Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 1

• Princess Liz Cheney -- 2014's Smoothie of the Year?
• "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1
• And the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama's SOTU

The Curious Case of the Princess and the Senator (see No. 1)

Crackpot Utopia: A dream world as envisioned by republicans; a manifestation or expression of the deranged, warped alternate universe inhabited by republicans, at least in their minds. See also: Bachmannism, Boehneresque.

by Noah

1. Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award

Since we're talkin' about crazy crackpot folks, why not start back in early January with the Cheney Princess, Liz, and her surprising -- and then surprisingly brief -- candidacy for the office of U.S. senator from Wyoming, the old home state of her Dr. Strangelovean Daddy Dick. Liz coulda been a contenda, or at least she thought so . . . at least for a while.

First, for purposes of frame of reference, here's a sample of Princess Liz speaking the crazy via Twitter:

Rarely do I disagree with best VP ever* but @SarahPalinUSA is more qualified than Obama and Biden combined. Huge respect 4 all she's done 4 GOP.
-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
* "Best VP ever" = Daddy Dick -- Ed.

You see, incumbent republican Sen. Mike Enzi (there are only republicans in Wyoming) was thinking of retirement. All Dark Princess Liz had to do was be gracious, courteous, and professional, or even just one of those three, and go ask him if the rumors were true and say that, if so, she would like to run for his seat. If he said that yes, he wanted to retire, she could ask for his blessing which those in the know say would have come.

But nooo! The arrogance apple doesn't fall far from the tree. She just called Senator Enzi and let it be known that she was going to run against him in the republican primary. That didn't sit well with the senator, who went all "Nobody's gonna push me out -- screw you!" on Princess Liz's royal ass. Strike One!

Now, the citizens of Wyoming happen to like Old School things, such as respect for elders, class, and earning your stripes, so Liz's bull-in-a-china-shop approach just didn't play in her state, especially when it turned out that Wyoming wasn't even really "her" state. That became clear when she thought she'd put a veneer of "local" on herself and apply for a Wyoming fishing license. She also bought a $1.9 million mini-castle in Jackson Hole, a place that real Wyoming folks regard as Hollywood East. She even bought brand-new boots and squeaky brand-new blue jeans to "look the part," and claimed to be a resident, but it turned out that Beltway Liz hadn't lived in Wyoming enough to claim resident status. She got fined $220 for her untruthfulness (another family trait!). Nothin' like finding new ways to say "I'm a carpetbagger!" Oh well, at least she didn't go and shoot one of her friends in the face on a fake bird hunt.

Princess Liz did manage, however, to wish death upon the local media when they didn't bend to her will and ran with the fish story. Now, who works in the local media? Local voters, that's who. She later said that she was referring to the liberal national media. Strike Two!

Then there was the open-range dispute with her gay sister Mary over marriage equality. The battle flew all over social and cable media. The princess mouthed the usual "marriage is between one man and one woman" crapola. It got ugly, and if you turn on your own family, why should Wyoming voters think you'll always have their back? Strike Three!

Tanking polls! You're out! Even FOX "News," trying desperately to give her some sort of gravitas, could not save her. Mike Enzi is still senator. He ought to thank Liz for making him look good by comparison. Back to the Beltway, Princess Liz!

Next time, the Cheney family might want to consider running Princess Mary the Gay. She's actually less of a princess than Liz. She's a little better-adjusted, and maybe her party could make an exception and back an openly gay person for national office. Hey, I'm not sayin' this would be sometime in this decade, but maybe in 30 years or so. Her dad will still be around due to his 15th pacemaker, an artificial liver, plenty of Depends, a jet-propelled wheelchair, and a suit made of nicotine patches. Mary's campaign slogan could be: "Wyoming, I Just Can't Quit You!"


2. "Miss Beck regrets" --
Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck



Also back in January, eternal misanthrope and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck put on a faux hairshirt and went on Faux News to confess to Mistress Megyn Kelly about his role in polarizing the United States Of America better than Tokyo Rose ever dreamed.

I remember it as an awful lot of fun and that I made an awful lot of mistakes, and I wish I could go back and be more uniting in my language. . . . I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart and it's not who we are.

I'm moved, I tell ya. I'm moved! Why, this is almost like little Idi Amin saying he's sorry he ate all those people!

Will Beck be giving back some of the millions he's made in the service of evil? What's next? Charlie Manson says he regrets that hot August night at Sharon Tate's? Too harsh? OK, maybe Beck was just trying to chat up Mistress Megyn by showing a "sensitive side."


3. The Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama's State of the Union speech

On January 28th, President Obama gave the annual State of the Union speech. Several republican voices, including foaming-at-the-mouth talk-radio wacko Mark Levin and Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton had encouraged republican senators and representatives to boycott the speech over such issues as "amnesty," the president's "luxurious travels," and of course (say the magic word!) Benghazi. Feeling that a boycott of the speech was appropriate, Fitton said:

Imagine if half the chamber is empty.

Well, for one thing, no goofballs would be mouthing: "You lie!"

The medication-free Mark Levin went even further over the top:

Since these men and women will not use the U.S. Constitution to defend this nation, since they will not use the Constitution to confront a lawless President, worse yet, since they're funding his activities with these omnibus bills filled with all kinds of crap, what the Republicans should do is boycott the State of the Union . . . so half of the House floor, because that's where they meet, is empty.

The immensely reality-challenged Levin rambled on semi-coherently with phrases like "threatens the Republic" and "liberty and tyranny" -- all the usual republican insanity.

Seems to me that if President Obama were half the tyrant these people think he is, they wouldn't have their radio shows, columns, etc. But hey, playing the victim card can rile up the critical-thinking-challenged disciples and rake in piles of money.

In the end, just about everybody,other than far right "Supreme" Court Justices Alito, Thomas, and Scalia showed up, but republican Rep. Steve Stockman did indulge in his version of Crackpot Theater when he got up and walked out halfway through the speech, saying he did it over the usual perceived abuses of the Constitution, Obama's not mentioning Benghazi, Obama's alleged "wholesale violation of his oath," "failed policies," blah, blah, blah. He's from Texas, so say no more -- except, well, he did bring the rockin' racist Ted Nugent as his date. (More on Ted in the next installment of "Crackpot Utopia.")

Another one of Texas's finest, Rep. Randy Weber, tweeted out something about Obama being the Kommandant-in-Chef. Chef? There go those Texas schoolbooks again. But who ever said you needed to know how to spell in order to go into politics? As outgoing Gov. Rick Perry says, it's not an IQ test.

The media reactions were just as bad. FOX's Erick Erickson blanched at the thought of equal pay for women in a tweet during the speech, while Bush's brain Karl Rove reached all the way back to 2005 to find something to whine about on his Twit account.

The man who threatened the full faith and credit of US now lectures congress on the issue.

The biggest media farce, though, occurred the very next day on FOX-Lite CNN, where republican shill Wolf Blitzer was seen tossing soft and fluffy questions to one of his most favorite guests, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who had given one of the not-the-historically-usual-one-or-even-two-but-three SOTU rebuttals that the laughably called "liberal media" had afforded their republican friends. On his day-after show, Wolfboy asked Cathy if she supported "equal pay for equal work."

"Absolutely!" came the response. She blathered on and on about how the GOP supports pay equality for women in the workplace, etc., etc., blah-blah-blah. Did Wolfie the bearded wonder shill then ask her why she has voted against equal pay four times? Nope, but hey, that's not what he's there to do. He just plays a journalist on TV.

I wonder if McMorris Rodgers handed her interviewer a bag o'cash after the show. "Keep up the good work, Wolfie! Reince loves you! Kiss, kiss!"

•     •     •

Well, that's it for Part 1 of "Crackpot Utopia." And I'm not even done with January yet!


TOMORROW IN PART 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW --
Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy

Part 1: Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award; "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck; and the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama’s State of the Union speech [12/19/2014]
Part 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award, to ABC "shark" Kevin O'Leary [12/20/2014]
Part 3: Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff; Arizona legalizes crack!; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: Bill O’Reilly [12/21/2014]
Part 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; and the "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370 [12/22/2014]
Part 5: The GOP and the kiss heard 'round the world; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5: Joe the Plumber [12/23/2014]
Part 6: A word about South Carolina; Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid; and I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please [12/24/2014]
Part 7: And so it begins: The running of the buffoons; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup [12/29/2014]
Part 8: Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association [12/30/2014]
Part 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza [12/31/2014]
Part 10: Newsmax -- Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann, Kimberly Guilfoyle [1/1/2015]
Part 11: GOP and FOX whip up the hate over a POW exchange; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 14: Iowa asylum escapee Rep. Steve King [1/3/2015]
Part 12: Arizona Republican protests busload of YMCA campers; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee(s) No. 15: the Impeachment Variations (group nomination); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 16: NM Rep. Steve Pearce [1/4/2015]
Part 13 (and last): TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal); and the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner! [1/5/2015]

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy*

Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [12/30/2013]
Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [12/31/2013]
Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [1/1/2014]
Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (plus more "Quote of the Year nominees") [1/2/2014]
Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [1/3/2014]
Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [1/4/2014]

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In stunning scientific news, scientists learn to tell wingnuts Jeff Sessions and Mike Enzi apart

Mike Enzi or Jeff Sessions? Oh wait, that's actually the much funnier Jeff Sessions look-alike, the late comedian and actor Henry Gibson.

by Ken

Oh sure, you could always tell them apart using seat-of-the-pants empricial techniques. Like knowing that Jeff Sessions is from the Confederacy Forever wing of the Republcian Party, you could say, "Slavery is an abomination," and wait for him to drawl, "The South will rahz again." Or knowing that Mike Enzi is from the Western Survivalist wing, you could pretend to be a revenooer and see if he goes for his shotgun.

Of course, the Teabaggers could tell them apart, because Enzi isn't quite crazy or strident enough to suit their tastes. As Washington Post political reporter Paul Kane notes in the piece below, the Senate GOP crazies are up in arms. (Kane notes that he's "no moderate. but he has worked with Democrats, including the late Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.)," and "his head-down approach has not earned him praise in the tea party era of confrontation." He reminds us that Enzi for a while faced a primary challenge from Liz Cheney in his last reelection bid.) The story, in brief is that Senate Republicans have a brouhaha brewing for the chairmanship of the Budget Kane, which as Kane notes they haven't had "since 1987, when Jesse Helms (N.C.) used seniority to trump Richard Lugar (Ind.) for the leading spot on Foreign Relations." And the Senate GOP crazies see the hand of the leadership in Enzi's challenge to the ascension of Sessions, who has been serving as ranking member, a challenge that Enzi is entitled by his party's rules to make on the ground of his razor-thin edge in seniority.

It's an awkward spot for the Senate GOP leadership, and reporter Kane seems to accept that the leadership is staying out of it. Naturally the GOP crazies aren't buying it. After all, these are people who see conspiracies under the bed when they get up in the morning. Even accepting that the leadership is staying out of it, though, almost my favorite moment in the story is when the spokesman for Senate Majority Leader-to-be "Miss Mitch" McConnnell says, apparently with a straight face, "The only members who decide the chairman are the Republican members of the committee. The leadership plays no role." And he wouldn't say it if it wasn't so.

Anyway, here's the story, which I'm going to let Paul Kane tell his way.

In chairman fight, Jeff Sessions is battling his perception on immigration debate

By Paul Kane

Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) were elected to the Senate on the same day in 1996, but Enzi holds seniority over his longtime friend through a totally random feature of party rules: They drew names out of a hat.

That quirk of history has led to a showdown over the chairmanship of the Budget Committee that has caused a backlash among conservatives, who say Enzi is unfairly laying claim to the powerful position at the behest of party leaders.

Sessions has been serving as the top Republican on the committee for the past four years and was in line to take the chairmanship after the GOP won control of the Senate this month.

But since then, Sessions has undercut party leaders with his strident opposition to President Obama’s immigration action, even raising the specter of another fiscal showdown that resembles previous confrontations with the White House. Party leaders are eager to fight back against the president, but in a more measured way in line with their desire to show that they are up to the task of governing.

That has provided an opening for Enzi, whose name-out-of-a-hat seniority gives him the standing to challenge Sessions and who is pitching himself as a less-confrontational alternative.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other members of his team have publicly stayed out of the contest, but conservative activists nevertheless say they are quietly backing Enzi because he would be a more reliable party man.

Gaston Mooney — who served as an aide to former senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who often clashed with McConnell’s leadership team — wrote in an article last week in Conservative Review: “If Sessions loses the chair of the budget committee, it is only under the orders and direction of McConnell.”

Enzi’s advisers reject the idea that he’s making a run at the leadership’s bidding, instead stressing his experience on fiscal matters such as health care. McConnell’s office issued a strong denial of playing any role.

“The only members who decide the chairman are the Republican members of the committee. The leadership plays no role,” Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, said Wednesday.

Sessions has spent his three terms in the Senate advancing a conservative agenda and has become one of the most reliable voices opposing Obama. He can be every bit as confrontational as his much-better-known colleague Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), with the key difference being that Sessions actually holds power and position within the Senate.

On immigration, Sessions has been the leading voice among Republicans who want to use the budget process to try to force Obama to back off his unilateral decision to offer protections to illegal immigrants.

Republicans who disagree with that strategy think that a better counter to Obama’s action would be to pass a border-security bill and other conservative immigration legislation and send it to the White House, rather than cutting off the budget and risking even a partial shutdown of government agencies.

Aware that critics say his approach will lead to a shutdown, Sessions has repeatedly vowed that if push came to shove, he supports funding the government. But he has been vague on how his strategy would work once the president vetoed legislation that included restrictions on implementing the immigration order.

“We should be cautious, we should be responsible. I’m going to tell you, that is exactly correct: We don’t need to shut this government down, we’re going to fund the government,” he said.

If Sessions wins the chairmanship, the implications for the GOP are more than temperamental or confined to immigration. On the policy front, Sessions is an independent thinker — a deeply ideological conservative who is very open to using the budget as a political weapon.

When House Republicans and Senate Democrats cut a bipartisan budget deal late last year, Sessions forcefully opposed the compromise, breaking with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman. Sessions argued that the agreement too easily adjusted levels of discretionary spending, and he balked at the inclusion of new federal fees.

Reluctant to criticize his old friend, Sessions is laying out his case of having done hard work over the past four years as the ranking Republican on the committee, and being ready to do the job on Day One. “Look, Enzi can do the job. He’s got sound values. I just have given a lot of thought to it and would like the opportunity to do it. We’ll keep talking, and our colleagues will ultimately get to decide,” he said.

The electorate for this race is tiny: The 10 or 12 Republicans who will be on the Budget Committee next year will vote, and whatever they decide will almost certainly be honored when the full Republican caucus weighs in.

Republicans have not had a contested battle for a top committee post since 1987, when Jesse Helms (N.C.) used seniority to trump Richard Lugar (Ind.) for the leading spot on Foreign Relations.

Short in stature and possessing a quirky, high-pitched Southern drawl, Sessions, 67, is sometimes overlooked, but he’s rarely out­hustled. He won a fourth term to the Senate three weeks ago without any opposition whatsoever, either in a primary or the general election.

The early focus for Sessions was the law, graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1973. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to be the U.S. attorney for the state’s Southern District, beginning an unusually long 12-year stint that spanned two GOP administrations.

His nomination for the U.S. District Court in Alabama became a racially charged moment in 1986 amid accusations of mishandling a voter-fraud case against civil rights activists, and his ultimate rejection for the lifetime appointment set him on a political path.

In 1996, he won the Senate seat of Howell Heflin (D), whose vote against Sessions a decade earlier was pivotal to his nomination’s defeat. His focus for years was on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he defended the George W. Bush administration’s aggressive tactics to fight terrorists.

His first battle with his own party on immigration came during the Senate’s 2006 debate on bipartisan legislation that would have led to a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants — a bill that the Bush White House backed but which Sessions labeled “fatally flawed.”

By 2009, Sessions became the ranking GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, where he played the role of leading the attack against Obama’s Supreme Court nominees. Despite Sessions’s sharp conservatism, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan won confirmation in a fairly amicable process.

Republican rules on term limits for top committee slots forced Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) out of another key post in 2011, and Grassley’s seniority trumped Sessions’s at Judiciary. Even though he wasn’t the most senior at Budget, other Republicans, including Enzi, had picked more prime committees, and the legal expert found himself serving as the top GOP senator on fiscal matters.

In the minority, Sessions did not hold nearly the same clout as his House counterpart, Ryan, the Budget chairman who became the ideological standard-bearer for this decade’s fiscal conservatives.

His biggest break from the fiscal-hawk wing has been that Sessions has shown a knack for Southern conservative populism on some issues. He recently advocated walling off Medicare and Social Security trust funds to protect their finances, rather than the ­Ryan-style voucher programs, and he often talks about “fair trade deals” that protect U.S. workers that sound ideologically similar to Northern Democrats.

Sessions was not a central negotiator in the four fiscal showdowns that Republicans had with Obama and Senate Democrats the past four years.

In fact, over the past two years, Sessions has made his biggest mark being the leading Republican opponent to immigration legislation, first on a bipartisan vote in 2013 and now on Obama’s executive action.

His confrontational style has scared some congressional Republicans, who want to avoid even talk of a possible government shutdown and argue that the 2016 GOP presidential nominee cannot alienate the Hispanic vote to have any chance at victory.

Enzi is no moderate, but he has worked with Democrats, including the late Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the former senator who is now ambassador to Beijing. His head-down approach has not earned him praise in the tea party era of confrontation, and for a brief time he drew a primary challenge from Liz Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president.

Enzi fought back hard and eventually cruised to reelection. He has been setting up one-on-one meetings with members of the budget panel in what is the most insidery of insider races in Washington.

“Jeff and I are talking,” Enzi said late last week, unclear whether the issue would go all the way to a rare vote on who gets the gavel. “I don’t know. We’ll keep working on it. We’re good friends.”

His public selling point has been that he holds a more senior post on the committee and that two years ago, when Republicans were still in the minority, he passed on asserting his seniority and allowed Sessions to maintain his perch.

But that seniority is based entirely on the quirky GOP rules. A handful of Republicans won their first Senate term in 1996 without any prior experience as a governor or member of the House, so under party rules seniority was determined by drawing names from a hat.

Sessions was the last name drawn, and now he’s squaring off against his old friend in a race that has caused anxiety among their colleagues.

“I hope they work it out,” said Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a member of the Senate Budget Committee. “That would be best for everybody.”

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Liz Cheney Slinking Off Back To Virginia-- Ends Wyoming Senate Bid

Once Liz Cheney's dismal initial polling numbers started sinking even further as Wyoming voters came in contact with her, I became hopeful that if she stayed in the race, her role in Cheney's take-over of the U.S. government in the first weeks of the Bush administration would come to the fore and help American understand how catastrophic the Cheney family has already been for this country. But last night it became clear that that is an exposé for another time. Liz Cheney called it quits to her ill-fated primary challenge to Mike Enzi. There's going to be an official announcement today but she let the cat out of the bag for CNN last night.

Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an official announcement about the race as early as Monday.

Cheney's surprising decision to jump into the race, an announcement made in a YouTube video last summer, roiled Republican politics in the Wyoming, a state Dick Cheney represented in Congress for five terms before moving up the Republican food chain in Washington.

Enzi was a low-key presence in Washington who was elected in 1996 and, with few blemishes, amassed a conservative voting record in the Senate. He expressed public annoyance at Cheney's decision to mount a primary challenge. A number of his Senate colleagues quickly rallied to his side and pledged support for his re-election bid.

There was little public polling of the race, but two partisan polls released last year showed Enzi with a wide lead, an assessment mostly shared by GOP insiders watching the race.

Cheney's campaign got off to a rocky start.

Her critics labeled her a carpetbagger, noting that she moved to Wyoming only in 2012 after relocating from Virginia. The issue flared in August after the Wyoming media reported that Cheney improperly received a fishing license despite not living in the state for at least a year, as the law requires.

Grabbing even more attention was her very public dispute with her sister, Mary, over the issue of same-sex marriage. Mary Cheney, who is a lesbian, took to Facebook in November to object to Liz's opposition to same-sex marriage, claiming that her sister has previously supported her relationship while saying something very different on the campaign trail.

The dispute prompted their parents to weigh in, saying they were "pained" to see the sisters battle over a private matter in full view of the news media.

Beyond the campaign missteps, Cheney's election effort, vigorously supported by her father and his allies, often felt out-of-tune with the small-government conservative sentiment that has fueled other Republican primary challengers.

Cheney, like her father, is an unapologetic neoconservative who favors muscular use of American military power overseas, a policy that does not sit well with many grassroots conservatives, particularly in the libertarian-leaning West.

Early this morning, the paper of record, confirmed the CNN "rumors" of last night. The excuse she's using is "serious health issues" in the family. She issued a statement:

"Serious health issues have recently arisen in our family, and under the circumstances, I have decided to discontinue my campaign. My children and their futures were the motivation for our campaign, and their health and well-being will always be my overriding priority. As a mother and a patriot, I know that the work of defending freedom and protecting liberty must continue for each generation. Though this campaign stops today, my commitment to keep fighting with you and your families for the fundamental values that have made this nation and Wyoming great will never stop."

Good riddance!

Endorsements: South Carolina, Wyoming, California's Inland Empire

Here in Southern California, there's a little bit of controversy in CA-31 (San Bernardino and the 'burbs between Upland and Redlands) over the "unanimous" and coordinated endorsements by 4 Democratic Clubs of DCCC empty suit Pete Aguilar over three better-qualified Democratic candidates. One DCCC operative told me these kinds of phony club endorsements are standard procedure for the DCCC to help prop up weak candidates like Aguilar. Former Congressman Joe Baca, running for his old seat despite a vicious and determined campaign against him led by Steve Israel, told me this week that 2 of the clubs are in other districts and that the other two have 4 members each-- and that the 4 members don't even go to the "meetings." These were faked endorsements to try to stampede the California Democratic Party to go along with Steve Israel's terrible decision to endorse Aguilar, who already lost the very blue (D+5) district to TWO Republicans in 2012.

Normal people don't necessarily care about endorsements, but some endorsements-- though not from these fakes clubs-- come with resources. Certainly a California Democratic Party endorsement has immense value in a Democratic primary. Baca told me that Aguilar doesn't have the brains to manipulate the system that way but that Steve Israel sure does. And then there's Eric Bauman, the would-be Jesse Unruh of California's Democratic Party, who has also been working behind the scenes on behalf of Aguilar.

There are good reasons the Democratic Party has worked up rules about not interfering in viable primaries. Political careerists who undermine those rules should be fired. Then people will think twice about doing it again.

Nationally, though there are other stories in the endorsement game this week, namely South Carolina's junior appointed senator, Tim Scott going on CNN's Crossfire and pointedly refusing to endorse South Carolina's senior senator, Lindsay Graham, who's struggling for political survival against a bevy of blood-thirsty teabaggers. (See video up top.)

The endorsement/non-endorsement story that's captured the public's mind though is, of course, the ugly controversy roiling the Cheney family. Liz Cheney, an ambitious extremist, is trying to unseat very conservative senator Mike Enzi in Wyoming and has relocated there from her home in Virginia. Her polling numbers are dreadful-- 69-17% in the latest poll-- so she decided to brutally throw her sister's family under the bus to get some attention. People who don't even follow politics are sickened by Liz Cheney's ogre-like behavior, worse than anything one would ever even expect from her father!

Politico reported that Mary Cheney has now publicly asserted that she won't be endorsing the evil sister's campaign. Liz Cheney blames the whole mess on Enzi, of course.

Unbeknownst even to some of her closest friends and advisers, her newly announced opposition to gay marriage had caused a major rift in the famously close Cheney family, and she and Mary were no longer on speaking terms. Days after we talked it all became public, when, in a series of Facebook posts as devastating as they were surprising, Mary blasted her sister’s stance against marriage equality. “Liz’s position is to treat my family as second class citizens,” Mary wrote. “This isn't like a disagreement over grazing fees or what to do about Iran.” The public rebuke was the first communication between the sisters since August, and soon their parents, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, found themselves dragged into the imbroglio, issuing a statement defending Liz.

But Mary wasn’t done speaking out. In a series of emails to me this week, as the news of her break with her sister spread, Mary wrote, “I’m not supporting Liz’s candidacy.” She later clarified: “By supporting, I mean not working, not contributing, and not voting for (I’m registered in Virginia not Wyoming).” The best she could say of the sister who was once her close friend and confidante was a final postscript: “I am not saying I hope she loses to Enzi.”

For a family renowned for its togetherness and discipline-- “It’s very un-Cheney-like for one arm of the family to do something the other part doesn’t know about in the political sphere and cause any degree of heartburn,” says one former adviser to Dick Cheney—the public squabbling has been a shock. And what began as a race that seemed certain to tear apart the Republican Party in Wyoming has been transformed into something that once seemed unfathomable: the race that’s torn apart the Cheney family.

…Until this week’s very public disagreement, the Cheneys had succeeded for years in keeping the political and the personal in delicate balance when it came to the issue of Mary’s sexuality. Granted, that wasn’t always easy. When she came out to her parents as a high school junior, as she tells the story in Now It’s My Turn, her mother burst into tears and said, “Your life will be so hard.” (Dick, for his part, told her, “You’re my daughter and I love you and I just want you to be happy.”) By the time Bush offered Dick the vice presidency in 2000, one of his biggest hesitations, Mary writes, was about what such a move would mean for her. “Personally, I’d rather not be known as the vice president’s lesbian daughter,” Mary told him. “But, if you’re going to run, I think the country would be lucky to have you. I want to do whatever I can to help out on the campaign.” Help she did, along with Liz, and over the next eight years of the Bush administration, the two sisters, who were already close, grew even closer. To the extent Mary’s sexuality intruded into the world of politics, it only seemed to draw the sisters tighter together.

Never more so than in 2004. That year began with Mary contemplating quitting her job on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign because of the president’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which proposed to ban same-sex marriage. As Mary recalls in her memoir, when she asked to discuss the matter with her father at the White House, Lynne and Liz joined them, and all three urged her to remain on the campaign-- noting that they themselves disagreed with Bush on the issue. But they also told her they would understand and support her decision if she did resign. Mary chose to stay on and, later in that campaign, when Democratic nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, each separately raised the issue of her sexuality during the debates, the Cheneys were furious. Lynne declared Kerry was “not a good man” and denounced his “cheap and tawdry political trick.” When Edwards debated their father, Liz and Lynne went so far as to stick their tongues out at him, while Mary glared at the Democrat and, borrowing one of her father’s famous expressions, silently mouthed the words “Go fuck yourself.”

By the time Dick left office, it seemed clear that the Cheneys had navigated a complicated issue with no negative political consequences-- and family solidarity intact. And, in the years since, it appeared the family's balancing act would only get easier: While the Republican Party remained solidly against gay marriage, public opinion-- even inside the GOP-- was shifting rapidly toward more friendly views about homosexuality. The rest of the country looked like it was catching up with the Cheneys.

But living in Washington is different from living in Wyoming, a fact that Liz Cheney may not have fully reckoned with when she announced in July that she would take on Enzi in next year’s Republican primary. When Cheney jumped into the race, the assumption among the political cognoscenti was that the incumbent was in trouble. The low-key, at times lumbering 69-year-old former CPA-- a politician so square and old-fashioned that he carries a briefcase onto the Senate floor, where he seldom utters a word-- was presumed to be no match for the young, media-savvy, slashing-and-burning daughter of the former vice president. It was an impression Enzi himself reinforced when, upon hearing the news of Cheney’s entrance into the race, he lamented to reporters, “I thought we were friends.”

Few, if any of the early accounts of Cheney’s candidacy even mentioned the matter of her sister, and at first it seemed her biggest problem would be dismissing the carpetbagger label. Although Cheney claims to be a fourth-generation Wyomingite, she did not live in the state-- save for two years as a young girl-- until 2012, when she moved her family from northern Virginia into a $1.6 million home in the tony resort town of Jackson Hole.

"When Women Succeed, America Succeeds"-- Except When The Opposite Happens... Think Liz Cheney

I'm glad Nancy Pelosi is launching an initiative to help empower women. But, let's be frank-- when Michele Bachmann succeeds or Ann Coulter succeeds, America fails. Deb Fischer is a U.S. senator from Nebraska. She's one of almost two dozen far right crackpots with ZERO crucial vote scores according to ProgressivePunch... right up there down there with Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), John Boozman (R-AR), Miss McConnell (R-KY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Burr (R-NC), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and the rest of the obstructionists who are working every single day to undermine America. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bob Corker (R-TN), very conservative senators who are sick of McConnell's willingness to hurt the American economy and American families to make Obama look bad, favor working with the Democrats in a spirit of compromise. Corker, who was heard yelling "bullshit" while McConnell was lisping out his Limbaugh-and-Beck-inspired rhetoric at a caucus meeting, told reporters that "What I did yesterday was not in a vacuum and I’m glad to be able to be in a position where I can do things that are for the greater good of the Republican Conference, the U.S. Senate, and ultimately, candidly, for the country and that’s what I did yesterday." Deb Fischer, an ideologue and a backbencher no one in Washington takes seriously, doesn't agree. She opposes compromise and she voted against ending the filibusters against Richard Cordray to be Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Tom Perez to be Secretary of Labor and Regina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency. And then Fischer voted against confirming all 3 of them. How else do you keep that ZERO rating!

I just realized that I happened to include Mike Enzi, the senior senator from Wyoming, as another crackpot wingnut with a ZERO ProgressivePunch crucial vote score. He voted exactly the same way that Fischer and Miss McConnell and Ted Cruz did... on everything. But some on the radical right don't think it's good enough-- like Sean Hannity-- and they're encouraging a woman wing-nut to run against him, Liz Cheney. Never mind that the first polls of Wyoming voters are already saying "no, thanks" to the carpetbagging millionairess from Virginia... the Republican Entertainment Complex is backing Cheney against Enzi. A Republican polling firm, Harper, did the survey and found Enzi crushing the former Vice President's spoiled daughter 55-21%. Enzi is viewed favorably by 76% of Wyoming Republicans. 45% view Liz Cheney favorably, even though nearly as many like her father and Enzi.

If the Cheneys manage to somehow get rid of Enzi-- "duck hunt, Mike?"-- Liz will certainly be right there with Deb Fischer opposing... everything. She's already demanding the GOP stop "cutting deals" with the Democrats.

“We’ve got to stand and fight, and we have to defend what we believe in. We have to not be afraid of being called obstructionists,” Cheney said.

“In my view, obstructing President Obama’s policies and his agenda isn’t actually obstruction; it’s patriotism,” Cheney said. “I think we have to stop what he’s doing, and then as conservatives, we’ve got to say, ‘Here’s what we believe,’ and, ‘Here’s the path forward,’ and that’s what I intend to lay out in this campaign.”

Cheney didn’t give specifics in response to reporters’ questions about what she believes Enzi might have done to show complicity with Obama’s agenda.

But she said, “Instead of cutting deals with the president’s allies in Congress, we can be opposing them every step of the way.”

Enzi's colleagues in the Senate including Wyoming's other senator and Miss McConnell-- and the NRSC which says it will spend party money to defeat Cheney-- all seem to be backing him so far, although fringe groups like Jim DeMint's Heritage outfit are pushing Cheney. They have tried-- along with the Cheney clan-- to push Enzi into an early retirement.

"She said that if I ran she wasn't going to run, but obviously that wasn't correct," Enzi said, speaking to reporters as he left the Senate floor. "I thought we were friends." The move by Cheney adds a new level of intrigue into the 2014 midterm elections.

Wyoming, one of the most reliably conservative states in the country, will almost certainly not affect the balance of power in the Senate, but the race will be a marquee Republican event.

..."It's kind of interesting that about 30 minutes after I put out a release saying that I intend to run, she put out one saying she was running," Enzi told reporters. "She's watching pretty closely what I'm doing. This is different than what she was saying before-- that if I didn't run, she would run."

Cheney, whose popularity grew among conservatives in her role as a commentator on Fox News, worked in the State Department during the administration of George W. Bush and her father. She is the eldest of two daughters of the former vice president and his wife, Lynn.

Her move back to Wyoming last year raised eyebrows among some Republicans in the state. An editorial in the Cody Enterprise newspaper in the state urged her not run, outlining several strikes against her.

You Think Baucus' Miserable Bill Could Get Any Worse? Give Enzi & Grassley A Shot At It

Where's Enzi? Can't find his make-up kit?

This CNN report last night that health care negotiators-- the ridiculous, built-to-fail Gang of 6-- are finding common ground turns out to be as false as the CNN 9/11 scare-mongering about an al Qaida naval invasion last week and Fox's report of the Million Moron March on 9/12. Sure, Baucus' bill is a grotesque charade of health care reform but still not horrible enough to satisfy any Republican hacks in the Senate, save, maybe Olympia Snowe. As expected by anyone not on heavy doses of narcotics, Grassley and Enzi blew up the talks... again.

As though the Finance Committee's shameful excuse for health care reform wasn't already a total sell-out to Baucus' Medical-Industrial Complex ($2,890,631) and Insurance Business ($1,196,463) donors-- not to mention Obama's generous supporters at Big Pharma-- Grassley and Enzi think it is still too generous to the louts who have to pay for the whole hideous charade.

Two of the three Republicans in a small group trying to forge a bipartisan compromise on health care have requested numerous major changes in a proposal drafted by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, reducing the chances that he can win their support.

The Republicans, Senators Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, have catalogued their concerns in documents sent to the chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana.

Their main complaint is a fee on health insurance companies, clinical laboratories and manufacturers of medical devices meant to help finance coverage of the uninsured. Although they are also bitching that the prohibition against allowing for women's health issues involving choice isn't strongly worded enough. And then they've decided that it isn't just illegal immigrants they want to keep out of the pool, but legal immigrants as well-- like most of our what would have been our grandparents and great-grandparents. I can only imagine what their demands would have been if the GOP had won either the Senate, the House or the White House in the elections 10 months ago!

On the other hand, wasn't the bill just absolutely bad enough straight from Baucus and his lobbyist pals even before Grassley and Enzi felt the need to further screw over as many more working families as Republicanly possible? Jonathan Cohn took a little peek-- and puked all over the newest issue of the New Republic.

The bottom line here depends, in part, on which people you consider--in particular, whether you’re looking at the poor or middle class, and whether you’re looking at the relatively sick or the relatively healthy.

Total medical expenses, including premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, would be no more than 20 percent of annual income for most of the people profiled in the document. For the poor, it'd be dramatically less. That's the (relatively) good news.

And the bad news? These figures are all for people in average health. But people end up paying a lot more in out-of-pocket expenses when they have a serious medical issue--whether it's because of an accident, an acute illness, or a chronic disease. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, a family of four making $42,000 a year could owe $9,000 a year in medical expenses if it hit the maximum in out-of-pocket expenses--which is pegged, in the Finance legislation, to deductible levels in Health Savings Accounts. That's easy to do when one family member gets in an accident, has an acute medical problem, or is dealing with a chronic disease.

A family of four making $78,000 a year could owe $23,000--nearly a third of its income--if it had a member with high medical bills.

Expect a massive ad campaign backing this travesty-- and paid for courtesy of Rahm Emanuel's deal with one of his role models, crooked PhRMA chief Billy Tauzin-- coming to all TV sets near you very soon. It's all part of the massive vaguely bipartisan clusterfuck passing for health care reform.

Obama was wrong when he said that for-profit insurance companies have a legitimate role in the country's health care system. They don't.