You Have To Go To A Dead Language To Find The Best Definition Of Trumpism

McConnell had hoped the Senate would vote to repeal Obamacare on Thursday night. He was wrong on two counts: the Senate rejected the repeal again-- and it came on Friday morning, the 52nd anniversary of Medicare.

My great-grandparents came to the U.S., refugees from the genocidal tyrannies of Eastern Europe, in the early 1900s. When I was a kid my grandmother sometimes used Yiddish words from her childhood around the house. When I was trying to think of a word to describe Trump's horrifying, degenerate, shameful and dysfunctional regime one of those words popped into my head: hegdesh. Perhaps the last time I heard it was 5-6 decades ago and I recalled it meaning "a messy, confused place." Before using it I thought I should look it up in an English-Yiddish dictionary. My memory was close: "filthy place." Sounds like everything attached to Donald J. Trump and his family and Regime.

Did you know he was angry at Priebus for not getting into a public fight with The Mooch when The Mooch told Ryan Lizza that the then-chief of staff is a "fucking paranoid schizophrenic" and a "paranoiac" and seems dot threaten to get him either investigated by the FBI or fired by Trumpanzee. Trump's management style-- divide and conquer-- is primitive, counterproductive and feckless. It may work in a mom-and-pop family business like Trump's but it doesn't work in the real world, not in the corporate world and certainly not in government. The Webster dictionary describes it as "to make a group of people disagree and fight with one another so that they will not join together against one." That's Señor Trumpanzee in a nutshell.

McCain got him back but good this week. This was his official statement after he joined Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and the Senate Democrats to kill TrumpCare Friday morning:

“From the beginning, I have believed that Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with a solution that increases competition, lowers costs, and improves care for the American people. The so-called ‘skinny repeal’ amendment the Senate voted on today would not accomplish those goals. While the amendment would have repealed some of Obamacare’s most burdensome regulations, it offered no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens. The Speaker's statement that the House would be ‘willing’ to go to conference does not ease my concern that this shell of a bill could be taken up and passed at any time.

“I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict-party line basis without a single Republican vote. We should not make the mistakes of the past that has led to Obamacare’s collapse, including in my home state of Arizona where premiums are skyrocketing and health care providers are fleeing the marketplace. We must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of aisle, heed the recommendations of nation’s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people. We must do the hard work our citizens expect of us and deserve.”

Writing for the Washington Post after the vote, James Hohmann noted that "There is nothing Trump can do any more that will get to McCain. Battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, the maverick was willing to vote 'no' on the 'skinny repeal' amendment so that other GOP colleagues who were also opposed to the measure could vote 'yes' to save face with the conservative base. To this day, Trump has never apologized for saying that the former fighter pilot was not a war hero because he got captured in Vietnam. It gets less attention, but the president also besmirched the Arizona senator’s character by repeatedly accusing him of not taking care of other veterans. McCain has never forgotten."

And Trump isn't smart enough to remember. Maybe he'll adopt an idea gaining currency among the crackpot right to repeal the 17th amendment that allowed the electorate to pick senators.

The Trump wing of the GOP is on the warpath-- and Trump (and Bannon) love it, of course. They're all about disunity, turmoil and chaos... always places for opportunists to thrive. Here was FreedomWorks' statement after the vote Friday:

Last night’s vote was a slap in the face to every conservative who has been promised that Republicans would repeal ObamaCare. Sens. John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins voted against the ‘skinny repeal’ of ObamaCare, theoretically the least repeal that can be achieved because so many Republicans went back on their votes for a 2015-style repeal. The Republican Party has been all about ObamaCare repeal for the better part of a decade, and now we see that they have been writing checks to voters that they knew the Bank of Obama wouldn’t cash. Now that President Trump would sign it, they have exposed themselves as frauds.

Trump probably would have been just as happy to have signed a Medicare-for-All bill. It's all the same to him. Serious conservatives looking to move forward would be better off reading John Harwood's OpEd for CNBC, GOP needs to buck the crushing partisanship that just toppled health reform, than the incoherent drivel from FreedomWorks.

Ohanian's Obamacare Repeal

Something collapsed of its own weight last night, but it wasn't Obamacare. It was a partisan legislative effort that had grown completely disconnected from its ostensible purpose. Congressional Republicans, in the name of improving American health care, ended up searching for any bill they could pass-- whatever its content.

Thursday's bizarre spectacle included Republican senators demanding assurances that a bill they were about to vote for would never become law. In the end, the fact that the "skinny repeal"-- like every other variant the House and Senate had considered-- would have left millions more Americans without health insurance proved too much for Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain.

Given the GOP's narrow 52-seat majority, their "no" votes were enough to sink the party's seven-year anti-Obamacare crusade. Spectacular dysfunction within the Trump White House-- where a disengaged president oversees open warfare between his chief of staff and new communications director-- only made the effort harder.

Now that GOP implosion threatens prospects for tax reform and President Donald Trump's entire legislative agenda. A similar disconnect between campaign commitments, policy goals and achievable legislation hangs over the remainder of the Republican agenda, which includes overhauling the tax code.

But Trump and Republican congressional leaders have no consensus on specific objectives. And since their legislative plan is to proceed with only Republican votes, they have minimal margin for error.

Trump, who championed the "forgotten" working class in his 2016 campaign, says his principal concern is cutting taxes for middle-income Americans. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who favors cutting top marginal tax rates above all, specifically rejects the idea of focusing a plan around cutting middle-class taxes.

Ryan, reflecting conservative deficit hawks in his caucus, wants a tax reform plan that does not increase budget deficits after accounting for economic growth. Trump and his aides emphasize tax cuts and are willing to accept higher deficits.

A tax reform statement released Thursday, just as health-care legislation foundered yet again, showed that the White House has prevailed on that point, at least for now. It shelved the so-called border adjustment tax that Ryan hoped would finance deep rate cuts for businesses.

What's not certain is whether a cuts-only plan that increases the federal debt could pass even in the House, where Republicans hold a substantial majority, much less the Senate. And while Ryan backs cutting the top personal tax rate, neither the Senate nor key players within the Trump White House have embraced that goal.

Hopes for a major infrastructure plan face the same dynamic. The White House has pledged a $1 trillion investment that uses $200 billion in taxpayer money to attract $800 billion in private capital.

But GOP leaders, already struggling to boost defense spending, raise the debt limit and pass a budget, face resistance from conservatives on infrastructure spending. Democratic lawmakers will insist on more spending if the White House decides to seek their votes.

For now there's only one clear lesson from the GOP's health-care failure. The size of Republican majorities now make partisanship for its own sake too heavy a burden to bear.

And, keeping the essence of the word, hegdesh in mind, let's not forget that to Trump all this is a distraction anyway-- anything and everything to get the focus off Putin-Gate.

Deutsche Bank Laundromat-- Scrubbling Rubles Into Greenbacks

Republican Civil War Isn't Just About Money… Bigotry And Racism Are Big On The Right As Well

Matt Bevin, the radical right's McConnell slayer?

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation, is probably the most prodigious Democratic bundler in California. It was huge news when he backed Obama instead of Hillary in 2008. Today's news was that he's back on board with the Clintons. In the last 2 cycles, plus this year, he's personally donated over $3.5 million to Democratic organizations and candidates, particularly Priorities USA Action. Between 1990 and 2008, he wrote checks for $1.3 million. Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn't contribute to outfits like Blue America; he gives to the DCCC, DNC, DSCC and to Democratic Party organizations in states. And those organizations guard their big donors like ravenous wolves. When a Florida local elected official agreed to contribute to Blue America, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz went ballistic and threatened to "cut him off." I'm certain (really, I am) that this is just a coincidence, but he was found dead a few weeks later.

Another of L.A.'s biggest donors had been trying to get me to join the board of one of her companies and I had explained I didn't have the time or space. She's a smart cookie and she offered to throw a fundraiser at her Beverly Hills mansion for one of the Blue America candidates. I agreed to meet her to talk about what I'd have to do on the board. That evening, she entered the room, saying, "Oh, Howie, I just got off the phone with Steve [Israel] and he said your candidate has no chance and won't even wind up running in the end." That candidate, as it turned out, nearly did win, coming closer to beating the longtime incumbent since the district was first created! He lost because Steve Israel sabotaged his campaign with easily-manipulated Democratic contributors who don't know they're being played for fools by the Israels and Wasserman Schultzes.

And the Republican versions of Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, it was reported by Jeremy Peters in the NY Times this morning, are working hard to de-fund the grassroots GOP organizations on the right. Same boss-like mentality from the Beltway Establishment careerists who seek to control the political life of the country. Of course, with their crackpot candidates, the Republican Establishment at least has a legitimate reason to undermine their own extreme right wing. Israel, Hoyer, Crowley and Wasserman Schultz don't. They just have that ole lust for power and control.

One of the biggest challenges for Republican leaders in the 2014 midterm elections will be how to hang on to the Tea Party support that has been so instrumental to the party’s growth, while winning back voters alienated by hard-right candidates. These conflicting goals were evident last week as Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio shelved plans to tackle immigration reform in the House, bowing to pressure from conservatives.

“We’re not picking a fight with the basis for the Tea Party,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who noted that most Republicans were sympathetic to the free-market, small-government philosophy that inspired the movement. “But some have hijacked the Tea Party model and taken it to an extreme level.”

The chamber has become one of the establishment’s most powerful forces this year by taking the highly aggressive step of working in primaries to defeat Republicans who are seen as unelectable and damaging to the national party.

“Let’s not screw around eating our own,” Mr. Reed said. “Let’s win a seat.”

Tea Party groups and other conservatives who are challenging the traditional party leadership say the pushback this year is as hostile as it has ever been.

“I’ve been told by a number of donors to our ‘super PAC’ that they’ve received calls from senior Republican senators,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, which is supporting challengers to Republican incumbents across the country. The message from these donors was blunt: “I can’t give to you because I’ve been told I won’t have access to Republican leadership,” Mr. Kibbe said. “So they’re playing hardball.”

Few have fought rougher than Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, who is facing a primary challenger at home and Tea Party angst in Washington.

Under his direction, the National Republican Senatorial Committee cut ties with a prominent Republican advertising firm and pressed individual senators to do so as well because of its work with a group that targets incumbent Senate Republicans, the Senate Conservatives Fund. That group has accused the McConnell campaign of pressuring its bookkeeper into resigning because she feared that she would never get work from Republican candidates again.

“He’s essentially joined the I.R.S. in targeting conservative groups,” said Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund. “It’s all meant to intimidate.” Aides to Mr. McConnell had no comment.

In other races, the party’s mainstream elements have been pushing back quickly, albeit with less brute force.

In Alaska, Joe Miller, the Sarah Palin-backed candidate who in 2010 tried to unseat Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican, is running again this year and faces a crowded Republican primary. But when he sat down with the staff of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to gauge its support, members came armed with polling data and warned him that he was too unpopular to win.

In West Virginia, the Chamber of Commerce is working to neutralize opposition to Shelley Moore Capito, the leading Republican candidate. They have already claimed one casualty: A former State House member, Pat McGeehan, who claims to hold the record for the most “no” votes cast. He dropped out.

“Pat is a little bit on the ...” said Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, trying to find diplomatic words. “I’m just going to say he has a little bit of an ideological edge to him. We certainly let it be known by running our ads and so forth that Shelley would be a better candidate.”

In South Dakota, Senator John Thune, a member of the Republican leadership, has thrown his support behind Mike Rounds in the race for the seat being vacated by Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat. Mr. Rounds, a former governor, is being opposed in the primary by several candidates, including one, Stace Nelson, who was banned from the Republican caucus in the State House after being too combative with other members.

Ground zero in the establishment-strikes-back fight may be the House race in Idaho between Representative Mike Simpson, an eight-term member, and Bryan Smith, a lawyer who has the backing of the anti-tax, anti-spending group the Club for Growth. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has started running ads depicting Mr. Simpson as the true conservative, rebutting Mr. Smith’s claim that he is a “RINO”-- Republican in name only.

Mr. Smith said he had anticipated the pushback, but was seeing encouraging support locally. “I always knew that a 15-year incumbent who’s a close ally of John Boehner’s was going to outraise me,” he said before ticking off some recent triumphs. “We’ve raised over half a million dollars. Last week I got two more endorsements from the Republican Party on the county level.”

Mr. Reed, of the chamber, said he had it on good authority that his message to the more recalcitrant Republicans was sinking in.

“Boehner has told me that in the House caucus meetings there are a lot more guys sitting up straight,” he said. “They aren’t sitting in the back with their feet up on the chairs hurling spitballs.”

Mr. Black, the Virginia state senator, said he bore no ill will toward the friends who endorsed his opponent. But he does question what kind of shape his party is in if its leaders go on attacking the movement that is the source of so much grass-roots energy. “So many of the big-money interests are very antagonistic toward the base,” he said, “and I’m not sure where the Republican Party is headed.”

And, of course, on the GOP side, it isn't only about the loot, like it mostly is on the Democratic side. Jim DeMint's proto-fascist operation, Heritage Action, is viciously trying to undermine the Chamber of Commerce passed on ideology. Republican grassroots groups can let their racist hair down more freely than the Establishment groups, who need to persuade independents and moderates they're not exactly the same thing as Nazis (they are), care to. Earlier today DeMint's stooge, Michael Needleman, claimed that the comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate last year with some Republican support-- Lamar Alexander, Kelly Ayotte, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, Mark Kirk, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and Marco Rubio (FL)-- is the result of "corporate cronyism" and was "written behind closed doors by the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce."

This morning the Tampa Bay Times confirmed the rumor that former Florida state Rep. Ana Rivas Logan had left the Republican party and is re-registering as a Democrat. "The GOP of today is not the party I joined," said Rivas Logan, who also served on the Miami-Dade School Board. "It's not the party of my parents. It's a party that has been radicalized and held hostage by a group of extremists." She pointed out that the Republican Party "a party that attacks women and minorities-- and one that asked me, and my former Hispanic Republican colleagues in the Florida legislature, to turn on their own people by supporting extreme anti-immigrant policies." I wonder how she'll define being a Democrat.

Another right-wing PAC, FRC, ran this radio ad against mainstream conservative Republican Richard Hanna (NY) who teabaggers deride for being insufficiently extreme. Obama tied both McCain and Romney in Hanna's R+3 upstate New York district (Utica, Rome, Binghamton) and this one could easily fall to a Democrat if… oh, never mind… Steve Israel neglected to recruit a Democrat gainst one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Northeast.

Listen.

Will The Extreme Right Make It Easier For Ami Bera (D-CA) To Get Reelected?

Republican civil war comes to Sacramento County

Monday I went to a public forum with three of L.A.'s most progressive congressmembers, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Janice Hahn and our old friend Judy Chu. Remember my proposal last week calling for progressives to stop paying dues to the DCCC while Steve Israel is still chairman? They all seemed open to the idea and even started riffing on how progressives could give contributions directly to fellow progressives instead, like Carol Shea-Porter, John Tierney, and... Ami Bera. Ami Bera?

You really have to stretch the meaning of "progressive" to fit him into the definition. First off, as soon as he was elected last year, he joined the corrupt Wall Street friendly New Dems. And his voting record is, at beat "moderate," at worst reactionary. He and conservative multimillionaire Scott Peters are the only California freshman Democrats with ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores below 60%. On all the key votes Bera has taken his orders from Steve Israel, thinking more in terms of placating implacable Republicans than serving the needs of his own constituents. But, in the interest of amity at the forum, I just let it slide. His Republican opponent won't.

Earlier this month, I warned that if moderate ex-congressman Doug Ose gets the GOP nomination, he would beat Bera, particularly after Bera-- who later changed his mind-- came out backing Steve Israel's pro-bombing Syria agenda, despite how unpopular that position is with California voters. As I said at the time, CA-07 is one of the only districts in the whole country with a zero PVI, signifying that it is a true swing district. Obama beat both McCain (52-46%) and Romney (51-47%) in the district, which basically encompasses the suburbs east of Sacramento, including Folsom, Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights and Elk Grove. The district is entirely within Sacramento County. Bera took out incumbent Dan Lungren, 119,726 (51%) to 115,902 (49%), outspending Lungren last year $3,531,711 to $2,716,574. That's very close and Bera needs every Democrat in the district to turn out for him again. Many in the base don't like him and they will just sit this one out.

At the time the NRCC announced a big coup, the successful recruitment of former Congressman Doug Ose (1999-2205). Ose was a mainstream conservative, not a teabagger type. He had pledged to serve only 3 terms so he didn't run again in 2005. He tried running again in 2008 but was beaten by libertarian right-winger Tom McClintock in a bitter primary. McClintock's former chief of staff, Igor Birman, is also going to run. Perennial candidate Elizabeth Emken is also running. If the primary gets ugly enough, Bera could possibly survive, but right now, I'd rate his chances at 50% at best. If Ose gets through the primary and comes out strongly against the war and Bera supports it, Ose will win.

Yesterday, Bera got a lucky break: FreedomWorks endorsed Birman and if he beats Ose, that will be a big advantage for Bera.

“The constituents of California deserve better than a rank and file follower or a recycled politician searching for another turn in the spotlight,” FreedomWorks PAC President Matt Kibbe said in a release. “Igor is a policy expert who understands exactly what needs to be done to get our country back on track and he has the spine to stand up and make sure it happens.”

...Many conservatives do not like Ose, who retired from Congress in 2005 due to self-imposed term limits.

In 2008, he attempted to return to Congress, but lost a brutal Republican primary to McClintock. In that race, the Club for Growth spent heavily against Ose and it has suggested it may look for an alternative candidate this cycle as well.

No doubt Bera and the New Dems have their fingers crossed.

Tea Party Civil War

We all love watching the Republican civil war between the greed and selfishness wing and the hate and bigotry wing as it unfolds. In the radio interview above, Palin declares war, again, on Marco Rubio and Kelly Ayotte. But how about the civil war that's tearing apart the Tea party itself... a civil war within a civil war? Those are always the most fun.

Over the weekend Luke Mullins covered an aspect of that for the Washingtonian: Armey In Exile. A month before Romney went down in flames, Dick Armey had agreed to resign as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the big-money Tea Party fronts, forced out by Matt Kibbe with an $8 million payoff to just go away. Mullins asks and answers the question about what had turned Armey and Kibbe into bitter enemies and ripped FreedomWorks apart just as-- in their deranged minds-- Romney was sweeping into the White House and Republicans were taking over the Senate?

Though Armey rose to political prominence during the Gingrich Revolution, congressional staffers saw that he lacked political instincts-- "forgetting people’s names and arriving late to votes because he was chatting with his staff. 'He was a Mr. Magoo type of character,' says a former GOP leadership aide. 'Everyone knew that he didn’t know what was going on.' Armey also talked himself into controversy. He referred to Hillary Clinton as 'Marxist' and to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank-- an openly gay congressman-- as 'Barney Fag.'" After resigning from Congress, Armey joined Matt Kibbe's radical right Citizens for a Sound Economy, an early version of the Tea Party, funded by the John Birch Society's Koch family. Armey's starting salary was $430,000 a year and he was able to keep his $750,000 a year job as a slimy K Street lobbyist at DLA Piper. The Kochs soon left in a huff over something or other and started their own teabagger front, Americans for Prosperity, and the Kibbe-Armey rump renamed itself FreedomWorks. They struggled for a while before glomming on to Rick Santelli's anti-Obama rant on CNBC, at which time Kibbe started quietly paying off Hate Talk Radio hosts Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to endorse the organization on the air.

Despite being Beltway elites, Armey and Kibbe emerged as emissaries for the populist, anti-Washington revolution. The New Yorker described Armey-- who flew first class and had a chauffeur-- as “the de-facto leader of the Tea Party movement.” Newsweek called Kibbe-- a former chief of staff to a Republican congressman-- a Tea Party “mastermind.”

As FreedomWorks’ profile expanded, contributions doubled from $7 million to $14 million between 2008 and 2010. Its number of volunteers jumped from 500,000 to 1.2 million. FreedomWorks fired up a long-dormant political-action committee and supported hard-line conservatives-- such as Republicans Marco Rubio in Florida and Mike Lee in Utah-- in Senate primary campaigns against more moderate GOP opponents for the 2010 midterms.

Fueled by Tea Party enthusiasm, the GOP picked up 63 seats in the House-- enough for control of the chamber-- six seats in the Senate, six new governorships, and nearly 700 seats in state legislatures.

It was finally happening-- Armey and Kibbe were at the center of the most powerful conservative movement in a generation. Together they wrote a bestselling book, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, and appeared on NBC’s Today show. Driving to Tea Party rallies around the country, Kibbe played his Grateful Dead tapes for Armey, hoping to convert the country-music lover.

But Armey was lame and considered, at 70, too old. His public comments made right-wing operatives at FreedomWorks cringe, often insulting people on TV-- echoes of "Barney Fag"-- and more often screwing up details of anything he talked about, including the names and work of right-wing heroes. He clearly needed to be kept away from live microphones. The go-go wingnuts saw him as a liability that could destroy their whole mission-- and the big salaries they were drawing. Kibbe's wife, an ugly stereotype of a catty, overly ambitious wife, wanted to push Armey out and make Kibbe the sole head of FreedomWorks. She was jealous of Armey's wife and made fun of her for being a devout Christian. Mrs. Kibbe is an atheist filled with contempt for Christians. Meanwhile Mr. Kibbe's priorities were changing. He went from being obsessed with elections and campaigns and grassroots and public-policy fights to his own image and selling books and doing Glenn Beck TV. Armey was pushed out of the media spotlight and media requests for him were given to Kibbe.

The ostensible break came over Kibbe's new book. Profits from the book he and Armey had written belonged to FreedomWorks. Kibbe insisted that the profits from the new book were his personally, even though the book had been written by FreedomWorks staffers on company time. "Diverting nonprofit resources for personal use is a violation of federal tax code," writes Mullins. "If Kibbe had used 'significant staff resources' to produce his book, he would have put FreedomWorks’ tax-exempt status at risk. Kibbe, Armey says, 'had put the organization in jeopardy, and he had done it to line his own pockets.'”

Kibbe has mutton chops-- and a childish impulse to insult Hillary Clinton

Furious, Armey and his wife flew to Maine to show the document to FreedomWorks’ third trustee: C. Boyden Gray, a former White House counsel.

Armey and Gray called a special meeting of the board for Tuesday, September 4, 2012. Kibbe arrived at Gray’s DC law office without knowing why he’d been summoned. When they were around a conference table, Armey argued that Kibbe had pilfered his media requests and used FreedomWorks’ resources to profit personally.

The trustees voted two to one-- Armey and Gray for, Kibbe against-- to remove Kibbe from the board, and then put Kibbe and Brandon [FreedomWork's press secretary] on administrative leave.

Before Kibbe left, the trustees asked him to sign a document preventing him from launching an organization similar to FreedomWorks for the next four years, a FreedomWorks executive says, adding that the agreement came with a $100 signing bonus: “It was meant to be insulting.” (Armey denies that there was a signing bonus and says that the document was just a confidentiality agreement.)

Kibbe refused to sign.

Armey worried that Kibbe might instruct his allies to destroy documents related to the book deal, so he telephoned Jean Campbell, who was waiting outside FreedomWorks’ Capitol Hill headquarters.

“Go ahead,” Armey told her.

She secured the office, marshaling employees away from their computers and into the conference room. An armed former Capitol Police officer accompanied her-- in case there was any trouble.

“Dick Armey will be here soon with an announcement,” Campbell told the staff.

Some 30 anxious staffers surrounded the rectangular table when Armey and his wife marched in. Armey announced that Kibbe and Brandon had been put on leave, but he didn’t explain why.

FreedomWorks staff divided into two camps. While some senior employees respected Armey’s authority, many newer ones weren’t old enough to remember his days in Congress and-- because Armey worked from Texas-- didn’t really know him. In Kibbe, they found a hip libertarian who went on television and hosted parties at his home. Younger staffers developed a “cultish admiration” for Kibbe, a former official says. Some even wore their chops you can believe in T-shirt at the office.

To the young staffers, Armey seemed ill suited to run the organization. He put three additional FreedomWorks employees on administrative leave but-- when they broke down in tears-- immediately reinstated them. Staffers say he referred to a Japanese employee with a ponytail as “that Indian fella.” (Armey denies this.) And when Armey kicked his cowboy boots up on a table in Kibbe’s office, that was it. “It was kind of like, ‘Well, I’ll be damned if this is going to happen,’ ” a young employee says.

Kibbe and Brandon had retreated to Kibbe’s Capitol Hill home, where they contacted FreedomWorks donors, activists, and board directors to establish support outside of headquarters. Directors were angry that Armey hadn’t consulted them before taking action. Glenn Beck and members of Congress called Kibbe to offer encouragement.

Soon after Armey’s takeover, a group of young Kibbe loyalists arrived at Kibbe’s house for pizza and wine. They told Kibbe about Armey’s office management. Among Armey’s first moves was ordering the removal of all references to Kibbe from the FreedomWorks website. (Armey says he only asked for the removal of references to Kibbe’s book.)

“In our limited experience dealing with Armey, [we] saw him as this lovable grandpa,” says a young staffer. “To see him tailspin into this power-hungry, totally out-of-touch person was really frightening.”

The younger staffers used their cell phones to record conversations with Armey or Campbell. They disregarded Armey’s instructions, refusing, for example, to provide him with Kibbe’s schedule of upcoming donor meetings. Says Armey: “They started trying to sabotage things right from day one.”

...Armey and his wife stopped at the Chicago home of Richard Stephenson on their way back to Washington. A reclusive millionaire who had founded the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Stephenson was a big FreedomWorks donor and Kibbe’s strongest ally on the board of directors.

When Armey arrived, Stephenson introduced a therapist who he suggested could mediate Armey and Kibbe’s dispute. Armey didn’t know it, but Kibbe had flown in from Washington and was waiting in another room. “If you think you’re going to therapize me into working with Matt Kibbe again, you’re kidding yourself,” Armey told the therapist.

He had previously told Stephenson that the allegedly rerouted media requests gave him a legal case against FreedomWorks for tortuous interference. He calculated damages at $8 million-- the potential earnings Armey felt he’d sacrificed by staying at FredeeomWorks. (The figure is based mostly on Armey’s $750,000 annual contract with DLA Piper, which his position at FreedomWorks forced him to give up.)

Either Kibbe goes or I go, Armey said. “And if I go, I’m going to have to sue. I can’t go away with empty pockets.”

As Armey left, he saw Kibbe sitting on a couch in an adjacent room. Neither said a word.

The next afternoon, C. Boyden Gray summoned Armey to his Washington office: Stephenson was willing to pay Armey $8 million to retire. The deal would be arranged as a consulting contract between Armey and Stephenson, payable in annual installments of $400,000 over 20 years. In return, the trustees would reinstate Kibbe as FreedomWorks president and Armey would leave the organization after the election.

Armey accepted.

Kibbe and Brandon were back in the office by the end of the day and spent the next few weeks settling scores, former staffers say. They labeled employees who had been helpful to Armey as “collaborators” and stripped them of authority. Kibbe promoted two young staffers who had remained loyal to him during the crisis, and he donated his $50,000 book advance to FreedomWorks. (Brandon denies punishing employees and says all promotions were merit-based.)

...Meanwhile, FreedomWorks is struggling. Key staffers and board members have fled, and first-quarter fundraising has slipped. Things may get even worse. Two watchdog groups have asked federal authorities to examine $12 million in suspicious donations that FreedomWorks received right before the election.

...Following the disastrous 2012 election, public support for the Tea Party has crumbled, and establishment GOP figures such as Karl Rove have launched initiatives to prevent less electable Tea Party candidates from winning primary campaigns. At its most recent tax-day rally at the Capitol, the crowd numbered in the dozens-- a turnout that recalled FreedomWorks’ early days.

Looks Like Boehner Booted Justin Amash And Tim Huelskamp Off Their Committees As Part Of A Policy Of Payback Against A FreedomWorks Faction

Battling right-wing sociopaths Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe are both stealing from FreedomWorks

In a new exposé on the shenanigans inside one of the most well-funded arms of the Tea Party, FreedomWorks, Mother Jones ace reporter David Corn has uncovered the genesis of Boehner's decision to kick several Republican members off key committee positions-- part of "a purge aimed at tea party lawmakers." The corrupt Beltway GOP Establishment made a move to infiltrate and take over FreedomWorks but when thwarted reacted against Justin Amash (R-MI), Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and other independent-minded GOP congressmen. There's a vicious and desperate civil war raging inside FreedomWorks and the bulk of contributions to the group is going right into the pockets of high-priced, white shoe legal firms as the battle moves towards expensive law suits and counter suits.

When the news broke in early December that former GOP Rep. Dick Armey had abruptly resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, a powerhouse of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party, Armey maintained that the nasty split was due to differences he had with the top management of FreedomWorks about the group's operations and future. Immediately, media reports disclosed that Armey had been concerned that Matt Kibbe, the group's president, had used FreedomWorks resources to promote a book he had written (which was released in June) and that Armey himself had received an $8 million payout from a FreedomWorks board member to ease his departure. But internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that the bitter war inside FreedomWorks has also resulted in allegations of staff wrongdoing (prompting an investigation by lawyers) and counter-allegations that Armey and his allies tried to turn FreedomWorks into a partisan outfit backing establishment Republicans over tea party insurgents.

On December 12, James Burnley IV and C. Boyden Gray, two FreedomWorks board members (and allies of Armey), sent Kibbe a letter informing him that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees." They notified Kibbe that the group's board of trustees had retained two attorneys, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. Burnley and Gray ordered Kibbe to cooperate with the lawyers, to make sure no records were "destroyed, deleted, modified or otherwise tampered with," and to send Regnery a check for $25,000 to cover his initial fees. (Regnery, a prominent conservative, is the past president of Regnery Publishing, a right-wing firm that has put out books by Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Pat Buchanan, and other notable conservatives.) The letter did not specify the allegations being investigated. In an interview with Mother Jones, Burnley declined to discuss the alleged wrongdoing at FreedomWorks. "The letter speaks for itself," he says. Gray, Kibbe, and a spokeswoman for FreedomWorks did not respond to requests for comment.

Shortly after receiving the December 12 letter, Kibbe wrote a memo outlining his beef with Armey, Burnley, and Gray. In the document-- titled Republican Insiders Attempt Hostile Takeover of FreedomWorks-- Kibbe accused the three of being shills for the Republican establishment and undercutting the group's standing as an independent, non-partisan, conservative organization. (FreedomWorks has at times endorsed tea party candidates in primary elections against mainstream or incumbent Republicans, drawing the ire of mainline Republicans.) Kibbe charged that the three men were trying to punish him for defying their effort to steer FreedomWorks into the conventional Republican fold. He contended that the divisive fight within FreedomWorks was not really about his book contract or other organizational matters; it was a grand ideological clash pitting those fully loyal to the tea party cause (such as Kibbe) against backroom, Washington-centric pols attempting to wield their influence to benefit their pals.

Noting Armey's habit of coining maxims-- and Armey's complaint that Kibbe had hijacked media requests for Armey-- Kibbe began his memo with a blast referencing a September 4 meeting at which Armey and Gray had voted Kibbe off the board of trustees and replaced him with Burnley, a secretary of transportation in the Reagan administration:

Our favorite "Armey's Axiom" goes something like this: "Every argument in Washington, like in a marriage, is really about something else." So it goes with the attempted hostile takeover of FreedomWorks by three Republican insiders from the old guard. Is it about a book contract, or a pilfered appearance on CNBC? No, it is not. As it turns out, the fight for lower taxes, less government and more freedom is all well and good until it is Republicans-- "old friends"-- that are the ones needing to be held to account. It is our sense that the irresponsible acts of the so-called Trustees of FreedomWorks-- Dick Armey, C. Boyden Gray, and James C. Burnley-- on September 4th, and their continued hostile acts today, are all about retribution for our willingness to take a strictly nonpartisan approach to politics, our willingness to hold both Republicans and Democrats to the standards set out by our freedom philosophy and the clear limits on government power delineated in our U.S. Constitution.

Kibbe then presented a timeline seeking to demonstrate that Armey, Gray, and Burnley had sold out the tea party cause to help less conservative Republicans.

His first example: the Republican primary contest earlier this year pitting Rep. Ben Quayle against Rep. David Schweikert, two House freshmen thrown into the same congressional district after redistricting in Arizona. In May, FreedomWorks endorsed Schweikert, who, Kibbe wrote, "had been willing to stand on principle even under tremendous pressure" from the GOP top brass. Quayle, according to Kibbe, had been too "reliable" a vote for the House Republican leadership, which FreedomWorks occasionally has opposed from the right. Yet Gray, the memo noted, was sending donations to Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle. (Gray was White House counsel during the Bush-Quayle administration.) And Gray, Kibbe wrote, called him several times last summer "wondering why we were engaged in this primary fight."

In the memo, Kibbe pointed out other conflicts as well. When Rep. John Mica, the Republican chair of the House transportation and infrastructure committee, was challenged by tea party freshman Rep. Sandy Adams in Florida in another primary race caused by redistricting, Kibbe wrote, Burnley, a transportation lobbyist, called Kibbe and "made it very clear…that he had a dog in this race." And on June 16, when FreedomWorks announced its "Retire Hatch" campaign against Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Gray endorsed Hatch. A month later, Gray held a fundraiser for Wisconsin senatorial candidate Tommy Thompson-- two days before FreedomWorks endorsed tea party favorite Eric Hovde, who was challenging Thompson in the GOP primary.

All of these conflicts, Kibbe maintained in the memo, led to that September meeting when he was booted off the board. Referring to himself in the third person, Kibbe described that confrontation: "It is eight weeks out from the most important election in our lifetime. 'Do you have any idea,' Kibbe asks, 'how much your actions will damage FreedomWorks efforts?' No answer is given."

The memo went on, with Kibbe taking Armey to task for having urged FreedomWorks to assist Thompson, who won the primary but whom the group had declined to endorse in the general election due to his "full-throated advocacy of ObamaCare," and Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri who had come under fire for his "legitimate rape" remarks:

One of the first actions taken by Dick Armey [after the September meeting] is his attempt to reassess our political priorities. "We have to help my friend Tommy Thompson," he tells the staff in his first meeting with them. He later tells the staff that he has discussed the Missouri Senate race with "my friend [Senator] Roy Blunt, and he says they really need grassroots cover for Todd Akin." FreedomWorks PAC had endorsed John Brunner, who barely lost to Akin [in the GOP primary]. We had declined to endorse Akin, even before "legitimate rape" became a late night punch line.

At the conclusion of his memo, Kibbe linked Mother Jones’ December 3 disclosure of Armey's departure from FreedomWorks-- one of several media reports supposedly featuring Armey "trashing the senior management of FreedomWorks"-- to House Speaker John Boehner stripping FreedomWorks-backed legislators of key committee assignments in what conservative pundits denounced as a purge aimed at tea party lawmakers. And Kibbe ended with this broad swipe:

Bottom Line: The Actions of the Trustees Put FreedomWorks Values and Mission at Risk. They have put personal and political agendas above the agenda of freedom.

No wonder all the big shots on the conservative cruise of a lifetime were so despondent! And it's no wonder so many House Republicans are feeling out opportunities to defeat Boehner's bid for another term as Speaker!

Ready To Say Farewell To Dick Lugar and Orrin Hatch? (Plus: Say good riddance to Ben Nelson)

It's pure coincidence, but I sometimes mix Orrin Hatch and Dick Lugar up. They're both doddering Republican conservatives, but that has nothing to do with it. One of them sat next to me at a state dinner at the White House honoring Václav Havel in 1998. And whichever one that was danced in his seat while Lou Reed performed Dirty Blvd. The guest list indicates that Lugar was there and Hatch wasn't. So, I guess it was Lugar who was rockin' out while Lou sang:

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
that's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

There's more than a good chance that soon neither of them will be there-- I mean in DC, unless they get jobs as K Street lobbyists. As teabaggers attack Lugar for being too much of a Lou Reed groupie not being far enough to the right, the 80-year-old senator is running to local Tea Party groups and begging them to let him keep his seat again, which he's held since 1977. (In 2006, a huge Democratic year, the Indiana Democratic Party didn't even bother running anyone against him. This year all they could come up with is a pathetic anti-Choice right-wing Blue Dog, Joe Donnelly, who was just gerrymandered out of his House seat.)

Lugar reacted to a report in the Moonie Times that he's probably toast by saying he's--

visited with many Tea Party groups. They have not pledged support, but they understand my position and some even are going to be voting for me. The point I'm trying to make is that it's, I think, useful to understand a Republican majority in the Senate is very important. And Republicans who are running for reelection ought to be supported by people who want to see that majority.

On CNN's State of the Union this past weekend he said, "If I was not the nominee, it might be lost."

The Moonies, mistaking him for a "moderate"-- apparently having never examined his voting record-- wrote that poor Lugar "finds himself in the crosshairs of the state’s growing and increasingly restive tea party factions. They question his conservative credentials and have made his ouster a top priority."

Hoosiersforconservativesenate.com, one of the group’s gunning for Mr. Lugar, slams his record, citing his stand on gun control (he earned a D+ from the National Rifle Association), his refusal to sign a legal brief challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care law, his backing for the TARP Wall Street bailout in 2008 and what they claim is a poor track record on such issues as government spending, immigration and support for “liberal-minded” judges.

And not only do they want Mr. Lugar out, Indiana conservatives know who they want in.

Even though longtime libertarian candidate Andrew Horning signaled this week that he will enter the race, most see state Treasurer Richard Mourdock as the clear Republican challenger for Mr. Lugar in the primary after state Sen. Mike Delph announced last month that he would not run.

...“Defeating Sen. Lugar is and has been a priority for tea party activists,” said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the Cook Political Report in Washington.

“Tea party activists in Indiana are very united against Lugar, allowing Mourdock to consolidate that vote. But this race isnt over because independents can vote in the GOP primary.”

Unlike fellow GOP incumbent Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, who has moved to shore up his right flank to head off a primary challenge in Utah, Mr. Lugar has tried to float above the fray, touting his record and clout in Washington in recent trips around the state.

...Mr. Mourdock has been endorsed by GOP presidential contender Herman Cain as well as Steve Forbes, radio pundit Mark Levin and influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Redstate.com. Other leading tea party and fiscal conservative groups are said to be considering an endorsement if Mr. Mourdock’s campaign proves to be viable.

A July poll by the conservative Club for Growth showed a tight race, with Mr. Mourdock leading Mr. Lugar 34 percent to 32 percent among likely GOP voters, but with 34 percent undecided. The senators own internal polling of 600 likely GOP primary voters, however, found him leading his challenger 45 percent to 31 percent.

Meanwhile, in Utah, Orrin Hatch, the same kind of elderly conservative establishment shill, is facing the same kind of teabagging. And there teabaggers have already ousted a senator and a couple of congressmen. Hatch is almost as old as Lugar. (He was also elected in 1977.) And the teababggers are also mad at him for having voted for Bush's TARP bailout. Worse for him, the fascist-oriented Super PAC funded by the Koch Brothers, the Scaife family, and tobacco and telephone corporations and operated by GOP rat Dick Armey's Freedomworks, is looking for Hatch's scalp. So far this year the only race they've spent any significant money on is Hatch's--over $100,000 in negative ads so far. (They spent around $16,000 against Lugar.) A Freedomworks darling and far right extremist, Utah state senator Dan Liljenquist, is the likely candidate against Hatch, and he's already pointing out that in 1977 Hatch voted to establish the Department of Education, a right-wing bugaboo.

Liljenquist not only wants to close down the Department of Education but also is gung-ho to privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, a key element to the program anyone who takes money from the Koch Brothers has to back. "People in my generation, we need a different deal," says Liljenquist. "I think people in my generation are willing to make that tradeoff. They'd rather have a free country and have the government do a little bit less for them than to be ensnared, entrapped and crushed by debt. The time for that debate has come, and that's exactly where I'm interested in stepping up."

This year Orrin Hatch had a 1.72 (out of 100) ProgressivePunch score. Lugar's is 5.08. Not good enough for the teabaggers? They're leaving Olympia Snowe alone with her 25.42 score, and they haven't been whining much about Scott Brown's 23.73 or Dean Heller's 16.67. They just smell blood in the water in Indiana and Utah, at least in part because Hatch and Lugar are so old.

Streams Of Consciousness

Howard Dean is adamant that he won't challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination. This morning DFA sent out an e-mail alert to their members from Governor Dean reiterating his position-- the Democratic position, and most Americans' position-- that it is time to end the hateful and bigoted Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. I even saw a CNN crawl a few minutes ago that the Marines have agreed to comply if there is a repeal. Nice of them. Dean:

For the first time since 1993, we have a real chance to end the shameful anti-gay policy called Don't Ask Don't Tell. The President and Democrats in Congress promised the American people that they would repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before the end of the year-- this is their last chance to deliver on that promise before Republicans officially take control of the House of Representatives just over a month from now.

Earlier this year we seemed to be making progress. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen testified before Congress in support of repealing the ban. Then in September, after repeal passed in the House of Representatives, Republicans in the Senate killed it. They saw this as a chance to play politics with the civil rights of American men and women just before the midterm election. It was disgusting.

This is not a tough one. In poll after poll-- two more released just last week-- a clear majority of Americans have said they think Don't Ask Don't Tell should be repealed. More than 70 percent of active duty and reserve troops have said that the effect of repealing the policy would be "positive, mixed or nonexistent."

The American people know repealing the ban is the right thing to do because requiring someone to lie about who they are, in order to serve their country goes against our values. As General Mullen said during his testimony before Congress, "allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is the right thing to do. It is a matter of integrity."

This is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time. To get this done, Democrats must stand up to Republicans in Congress and fight for the rights of America's gay service members. It's time to declare once and for all that they will no longer be treated as second-class citizens. It's time to allow all Americans to serve the country they love, regardless of who they love.

When Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva stepped on the landmine outside of Basra that broke his arm and resulted in the amputation of his leg, he became the first person wounded in President George W Bush’s Iraq war. Sgt. Alva is also gay. Now, if someone is brave enough to take a bullet for the United States of America, then they ought not have to lie about who they are. They deserve the right to serve openly.

Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says he'll hold hearings on repeal as soon as the Senate reconvenes after the Thanksgiving break. McCain has vowed to filibuster any legislation that repeals DADT. Can Reid muster the 60 votes he'll need to break the GOP filibuster? There are 58 Democrats in the Senate-- if you count Ben Nelson as a Democrat-- so either two or three Republican votes will be needed. So far John Ensign and Lisa Murkowski has each indicated that they will not block the repeal. There are reasons to believe that Dick Lugar and Susan Collins-- even if Olympia Snowe is in an hysterical teabagger panic-- will also support repeal. And outgoing Ohio Senator George Voinovich is another possibility. On the other hand, God only knows what to expect from Nelson, Joe Manchin and dingbat Claire McCaskill.



Meanwhile the teabagger organizations are laying claim to the members of Congress they bought and paid for. Freedomworks is getting exactly what they paid for from Utah's newest fringe lunatic Mike Lee: "using a very safe seat as the high ground to launch Overton Window-shifting attacks on the political consensus. Forget the question of whether Jim DeMint hurt the GOP in a few Senate races. If all he did was help Rand Paul and Mike Lee into the Senate, he's tripled the number of die-hard strict constructionists in the GOP conference."

Americans For Prosperity, one of the most bogus of the billionaire-financed tea party groups, was bragging they have the whole GOP House leadership in the bag when it comes to killing Climate Change legislation.

The following representatives will lead the U.S. House in the 112th Congress and have all signed the pledge:

• John Boehner - Speaker of the House
• Eric Cantor - Republican Leader
• Kevin McCarthy - Republican Whip
• Jeb Hensarling - Republican Conference Chairman
• Pete Sessions - National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman
• Tom Price - Republican Policy Committee Chairman
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers - Republican Conference Vice-Chair
• John Carter - Republican Conference Secretary
• Kristi Noem - Freshman Elected Leadership Representative
• Tim Scott - Freshman Elected Leadership Representative

It didn't even cost much. Americans For Prosperity spent $1,322,060 helping the Republicans defeat progressives Alan Grayson, John Hall, Carol Shea-Porter, Mary Jo Kilroy, Steve Kagen, Ann Kuster and a bunch of Blue Dogs. Their biggest single expense ($189,029.00) was to help elect vehement climate change denier Rick Crawford instead of slightly less vehement climate change denier Chad Causey in Arkansas, on whom the DCCC I.E. Committee squandered $1,771,176.95 (their single biggest candidate expense).

How Long Before Boehner Starts Hitting The Bottle Bigtime?

Boehner has been urging the unruly mob of freshmen teabaggers to start behaving like adults. They just make farting noises in response-- especially when it comes to the debt ceiling. He can't even get freshmen in his own state who he gave piles of money to, like Bill Johnson, to think about acting responsibly. When Boehner tells them they could bankrupt the country they get confused thinking that that, after all, is what the party plank they ran on was urging. “Most of us agreed that to increase the limit would be a betrayal of what we told voters we would do,” said Johnson. If the extremists manage to prevent the deby ceiling from risingit would probably lead to an economic catastrophe for the country, something many of the teabaggers are eager to provoke.

The financial markets are on edge today, with U.S. Treasury bonds being the safe haven for most investment capital. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling would recklessly disrupt the sale and purchase of new Treasury bonds, and could potentially cause a run on outstanding Treasurys as well, as investors sought other investments. This could have catastrophic consequences for our economy as well as the economic stability of the rest of the world.

Such a move will also increase long-term deficits and debt, while cutting off Social Security and Medicare benefits for millions of seniors. But if Johnson is to be believed, many incoming Republican freshman will put that second to their Tea Party ideology.

This may sound ominous to you but it's sweet music to the ears of new elected fanatics like Bill Johnson, Jeff Denhem (R-CA), Tim Scott (R-SC), and Mike Lee (R-UT).

Seeing Through The Townshirts And Their Tactics

I've been writing about my fabulous adventure with the teabaggers in Alhambra all week and I've been posting pictures that I took and that my old pal, filmmaker Nancy Stein, took. I arrived at the Adam Schiff town hall thing at 4pm, three hours before it started, at a time when most of the people milling around (or sitting in lawn chairs) were from the far right local fringe group, Pasadena Patriots and other assorted nuts, teabaggers, and, as Larry Schorr dubbed them, "townshirts."

I spent the three hours talking with them-- not arguing for the most part, just trying to understand where they're coming from. Some were just confused people with a lot of time on their hands and too many hours listening to the self-serving sociopathic hate rants by Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck and Dobbs... but some were dedicated movement conservatives following the agenda laid out in Dick Armey's Freedomworks playbook for systematically disrupting Democratic town halls and intimidating congressmen and normal constituents. Read a few lines from it-- this leaked plan for intimidating easily-intimidated, congenitally cowardly members of Congress:

* Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington. They need to leave the hall with so me doubts about their agenda. The other objective is to illustrate for the balance of the audience that the national leadership is acting against our founders' principles which are on the other side of the debate-- and show them that there are a lot of solid citizens in the district who oppose the socialist approach to the nation's challenges. We want the independent thinkers to leave the hall with doubts about the Democrat solutions continually proposed by the national leadership.

* You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early. If he blames Bush for something or offers other excuses-- call him on it, yell back and have someone else follow-up with a shout-out. Don't carry on and make a scene-- just short intermittent shout outs. The purpose is to make him uneasy early on and set the tone for the hall as clearly informal, and free-wheeling. It will also embolden others who agree with us to call out and challenge with tough questions. The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.

* When the formal Q&A session begins get all your hands up and keep up-- be persistent throughout the entire session. Keep body language neutral and look positive to improve chances of being selected. When called on, a specific prepared question that puts the onus on to answer. It can be a question including lots of statistics/facts. You will not be interrupted from reading a solid question. If you ramble on too long without a focus, you wiII be stopped. After the Rep answers, or more likely diverts or dodges, be prepared with a follow-up take the initiative and you will be able to follow-up. The balance of the group should applaud when the question is asked, further putting the Rep on the defensive. If the Rep tries a particularly odious diversion, someone from the group should yell out to answer the question. These tactics will clearly rattle the Rep and illustrate some degree of his ineptness to the balance of the audience.

At the bottom of this post is a YouTube posted by a right-wing propagandist. It's of a team I met in Alhambra, a man and a woman with posters even more aggressively bizarre than other's, filled with self-righteous anger and bile. This is another teabagger even though-- one in front of Dianne Feinstein's office a few days later. I had listened to the woman's sob story about how she's been screwed over by the insurance companies-- one of which she is suing. I was curious why she was so opposed to health care reform that would address the exact problems she was talking about. My question got her angrier and she accused me of trying to confuse her. She went from looking slightly deranged to looking menacing and dangerous. She was obviously hopped up on drugs. She talked to me for 20-30 minutes, mostly complaining about everything that popped into her mind. I started wondering if her neckbrace and walker were real. Many people were there with fake medical equipment-- and I blogged about one friendly right-wing lady who got out of her scooter and asked me to sit in it for her while she ran off to wave her sign, scream and demonstrate for a while. I don't know if the woman with the neck brace was a faker or not, but when I saw the YouTube yesterday I realized she and her partner were weaving quite a tale for the media. The claim that her injuries were caused by a liberal assaulting her on Tuesday were patently false-- a clear distortion to put the onus for violence of pro-health care supporters and remove it from the violent rightists who have been instructed about how to disrupt events. Her husband (or "husband")-- the one with the Nancy Pelosi cryptkeeper sign who was denying being "astroturf" or right-wing had his lines well memorized. They were exactly-- word for word-- what he had spouted off to me earlier in the week. In fact almost every single person speaking was speaking directly from prepared texts... word for word. The woman started quoting Saul Alinsky. Their goal: project their own failings onto SEIU, Acorn and liberals. Before you watch them spin, I see a post she did with her version of the "assault" (which is now being blown up into a story by far right blogs: