The party of Richard Shelby, Mitch McConnell, and "Susie Q" Collins has moved a long way from the party of Warren Rudman

"[T]he Republican tradition of campaign finance reform in which I stand dates to the trust-buster, Theodore Roosevelt. In his 1905 message to Congress, President Roosevelt proposed that 'contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.' His logic was straightforward enough: 'If [legislators] are extorted by any kind of pressure or promise, express or implied, direct or indirect, in the way of favor or immunity, then the giving or receiving becomes not only improper but criminal.'"

-- former NH Sen. Warren Rudman, in a WaPo op-ed today,

"Republicans losing their way on campaign finance reform"

by Ken

We'll come back to Warren Rudman. While every day is a bad day for Republicans Behaving Shamelessly, today a bit of the doody has been hitting the fan.

Since Howie's report earlier today (in his post "Is There Something That Can Be Done About Ritual Obstructionism In The Senate?") about TPM's revelation last night that AL Sen. Richard Shelby put a "blanket hold" on at least 70 Obama appointments facing confirmation in the Senate (TPM has an update today), there was rather a bit of an uproar today, which led finally to confirmation of sorts from the senator's office.

In his WaPo "Federal Eye" column Ed O'Keefe quotes Shelby spokesman Jonathan Graffeo saying that his boss "has placed holds on 'several pending nominees.'" O'Keefe adds: "The office of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Shelby's holds applied to more than 70 nominees; Shelby's office did not immediately specify the number. Is it a physical thing, do you think, that a Republican can't get through a sentence without lying?

And of course, like all Republican mouthpieces, this Graffeo fellow is an expert on terrorism:

"If this administration were as worried about hunting down terrorists as it is about the confirmation of low-level political nominations, America would be a safer place," Graffeo said, adding that Shelby has made the White House aware of his concerns "and is willing to discuss them at any time."

After all, these folks devoted every available second of the eight years of the Bush regime and every bit of energy in their frail carcasses to: (a) terrorizing the American people into political lockstep, and (b) doing everything in their fearsome power to swell the ranks of international terrorists and make the U.S. both as hateful and as vulnerable as they could possibly manage, while seizing the opportunity to incorportate as much of their fascist agenda into American daily life, just to make sure that in the end there's as little as possible in America to be worth saving. (It's not for nothing that American wingnuts boast of being "Hitler's children.")

Note that Senator Shelby "is willing to discuss" his extortion schemes, rather than doing his damned job. Of course, as our friends at Think Progress reminded us today:

Unsurprisingly, Shelby had quite a very different attitude when a Republican sat in the White House. In early ’05 — shortly after winning his fourth term to the Senate — Shelby complained, “Far too many of the President’s nominees were never afforded an up or down vote, because several Democrats chose to block the process for political gain.” He added, “Inaction on these nominees is a disservice to the American people.”

In Feb. 2005, Shelby specifically promised his constituents in Tuscaloosa that he’d do “whatever it takes” to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees, including killing the filibuster:

Shelby also pledged to do “whatever it takes” to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees. A vast majority of Bush’s appointees were confirmed in his first term, but a few controversial ones were filibustered by Democrats in the Senate.

At the time, Shelby indicated a willingness to support Senate rules changes to force that famous "up or down vote" he believed in so fervently if Democrats continued to filibuster. When so-called Senate "moderates" forged their compromise to avert the "nuclear option" threatened by then-Senate Majority Leader Doctorbill Frist, Senator Shelby wrote on his website:

I do not think that any of us want to operate in an environment where federal judicial nominees must receive 60 votes in order to be confirmed. To that end I firmly support changing the Senate rules to require that a simple majority be necessary to confirm all judicial nominees, thus ending the continuous filibuster of them.

So what is Senator Shelby's problem? The principle one is a demand that the federal government rig the rebidding of an Air Force contract for planes refueling to tankers so that it favors the bid of Airbus over that of Boeing. I think we can assume that there has been massive corruption on both sides in both rounds of bidding, but the key for Senator Shelby is that, while a contract for Boeing would generate vastly more American jobs, the American jobs held out by Airbus would be in Alabama. This is important for him, because in addition to justifying the bribes he stuffs in his oversize pockets, he has to wangle occasional pork for the folks back home, so that (a) he has patronage to distribute, and (b) he can fool his gullible constituents into thinking he's "bringing home the bacon" rather than selling out their interests at every opportunity to his megacorporate paymasters.

Marcy Wheeler has a great post today on this subject: "Shelby Tries to Shut Down US Senate to Benefit Foreign Company." Now I've heard from someone whose information I trust that the Airbus package is actually much superior to the Boeing one, and I'll admit that this may be the case, but I'd be surprised if Senator Shelby has any inkling of that.

Of course the Airbus jobs in Alabama would be non-union ones. That's important to God-fearing people who understand that labor unions are the work of Satan. Only Satan -- and his minions, libruls -- could believe that workers should have any leverage to help them secure decent wages and working conditions. God, that omnipotent hater of all workers, intended a system where workers are forced to accept their status as wage slaves of plantation masters who are subject to no kind of control whatsoever, unless you count the eternal hellfire their God has in store for them when they cross over.

Eventually even the White House got into the act, with a wishy-woshy statement from Dan Pfeiffer on the White House Blog ("Another Day, Another Disappointing Political Ploy Obstructing Progress"), which seemed more sorrowful than angry, waggling a schoolmarmish finger but, astonishingly, not waggling it at anyone. As a colleague pointed out, the one word that never appeared was "Republican."

It's important to bear in mind that A key point in Howie's report was the reminder that the Republican program of obstruction has been, with only occasional exceptions, unanimous, and whatever whitewashing the Infotainment News Media may wish to perform, there are no Senate Republican moderates, and that means the biggest liars in that august body, the Maine girls, Olympia Snowe and Susie Q Collins. Maine voters love their girls, especially the more established and credible Olympia; it was probably our Miss Susie's "me too" attachment to her colleague that protected her from the reelection challenge of former Rep. Tom Allen last year, who was about 17 million times fitter for office. Apparently Maine voters didn't care that every word out of the mouth of their Susie was lying bullshit, that what she really wanted them to send her back to Washington for was so she could be a lockstep stooge of the most evil, corrupt, America-hating vermin in the Senate. In this regard, of course, her constitutents were right about there not being a dime's worth of difference between Miss Susie and Mount Olympia.

So when a pundit or pol says that "all it takes is 41 votes" to shut down the Senate, remember that the Maine girls can be counted on as reliably as the core Republican constituency in the Old Confederacy. They're an indispensable part and parcel of the Republican Campaign Against America, designed to reduce the country to such a shitpile that the thugs and goons who did the most to put us in this mess during their years of unchecked control of all three branches of the federal government will be summoned back to power.

There's a lot more to be said, but I'm tired, and you're tired, and I'm fed up and I'll bet you are too, and I did want to get back to Warren Rudman. I can't say I had much use for him while he was in the Senate, when he tended to blur with the standard-issue conservative slugs New Hampshire voters were electing, sludge like Norris Cotton and Meldrim Thomson and John Sununu (the first, that is), and God help us Bob Smith. (I shudder just at the mention of his name.) But after Rudman chose not to run for reelection in 1992, paving the way for the election to the Senate of that useless biped Judd Gregg, his occasional returns to public service -- not least giving us Supreme Court Justice David Souter -- evidenced a genuinely thoughtful and principled guy.

His WaPo op-ed today focuses on the issue of campaign spending and finance reform. He comes out with guns blazing, insisting, as we saw at the top of this post, that finance reform has always been a Republican issue. I think Senator Rudman would agree that his remarks apply to a host of other issues on which Republicans once had principled positions.

Republicans losing their way on campaign finance reform

By Warren Rudman
Friday, February 5, 2010; A17

When I arrived in the U.S. Senate 30 years ago, I was a proud member of a Republican Party known for championing moderation in Congress, restraint in the courts and good-government reform.

In fact, the Republican tradition of campaign finance reform in which I stand dates to the trust-buster, Theodore Roosevelt. In his 1905 message to Congress, President Roosevelt proposed that "contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law." His logic was straightforward enough: "If [legislators] are extorted by any kind of pressure or promise, express or implied, direct or indirect, in the way of favor or immunity, then the giving or receiving becomes not only improper but criminal."

The resulting Tillman Act of 1907 and Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1910 were the first laws limiting corporate money in federal elections and requiring strict disclosure of campaign funds. With the rise of organized labor in the 1930s, Republican Sen. Robert Taft and Republican Rep. Fred Hartley extended the ban on corporate contributions to unions. Those laws were dealt a serious blow by last month's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That such a rash and immoderate ruling could come from a chief justice once committed to respecting precedent, and win praise from leaders of my party, is beyond my comprehension.

It was congressional Republicans who led the 1971 effort to strengthen existing campaign finance law through the Federal Election Campaign Act. After the Watergate campaign finance scandal, Republicans in Congress joined with Democrats to pass far-reaching amendments to the 1971 law, limiting contributions and campaign spending and establishing a system of public financing for presidential campaigns.

In more recent years, my friend and former Senate colleague John McCain (R-Ariz.) took up the cause of reform with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), leading a decade-long effort to stem the flow of unregulated "soft money" from special-interest groups to political parties and to curb spending by outside interests.

That history of Republican leadership on campaign finance reform should remind Republicans in Congress today that it is not in our true nature to side with the moneyed interests against the interests of the American people. The Supreme Court has taken that stand.

It's time to return to our roots and take up Teddy Roosevelt's challenge from over a century ago by enacting the only real and lasting solution I know: citizen-funded elections. Under the proposed Fair Elections Now Act, sponsored by more than 130 members of Congress, money from special interests would be replaced by small donations from constituents and matching federal funds. Matching funds, raised through a fee on large-scale government contracts, would go to serious, hardworking candidates who demonstrate a broad base of public support and who say no to large donations.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress must work together to expand political speech for all citizens by replacing special-interest money in politics with small donations and public matching funds. Supreme Court opinion notwithstanding, corporations are not defined as people under the Constitution, and free speech can hardly be called free when only the rich are heard.

No, Senator Snowe, and no, Senator Susie, you can't claim the mantle of Senator Rudman. You're with Shelby and Miss Mitch. Sorry, but it was your choice.

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E. J. Dionne Jr. nails the issue of the "right" to carry weapons in the vicinity of the president (PLUS: Harold Meyerson on the shrunken GOP)

Mark Streeter in the Savannah Morning News

"The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them. . . .

"Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?"

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column
today, "Leave The Guns At Home"

by Ken

During the eight unrelentingly lawless years of the Bush regime, at almost every turn developments cried out for a round of "If the shoe were on the other foot." And now that the soldiers of the Bush crime machine are mostly purged from the government bunkers they befouled those eight years (there are still holdovers reporting for work daily, aren't there?), though not yet in the prison cells where most of them belong, the craziness they fostered has only gotten crazier.

I've been on online listservs where people are in shock over the absence of a deafening uproar at the right-wing scumbaggers -- oops, I meant teabaggers -- who have taken to making a show of carrying weapons to the sites of presidential appearances, living up to their calling as totalitarian thugs and anti-democratic intimidators. And I have to say, my shocked colleagues have a point. Where is the outrage? Can you imagine the Bush-Cheney security apparatus allowing anyone with a weapon in the same county as one of their officials?

As I argued recently, the chances that this is what the original intenders of the Constitution had in mind with the Second Amendment seem to me nonexistent. The current extremist majority on the Supreme Court -- a majority, that is, when poor Justice Anthony Kennedy blows their way -- may have had its reasons for wishing to unleash a wave of political-gang violence in the country, but those reasons have nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, whether read literally or seen through the prism of "original intent."

At the president's appearance in Phoenix Monday

One day a Supreme Court majority made up of sane people who know how to read will undo the mischief of the radical anti-constitutionalists of the Roberts Court and correct their fundamental misreading of the Second Amendment, which addresses the need for "a well-regulated militia," a need that is now met by our rather sizable standing armed forces as well as the states' National Guards. Those future justices will probably be too polite to inquire how five of their predecessors managed to get their heads wedged so far up their butts, but they may well point to the incitement to civilian violence laid by their Far Right activism, and wonder how the provocations and intimidation of the scumbaggers related to the need for a well-regulated militia.

People are pointing a finger at the Secret Service, which is unfair. I can't imagine they're happy about the presence of guns where they're on the job, but I'm guessing they're voicing their displeasure as forcefully as they can. A comparison with Bush-Cheney security is unfair, because the Bush regime clearly had the security apparatus of any totalitarian regime, which proceeds from the generally well-founded assumption that it has enemies everywhere.

Of course there was never much reporting on the Bush-Cheney security operation. I expect that any reporter enterprising enough to try to report on the subject would have had it made clear that doing so would have been regarded as a breach of national security and would have been dealt with accordingly. Nevertheless, we got occasional glimpses of the scope and thoroughness of the operation, like when people were thrown out of gatherings -- and even roughed up and arrested -- for wearing unsupportive T-shirts, or when Chimpy the Prez traveled, and it seemed as if entire countries had to be displaced to provide a large enough security perimeter for the Tiny One.

All of which is a prelude to calling the Washington Post's E. J. Dionne Jr. to the witness stand. Boy, did he nail this in his column today:

Leave The Guns At Home

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?

How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: "It is time to water the tree of liberty"? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.

In fact, the Bush folks didn't like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004 incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush. The detained woman wasn't even armed. Maybe if she had been carrying, the gun lobby would have defended her.

The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the president's appearances. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can't even take his own side in an argument.

What needs to be addressed is not the legal question but the message that the gun-toters are sending.

This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.

There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.

The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.

On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.

Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president's public events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.

And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?

All this is taking place as the country debates the president's health-care proposal. There is much that is disturbing in that discussion. Shouting down speakers is never a good thing, and many lies are being told about the contents of the health-care bills. The lies should be confronted, but freedom involves a lot of commotion and an open contest of ideas, even when some of the parties say things that aren't true and act in less than civil ways.

Yet if we can't draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to disintegrate. Power, not reason, becomes the stuff of political life. Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?

Dionne is a fine and sensible writer whose regular columnizing efforts become all the more important as the Post's editorial pages become more and more overwhelmingly right-wing. Some days, though, he rises above and beyond. Here he has tackled a Big Subject head-on, and done it about as well as I can imagine it being done.

POSTSCRIPT: HAROLD MEYERSON IN TOP FORM SAYS
YOU CAN'T MAKE A DEAL WITH THE SHRUNKEN GOP

"In its ideological uniformity, today's GOP looks -- O, the irony -- more like a classic European party than an American one."

-- Harold Meyerson, in his WaPo column today,

"Lincoln's Prophecy for the GOP"

Is Thursday "Let's Let Loose the Lefties" Day at WaPo OpEd? My guy Harold Meyerson has a really terrific column on the geographically and ideologically shrunken GOP. He starts by noting Senate Finance Committee ranking Republican Chuck Grassley's unexpectedly frank admission that he won't support any health care proposal that doesn't "find a broad base of support within the Republican Party," and wonders:

Why, then, does Max Baucus, the committee's Democratic chairman, persist in the charade of bipartisan negotiations with Grassley? Does he -- does anybody -- really believe that a Republican Party so deeply invested in defeating President Obama's campaign for health-care reform is open to a scaled-down version that Obama can still claim as a victory?

Meyerson takes a hard look at the consequences for American governance:

Republican ideology has shrunk alongside its geography and demographics. Where once its view of the role of government ran the gamut from Rockefeller activism to Goldwater libertarianism, today the party largely adheres to the religiosity and the anti-statism of the white South. (In its ideological uniformity, today's GOP looks -- O, the irony -- more like a classic European party than an American one.)

In short, the Republican Party with which Democrats could make deals no longer exists. The GOP is too narrow; the gap between the parties, too wide. Our politics are not those of the mid-20th century, when bipartisanship was fairly common. If anything, they're more like those of the mid-19th century, before the Civil War, when North and South combined only to make a house divided against itself -- a conflict resolved not by compromise, but, as Lincoln predicted, by a nation then half-slave and half-free becoming "all one thing or all the other."

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Confused about Princess Sarah's abdication? Puzzled by the muddled response of her loyalists? Let Tom Tomorrow explain it all

[Click to enlarge]
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Decision Making Time For The Republican Party? Will They Court Extinction Or Return To The Mainstream?

Republican office holders are worried. Some have described them as part of a rump. The problem for the national Republican Party is that the far right extremism that works so well in backward, poorly educated parts of the ex-slave holding states and the Mormon areas is absolutely toxic in areas where candidates have to appeal to normal Americans. So when you get successful extremists like James Inhofe (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mark Sanford (R-SC), Eric Cantor (R-VA) or Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) claiming-- against all empirical evidence-- that the GOP lost dozens of seats over the past 4 years because they've been "too moderate," mainstream conservatives have good reason to worry. What works for a kook in the back hills of Georgia or at KKK recruitment drives in Oklahoma, or among brainwashed brain-dead bigots whose ignorance leads them to interpret Jesus' message to be about Hatred and Selfishness and to favor secession and the revival of the Confederacy, doesn't work for rational people... anywhere.

GOP officials and strategists at party conferences last week offered sharply contrasting assessments of what went wrong, and of how difficult it will be to rebuild. Perhaps not surprisingly, the split tended to fall along generational lines.

Older party hands pointed to John McCain’s lackluster campaign and the difficult terrain Republicans found themselves battling on this year, and eschewed any sky-is-falling rhetoric. The up-and-comers, meanwhile, sounded the alarm of impending permanent minority status unless the party changes.

Problem with the generational theory is that it doesn't hold up to examination nearly as well as one based on ideology. Mainstream conservatives-- derided as "moderates" these days inside the GOP-- are battling neo-fascist extremists and confederates who have taken over the rump in most of the Republican areas of the country (i.e., the South and the Mormon West). And they're utterly delusional.

RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, who has worked at the highest levels of Kentucky and national Republican politics for decades, expressed optimism about the GOP’s prospects for the 2010 mid-term elections, suggesting the GOP losses this year were a result of a toxic stew very much unique to the cycle.

“The mood of the country is what was bad in this campaign,” Duncan said in an interview at the governor’s meeting. “It was 90-10 wrong track, you had the war, we had the economy going south on us, we had the third-term curse, all those things.”

What it was not, he insisted-- offering post-election polling that showed voters still supported right-leaning positions, just not McCain, to make his case-- was a rejection of the party’s conservative philosophy.

“If you look at the American electorate, and where they stand and what they believe-- we’re in good shape.”

Break out the party hats and noise makers. The Governor of Mississippi talks about how the GOP was in worse shape-- though he wasn't-- after the Watergate scandal and how there were meetings about changing the name of the party. Now there are some, Cantor for example, who think all you need to do is bone up on technology, fire up the ole racism and xenophobia from time to time, stand up to Boehner when he isn't extremist enough, and pick your fights with Obama and the Democrats strategically to usher in the Big Comeback. Oh-- and hypocrisy; you can't have a Republican Party comeback without massive hypocrisy.

Formerly a steady defender of President Bush, Mr. Cantor doesn't attack the president directly, but he repeatedly refers to "eight years," using the term as if it were a symbol of dark times for Republican principles. That drives his call for Republicans to make themselves relevant while remaining true to their principles-- the pitch he said he's making to colleagues.

"I'm not one to say I'm the right guy, but I would hope, my case for this position is, I very much believe our party is one of limited government, lower taxes, belief in free markets, belief in a strong national defense posture with a cautious approach to making sure that happens.

That "pitch" may work among his shocked and awed colleagues in the rapidly diminishing rump of the GOP, but among regular Americans... not so much. More thoughtful Republicans are trying to figure out why their party lost Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Nevada (by double digits), New Mexico (by double digits), North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania (by double digits) and the entire upper Midwest by double digits. And they're scratching their heads and wondering why every single GOP Senate candidate who was further right than the retiring incumbent he was trying to replace lost by wide margins:

Virginia: Mark Warner (D- 65%) vs James Gillmore (R-34%)
New Mexico: Tom Udall (D-61%) vs Steven Pearce (R-39%)
Colorado: Mark Udall (D- 53%) vs Bob Schaffer (R-42%)

And why extremist right-wing incumbents, like Joe Knollenberg and Tim Walberg in Michigan, Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado, Ric Keller and Tom Feeney in Florida, Robin Hayes and Liddy Dole in North Carolina, Virgil Goode and Thelma Drake in Virginia, Bill Sali in Idaho and Randy Kuhl in New York all had their asses handed to them. Tough to figure that out; much easier to resort to excuses that appeal to a deluded base filled with brainwashed haters who spend entirely too much time listening to Fox and Limbaugh and Coulter.


HITLER ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS PAINTED THE GERMAN VOLK AS THE VICTIM OF THE JEWS

And, of course, the right-wing party of today, just like the Nazis of the 30's, are always the victims too. But they're the victims of the Nazis. Republicans love projecting and they love to claim that progressives and liberals are like the dirty Nazis-- even though it was always the GOP that was sympathetic to their fellow rightists. Now we have Newt Gingrich and the Mormon cult crying that the evil gays are acting like... facsists. Yes, gays want to impose their will on the rest of society-- their "will" being they be treated like everyone else. Nice to see Newt and his right-wing brethren have learned so much since they had their day in the 1930's-- and more recently from 2000 to 2008.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE 3 LOSSES FOR THE GOP IN THE RECENT SPECIAL ELECTIONS

Stender & Hall, beneficiaries of Republican Party disintegration

The other day I was working on our Carney campaign and I pulled up the Progressive Punch Chips Are Down table that shows the relative adherence to Democratic positions on key substantive matters. Predictably, Carney was way towards the bottom of the barrel with a 41.54 score, one of the half dozen Democratic freshmen voting again and again and again with the GOP on key issues. But then when my eyes drifted down into GOP territory, I noticed there was a Democrat who was voting far worse than Carney, even worse than perennial Dixiecrats John Barrow, Nick Lampson and Jim Marshall. Look at this chart. It shows Don Cazayoux voting more frequently with the GOP than 3 Republicans-- and virtually tied with Michael Castle, a mainstream conservative from Delaware. In fact, Cazayoux's voting record, so far, has more in common with Mean Jean Schmidt's, Patrick McHenry's, Tim Walberg's and the other most extremist Republicans than he has with even moderate Democrats like John Salazar (CO), Jim Cooper (TN), or Blue Dog caucus chair Mike Ross (AR).



I warned friends of mine who were working for his election that they would need to keep an eye on him after the election because it seemed likely that he would be prone to vote exactly how Woody KKKpecker, the neo-fascist he defeated, would vote. And he has.

That said, it has been even more than a great joy seeing the Republican Party thrown into a death spiral of dismay, panic and finger-pointing after the losses of the 3 special elections won by Cazayoux and 2 other conservative Democrats, Bill Foster (IL) and Travis Childers (MS). I say more than a great joy because one sees concrete political results of the Republican debacle every single day. Yesterday the minority leader of the Westchester legislature, Republican George Oros, abandoned his challenge to progressive freshman Congressman John Hall.

In a “Dear Friends” letter to supporters, Oros said he felt he could win a primary, but, citing recent Republican defeats in special congressional elections elsewhere, he has concluded the odds of winning in November, this time around, are slim.

The GOP-- at all levels-- has been plagued with recruitment problems, unable to find plausible candidates to run even in once solidly Republican districts. They have had to settle for self-funding vanity candidates and for wild-eyed ideological firebrands in race after race. Even in high profile races for the U.S. Senate they've been stuck with largely lackluster second and third tier non-contenders. In Arkansas, the four very mediocre Democrats who make up that state's Democratic congressional delegation will all waltz back to their seats without a single challenge between them.

And this morning's CQPolitics reports that in New Jersey, a state where the GOP has been suffering in more than most states from Republican top tier candidates passing on runs this year, another race to hold a Republican seat looks like a lost cause. Today a p.r. agent, the daughter of a failed GOP politician and a couple of hackish also-rans will meet in a bitter primary-- after half a dozen actual contenders dropped out of the race-- to determine which Republican will be beaten by Democratic state Senator Linda Stender in November.

At stake is a House general election race that projects to be one of the nation’s most competitive this year. The Democrats are making a strong push to take over the seat that four-term Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson left open with his surprise decision to retire, announced last November.

It is likely that Republican primary voters, out of step with mainstream Americans, will pick the wildly right wing extremist p.r. agent, Lenny Lance, over the more mainstream conservative daughter of Christine Todd Whitman, guaranteeing a blow-out for the Democrats in November. Previously rated as "Leans Republican" (Bush won here with 53% in 2004), CQPolitics didn't even wait for the primary results to come in to upgrade the race to "No Clear Favorite," which, for a timid, conservative organization means: "Landslide for the Democrat No Matter Who Wings the GOP Primary."

GO, VITO, GO! FOSSELLA WANTS TO RUN AGAIN

One of my sisters lives on Staten Island. She and her husband are more Republican than Democrat and we've had our disagreements over the years. But the other day my sister told me that she-- and everyone she knows, particularly women-- have had it with their two-timin' congressman, Vito Fossella. They want him out. Vito wants to stay. The national Republican Party is not happy.

After the electoral debacles in safe red districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, NRCC head Tom Cole (R-OK) went through a song and dance about all the reasons Republicans can expect sharp losses in November and then he added that another scandal would sink the party. On cue... Vito Fossella staggered, drunk and disorderly onto the national stage to announce that he has two families, one on Staten Island and one more conveniently located near the office. House Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) told him to resign. He hunkered down in Staten Island with his cronies and decided to see if he could tough it out. Today's NY Times reports that his toughing it out is especially tough on the tottering GOP.

There has been nothing but silence coming from the embattled Staten Island congressman, Vito J. Fossella, regarding his plans to run for re-election this year. And that uncertainty has caused waves of concern not only among Republicans in New York City, but in Washington as well.

All signs indicate that Mr. Fossella, a Republican who was arrested in Virginia on May 1 on a drunken driving charge and then admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock, is leaning toward running for a sixth term in November. He has been telling friends and advisers that he thinks he can win. And though he canceled a fund-raiser scheduled for this past weekend, he has five or six events planned for the coming month.

...[F]or all his popularity on Staten Island, long a Republican stronghold, Mr. Fossella, 43, faces daunting obstacles. If convicted of drunken driving, he would have to serve a mandatory five-day jail sentence. His acknowledgment of an extramarital affair-- he has three children with his [legal] wife, Mary Pat-- has clearly upset many voters in his conservative-leaning district.

Boehner has been conspiring with Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan to push Fossella out of the race, a race, one of Fossella's mentors, Staten Island GOP éminence grise Guy Molinari, says won't be easy considering that 2008 “is a bad Republican year, politically, and that doesn’t help matters.” Molinari says he's sticking with Fossella and that Fossella still has a chance to be re-elected-- Staten Island isn't known for having the sharpest knives in the drawer-- but that it will cost a lot more money than usual, money the NRCC doesn't have-- and probably wouldn't give Fossella even if it did. Most local Repugs are tip-toeing around the tulips and the party is utterly paralyzed and floundering. "Even Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been a reliable source of campaign money and support for Mr. Fossella in the past, said he was uncertain whether he would support the congressman in a re-election campaign."

In his more recent elections, he has continued to win, but against opponents who have done increasingly well. Indeed, some Democratic leaders have said privately that they hope Mr. Fossella decides to run again, suggesting that the scandals would do nothing but help their cause.

Stephen A. Harrison, a Brooklyn lawyer who was Mr. Fossella’s Democratic opponent in 2006 and hopes to challenge him again this year, has stopped short of calling for Mr. Fossella to resign or step down after his present term. In a statement, Mr. Harrison said, “If he decides to run, the people will decide in November if his recent behavior and revelations should disqualify him from continuing in office.”

He added: “There are great issues to be debated in this campaign-- the war in Iraq, health care, the economy, the environment and energy, just to name a few. It is now my intention to get past this distraction and return to those issues.”

It remains to be seen whether the Congressional race will actually focus on those issues. For now, the attention seems to be firmly on Mr. Fossella rather than his opponents, or the issues.

Meanwhile CREW filed an ethics complaint against Fossella because he used taxpayer funds to court his illegal second wife on whirlwind tours around Europe.

PANIC AND DESPAIR HAVE DRIVEN THE REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT INSANE

Go my child and bring unto us 4 more years... and a fat goat

The Inside the Beltway GOP Establishment first blamed their mounting problems at ballot boxes across the country-- huge and enthusiastic Democratic turnouts vs frighteningly anemic and perfunctory Republican turnout, followed by staggering losses in state legislative and congressional special elections in "safe" Republican districts in New York, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi-- on... crappy candidates. That went over rather badly with the Republican grassroots. So John Boehner and Tom Cole started blaming each other instead and Newt Gingrich and Richard Viguerie publicly blasted the Insiders with a dose of reality: they are completely out of sync with mainstream America.

Panic-stricken career politicians in the congressional Republican caucus have suddenly realized that they will soon be pounding the pavement looking for real jobs-- and in an economic environment their own policies have made rather unattractive for the unemployed. This week almost 3 dozen Republicans voted to increase the taxes of the wealthiest Americans. On Thursday, the House overwhelmingly passed legislation to modernize the GI Bill so that vets of Bush's Iraq and Afghanistan wars can get educations after serving. It included a tax increase of one half a percent on people making more than $500,000 a year to pay for it. Joining the mainstream were a combination of Republicans sorry that their party had strayed so far right plus quite a few vulnerable incumbents ready to abandon their extremist "principles" in an attempt to keep their jobs. The Republican congressman voting to raise taxes on the wealthy:

Steve Buyer (IN)
Shelley  Moore Capito (WV)
Howard Castle (DE)
Charlie Dent (PA)
Jo Ann Emerson (MO)
Phil English (PA)
Jeff Fortenberry (NE)
Vito Fossella (NY)
Wayne Gilchrest (MD)
Robin Hayes (R-NC)
Tim Johnson (IL)
Walter Jones (NC)
Peter King (NY)
Mark Kirk (IL)
Joe Knollenberg (MI)
Ray LaHood (IL)
Steve LaTourette (OH)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
John McHugh (NY)
Candice Miller (MI)
Tim Murphy (PA)
Tom Petri (WI)
Todd Platts (PA)
Jon Porter (NV)
Jim Ramstad (MN)
Rick Renzi (AZ)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL)
Chris Shays (CT)
Chis Smith (NJ)
Fred Upton (MI)
Ed Whitfield (KY)
Don Young (AK)

Yesterday's CQPolitics makes a stab at explaining how the GOP political hacks-- who just a few days ago were insisting Democrats are beating them because they have stolen right-wing positions on issues-- are now trying to turn themselves into... Democrats.

Something big is missing from House Republicans’ 2008 campaign agenda for American families--   and that is no accident.

There’s not a single mention in the 47-point program of such red-meat GOP issues as banning abortion, outlawing same-sex marriage, allowing prayer in the public schools, banning flag burning and protecting the Pledge of Allegiance.

They are still tepid about backing real solutions for economic issues like health care and fair pay, but at least they are willing to talk about issues like those instead of just blatant fear-mongering and slandering their opponents. “In the past, the Republican agenda for families was about social issues. This is more straightforward, talking to families where they are, not where you want them to be,’’ explained rubber stamp Texas Congresswoman Kay Granger.

De-emphasizing issues that were Republican signatures for many years is tricky. It risks alienating the party’s base in a challenging election year when it needs loyalists to turn out. And it does so when conservative Republicans are already uneasy about their party’s presumed presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

But GOP leaders see little choice. Democrats this year won three special elections in House districts long held by Republicans. The party’s campaign unit is struggling to raise funds. And polls show a strong generic preference for Democrats this year.

One of the worst of the GOP lunatic fringe, Pennsylvania extremist Joe Pitts, says he isn't worried that the GOP will do anything more than make some cosmetic changes and that at heart, they'll always be the neo-Nazi Party he has worked so hard to turn them into. He's the fuehrer of the Republican House Values Action Team and he's just laughing at all the hubbub. "I have no assurance from the leaders about this. But I know the leaders and I know that when we come out with the whole big picture, these are all things we will stand for... The worst thing you can do in an election year is deflate your base. They won’t vote against you, they’ll just stay home.’’

Pitts said conservative voters are rallying around McCain in part because he has indicated that as president he would appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of President Bush’s conservative picks, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Conservatives feel that with one or two more like-minded justices, the high court could overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide and issue other decisions they would support.

CQPolitics interviewed Julian Zelizer, a congressional scholar at Princeton who told them that a "problem for the GOP is that social issues have been a core building block for the party for decades. De-emphasizing them now may look opportunistic to voters. "When you’re losing, people are suspicious if you change. Republicans have defined themselves on these issues for three decades. It’s much harder to divorce yourselves from them.’’ Pelosi says when she looks at the GOP scurrying to redefine themselves she sees "disarray, chaos, dissatisfaction, and uncertainty about the future."


UPDATE: BUT NOT AS INSANE AS THE BASE

Wander over to the NRCC site if you want to see something really sick. Tom Cole posted all these new ideas about how to pull the brand out of the sewer and shine her up nice'n purty. The comments from the faithful are fantastic. They are reaping what they have sewn!

DISINTEGRATING GOP EVEN RUNNING INTO TROUBLE IN KANSAS

Even Kansas could be in play this year

It has been hard to miss all the Republican doomsaying and hand-ringing lately-- from Newt Gingrich to the hapless congressional jerkoffs-- who still insist that they disastrous and repeatedly failed, racist strategy of trying to tie Democrats to Jeremiah Wright is the only way to go (Go! Go! Go!)-- to the hack Republican pundits like John Fund and Peggy Noonan:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid-- detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

But even with all this I had to laugh today when I read that even the Kansas Senate seat held by ultimate Bush rubber stamp extraordinaire, Pat Roberts, could be in jeopardy. Lately we've been looking at the 1936 election that left 88 Republicans in the House and only 16 in the U.S. Senate. Of the 16 left in the Senate, one was Arthur Cropper (an ex-Kansas governor who served 5 senate terms starting in 1918), who won re-election against Democrat Omar Ketchum. Cropper won re-election as one of the few Republicans who refused to participate in obstructing FDR's New Deal and, in fact, supported FDR over and over. Roberts, on the other hand, can claim to have enthusiastically participated in every McConnell obstructionist initiative since the voters defeated half a dozen of his fellow Republicans in 2006.

But even if Slattery, an ex-congressman, can't beat evolution-denier Roberts, red states that look ready to elect Democrats in November include Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky-- on top of rcrllrnt shots for Democrats in less red states, like Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. If you want to help the Democrats pick up not just generic Democrats but Democrats who will not be representing corporate interests over our interests, please consider making a donation to the campaigns of Tom Allen (D-ME), Andrew Rice (D-OK), Greg Fischer (D-KY), and Rick Noriega (D-TX) today at our Blue America ActBlue page.

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN PARALYZED WITH FEAR AND FILLED WITH RECRIMINATIONS OVER THEIR PARTY'S DISINTEGRATION

Blue America didn't raise money for conservative Democrats Bill Foster, Don Cazayoux or Travis Childers but some smart DWT readers questioned our cheers-- even restrained cheers-- for their victories. Undoubtedly they will be tugging the Democratic House caucus in a dangerous rightward direction. But what the Republican defeats have meant is probably worth it, at least right now. Congressional Republicans desperately want to distance themselves from Bush and embrace McCain. McCain wants to distance himself from Bush-- and from the congressional Republicans! Today's NY Times paints a compelling picture of a political party on the verge of implosion with phrases like "waves of apprehension" and talk of "senior Republicans urging congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall." In the most insanely Pollyanna pipedream for Republicans in November former NRCC head Tom Davis (R-VA) warned that all that Bush rubber stamping had damaged the congressional Republicans so severely that "unless Republican candidates changed course, they could lose 20 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate." By fall they'll be asking their church auxiliaries to pray they only lose 20 House seats and 6 Senate seats. Even Davis admits “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than it was in 2006.” 31 new Democrats were elected in the House in 2006 and not a single blue district turned red... not one... not anywhere.

The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.

Republicans had sought to link Mr. Childers to Mr. Obama in an advertising campaign there. Republican leaders said they were looking to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, as a model whose independent reputation appears to allow him to rise above party in a year when the Republican label seems tarnished.

But Mr. McCain’s advisers said the Mississippi race underlined his intention to distance himself as much as possible from Congressional Republicans. Mr. McCain has already been openly critical of some of President Bush’s strategies.

Republicans are already declaring it's every man for himself. The 66 64 lobbyists that make up the McCain brain-trust claim the problems the GOP congressional candidates are having has nothing whatsoever to do what them-- NOTHING. DO YOU HEAR ME? N-O-T-H-I-N-G! "But they said it steeled their resolve to run a campaign that distinguished Mr. McCain from both Mr. Bush and a Congress where he has served, in the House and the Senate, since January 1983. They said Mr. McCain would seek-- sometimes explicitly, sometimes not-- to distance himself by speaking critically of what he has described as excessive spending in Washington, as well on issues like the environment." In other words, McCain will throw the rest of his hated party under the bus at every opportunity. He feels very burned after campaigning for Oberweis in Illinois and after having done a recorded message for every single Republican household in MS-01, endorsing their dead dog candidate there. McCain was made to look weak and with toxic coattails.

The special election results left Democrats and Republicans in rare agreement about one thing: President Bush looms as a drag on Republicans.

Yesterday's GOP House caucus meeting, according to Christian Bourge's report for CongressDaily was a mad house with Republicans screaming at each other and everyone pointing fingers at everyone else. "Sources said the meeting erupted into yelling at several points, with Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., the most vocal about the problems the GOP faces heading into the fall. 'There is chaos among the ranks,' said one GOP insider close to the House leadership. 'Some people are pissed and they want [National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole] out.'" Most of the rank-and-file blamed the whole leadership, not just the hapless Cole.

Today the desire to distance themselves from Bush and their own reactionary leadership helped stampede dozens of House Republicans to vote with the Democrats in passing a farm bill that Bush has vowed to veto. In fact, so many Republicans wanted to make the point to their constituents that they do not stand with Bush, the it passed with a veto-proof majority, 318-106. Among the usually dependable Republican rubber stamps loudly eschewing Bush were vulnerable members like Phil English (R-PA), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Randy Kuhl (R-NY), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Sam Graves (R-MO), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Steven LaTourette (R-OH), the two pathetic Diaz-Balart brothers (R-FL), Don Young (R-AK), Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), Fred Upton (R-MI), John Kline (R-MN), Jon Porter (R-NV), Denny Rehberg (R-MT), etc.

So who stuck with Bush? What kind of unabashed, tone deaf rubber stamp addicts? Glad you asked; many of the usual suspects, the worst of the worst-- Patrick McHenry (R-NC), John Boehner (R-OH), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Melissa Bean (Blue Dog-IL), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Heather Wilson (R-NM), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Gary Miller (R-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Mike Pence (R-IN), Ric Keller (R-FL), David Dreier (R-CA), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Robin Hayes (R-NC), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Daniel Lungren (R-CA), Virgil Goode (R-VA), etc. Too scared and paralyzed to vote at all: Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), and Mary Bono (R-CA).

And it isn't only members of Congress who are despairing. "Scott Reed, a former chief of staff to the Republican National Committee, said the defeat would dampen fund-raising. 'Republican leadership needs to really take a good look in the mirror,' Mr. Reed said. 'They’re taking the party off the cliff.'” Yes they are-- and none to soon!

On a related note, I met New Mexico congressional candidate Martin Heinrich in person tonight. He's in a fairly unique-- and enviable-- position. When every quasi-rational Republican in America is running as fast and as far from Bush as they can-- especially after Cheney's and Rove's magic touch moments in Mississippi this week drove up the Democrat's winning margins-- Martin's clueless opponent, Darren White, is embracing Bush and running around Albuquerque chanting "4 more years." On May 27 Bush will be flying in to Albuquerque to host a fundraiser for his former Bernalillo campaign chief. We decided to invite Martin back to Firedoglake this weekend for another live blog session.


UPDATE: "THE CHANGE YOU DESERVE" ISN'T GOING OVER TOO WELL WITH THE ZOMBIES

I wonder what the GOP paid the consulting team to come up with that one! Even the most brain dead Republican hacks and cheerleaders realize that superficial slogans are going to do no more to save their asses than attacks on Jeremiah Wright.