The Far Right Continues To Work To Defeat Mitch McConnell

Almost all the Koch-funded far right extremist groups have now joined the battle to nominate teabagger Matt Bevin over McConnell in the May 20th Kentucky primary. The latest, this weekend, was the Republican Liberty Caucus. The group, which has been around since 1991, has also endorsed Milton Wolf over Pat Roberts in Kansas, Lee Bright over Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Pat McGeehan in West Virginia instead of the Establishment corporate shill (Shelley Moore Capito), and Owen Hill in Colorado (instead of Ken Buck, the other extremist lunatic in the race). They claim the endorsement of Matt Bevin over McConnell was "unanimous."

“It is time that the career professional politicians more interested in being  Washington insiders step aside for new voices who will represent their constituents' desire for lower taxes and less government interference in their family affairs and their personal lives,” said RLC National Chair Matt Nye.

Nye said it was a thorough process to compare the incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell and Matt Bevin, and the RLC deliberates carefully when the incumbent is a Republican.

…“But in the end, it was clear that Matt Bevin, unlike the incumbent, will stand up for individual liberty, limited government and Constitutional principles.

He will hold Washington accountable for its actions that impact the lives of hard-working citizens who know better than government how to manage their lives,” Nye said… “We believe that Matt Bevin is the best hope for the citizens of Kentucky to be secure without government prying into their private lives,” Nye said.

The congressional Liberty Caucus, chaired by Justin Amash, must be asking for extra helpings of the cherry Coke they all drink. McConnell could help Boehner squash them like bugs if he got the idea any of them-- particularly Kentucky teabagger Tom Massey, who represents the northeastern part of the state across from Cincinnati. The GOP Establishment is already at war with these Members, who they see as troublemakers and rebels-- especially Amash, Raul Labrador (ID), Mick Mulvaney (SC), Thomas Massie (KY), Mark Meadows (NC), Tom Graves (GA), and Jim Jordan (OH). Friday, though, Charlie Spiering at the right-wing website, Washington Examiner, opined that the RNC is trying to make nice with the extremists.

Liberty Republicans. They are the young, more libertarian-minded, grassroots supporters that used to be identified chiefly by their favorite Republican presidential candidate, former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

Now, as the Republican National Committee tries to repair relationships and increase outreach to all political groups, they are doing their best to entice more libertarian Republicans into the fold.

Some of these supporters were turned off by what was described as the "railroading" of Ron Paul supporters by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus during the 2012 convention in Tampa.

But the RNC wants to appear welcoming to the libertarian element in their party, which more established members of the party once derided as "Paultards" after they disrupted events in favor of their candidate.

…During the party's winter meeting in Washington on Friday, the RNC passed a resolution renouncing the National Security Agency’s surveillance program for its abuses of private liberties… Spiker cited it as a key step going forward in making sure that libertarian issues were part of the Republican Party.

"There are things like wireless wiretaps, surveillance programs on people-- that's not going to earn the trust of young people, so our party has to be the party that defends civil liberties and it needs to be a big cornerstone of the party, protecting private property rights and individual rights," he told the Washington Examiner after the resolution passed.

I guess they missed Speaker Boehner on Jay Leno's show the night before.

Leno: Let me ask you about Snowden. I guess Mike Rogers…

Boehner: Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee

Leno: He seems to think that Snowden was working with Russia as a spy?

Boehner: Ahhh… That may or may not be true. All I can say is that I think Snowden is a traitor to the country...

Leno: I agree with you

Boehner: I think that the NSA may have made mistakes but, let's understand something: the NSA is there to keep Americans safe here and abroad. They've got a big job to do. We're gonna take a look at what needs to be tweaked.

Leno: Israel spies on us…

Boehner: And we spy on them. We spy on everyone else. Let's all just get over it. It's been going on for thousands of years…

Leno: Exactly, exactly…

I wonder if Amash watched that performance and how many "liberty Republicans" think Boehner was trying to earn the trust of young people.

Meanwhile, on Saturday the Arizona Republican Party formally censured Sen. John McCain, citing a voting record they say is insufficiently conservative. According to the resolution, McCain has campaigned as a conservative but has lent his support to issues "associated with liberal Democrats," such as immigration reform and campaign finance reform and for voting to fund the Affordable Care Act. The party, which is controlled by far right-wing extremists rebuked McCain and called his record “disastrous and harmful."

Saturday’s censure came two weeks after the Maricopa County Republican Party passed a resolution to censure the senator on a 1,150-to-351 vote.

The state GOP party’s censure passed by acclamation, meaning by a voice vote. It has no practical effect, but serves as an attempt to embarrass the senator.

McCain and his office have not commented on the county censure although his supporters point to the party’s reputation for ultra-right partisanship… The resolution condemns McCain “for his continued disservice to our state and nation,” and said state Republican leaders “will no longer support, campaign for or endorse John McCain as our U.S. Senator.”

A Bitter, Self-Pitying Boehner Blames His Republican House Colleagues For "A Very Predictable Disaster"

Boehner told Jay Leno on Thursday that he's learned that "a leader without followers is simply a man taking a walk." His problem, an inability to exercise the kind of skills needed to actually be a leader, never dawned on him when he led his caucus over the cliff last year, despite understanding what a disaster it would be. When Leno then brought up the idea of rooting for America to fail for narrow partisan advantage and mentioned his Congress' 8% approval rating (as the audience cheered), Boehner tried deflecting the blame away from himself: "The Congress has been America's favorite whipping boy for 200 years-- the CONGRESS. You know, there are 465 of us; we've always got some Members in some level of trouble. And so, it doesn't look good…" And then he lapsed into discredited right-wing lies, you expect to hear from Limbaugh or Beck or Ann Coulter. Like Obamacare being "a government takeover of our healthcare system."

Leno lost his touch long ago and it wasn't a very good interview. Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow would have had a great deal more to offer and could have engaged Boehner much more productively, especially when he recited tired, false GOP talking points-- like the one about Obamacare not working. Imagine if it was Chris or Rachel talking instead of Jay! Unlike Jay, they would have at least known that so far this month another 800,000 people have signed up and that the total is already around 3 million. "And, if the pattern of people signing up matches the experience of Massachusetts under Romneycare, we can expect a big surge ahead of the March 31 deadline." Is that good? Unless you want mindless platitudes and laughable "FoxFacts," don't ask Boehner or Leno but…

Given that the first two months of the law’s existence were basically lost due to problems with the exchange websites, these latest numbers are interesting because they show that the number of people signing up is beginning to catch up to the projections made before the September 1 rollout-- before all the trouble with the websites.

Back then, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 3.3 million people would sign up for insurance through the exchanges by the end of last year. That obviously didn’t happen. But after essentially losing two month to technical problems, Obamacare appears to be gaining ground. It’s nearly reached that 3.3 million figure two-thirds of the way through January. It no longer seems inconceivable that 7 million could sign up by March 31st, as the CBO had originally projected.

Imagine Jay Leno ever asking, even indirectly, Boehner about the Republican Party's war on the poor. Not gonna happen. The hottest topic in current political discourse, economic inequality, was never even brought up. In his Washington Post column yesterday, Greg Sargent posited that the Beltway's Conservative Consensus favorite topic of Austerity has now made way for "a discussion of what government should be doing to boost the economy and protect people from economic harm." He synthesized the data from the two most recent polls on the topic, both out this week, one from Pew and one from CBS. "The ideas and assumptions underlying the GOP economic and poverty agenda are far and away more reflective of the preoccupations of Tea Party Republicans. Meanwhile, non-Tea Party Republicans are much more in line with the rest of the public on these matters.

In short, the Tea Party economic worldview, if such a thing exists, is isolated from the rest of the public, and even to some degree from non-Tea Party Republicans-- yet it has an outsized role in shaping the GOP’s overall agenda.

Both the Pew and CBS polls find large majorities believe the income gap is growing, and both find that more Americans want government to do something about it. Both also find solid majority support for raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, and (in Pew’s case) taxing the rich to help the poor.

Both polls also find that only Republicans don’t think government should act to reduce inequality. This is reflected in the GOP economic agenda. As Jonathan Chait explains, this agenda continues to be premised on the ideas that there is, if anything, too much downward redistribution of wealth, that government shouldn’t interfere in the market by, say, raising the minimum wage, and that safety net programs lull people into dependency (Paul Ryan’s Hammock Theory of Poverty).

…• The CBS poll finds that Republicans believe unemployment benefits make people less motivated to look for a job by 57-40. But Tea Party Republicans overwhelmingly believe this by 67-32. By contrast, only a minority of non-tea party Republicans believe this (47-51).

• The Pew poll has a similar finding: Republicans believe government aid to the poor does more harm than good by making people dependent on government, rather than doing more good than harm, by 67-27. But Tea Party Republicans overwhelmingly believe this by 84-11, while non-tea party Republicans are somewhat more closely divided, 59-35.

• The Pew poll finds that Republicans favor raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 54-44. But Tea Party Republicans overwhelmingly oppose this by 65-33. Non-Tea Party Republicans overwhelmingly support it by 65-33. (All the above Pew numbers include Republicans and GOP-leaners).

• The CBS poll is less pronounced, but even here, Tea Party Republicans tilt against a minimum wage hike by 52-47, while non-tea party Republicans favor it by 50-48.

Um, Jay, who exactly lost money in WHICH Obama economic plan?

Who wouldn't like to see Jay Leno someday introduce occasional touches of "humor" to his jokes? But it's more important that he try to cut back on the lies.

"The Center for Responsive Politics reports that President Obama has become the first politician in history to raise $1 billion in his political career. Imagine how much more he could have raised if people had't lost it all in his economic plan."

-- a Jay Leno "joke" on The Tonight Show

by Ken

It's something right-wingers never understand. Or, to be fair, a certain number of non-right-wingers either. What I have in mind is people who are officially Democrats, including many who aren't necessarily not-right-wingers. But even many Democrats who insist that they're committed progressives believe it's impermissible to make fun of people they support -- such as, to pick a wild example, the president -- no matter how ridiculously they may behave.

In case it isn't obvious from the preceding, what I mean by the "it" that right-wingers never understand is the principle that pols of all persuasions are fair game for earned ridicule -- that in fact it's important to the health of the republic to call ridiculousness to account in our public servants. Okay, it's true that, as this presidential primary season demonstrated, right-wingers have lost their former compunctions about savaging doctrinally diverse wingnuts, but does anyone expect that to carry over into an inter-party race, let alone a Republican-controlled federal government?

These are, after all, people from whom hardly a peep was heard during the reign of terrifying insanity and ineptitude that constituted the Bush regime, those eight unimaginable years during which the office of president of the United States was misappropriated by a shell of a humanoid creature without even minimal qualifications for any known category of non-figurehead employment except perhaps "boozing gladhander." And for a good part of that same period both houses of Congress were controlled by sociopaths who again would have deserved to be the butt of daily scorched-earth ridicule if their actions hadn't been so singlemindedly aimed at turning the country into a festering doodyhole for everyone except the rich and their fellating stooges. (Many of them, it's true, also earned decades-long prison sentences that they didn't get, a closely related story but not the one we're pursuing just now.)

The switch of parties in the Oval office had the effect of switching an on-off switch for both the character assassins and the would-be humorizers of the Right. By contrast, any Democrats who expected, say, Jon Stewart to play nice with the new administration clearly wasn't paying attention. The rule is not only fair but important to our political health: When you earn ridicule, you have to get it.

Just today, Newt Gingrich, in defending the Indefensible Willard for his handling of the psychotic ravings of converted Willard booster "The" Donald Trump, explained that birther foolishness isn't the cause of President Obama's. "I think that Obama creates very powerful emotions about him largely because of the radicalism of his views. I think that that's the key." And nobody, to my knowledge, has asked him, "Are you speaking as an insane person, an imbecile, or just a pathological liar?"

Really, it would have been understandable if everyone present had just burst into hysterics pointing wildly at the grotesque turd, maybe muttering, "What an incredible colossal dickwad!" Obama, maybe the least radical pol in the history of the republic, being branded as "radical" by a man who holds so many off-the-chart ultra-zealot crackpot views that it's hard to imagine how he walks the streets free of the loony bin. But of course a country whose citizens have been so unrelentingly subjected to miseducation and lies -- citizens who often seem happy only when they're being lied to by right-wing filth-mongers -- manages to believe this utter lunacy, and the perpetrators walk free.

So Obama jokes are absolutely fair game for Jay. Lies, however -- not so much. The president is, again, accountable for what he has failed to do for the economy, or more accurately failed to try to do, because his political haters would surely have roused themselves to the utmost to prevent him from doing anything that would have helped the country and in so doing been to his political advantage.

But the closest thing to an "economic plan" which might fit the mold of the joke Jay was trying to make is the economic policies of the Bush regime, the policies of commission and omission which paved the way for the economic meltdown. Jay is either so stupid that he doesn't know this, in which case he ought to be encouraged to keep his trap shut about stuff he knows nothing about, or else he's happy to be locking in the right-wing lie about who made the economy go boom.

In which case he ought to come out of the closet as a right-wing propagandist. (The occasional funny joke would be an upgrade to his comedy product too, but that's yet another story.)

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Is It True That Only The Rich And The REALLY Stupid Vote For Republicans?

Many Republicans, like Eric Cantor, pick up the disease early in life. This was from his high school year book

Wednesday morning I watched John McCain get up on the Senate floor and scoff at young people who had to live in their parents' basements and stoop to staying on their insurance. Republicans like McCain-- who married the daughter of a fabulously wealthy gangster-- detest the non-rich. And if there was ever a Republican "like McCain," it is Willard Romney. He hired a DC lobbyist to take care of the details of overseeing the new beach shack mansion he's building in La Jolla, and what beach shack mansion would be complete without elevators for the autos?-- but he has plenty of time to run around attacking working people struggling to get a small piece of the pie he and his brood and the billionaire cronies who are financing his attempt to seize the White House are hogging for themselves. Greg Sargent picked up on Willard's crass class war from his Leno appearance the other night. It was like he was trying to prove Alan Grayson was correct when he said the Republican plan for health care for the poor is "die quickly."

Romney replied that people with preexisting conditions should continue to get insurance-- as long as they’ve been insured in the past. He refused to say what should be done about those who have never had insurance. Here’s the exchange (video here):

LENO: So you would make the law stand for children and people with preexisting conditions.

ROMNEY: People with preexisting conditions-- as long as they’ve been insured before, they’re going to continue to have insurance.

LENO: Suppose they were never insured?

ROMNEY: Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered.’

LENO: I know guys at work in the auto industry, and they’re just not covered... they’ve just never been able to get insurance. And then they get to e 30, 35, and were never able to get insurance before. Now they have it. That seems like a good thing.

ROMNEY: We’ll look at a circumstance where someone was ill, and hasn’t been insured so far. But people who have had the chance to be insured-- if you’re working in an auto business for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure all their employees-- you look at the circumstances that exist. But people who have done their best to get insured, are going to be able to be covered. But you don’t want everyone saying, `I’m going to sit back until I get sick and then go buy insurance.’ That doesn’t make sense. But you have to find rules that get people in that are playing by the rules.

That last section is a bit garbled, but the basic fact here is that when asked what the federal government should do about those with preexisting conditions who have never had insurance, Romney won’t say. This echoes Romney’s recent exchange with a student who asked what the federal government would do to help with student loan debt. Answer: Nothing.

What’s particularly interesting about the above exchange is that Romney himself detailed exactly the problem that the individual mandate is designed to fix: If people wait until they get sick before getting insurance, it fouls up the system. As he puts it, this “you’ve got to get insurance when you’re well.” Romney’s recognition of the policy problem, of course, is why he passed a mandate at the state level in Massachusetts.

But now Romney is obliged by GOP primary politics (and perhaps by his actual beliefs) to insist that a federal mandate is an unconstitutional usurpation of American freedom. So he’s forced to give a nonsensical answer to the core policy and moral question that’s left behind if we do away with Obamacare: What should the federal government do about those who can’t get insurance coverage, thanks to preexisting conditions?

Until Romney details otherwise, his answer, for all practical purposes, is: Nothing.

A little personal story. A few days ago, in a hysterical press release, corrupt Blue Dog Tim Holden accused me of being a "billionaire Hollywood record executive." My friend David Kahne-- who produced the first four hit records I had on my indie record label (by Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, Romeo Void, Translator and the Red Rockers)-- laughed when he saw it and wrote to me: "I sure wish he was right about you being a billionaire, though. You could spend some bucks and PAC him outta his gig." David, who has gone on to produce platinum-selling records for the Bangles, Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, Sugar Ray, The Strokes, Sublime, used to be the janitor at a recording studio and he would get free time to make our records. At that time I was on food stamps and surviving by taking photographs and selling them to rock magazines. We've both done well, working hard but billionaires? No, not even close. But I'll never forget that the American people saved my life when I came back from living abroad for 7 years with no money and no prospects except my dreams. I needed a helping hand at the time, the food stamps were a godsend and I have never once begrudged paying my taxes and I have never stashed any money in a tax shelter or hoarded it in a Swiss bank account or in the Cayman Islands. I'm proud to pay my taxes to this great country that I love and cherish and that gave me the chance to make my dreams come true and live a good life.

Romney was born rich. He can never understand what it means to go from being poor to being comfortable. He was born into privilege, born wealthy, born white, born with every advantage. No one wants to take that away from him. But why does he begrudge society giving a little help to people who didn't get lucky in the DNA sweepstakes the way he did? And where did he get the idea that it's "humorous" or appropriate to tell stories about shutting down factories and putting thousands of working people out of jobs? What is it with this guy? And why would we want to elect someone like that to be our leader? Remember this video clip? It's worth paying close attention to:

It's possible to be as stupid as Evan Bayh, but does anyone in his position have the right to be? PLUS: Jay Leno on Obama vs. Bush

Senator Evan with one of his prominent admirers

by Ken

Longtime DWT readers know that Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh is not a favorite here. Howie and I have fairly often been driven to fairly extreme vituperation. There's no evidence I'm aware of that the guy has a working brain, because if he does, the only use he makes of it is to process his intake of prevailing-wind measurements.

He is to all appearances the worst kind of gutless panderer, and I do mean the worst kind, because he is not only willing but happy to pander to voters' deepest ignorances rather than attempt to exercise the tiniest bit of leadership and attempt to educate them. When it comes to a grasp of social and economic issues and the backbone to exercise leadership thereon, his model appears to be a leftover dish of tapioca pudding.

It's all the more distressing because his father, former Sen. Birch Bayh, was a genuine statesman of the '60s and '70s -- and since being thrust out of elective office has continued to champion the values he espoused in government in other sectors. Is there not some eerie symbolic resonance to the fact that Senator Birch was ousted from his seat by that poster boy for idle-rich imbecility Dan Quayle in 1980, in the same election that installed Ronald Reagan, the man who made the U.S. officially a country built on and devoted to imbecility? Is there any reason to think that Senator Evan is anything other than a (nominally) Democratic version of Dan Quayle?

But this is an old story. Granted, it became topical during the last presidential election cycle, when first candidate Hillary Clinton and then nominee Barack Obama seemed perfectly prepared to make this giant lunk of nothingness her/his running mate. Still, we dodged that bullet -- and while Joe Biden may not be my all-time favorate U.S. politico, every time I hear "Vice President Biden," I still remember only too vividly how close we apparently came to, well, a different outcome.

This is still old news, though. Well, Senator Evan has popped up again. He's one of 14 Democrats, as counted by stalwart progressive Mike Lux in a stirring HuffPost exhortation, "Dems Need To Drop Culture Of Caution," who were identified in a Wednesday Politico piece "as having concerns with [President] Obama's policy plans." It seems the Politico 14 are trying to counsel caution to the White House.

It's an exciting piece from our colleague and friend Mike, stressing that the great Democratic victories for social progress have never come from being cautious. Everyone should read this piece. (This seem an appropriate place too for a plug for Mike's new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.) But the quote from our boy Evan still has me spluttering. Here's a post I churned out earlier to a list on which Mike's post was circulated:

At the risk of belaboring the bleedingly obvious, Politico quotes that great thinker and crack economist Sen. Evan Bayh as saying:

"The American people and businesses are tightening their belts. I think we need to show that the government can economize, as well."

Much as I admire Mike Lux's exhortation for Dems to rise above caution, this isn't even a "caution" issue, is it?

(1) Isn't the fact that NOBODY IS SPENDING a functional description of how we have sunk into, and are mired in, a depression (still masquerading in polite society as recession)? (Hence the logic for "economic stimulus"?)

(2) I know that Senator Bayh isn't very bright. I've called him things like "imbecile." But is it really possible that a prominent Democratic U.S. senator -- a man who came this close to being nominated for the vice presidency -- DOESN'T GRASP THIS? I understand that he's got a serious and apparently incurable case of panderitis, but still . . .

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
JAY LENO ON PRESIDENTS BUSH AND OBAMA


"Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on Meet the Press yesterday. And he said that Barack Obama is more analytical than President Bush. Well, there's a shock, huh? I think Tickle Me Elmo is more analytical than President Bush."

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McCain Decides To Compete In The Celebrity Arena-- Gets The Nod From Daddy Yankee And Half of Big & Rich (The Gay Bashing Half, Of Course)

"Can you sing 'Dancing Queen?'"

Today John McCain, apparently thinking he was about to get another $1,394,033 check from Big Oil and Gas, accepted the endorsement from "Gasolina" singer Ramon Ayala (p.k.a.- Daddy Yankee). McCain, an Abba fan, has also been endorsed by half of country duo, Big & Rich, John Rich, whose previous political foray was a vicious homophobic tirade coupled with an endorsement of McCain's then-rival, the hapless Fred Thompson. He's now recorded a catchy ditty called "Raisin' McCain," which tries helping McCain further exploit his POW experience in Hanoi-- one thing McCain doesn't need any help doing. In fact, right after accepting his endorsement from Daddy Yankee, McCain flew off to Hollywood for his 900th celebrity appearance on Jay Leno's show. There he again shamelessly played the "I was a prisoner of war" card to try to garner sympathy and take the spotlight off another in an embarrassing series of bumbling gaffes:

Leno: "For a million dollars, how many houses do you have?"

McCain: "Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, at a moment of seriousness. I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair."

He then went on the sing to praises of the millionaire mobster and jailbird, his father-in-law, who's bootlegging business and Mafia connections bought McCain every single one of the 13 houses he owns.

Now Daddy Yankee, who isn't eligible to vote in presidential elections, is no Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Nas, or John Legend, all outspoken Obama supporters. But the endorsement certainly got some of the crazier extremists in the crumbling GOP coalition hopping mad. God only knows what Dobson and Company think of Daddy Yankee's family-unfriendly, sexually suggestive act-- and "Gasolina" is not about "drill here now," (unless you mean drilling in a... colloquial sense). But extreme right, out-of-kilter GOP blogger Michelle Malkin was howling at the moon when she saw McCain and Daddy Yankee together.

Can someone, anyone, in the McCain camp stop him from self-immolation? Can the open-borders GOP establishment drive a bigger wedge between the conservative base and the GOP ticket?

Last week, it was the RNC ad touting McCain’s shamnesty superiority over Obama. Today, it’s McCain goofily, stupidly, standing with Puerto Rican singer Daddy Yankee for the all-important reggaeton vote while teenagers squealed. Celeb-u-pocrisy, anyone? The singer, whose real name is Ramon Ayala, singled out McCain’s sponsorship of the shamnesty bill as the reason for his endorsement:

“He’s been a fighter for the Hispanic community and I know that, me personally, I’m choosing the best candidate, because he’s been a fighter for the immigration issues,” Ayala said. “So, for me, he’s the best guy to lead this nation.”

Desperately seeking a coolness boost, McCain lapped it up: “I just wanna say thank you, Daddy Yankee,” McCain said.