How Much Damage Will Their Support For TrumpCare Cause GOP Senators?

Tuesday night, Jerry Moran, a conservative Republican senator from Kansas, let lose with a couple of tweets that augur poorly for McConnell's chances of ever passing TrumpCare 3.0 through the Republican-controlled Senate. He's another NO vote-- an unexpected one. "The Senate health care bill missed the mark for Kansans and, therefore, did not have my support,” he said in a statement. “I am pleased with the decision to delay the vote-- now is the time to take a step back and put the full legislative process to work." He added that he's hoping to help craft a bill that "makes certain Kansans will have access to more affordable and better quality healthcare," a slap in the face at Trump, McConnell, Price, Ryan and the rest of the anti-healthcare fanatics who are trying to pass this garbage bill off as just that exactly.

Another senator no one expected to oppose TrumpCare is Tennessee's Bob Corker, a conservative Republican in a deep red conservative state. But he's up for reelection in 2018 and a new poll of his state just came out from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Bad news for Corker if he's seriously considering voting for this turd. Trump won Tennessee in a landslide-- 92 out of the 95 counties with 61.1% of the vote to Clinton's 34.9%. And most Tennesseans still back him, though, the poll finds, "they are less optimistic that he’ll change things for the better... The percentage of Tennesseans who say health care should be the state government’s top priority has been steadily rising since 2012 and now stands at 30 percent, tied for first place with the economy. At the federal level, Tennesseans rank reducing health care costs second, after the economy and before terrorism prevention." And he's where it gets sticky for Corker:

Support for the Affordable Care Act is still low but higher than it’s ever been before—29 percent. Additionally, support is growing among Tennesseans to fix the ACA (33 percent, up 5 from November) rather than repeal it (14 percent, down 7) or repeal and replace it (24 percent, down 5). In another surprise, the percentage of Tennesseans favoring a single-payer health care system has risen 6 points since November to 22 percent.

While Tennesseans may still be skeptical of the ACA itself, several of its signature policies have overwhelming bipartisan support: Just under 80 percent want insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, not charge them more for it, cover children up to age 26 and cover addiction treatment.

I suspect state polling across the country, in one red state after another, is going to show senators the same thing. The new national poll from Marist, released yesterday morning, shows approval for TrumpCare at a startlingly anemic 17%. The top-line: "Americans broadly disapprove of the Senate GOP's health care bill, and they're unhappy with how Republicans are handling the efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act." The details don't make it sound any better. While Democrats and Independents hate the thing (only 8% of Dems approve and just 13% of independents do), just 35% of Republican voters are onboard. And this poll was done before the CBO report was released, which will drive this numbers lower.

In fact, while many Americans want changes to the ACA, also known as Obamacare, they want it to be more far-reaching. A 46 percent plurality say they want to see the ACA do more, while just 7 percent want it to do less. Keeping the ACA and having it do less is essentially what GOP congressional plans are doing.

Only 17 percent want the 2010 bill left intact and unchanged, while a quarter of Americans want it repealed completely-- including just over half of Republicans.

If Congress doesn't go through with a repeal of the ACA, 37 percent of Americans said they would blame Republicans in Congress, while 23 percent would blame Democrats, and 15 percent would blame President Trump.

Wednesday morning Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman Raul Grijalva was trolling Señor Trumpanzee with a tweet pointing out that "Public support for #Trumpcare is below @realDonaldTrump's abysmal approval rating. #Sad!" And it's true. And now Republicans are starting to blame each other for the failure. McConnell has been hissing behind the scenes that Trump has been useless in the battle, even counter-productive, while extremists like Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows (R-NC) and anti-government radicals like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul are all demanding the bill go even further right, alienating mainstream Republicans who are trying to stick with McConnell. McConnell's office has been telling reporters off the record that the Trump/Pence SuperPAC, America First Policies, deciding to attack Dean Heller (R-NV) with a million dollars in ads encouraging Trump voters to abandon him, was the last straw for many Republican senators.

I want to point out a Philadelphia Daily News column by Will Bunch on a Republican senator, Pat Toomey (R-PA) left twisting in the wind but still sticking with Trump (who barely won the state, 48.8% to 47.6%). Bunch wrote that Toomey had a close call inasmuch as having to take an actual on-the-record vote on TrumpCare would have discomforted him bigly, considering around 700,000 Pennsylvanians get healthcare coverage though the Medicaid expansion TrumpCare savages. "Maybe we’ll never know how Toomey would have voted," he wrote. "While he called the measure “a constructive first step” when it was finally made public after weeks of secret, closed-door deliberations, he also assured Pennsylvania: “I will thoroughly examine this draft and welcome all feedback from my fellow Pennsylvanians in the coming days.” Ha, who was he kidding? The reality is that the draft that Toomey and the Senate is considering is, in good measure, Toomey’s own work. As Philadelphia Magazine’s Claire Sasko reported last week, it was Toomey who-- without holding a single public hearing (something that we here in Pa. call the Toomey Way)-- drafted the $800 billion in reduced Medicaid spending which the senator said is 'necessary to make it a sustainable program' yet in the real world seem to have disappeared mostly to pay for those tax cuts for the Maserati crowd."

So you could also say that Toomey’s posturing on Medicaid and on the BCRA tax-cut-disguised-as-health-care bill was disingenuous, at best-- but then it got worst, a lot worse. On Sunday morning, the Pennsylvania Republican went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and, facing the nation, proceeded to blatantly attempt to bamboozle it. To the casual coffee-cake-munching Sunday a.m. TV viewer, Toomey delivered a rap that made it sound like he’d found a magical way to make Medicaid better by spending less money-- and no one gets hurt. The senator uttered words that were true only if you parsed the English language in a way that 320 million  Americans, minus about 40 U.S. senators and a few brain-dead Trump administration officials, do not. In that kind of “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” way.

Here’s some of what Toomey told CBS’ John Dickerson:

Yes, listen, it’s going to be a challenge, but I have to strongly disagree with the characterization that we’re somehow ending the Medicaid expansion.In fact, quite the contrary. The Senate bill will codify and make permanent the Medicaid expansion. And, in fact, we will have the federal government pay the lion’s share of the cost. Remember, Obamacare created a new category of eligibility. Working-age, able-bodied adults with no dependents for the first time became eligible for Medicaid if their income was below 138 percent of the poverty level. We are going to continue that eligibility. No one loses coverage. What we are going to do, gradually over seven years is transition from the 90 percent federal share that Obamacare created and transition that to where the federal government is still paying a majority, but the states are kicking in their fair share, an amount equivalent to what they pay for all the other categories of eligibility.

That was Sunday. About 30 hours later, the Congressional Budget Office came out with its devastating report on so-called Trumpcare which projected that 22 million fewer Americans will have health insurance by 2026 including-- more relevant to Toomey’s CBS comments-- a whopping 15 million fewer to be covered by Medicaid. That’s a lot more than “no one.”

Even some of Toomey’s colleagues from across the aisle, normally reluctant to call out a peer, were aghast at the senator’s performance.

In the spirit of, ahem, civility, I reached out on Monday to Toomey and his staff, and his staffers were civil back in offering their background thoughts on their boss’ comments. His defense is essentially that the Senate bill retains the eligibility for the working poor that was added in 2010-- the only thing that’s changing is dramatically fewer federal dollars to pay for that coverage. In theory, states receiving Medicaid block grants could somehow increase their own ante, or else states could cut services but not the rolls of the insured. Those more-than-highly unlikely things could keep Medicaid enrollment at the same levels! Also in theory, the last place Phillies could suddenly win their final 87 games and still make the playoffs. That’s about as plausible as the Toomey Medicaid scenario.

Here’s what Toomey’s spokesman Steve Kelly sent me tonight: “Senator Toomey’s comments related to Medicaid and the current Senate health care bill-- the federal government is not ending Medicaid expansion coverage or eligibility for anyone. States are still free to offer the coverage to anyone who meets the Obamacare’s expanded criteria. However, instead of funding it at 90 percent in perpetuity, the Senate bill asks the states to contribute the same amount for the expanded population as they do for every other category of Medicaid.”

That said. you can and probably should note that Toomey’s CBS Sunday statement is demonstrable false, since 8 states that expanded Medicaid coverage after 2010 have so-called “trigger” provisions that automatically kill their program if federal funding drops below 90 percent, which is exactly the plan that Toomey is pushing. That would end Medicaid coverage for 3.3 million people. Again, not “no one.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning Factcheck.org looked at Toomey’s appearance and-- citing his parsing on the eligibility issue-- gave him a “half-true” rating. I think they were more than generous. The truth is that Toomey didn’t want to level with Pennsylvanians-- or the American people-- about what’s in the bill or what it does. There’s a word for that: Bamboozlement. And when it’s a matter of life and death for the elderly, the working poor, and the sick people that Toomey represents, bamboozlement is an outrage.

Toomey won’t tell you the whole truth because, politically, he can’t. Because he helped design this scheme to cut Medicaid solely for the purpose of benefiting the people that he really represents. People like the oil-billionaire Koch Brothers, who bankrolled Toomey’s 2016 re-election and whose retreat in sunny California the senator fled to while his Pennsylvania counterpart Sen. Bob Casey was at Philadelphia International Airport fighting for the rights of migrants. Or like hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose Elliott Management employees are Toomey’s largest corporate source of campaign funds. Or Wall Street billionaire (and former New York mayor) Mike Bloomberg, another key 2016 backer. These are the folks who will gain millions while states are struggling to decide which sick truck driver gets to see a doctor.

The good news? The temporary collapse of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s scheme to ram through the BCRA this week means that Toomey comes home for the July 4 break with a wonderful opportunity to both atone for his bamboozlement and follow up on his promise. You know, sir, the one where you said that you “welcome feedback from my fellow Pennsylvanians…” That would mean doing something that you haven’t done since 2013, senator-- holding a public, in-person town hall in the state that you represent. That would give you a chance to explain in long form-- and not tortured TV soundbites-- why you think reducing Medicaid is such a good deal for Pennsylvania. And it will give you, Pat Toomey, a chance to do something else you so rarely do, which is listen to regular people, and not lobbyists. You’ll hear something that might even sound a little strange to you.

The truth.

Is Trump's Infrastructure Plan Just An Excuse For A Privatization Agenda?

You might not know it from Señor Trumpanzee's demented early morning tweet storms since Monday, but this is what the Regime dubbed "Infrastructure Week." Not counting all the deranged distractions, he kicked off Infrastructure Week with an announcement that he's going to try to privatize U.S. air traffic control. Señor signed a memo and letter to Congress outlining his a plan written by a lobbyist who the airline industry gifted to the chair of the filthy-corrupt House Transportation Committee, Bill Shuster (who also received $148,499 in airline industry bribes last year alone). Trumpanzee then handed out pens and reveled in several rounds of applause from invited sycophants. Like most of his nonsensical signings, the announcement had no binding effect, and normal people quickly denounced the proposal.

Bill Nelson, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee: "The safety of the flying public should not be for sale. Handing air traffic control over to a private entity partly governed by the airlines is both a risk and liability we can't afford to take." House Transportation ranking Democrat Peter DeFazio said turning air traffic control operations over to a non-governmental entity "was a bad idea when it was proposed in the last Congress, and it remains a bad idea today despite President Trump's support," noting that opponents on both sides of the aisle "have raised serious concerns about whether it would guarantee safety, protect national security, expedite new technology and keep our aviation system solvent." It isn't the kind of infrastructure people eager to see a boost to the economy were looking for. Last week we talked about a real plan-- the one Ted Lieu penned on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Yesterday, a statement from Lieu, along with CPC co-cahirs Raul Grijalva and Mark Pocan emphasized that "Trump’s attempt to shift public attention away from his Russia troubles by rolling out an infrastructure privatization scheme only exposes his Administration’s radical agenda to sell off the highways, bridges, and clean water we all rely on to benefit foreign corporations and Wall Street investors. President Trump’s push today to dismantle the Federal Aviation Administration and put it under private control is just the first step of a larger scheme that appears to cut existing infrastructure spending while forcing taxpayers to subsidize the construction of border walls and private prisons. If this administration was serious about putting people to work and addressing our infrastructure needs they would be touting something very different. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has a real solution. Our 21st Century New Deal for Jobs is a bold vision that puts 2.5 million people to work in revitalizing our schools, parks, bridges, roads and drinking water, while laying the foundations of a 21st-century economy through clean energy, high-speed rail, and lightning-fast internet for all. Rather than selling off public assets to the highest bidder, as Trump intends to do, our $2 trillion plan makes big corporations pay their fair share. Over the past week, over 30 House Democrats have rallied behind our resolution, which lays out clear principles for an infrastructure plan that creates millions of good jobs while preventing Trump and the Republicans in Congress from selling off and privatizing our public roads, bridges, and ports. Public money must serve the public good. Americans don’t want to pay for a Trump corporate giveaway, and his feeble attempt at an infrastructure plan will fall flat, while the CPC’s New Deal for Jobs will continue to gain momentum across the country."

The handover of about 300 airport towers and other flight tracking centers would be one of the largest transfers of U.S. government assets. About 35,000 workers, including 14,000 controllers and 6,000 technicians, would be affected. Small airports fear it would result in higher fees and less service. Kansas Republican Jerry Moran: "Proposals to privatize air traffic control threaten the reliable transportation options provided by small airports and the general aviation community for millions of Americans. All but our largest airports nationwide stand to be hurt by this proposal. Privatization eliminates the chance for Congress and the American people to provide oversight, creates uncertainty in the marketplace and is likely to raise costs for consumers."

Writing for The Atlantic, Russell Berman went into some detail about why Trump is trying to privatize air traffic control. It's cheap, easy and ideologically pure enough to serve as red meat for some conservatives, though not the radicals like the House Freedom Caucus. The orange-hued baboon "pitched the proposal as transformative, spicing up air-traffic control with plenty of Trump-ian flourishes at a White House ceremony." To a normal person he sounds... like an orange-hued baboon who has learned a few words of English. To his followers, he sounds like the president they've been waiting for to put them out of their misery.

He described the status quo in dire terms-- “an ancient, broken, antiquated, horrible system that doesn’t work,” he said. (“Other than that, it’s quite good,” Trump added for laughs.) And he said the principles he was endorsing would fix just about every complaint that Americans have with flying today. “We’re proposing reduced wait times, increased route efficiency, and far fewer delays,” the president promised. “Our plan will get you where you need to go more quickly, more reliably, more affordably and, yes-- for the first time in a long time-- on time. We will launch this air travel revolution by modernizing the outdated system of air traffic control. It’s about time.”

All those things sound nice, but to skeptics of the proposal, converting the air-traffic control system into a not-for-profit cooperative isn’t necessary to achieve them. The key to reducing delays and increasing efficiency, they say, is not a bureaucratic overhaul but the full implementation of technology known as NextGen that is shifting air-traffic control to a satellite, GPS-based system. The shift has been slow and costly, which has led Republicans to call for getting the government out of the way. But air-traffic control, per se, isn’t the problem, and despite the outdated technology, the system’s safety record remains strong. “If something isn’t broken, why fix it?” asked Paul Hudson, a member of an FAA advisory committee and the president of a passenger advocacy group called FlyersRights.org.

...In a victory for conservatives, the president is no longer touting new public investments on a grand scale; the $1 trillion he once promised has fallen to just $200 billion in direct federal spending. Instead, he’s relying on ideas Republicans have already proposed to incentivize private development and reduce the federal role in infrastructure altogether. The president plans to promote his infrastructure plans on the road in Cincinnati on Wednesday and again back in Washington later in the week, but he is expected to focus on permitting reform rather than new federal money.

In part, that’s a political calculation. Trump has already seen the two issues Republicans most prized-- health care and taxes-- stall on Capitol Hill. Conservatives were never particularly excited about infrastructure to begin with, and Democrats are loathe to cooperate with Trump on anything. The president needs something-- anything-- to pass Congress, and if nothing else, privatizing air-traffic control was an idea that had already gotten off the ground, so to speak.

It was a priority of Representative Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, an early Trump supporter who is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and will be key to enacting the administration’s other infrastructure proposals. Shuster said he pitched his plan to Trump back in the winter of 2014, before he even became a candidate, and the White House based its principles largely on legislation the chairman introduced last year. “It seemed like naturally low-hanging fruit from a policy perspective,”  Gribbin told reporters on Monday in explaining why the president chose to lead off with air-traffic control.

Yet in the current legislative environment, even the lowest-hanging fruit have long odds of making it into law. Shuster’s bill never made it to the House floor last year, suggesting that even Republicans were not fully onboard. The proposal ran into turf battles with the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, and it is likely to draw opposition from lawmakers representing rural districts that rely more on government support.

Its path through the Senate is even rockier, since Democrats who have the power to block the measure are opposed to privatization. A lukewarm statement from Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a top Republican who leads the Commerce Committee, sent an ominous signal on Monday. “As we move forward in discussing potential reforms, getting a bill to President Trump’s desk will require bipartisan support as well as a consensus among the aviation community on a way forward,” Thune said. Another Republican, Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, panned the proposal altogether, saying it would “threaten reliable transportation options provided by small airports and general aviation for millions of Americans.”

...On Monday afternoon, the president made a show of putting his signature on the statement of principles he would be sending to Congress. This wasn’t a bill-signing, of course, but with no infrastructure legislation before him and obstacles looming even for his pared-down privatization plan, it might be the closest Trump is going to get.

Will The Republican Party EVER Be Able To Escape Its Own Congenital, Backward-Looking Obstructionism?

On the day Obama announced his nominee to fill Scalia's job was Merrick Garland, we made it clear what our opinion of the nomination is: Yuck! The political gamesmanship yielded up the most conservative nominee a Democrat has proposed to the Supreme Court in many decades. Terrible choice... but politically strategic. Easily, the worst of all outcomes would be that Garland gets confirmed in a lame duck session after a Bernie landslide pulls in a nearly filibuster-proof Democratic Senate that does not include Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Rob Portman (R-OH), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John McCain (R-AZ), Rand Paul (R-KY), Richard Burr (R-NC), and where Alan Grayson has replaced Marco Rubio. That would mean a Senate with 57 Democrats (as long as Vermont replaces Bernie with Peter Welch) and 43 pretty demoralized Republicanos. With Bernie in the White House and a healthy Democratic majority in the Senate, there would be no need to pick a conservative nominee. Even if Clinton wins the White House, she would likely pick a better nominee than Garland, likely nominate outstanding California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu.

But Democratic strategy has been to pressure vulnerable-- and even not-so-vulnerable-- Republicans to give Garland a fair hearing. Mark Kirk already met with him. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski said they will as well. And with editorialists across the country pounding on the GOP for their blatant and ugly obstructionism, even Kansas' Jerry Moran and far right ideologue Ron Johnson indicated that they might be open to a fair process. But then the pressure from the far right started mobilizing and-- poof-- Moran, Murkowski and Johnson instantly caved.

Johnson, who is the most likely Senate Republican to lose his seat in November, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on March 16 that he'd meet with Garland. "I have no problem with meeting with people. I'll have to say, I'm not sure what the point will be." He's since changed his perspective to "no comment." Moran, who has no viable opponent in November, but was blasted by the editors of the Kansas City Star on March 16, has been even worse.

Senators Jerry Moran of Kansas and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have reversed themselves and say they now back the decision made by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, not to hold hearings.

“Senator Moran called Senator Grassley to discuss his position,” said a statement released by Mr. Moran’s office on Friday. “As Senator Moran has said, he is opposed to President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. He has examined Judge Garland’s record and didn’t need hearings to conclude that the nominee’s judicial philosophy, disregard for Second Amendment rights and sympathy for federal government bureaucracy make Garland unacceptable to serve on the Supreme Court.”

Mr. Moran’s announcement, first reported by National Review, came a week after he said the Senate should move forward with the nomination process, including holding hearings and meeting with Judge Garland.

“As I have said since the vacancy was created, I believe I have a duty to ask tough questions and demand answers,” he said in a statement on March 25. “I am certain a thorough investigation would expose Judge Garland’s record and judicial philosophy, and disqualify him in the eyes of Kansans and Americans.”

On March 21, according to the Garden City Telegram, Mr. Moran told constituents, “I would rather have you complaining to me that I voted wrong on nominating somebody than saying I’m not doing my job.”

Similarly, a spokeswoman for Ms. Murkowski, Karina Petersen, said the Alaska senator also no longer supported holding hearings, though she will meet with Judge Garland to discuss cases that are important to her state.

“Senator Murkowski respects the decision of the chair and members of the Judiciary Committee not to hold hearings on the nominee,” Ms. Petersen wrote in an email.

In February, before Mr. Obama named Judge Garland as his pick, Ms. Murkowski told reporters in Alaska that the nominee should be granted a hearing. Though she emphasized, in a Facebook post the next day, that she opposed Mr. Obama’s making the nomination, Ms. Murkowski had declined to directly address her stance on holding hearings since her comments in February.

As the right-wing psychos-- including the Koch brothers' pet congressman Mike Pompeo-- went nuts on Moran's ass, he backed away from even agreeing to meet with Garland. His latest statement, through an aide: "He has examined Judge Garland’s record and didn’t need hearings to conclude that the nominee’s judicial philosophy, disregard for Second Amendment rights and sympathy for federal government bureaucracy make Garland unacceptable to serve on the Supreme Court. Senator Moran remains committed to preventing this president from putting another justice on the highest court in the land."

Just a week earlier Moran told the Dodge City Daily Globe "I think we have the responsibility to have a hearing, to have the conversation and to make a determination of the merit... I think I have the responsibility to consider a nominee presented by a president and make a determination whether he or she is qualified. I'm willing to participate in the process" and had admitted that not meeting with Garland and not pushing for a hearing would be "not doing my job."

You would be severely mistaken if you thought the only thing making the GOP dysfunctional and detrimental to the United States is Donald Trump. The way extremists can push Republican senators like Moran, Johnson and Murkowski around go deeper than Trump's bizarre ego-trip. Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in yesterday's NY Times:

Given the current dysfunction of the Republican Party, many both inside and outside Republican ranks are probably hoping that a big defeat will force the party to change. But waiting, as the current president once put it, for the “fever” to break may be fruitless.

Try this setup instead: It’s 2017. After Mr. Trump’s landslide defeat, President Clinton has a Democratic Senate and House of Representatives. The Republican National Committee has just released its latest post-mortem-- it probably looks a lot like the post-2012 soul-searching exercise, the Growth and Opportunity Project, which encouraged moderation in tone and inclusiveness in policy.

But that blueprint is ignored. Instead, the party quickly regroups in opposition to the incoming administration. Most Republican voters hate Mrs. Clinton even more than they hated Mr. Obama. The conservative apparatus for sowing discontent with a new administration is in place, flush with cash and battle-tested.

For Republicans in and outside government, it will be a time not for facing up to hard truths but for doubling down on hardball tactics.

...More worrisome, they reinforce a dangerous spiral. The most effective Republican response to its own unpopularity in presidential elections is to take steps to make the American political system more unpopular still.

The final pre-primary polling for Wisconsin came out a few hours ago by Emerson and it shows that Bernie has surged past the establishment candidate and now leads her by 8 points (51-43%); in Emerson's last Wisconsin poll 2 weeks ago, Hillary was up by 6 points. Nice turn-around, which he'll need to do in New York as well. He's doing his part; are we doing ours? And, you know, it's not enough to support Bernie's bid for the presidency. His political revolution means replacing an obstructionist, corporately-owned Congress with a more progressive one. You can be part of that-- we all can. Whether you give $270 to one candidate or split $27 among all of them, please take a look at these progressives running on Bernie's platform... and do what you can:

Snatching Defeat Out Of The Jaws Of Victory-- Republican vs Republican

Will Bloody Kansas be the next battlefield in the GOP civil war?

NY-23, up near Montreal in northeast New York, has more cows than people-- and more Republicans than Democrats. The Inside-the-Beltway and national media have jumped into the race, marveling at how the GOP is managing to screw up their chances there with a vicious intraparty civil war. Watch the video below of Beck calling for a right-wing jihad against the Republican Party establishment in the name of teabaggery, and keep in mind that he still has one full week for a full-on Vicks VapoRub weeping session before the balloting is over. Even more important to remember, though, is that NY-23 isn't the only congressional race shaping up to be a showcase for the struggle between mainstream conservatives and the unhinged, Hate Talk-inspired teabaggers trying to capture the GOP.

The U.S. Senate race in Florida between the Establishment candidate, Gov. Charlie Crist, and a mediocre but charismatic right-wing insurgent, Marco Rubio, has been the most high-profile example. Among the far right fringe of the GOP, Charlie Crist has been transformed into America's worst governor (worse than Mark Sanford and Arnold Schwarzenegger!), and Republican elected officials are at cross-purposes in choosing a horse to back. Rubio, the darling of the teabaggers, has won every single county Republican straw poll-- and each one by a landslide. The farthest-right members of the GOP congressional delegation have jumped on his bandwagon, while the slightly less extremist ones are sticking with Crist. Nationally, the split is apparent when you notice that Senate Minority Leader Miss McConnell and NRSC Chair John Cornyn are backing Crist while radical right fringe operators like Jim DeMint and Mike Huckabee are on the warpath for Rubio.

Another Republican race where the split is rending the GOP into warring camps is in Kansas. With Sam Brownback giving up his Senate seat to ascend to the state's governorship-- presumably a better perch to launch a presidential race from-- two very conservative Kansas congressmen, Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt, are at each other's throats for the Senate nomination. Moran is viewed as slightly more mainstream and Tiahrt as slightly more extremist. Tiahrt's lifetime ProgressivePunch score is 2.25, and his score this year is 2.13, while Moran is trying to make up for his 5.07 lifetime score with a big fat zero-point-zero-zero this year. But such minutiae is the stuff that motivates your average dittohead and teabagger. Right-wing loon Rick Santorum is backing Tiahart while John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Mike Johanns, afraid that their party is falling off an ideological cliff, are behind Moran.

If, as most observers expect, the rift in NY-23 results in a victory for Democrat Bill Owens-- who basically has nothing going for himself other than the Scozzafava v. Hoffman feud-- the entrails of defeat will be picked over closely, and each side will determine, probably within minutes, that they will need to fight even harder-- against their fellow Republicans, in Florida, Kansas, South Carolina, Texas and dozens of other races across the country. I bet Rahm Emanuel would love to take credit for this fortuitous development. OK, as promised... it's Glenn Beck time:




UPDATE: Word From The Lunatic Fringe

The Senate's most extremist member, Jim DeMint, just endorsed Hoffman. I wonder how many voters in upstate New York will make up their minds based on the hysterical urgings of a racist and secessionist from South Carolina.

Two GOP Political Dwarves Square Off For The Honor Of Being Pulverized By Katherine Sebelius

Sam Brownback, a suspected Opus Dei cultist and admitted far right religious fanatic, obsessed with bizarre morbid sexuality, decided to retire from the Senate and run for the Kansas governor's mansion in 2010. The current governor, wildly popular Democrat Katherine Sebelius, is serving her second and last term and is likely to trade jobs with him.

But a couple of Republican hack pols have decided to fight it out in a primary contest over who will have the honor of being defeated by her. Todd Tiahrt announced his bid yesterday in Topeka. The other one, who announced after winning re-election to his House seat in November is Jerry Moran. Although the differences between them are barely perceptible, Tiahrt is considered to the right of the Nazi Party and Moran is just a garden variety conservative extremist. In terms of their congressional voting records, they were both absolute rubber stamps for Bush. Moran has a 5.16 (out of 100) on the Progressive Punch score of crucial partisan votes and Tiahrt has a 2.23. In the arcane world of right wing fanaticism, that makes one (Tiahrt) purer than the other (Moran). Neither has ever voted in favor of anything that would benefit working families and each is considered a complete shill for Big Business.

Polls show Moran way ahead of Tiahrt, who is perceived by the Kansans who even know who he is as an extremist and kind of a far right fringe candidate. The fact that he's further right will tend to help him as the primary gets really contentious, as is expected, probably by noon tomorrow.