When Absolute Brilliance Meets Teh Absolute Crazy

If you know the English poet James Fenton at all, it's probably from his brilliant writing for the New York Review of Books. Something tells me my favorite teabagger, the Sarah Palin of The South, Katherine Jenerette isn't a Fenton fan. Fair enough; I doubt he'd groove on her either. Writing Friday on the teabaggers for the London Evening Standard, Fenton reminded me of something I got from Katherine this morning. (This is James, not Kath:)

April 15 is Tax Day in the US, the day on or by which all federal and state income tax returns have to be filed. Income tax itself was first introduced in America in 1861, to help finance the Civil War, so you could imagine that people who still, to this day, resent the outcome of the Civil War probably deplore income tax and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself.

How could that not make me think of Katherine? As you may know, she's the teabagger candidate in the Republican primary for South Carolina's open First District, most of the state's lovely coast other than Beaufort County. And now it's her turn, having just returned from the teabaggy anti-tax protest in Charleston:

I intend to introduce legislation to repeal the 16th Amendment that started the Federal Income Tax in 1913. Somehow, our country managed to survive without a personal income tax for 137 years.

Oh, there's more... she also wants to repeal healthcare reform, of course, and the 17th Amendment (which allows voters, rather than state legislatures and governors, to pick senators)... and, she wants to do something to or with Nancy Pelosi in an elevator. I e-mailed and asked her to explain but she hasn't gotten back to me yet. But watch:



Is it any wonder that sane folks around the world are scratching their heads and asking people like James Fenton to explain to them just what the hell is happening over there (here)? He happens to be doing a spectacular job of it as well-- as well as the only person I know of, aside from yours truly, who insists on always referring to them as teabaggers.

So it is that this year and last year, Tax Day was the chosen date for nationwide political rallies by the Tea Party, the loose grouping of local movements currently dragging the Republicans in the direction of relative insanity. The essence of Tea Party belief, as it has grown up during the Obama presidency, is extreme fiscal conservatism.

The teabaggers were outraged at the size of the stimulus package with which Barack Obama (at least so his supporters believe) saved the economy from yet further recession. That's what gets them going, or so they say.

Others believe that teabaggers are a bunch of disaffected whites who can't get used to the feeling that nobody is deferring to them, as whites, any more. When they exclaim that they are not being listened to, what they mean is that there's a black chap in the White House and they don't like it. They don't like the way Obama seems to be more interested in helping poor blacks than giving aid to the middle class. They don't like immigration. And they don't like the US Federal Reserve, which they think is unconstitutional and in the hands of a small number of families.

Here's a surprising statistic from Fox News: more Americans have a favourable opinion of the IRS (49 per cent) than of the Tea Party movement (36 per cent). Indeed, more people, according to this poll, have a favourable opinion of Obama (50 per cent) than they do of the IRS or the Tea Party.

Still, 36 per cent would be a worrying level of support for a group whose members do not seem shy of saying that they believe Obama is a Muslim and pushing the country in the direction of Islam and socialism. In fact, the percentage of voters who describe themselves as part of the Tea Party movement is lower than this: 18 per cent, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll.

According to the earlier poll, 55 per cent of the Tea Party supporters are women, 88 per cent are white and 74 per cent are Republican. They belong to the middle class. They are not necessarily directly affected by unemployment but the majority in yesterday's poll expressed concern that someone in their household would be out of a job next year.

The Tea Party gets its name, and spurious kudos, from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, a pre-revolutionary tax revolt against British authority. On Wednesday this week Sarah Palin, who gave up being Governor of Alaska in order to make money on the circuit, and is said to have taken around $12 million in publishing and speaker's fees, turned up in Boston for a teabaggers' rally.

...In many Tea Party rantings, what comes across is a sense of national distress, a fear that the nation may have lost its greatness, leading to a highly emotional individual response which gives political meetings a confessional, quasi-religious tone.

And this kind of national self-pity seems to turn to leaders perceived as uncontaminated with Washington politics: rabble-rousers, paranoiacs, conspiracy-peddlers. It's a potentially dangerous mix-- although, it must be said, none of the elements are new to the American scene.

I would love to introduce James and Katherine.

Doesn't Everyone Have A Favorite Tea Party Candidate? Meet Mine-- And Also Alan Grayson's

It isn't only progressive heroes like Doug Tudor, Alan Grayson, Connie Saltonstall and Bill Hedrick who have been sharing their thoughts on healthcare with us. You must know about my affinity with the Sarah Palin of the Confederacy, South Carolina congressional candidate Katherine Jenerette. She's fascinating, and I'm rooting for her to bring the Old South Crazy to new heights and give Virginia Foxx, Michelle Bachmann and Mean Jean a run for their money.

Predictably, Katherine wasn't jumping up and down over the Republican Party debacle of Sunday night, and she's not exactly a fan of effective healthcare reform. But she sure did send out one of the most entertaining press releases on the subject that I've seen. Sit back and try to get into it. This one makes Randy Neugebauer and Joe Wilson seem blasé:

Katherine Jenerette on Federalized Health Care Passage: Saint Vitus Dance for Republicans

by Katherine Jenerette

Round One of the Socialized Federalized Medicine-Man fight is over.

As soon as President Obama signs on the dotted line, Round Two will be initiated with a herd of raging bull Attorneys General (AG) from around the country; all in a charge at the red cape of the constitutionality of congress to mandate the purchase of health insurance by individual citizens.

It’s a set up guys. Obama and his brain trust are out in front on this one. They put the ‘thou-shalt-purchase’ clause in the bill deliberately knowing every freedom-loving, red-blooded Republican AG would charge. They intend to have the Republican’s object to this in bit-and-pieces instead of a full frontal attack that the ENTIRE Bill is unconstitutional.

We Republicans bit the bait real good, but, it was a Trojans horse covered with shiny stuff like the abortion debate; deliberately set to get our attention. While all along, ‘Obamanistas’ fully expect that the Supreme Court will strike down the parts that mandate a person will buy insurance or they will pay through the nose to BigFed one way or another. There are bigger problems ahead, so save some ammo.

We had a saying when I was in the desert in the first Gulf War, ‘It’s not just the mouse that ran through the tent you need to worry about – it’s the viper that’s chasing the mouse you better be afraid of.’

When the Supreme Court decision is finally made – with the anticipated ruling, the bumper sticker “I Heart Socialized Medicine” liberal crowd will pull out the already prepared Round Three plan: Public Option in tandem with the Federal Government picking up the tab incrementally to offset the loss.

“But, what else can we do? We can’t leave people without health care can we?” Liberals will sob as the complete implementation of socialized; taxpayer health care is implemented with Under New Management Federal Clinic signs being put up over the old Mayo Clinic signs, and hospitals across the country, et.al.

It’s part of the plan. For example, do you believe that Obama just wrote that Executive Order about Federal Funding of Abortions in the eleventh hour before the vote? That thing was written months ago and held to the last minute to make it look like some kind of ‘real’ concession to the hold-outs.

The liberal guys are not some lightweights. They have a plan while we Republicans do a Saint Vitus Dance jerking around the details and nickel-and-diming our attacks that should have been coordinated years ago. It’s not like the Democrats didn’t start this with Clinton Care in the early 1990s.

Anyway, it’s critical that we need to understand their game and focus on a way to repeal this bill and counter it with workable market approaches to health care with the doctors providing that care and the patients at the center of gravity:

(1) States should implement; as difficult as it is, meaningful health care reform for its citizens at the appropriate level of government. Health Care is a real problem.

(2) States should intervene and represent any citizens of their state that the Federal Government decides to fine for failure to purchase insurance.

(3) States should facilitate competition in health care providers and health care facilities, and increase the number of students entering medical and nursing schools.

(4) Republicans better send ‘Constitutional Gun-Fighters’ and thinkers to Congress.

(5) States should band together – repeal the 17th Amendment, and take their Senators back. This action will give the states a place at the table in Washington and put teeth into State Sovereignty again.

If we thought the nightmare of the Federal ‘No Child Left Behind’ program was hard to deal with, just wait for General Hospital USA. Hold your ears and don’t dance to the liberal’s song.

I bet if she wins she'll run against Lindsey Graham, and what a hoot that'll be!

I'm guessing Alan Grayson has an entirely different, though no less cartoonish, favorite teabagger. In his case, it's got to be the official Florida Tea Party candidate running against him, Peg Dunmire, a lifelong Republican who has turned her back on the breathtakingly corrupt Florida GOP to run as a true independent. Although a recent poll shows that 28% of Republicans actually support Grayson, hard-core right-wing extremists will be splitting their votes between whichever sixth-tier candidate the Republicans manage to puke up and Dunmire.

Less than a week after Sarah Palin directed her zombie army to “take out” Congressman Alan Grayson, one of her undead minions has risen to the challenge. Peg Dunmire has filed to run as the Florida Tea Party’s candidate against Grayson in November. Dunmire evidently is the first person to qualify as an official Tea Party candidate in any House race in the country.

“I read Dunmire’s announcement,” said Grayson. “I then forwarded it to the Guinness Book of World Records, for consideration under the category ‘Most Consecutive Cliches.’ This kind of right-wing drivel gave America $4-a-gallon gas and two endless wars, and drove us all to the brink of national bankruptcy. Was she living in a cave for eight years?”

Grayson was asked why he thinks that Dunmire decided not to run as a Republican. He laughed out loud. “Dunmire is not running as a Republican because the Republican Party of Florida smells worse than a rotting carcass. The stench reaches all the way to the Georgia state line,” Grayson said. “For goodness’ sake, on the day that their state leader resigned in disgrace, a ‘Shred-It’ truck rolled up to Republican headquarters. Dunmire doesn’t want any part of what the grand jury in Orange County rightly called their ‘Culture of Corruption.’”

“Whatever money you give to the Republican Party in Orange County ends up in Chairman Lew Oliver’s pocket,” Grayson continued. “He’ll probably take that money from the Palin event and lease a Lexus. Oliver had to rig his own election to win the job, and then he had to cancel all those local Republican Party meetings to keep it. Lew Oliver couldn’t find his rear end with both hands, unless there was a twenty-dollar bill sticking out of it.”

A recent poll of registered Republicans in FL-8 showed Grayson leading the Republican primary, with over 28% of the vote. Grayson’s dozen Republican challengers collectively polled 14.5%, with the remainder undecided. Grayson’s campaign has 14 times more cash on hand than all Republican challengers combined.

Grayson was asked whether he was concerned about Dunmire’s announcement. He said, “not at all. It doesn’t matter to me whom I beat in November.”

Alan will be a live guest at Crooks and Liars tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, meet his opponent:

The Political Disloyalty Effect

This morning CNN trotted out retiring ConservaDem Brian Baird (D-WA), one of Congress' most detestable assholes, to brag about how he wants to take down the Democratic Party with him when he goes. He seems as eager as ever to vote against healthcare reform. "The House bill is better than the status quo; the Senate bill is better than that [...but] I don't think this bill is what I would like to see us do if I ran the universe." Much to his chagrin, he doesn't. Instead he runs a subcommittee of the Science and Technology Committee and he's a big macher on the Congressional Ski and Snowboard Caucus and the Congressional Mental Health Caucus.

Unless you just stumbled upon DWT today for the first time, you probably know how we feel about Jim DeMint, the John C. Calhoun of our day, around here. As treacherous and reactionary as DeMint is-- and as poisonous as his conservative ideology is for American working families-- he isn't a moron when it comes to political calculations. When he declared that if the GOP could defeat Obama on healthcare reform it would "break him" and it would be his Waterloo, he knew exactly what he was saying and what he was starting-- and it wasn't an Abba revival.

Democratic Party pollster Stanley Greenberg took to the pages of The New Republic last month to examine the similarities-- and the differences-- shaping up between the 2010 election cycle and the 1994 election cycle. He offers a prescription on how to avoid a repeat of 1994, something Ben Goddard hearkened back to in a thought-piece on the teabaggers for The Hill this week.

Before we look at Greenberg's and Goddard's analysis, let me remind you that-- aside from my day of actual teabagging-- I spend a lot of time talking with candidates running for office-- and that includes Tea Party candidates. Although Katherine Jenerette in South Carolina may be my favorite, besides going back and for with her online yesterday, I spent some time on the phone with Chris Riggs, the Tea Party fave running against Republican corporate whore Ken Calvert just south of where I live. I even introduced the two of them so they could network against the GOP establishment they are both running against.

Earlier in the day I had left a comment on Katherine's behalf (and at her request) on some right wing South Carolina blog and she had some mixed feelings about me comparing her to South Carolina heroes John Calhoun and Strom Thurmond, pointing out that I probably don't have their pictures on my wall while calling them "political giants."

My philosophy is that if I get elected, I won't just be representing the right, left or either extreme or the people in the middle - I represent them all.
 
Maybe the Army is responsible for my perspective. I joined when I was 19 and I never asked the soldiers that I went with the Persian Gulf War with whether they were Democrats or Republicans and they never asked me.
 
My duty was to those serving with me - and that's how I see going to Congress. My duty is to the people of my district.
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some moderate or liberal and most people view my issues as being right-winged conservative. But, I view myself as a Constitutionalist. But I will not forget that I serve the people of my district and that includes the richest businessmen in the district and it includes single-moms with kids who are trying to get them through school to educate them and the ordinary people like me who go to work and pay their taxes and wished their government wasn't so damn big. (I've always thought that the bigger the government, the smaller the individual - that one small voice is important because when we lose that, we lose what the American dream is all about).
 
I'm just wanting to find solutions to our problems which is nothing new. I think we can do it. No, I know we can do it.

Katherine may seem hopelessly naive, but she's no dummy. She also has more charisma than the whole Republican Party machine that's trying to tear her down. Riggs is also a young, family-oriented outsider candidate, another well-meaning but severely misguided idealist buying into the right-wing propaganda that's rotted the minds of so many millions of Americans. Now, back to Goddard, who, like Greenberg, thinks the Republican Party is all prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory-- with the help of teabaggers like Katherine and Chris. He feels certain the GOP won't be able to present themselves in a way that is even remotely attractive to voters and that no matter how disappointed voters are with Obama and the Democrats, memories are not short enough for people to forget who got us into the messes we're in and how the Republicans have obstructed Obama's every move to fix the problems they took 8 years to create.

The ranting about President Barack Obama’s secret socialist agenda and the rise of spokesmen like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck-- obvious ideologues appealing to a narrow segment of the party-- have served to define the party as right-wing. What started as a tax protest, the Tea Party, seems to be evolving into a legitimate movement within the party, with well-organized and -financed candidates challenging mainstream Republicans in primary races around the country.

...[In 1994 Greenberg] convened a meeting of top political scientists to divine what the diverging lines of support for Republicans and Democrats meant. Their conclusion was a loss of 15 to 18 seats-- a dire scenario, but nothing quite like what actually happened, which was a loss of 54 House seats and eight in the Senate. At the time, the president’s approval rating held at 50 percent. Following the disastrous defeat of his crime bill by his own party in the House, his positive numbers had fallen to 39 percent.

Are we in the same situation today? Greenberg thinks not. “Republicans have remained amazingly unredeemed,” he says. Unlike Gingrich and Dole, who gained stature with every battle, Republicans today look like a cult.

Ken Feltman surprisingly shares this view, comparing where the party is today to the Whigs in the 1850s. More recently, he recalls the “loyalty test” votes of Tom DeLay that affirmed leadership’s positions without regard for the needs of moderate constituents. He cites Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.) resigning because DeLay had no idea what it took for a Republican to win in Buffalo. Moderates need not apply.

In reading Feltman’s newsletter,  Radnor Reports, I was reminded of a paper I wrote in college on how F. Clifton White and his cohorts seized control of the Republican Party from the “Rockefeller Republicans” and nominated Barry Goldwater for president. Radnor believes the pattern will repeat. The Tea Partiers will take over more party positions now held by the old guard. “Some of those Tea Partiers will be kooky, others will be single-issue ideologues. A few will be anti-immigrant, a smattering will be paranoid. Others will be very like the Republicans they beat.”

Whether the movement will be a short-lived adjustment in GOP philosophy or a wholesale shifting of the political foundation in this country will take some time to sort out. But the message from two very political observers from opposite ends of the spectrum is that change is coming. And it may not be the change many suspect.

If Obama is able to make the case that he and the Democrats are making a better life for real people while Republicans simply want to stop any change that affects the status quo, they may be able to weave a positive economic narrative. Communicating that message just might trigger the same kind of realignment that eventually created the Republican Party some 160 years ago.

Will right-wing idealists like Jenerette and Riggs be able to save the Democrats from the perfidy of conservative Democrats like Baird who are disappointed they don't run the universe (or even a committee)? Stay tuned-- and take a look at the place where the non-racist obsessed teabaggers actually start blending in with normal Americans:

Congressmembers Who Tweet And Congressmembers Who Don't

Now that I'm retired, I'm on several boards, both business and civic. One is a large non-partisan civil liberties organization Inside the Beltway. At one meeting their president announced he was teaming up with GOP arch villain Grover Norquist. There was stunned, dead silence in the room. Many of the people around the table had been working in the trenches against reactionaries like Norquist when the president was still a (liberal) Republican. I realized that he had just taken a giant step towards ending his own tenure with the organization. Working with someone of good faith across party lines is one thing; working with Grover Norquist or Jack Abramoff or Tom DeLay is something entirely different. You won't find anyone at DWT monkeying around with that shit. However, over the last few months I've been in a friendly and spirited dialogue with the Sarah Palin of The South, Katherine Jenerette, an extremely-- and I mean extremely-- conservative Republican candidate for Congress in South Carolina. Her website prominently features a "How Liberal Blogs see her" post that links to two not very complimentary DWT stories about her. A teabagger type-- and far better looking and less dizzy than Palin-- she's the leading candidate to replace retiring Republican Henry Brown (and she's up against a whole slew of sons of famous Republican icons). She's probably one of the only Republicans, outside of my insufferable brother-in-law, who I chat with.

A couple days ago she sent me these two e-mails:

I saw your latest post on the First Congressional district, now I'm a godess? I'd just rather just be a mom, a soldier, a concerned citizen...

Actually, I died laughing. It was good entertainment. Should I send you a picture of me and my pick-up truck? My 13-year old daughter keeps trying to get me to trade it in for a candy-apple red camero. I need to find you on Facebook and make you one of my friends. I have a few Democrat friends. I like everyone (there are a few exceptions), I just don't agree with everything everyone says.
 
I'm still at here at Ft. Bragg. We've got a boatload of people going to Afghanistan as you know. A lot of people going to the Horn of Africa as well. I was in DC a few weeks ago at the State Dept. with a group going to Iraq to help with the upcoming elections. As if we can tell the Iraqi's about honest elections on either side of the isle.
 
When I do go to wherever the Army sends me, I would love to be a guest poster to your blog.
 
Thanks to you and Ken. Maybe while I'm up at Ft. Dix; if I get a chance, I can look you up in New York. You could show me around. I've only been there twice. I would truly be a tourist.

----

You make me blush! Why do you like me so much when we are obviously on different sides of the isle on most issues?

Your new FB Friend,

Katherine

PS - I know that Sarah Palin is by far - more widely known and more popular then me-- but how bout Sarah Palin - the Katherine Jenerette of Alaska?

Yes, she and I became Facebook pals and I ever tweeted something about Palin being the Katherine Jenerette of Alaska (which probably left some people scratchin' their heads). Don't expect to see DWT endorse her, even if I do prefer the real crazy, out-there Republicans to the garden variety greed-and-selfishness country club types like her opponents. I mean there is something to be said about having opponents like Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Steve King, Mean Jean Schmidt, Virginia Foxx and Jim Inhofe to be able to point to and say, "See this is what we're up against." And I'm happy to promote her candidacy among the scores of Republicans who follow me on Twitter.


In fact, I follow dozens of Republicans on Twitter and often have a great deal of fun making fun of the bone-headed tweets from imbeciles like McCain, Patrick McHenry, Darrell Issa, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, Grandpa Grassley, Glenn Beck, Jim DeMint, Howdy Doody, Paul Ryan, Mary Bono Mack, etc. On the other hand, I don't follow many Democrats. First of all, there don't seem to be many on Twitter. Second, the one who runs her mouth the most, Claire McCaskill, is almost as lame and clueless as Grassley and it was so painful reading her tweets that I stopped following her. Alan Grayson's stuff is great, of course, but he's like the only Democratic member of Congress worth following.

Yesterday a brilliant healthcare wonk, Mark Senak, posted a fascinating study he did on his blog, Twongress-- the Power of Twitter in Congress. I couldn't stop savoring all his research yesterday and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Like me, he feels the Democrats aren't making use of Twitter and that they ought to wake up and smell the roses before it's too late. (I gather, though, that he'd agree with my assessment that the Republicans may be using it a lot but not very effectively. He told me that "the two most important things that come out of the report are these: First, it is an election year and Twitter, which didn’t even exist until three years ago, has become a powerful communications tool. And when you look at the numbers, one party is clearly utilizing it at a greater rate, meaning that on specific issues, they can generate specific messages to a targeted base using Twitter. That said, there is certainly time between now and the election to change that. The second thing is that if you look beyond the numbers, the truth is no one and no party is really maximizing the potential of twitter. Tweets aren’t being classified by topic using hashtags, and they aren’t using Twitter to drive people to their Web sites. There is a lot of unmet potential." The report itself goes much deeper:

As social media in general, and Twitter in particular, have had growing utility among policy makers, I therefore set out to examine the role of Twitter and its use by members of Congress (MOCs) to determine who was using this medium and where, if at all, there was influence and clout among members.  Hence the white paper that I am publishing today - "Twongress - The Power of Twitter in Congress" - Download Twongress White Paper Final 1-14-10.

...Here are a few of the topline findings.  There are 89 Republicans using Twitter and 32 Democrats. While there is near-parity between the parties in the Senate, House Republicans are particularly active on Twitter.  For example, House Republicans sent out 29,162 Tweets.  One House member ranked in the top ten number of followers with nine Republicans in the top ten.  Two House Democrats were in the top 20, and eighteen House Republicans in terms of followers.  Two Democrats were in the top ten for influence and clout, with eight Republicans in the top ten. All told, in the House, Democrats sent out 5,503 and Republicans sent out 29,162.

While there was much more parity on the Senate side, individual distinctions emerged.  Senator John McCain has more followers by far than any MOC.  Senator Claire McCaskill sends more Tweets than any MOC.  Senator Jim DeMint pulled more influence and clout than any MOC, in spite of Senator McCain's far greater number of followers.
 
But there is also a story beyond the mere numbers. While some in Congress have embraced Twitter with some gusto and have acquired significant followers, the truth is that no one in Congress is doing a particularly outstanding job in using Twitter or maximizing its potential. There has been little effort to develop the resource to engage communities by classifying their tweets by topic for their constituencies through the use of hashtags.  For example, one could organize one's tweets under hashtags for "taxes" or even by party-- such as"DEMHCR" for Democratic member views on health care reform. Those tweets could be aggregated at Web sites, and twitter could drive traffic to those Web sites. Without such strategic efforts by either individuals in Congress or by the parties, the primary use of Twitter by Congress is merely as a message platform to push out points direct to waiting constituencies. In other words, the tweets are one-offs. Much more, actually, could be done to harness the echo chamber that is Twitter.

If any of this is even vaguely interesting to you, you have to download the pdf file and revel in the wealth of information Mark has put together-- like that chart up top or this one here:

Teabaggers Triumphant... Well, Depends How You Define Triumph

Today teabaggers are celebrating the way their boy Marco crushed Governor Charlie Crist in a straw poll last night in his own home county, Pinellas. Although Crist has lost every single straw poll in the state-- and by far worse margins than he did in Pinellas-- Pinellas is his home county and the media is blowing this up big. One prominent extreme right blogger tweeted last night, "Ladies & Gentlemen, first we drive Crist from this race, then we march to Utah and crush Bob Bennett."

So far the only electoral accomplishment of the teabagger movement has been to crush the GOP chance to win a congressional seat in a very red district, NY-23. But that isn't going to dampen their delusional enthusiasm for lemming-like self-destruction. Yesterday the always befuddled Dan Quayle got in a newspaper by endorsing a teabagger insurgent, Ovide Lamontagne, for the open New Hampshire Senate race in which the Republican Establishment has recruited one of their own, Kelly Ayotte. (Laura Ingraham is also backing Lamontagne, who she calls the "only true conservative" in the race, code for "crazed, sociopathic teabagger.")

A recent poll that showed teabagger candidates beating Republicans in 3 party races-- Democrats would win the seats but teabaggers will trump official GOP candidates-- has encouraged more teabaggers to forego Republican Party primaries and opt for third party runs. It's happening all over the country, and this week it happened in a seat the GOP felt certain they could pick up. Tennessee's eighth district is one of those few districts where McCain actually did better than Bush, racism probably playing an outsize factor. In 2004 Bush took 53% against Kerry, while last year McCain managed 56% against Obama, light skin or not. This mostly rural district in the far west of the state (minus Memphis) hasn't had a Republican Representative since just after the Civil War. Blue Dog John Tanner has been the congressman from the 8th since 1988, but he recently announced he would be retiring, it certainly looked like a prime GOP pickup. Tanner's career-long ProgressivePunch score on substantive votes, 55.25, is the lowest of any of the conservative Tennessee Blue Dogs-- and since Obama has become president it has sunk to a dismal 39.34. Aa victory for a Republican won't do any damage to any progressive legislation, since the aisle-crossing Tanner never supports any of it anyway.

But even that easy Republican victory is now in jeopardy as an angry Republican candidate, Donn Janes, bolts the GOP to run as a pure Teabagger.

“As of today, I am no longer going to run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican,” Janes announced. “We need to change the way we elect our representatives. We continue to rely on the two-party system to provide us with different choices; but thanks to this corrupt system, there is little difference between the two of them. Both parties voted to increase the size of our government; both parties voted to trade your freedoms for security; and both parties are responsible for our monstrous debt, our failing economy and the exporting of our jobs overseas. I will be running as an independent Tea Party Candidate, a candidate who doesn’t answer to or work for party leadership, but a candidate who will work for the people of West Tennessee.”

When asked about what led to this decision, Mr. Janes stated that the National Republican Party continues to aggressively support candidates who lack depth on issues and conservative values, but instead focus on candidates who are able to self fund or raise large sums of money.

The GOP Establishment is supporting gospel singer Stephen Fincher, another far right kook, but not as far right and not as certifiably insane as Janes. There's also a millionaire doctor, Ron Kirkland, who just threw his hat into the fractured Republican race. Democrats are relieved and feel that if Janes stays in the race 'til the end, state Senator Roy Herron will easily keep the seat in the Democratic column.

Rachel Maddow, who pointed out last night that only a dozen or so sorry, frozen teabaggers showed up at the Detroit Tea Party yesterday, has been keeping track of the battle for dominance between grassroots teabaggers-- who I can attest are primarily motivated by racist rage-- and Republican Party operatives, motivated by purely partisan lust for power and patronage. Last week she summed up the purging instinct that has taken over the far right very well:



UPDATE: How Could I Forget The Confederate Sarah Palin?

South Carolina's most responsive-- and attractive-- political leader, Katherine Jenerette, sent us this post to emphasize how strongly an extremist teabagger like herself can absolutely crush-- that word again-- any pathetic Republican Establishment hack the party choses to field. Jenerette may be poohpoohed by the media, but she's every bit as compelling to the brainwashed Beck/Limbaugh masses as Marco Rubio is. And she's looking like a winner to replace Henry Brown in South Carolina's first congressional district-- even handily beating Insider favorite Carroll "Tumpy" Campbell III by more than double.

Could South Carolina's Political Circus Get Any Messier? Henry Brown Announced His Retirement Today

Guess which one drives a pickup truck

Political observers may be startled to watch the race for the bottom going on among Republicans in the campaign for the open Kentucky Senate seat, where the bloodless Establishment hack Trey Grayson-- handpicked by party boss Mitch "Miss" McConnell-- has been challenged from the right by the libertarian-oriented/teabagger-coddling Rand Paul, only to see a lunatic fringe candidate even further to the right, Bill Johnson, come into the race as the "true conservative" (which these days means racist, bigoted, neo-fascist America hater). Kentucky, however, is hardly an exception in Republican Party politics this year. And it goes beyond Tennessee too.

Let's look at the dynamics behind Rep. Henry Brown's announcement of his retirement this morning. Even while chickenhawk South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint ducks a national security debate challenge from Eric Massa and starts praising Obama as he fearfully backs off his virulent pro-terrorist ravings, Brown, the oldest member of the South Carolina congressional delegation, has called it quits on his faltering political career. He was nearly beaten (52-48%) in 2008 by an openly gay, openly progressive Democrat, Linda Ketner, and this year 3 Democrats-- Dick Withington, retired Air Force Col. Robert Burton, and Robert Dobbs-- were already vying for the opportunity to finish him off. But it wasn't Democrats that made Brown throw in the towel.

He already had 4 Republican challengers jumping into a primary battle against him, each one further right than him-- and further right than Attila the Hun. Brown is a solid, dull conservative Republican whose latest bill was to "save" Christmas, was facing formidable challenges from Carroll "Tumpy" Campbell III (a son of a popular ex-governor), Mark Fava, Ryan Buckhannon, and Confederate teabagger goddess, Katherine Jenerette (AKA, "The Sarah Palin of the South"). Brown likes to brag that his voting record is the furthest right of any South Carolina congressman-- and 5 points further right than Joe "Liar!" Wilson's. Progressive Punch shows his lifetime voting record tied with Eric Cantor and Adam Putnam way at the bottom of the GOP barrel, tucked neatly between Michele Bachmann's and Virginia Foxx's-- a horrifying 0.86! But to wingnuts-on-the-rampage voting like a loon isn't enough. Sure, Brown voted against body scan machines but is he actively trying to shoot down American passenger planes-- which is what the teabaggers will soon be demanding as proof that their reps are anti-Obama enough to pass the right-wing purity test!

But worse than any of this-- even worse than the nightmare of having to campaign against the Confederate Sarah Palin-- is the likelihood that Strom Thurmond's legitimate white son, Paul-- not any of the offspring he had with his African-American mistresses-- is going to run. Most Americans who remember Strom Thurmond remember his as a venal and vicious racist who helped engineer the Republicanization of the former slave-holding states. He's loathed across America as the man who engineered the presidency of Richard Nixon. But in South Carolina, many people still revere him. And his son is very popular. If he does run-- which is likely-- he and Carroll III could well knock each other out of the race and let the Confederate Palin slip in, a true voice for teabaggery. Get the popcorn ready-- cause there's going to plenty more of this: