Another Sign Of Republican Desperation: The Rats Are Turning On Each Other Now

I'm sure by now everyone has seen Trumpanzee's scolding tweet aimed at Paul Ryan yesterday. "I guess we all know who Trump plans to blame for our losses next week," a top Republican House staffer told me minutes after the tweet. "This guy is so fucked up... He's like an albatross around our necks." But it's not just Trump-- well, it's mostly Trump. Yesterday, conservative Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo was on MSNBC saying he would never vote for Steve King, his neo-Nazi colleague from Iowa who is on the verge of losing his seat to a progressive Democrat in an R+11 district Trump won 61-33%.

It gets worse-- at least for Virginia Republicans. Senator John Warner, the éminence grise of the Virginia GOP, just endorsed Democrat Leslie Cockburn. After 3 decades of representing Virginia, Warner, a lifelong Republican seems to be fed up with the Trumpist extremism and what it's done to his party.

Warner endorsed Sen. Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, in his race against GOP nominee Corey Stewart in September. Warner appeared with Cockburn and Sen. Mark Warner (D) at a fundraiser at Kinloch Farm in The Plains Saturday.

“I’m still a Republican. I’m going to tell this gang, I’m still a Republican,” the elder Warner said in an interview before the event. “You can’t take that away from me. But you’ve got to have the courage to do what’s right for the country and what’s right for your state.”

Warner, 91, took out his iPhone to scroll through Cockburn’s platform as he talked about why he’s publicly backing Cockburn over her Republican opponent, Denver Riggleman.

Warner called Cockburn “an exceptional candidate” and said he agreed with her positions on health care, education and “commonsense gun laws.”

...Warner acknowledged the political tide might be turning in Virginia but called the state “fundamentally conservative.”

“The state stands for firm principles and leans a little bit on the progressive side,” he said.

Cockburn, who served on the board of the Piedmont Environmental Council for a decade, said her strong support for land conservation and environmental-protection issues has won her support among rural Virginia’s more moderate Republicans.

“There are many people who would consider that their very top issue,” Cockburn said of conservation. “And that’s why they would gravitate to me.”

Although the DCCC has finally added Cockburn to their Red to Blue page, neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's House Majority PAC has spent a dime responding to $832,152 worth on vicious smears by Paul Ryan's slimy SuperPAC and its allies. Cockburn is running for an open seat against a far right sociopath, Denver Riggleman, a gin and vodka distillery owner and devotee of Bigfoot erotica. The district has an R+6 PVI and Trump beat Hillary there by 11 points. Today this race is a toss-up and the only recent polling is from the unreliable and gimmicky NY Times/Siena poll, which found Cockburn ahead by one point-- 46-45%. Had the DCCC engaged, the district wouldn't be "toss-up" now by "likely Dem." I have no idea if Warner's endorsement of Cockburn will help on Tuesday but it sure isn't going to help Riggeleman with mainstream conservatives or independents who are already worried that he may be insane because of the BigFoot erotica. (He also wrote a book about Bigfoot.) Yesterday Cockburn was endorsed by John Legend as well!

And speaking of the whole "turning on each other" scenario, CNN reports that White House chief lawyer Don McGahn "ended his tumultuous tenure at the White House with one last encounter" during which the illegitimate "president" blamed him for Robert Mueller’s appointment. "In a face-to-face Oval Office meeting" Señor Trumpanzee "groused to McGahn about Mueller’s appointment made on McGahn’s watch as White House counsel, and the cloud the investigation has continued to cast over the presidency." One source said that "Typically you would have the incumbent stay until the successor was ready to take his place." But in this case, McGahn couldn't stand another moment of the asshole he was working for and the asshole was tired of McGahn. His Putin-Gate testimony and eventual tell-all book should be more than a little interesting.

Trump's racist new ad seems to have shaken up a lot of people. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) isn't running for reelection but he called it "a new low in campaigning; it's sickening." Reporters should ask Ted Cruz and Dean Heller what they think of it. Al Cardenas is probably best known as the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Others know him as the chairman of the American Conservative Union. A partner at Squire Patton Boggs, he is also one of Washington's top right-wing lobbyists. He seemed upset this morning:

Was Tom Garrett Drunk When He Made His Staffers Pick Up His Dog's Poop?

I was talking with a friend of mine, a top congressional staffer, the other day about a drunk congressman. He mentioned-- without judgment-- that it would be easier and far quicker to make a list of sober members of Congress than a list of the alcoholics serving in that branch. No wonder a deranged-- and possibly senile-- lunatic like Trump can run circles around them!

Tom Garrett is a far right backbencher from Virginia's 5th district, which runs from the DC exurbs around Warrenton and the Bull Run Estates clear down through Charlottesville, Farmville, Bedford, Appomattox, Gretna and Danville to the North Carolina border. The district has an R+6 PVI and Trump beat Hillary there 53.4% to 42.3%. When Republican incumbent Robert Hurt retired in 2016, state Senator Tom Garrett beat Jane Dittmar 207,758 (58.2%) to 148,339 (41.6%). He's a Trump lackey with one of the worst attendance records in the House.

Last week Garrett and his wife were accused by his congressional staffers of using them as personal servants. With an Ethics Committee certainly in the offing, he went back and forth several times about retiring and then announced on Monday that he had to leave Congress to seek treatment for alcoholism. Remember, this is a jackass who had been palsy walsy with the KKK and neo-Nazis who caused mayhem at last August's Charlottesville white supremacist rally.

The Republican Party is likely to pick state Delegate Nick Fretias (who doesn't live in the district) to run against already-nominated Democrat Leslie Cockburn, a progressive who beat the DCCC/Blue Dog candidate J.D. Huffstetler. about a month ago. (Cockburn is another official Democratic nominee who the DCCC has been refusing to get behind.) She's been outraising Garrett, as of April 8, $715,038 to $432,330. Currently Cockburn has $271,114 in her war chest and Garrett has $133,275. Freitas, who has been running for the U.S. Senate against Tim Kaine, currently has $251,694 in his war chest.

Garrett is the 44th House Republican who will either retire or not seek reelection this year, according to CNN’s retirement tracker.

His announcement walks back his previous statement on Thursday when he said he would continue his reelection bid in a bizarre and rambling press conference.

"Yesterday, in frustration, I said, 'I don't know if I can do this anymore'-- in the last 24 hours I've had an opportunity to think and pray a lot,” Garrett said Thursday. “And guess what? This country was founded by people who took great risks to do what they thought was right and the sacrifices that my wife and I make are not small, but they pale in comparison to those who play God in their lives.”

He added, ”And with that, I will tell you that there is no way in heck that I'm not going to be back here in 2019 as a member of the Congress representing the 5th District of Virginia because too darn much is at stake."

The change of heart also follows a bombshell report from Politico last week where ex-aides accused the congressman and his wife of treating them like servants, including having them do menial tasks such as picking up groceries and clothes and cleaning up after the family dog.

A Progressive Is Beating The Blue Dog In Virginia's Southside

Leslie Cockburn with husband Andrew

VA-05 leans red. The PVI is R+6 and in recent presidential elections the district has been going to Republicans. McCain beat Obama 52.2% to 46.8%; Romney beat him 52.5% to 45.9% and then in 2016 Trump did better, beating Hillary 53.4% to 42.3%. The Southside district was the longtime home (since 1996) to Blue Dog Virgil Goode, who switched to the GOP in 2002 and was defeated by Tom Perriello in the 2008 Democratic wave election. In the 2010 GOP wave, Republican Robert Hurt beat Perriello. He retired in 2015, allowing Tom Garrett to win the nomination and the seat in 2016. The district starts way up north in the DC exurbs around Warrenton and makes its way all the way down top the North Carolina border, zigging and zagging through Charlottesville to Danville and the John Kerr Reservoir.

Yesterday was day one in the process of picking a Democratic nominee to oppose Garrett. There will be a convention on May 5th, preceded by delegate selection at each of 23 caucuses that began yesterday in Charlotte, Fluvanna, Franklin, Lunenburg, Madison, Pittsylvania and Rappahannock. The establishment candidate, openly endorsed by both the New Dems and Blue Dogs and surreptitiously backed by the DCCC, is the conservative shill, J.D. Huffstetler. Like most DCCC picks, he has little grassroots support from Democratic voters and failed badly yesterday, losing every county to the progressive candidate, Leslie Cockburn, a former correspondent for PBS Frontline and 60 Minutes producer. Huffstetler has publicly admitted that the late Zell Miller, a far right Democratic governor and senator from Georgia who voted for Bush and served as a keynote speaker for the Republican National Convention in 2004, is his political hero. When someone tells you who they are... listen.

On Monday, caucuses will elect delegates from Henry, Albemarle, Appomattox, Halifax and Henry counties followed by Buckingham, Campbell and Cumberland on Tuesday, Bedford on Wednesday, Danville, Nelson and Prince Edward on Thursday and the final 6 next Saturday: Brunswick, Charlottesville, Fauquier, Greene and Mecklenburg.

As of December 31's FEC reporting deadline Huffstetler had raised $821,370, Cockburn had raised $510,285, Ben Cullip $252,155 and Andrew Sneathern 196,244. (Huffstetler and Cockburn each outraised Garrett and each also has more cash unhand than he does.) Now for the bad news: in last year’s Virginia wave election, Ralph Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie by 9% for governor statewide but in the 5th district Gillespie beat Northam by 9 points.