Trump's Worst Scandal Yet-- And This Time Republicans DO Care, At Least Many Do

Bullets by Chip Proser

If, as is often said, Texas is the GOP's California, then TX-13 (Amarillo) is the Democrats' CA-12 (San Francisco). One has a PVI of R+33 and the other's is D+37. In 2016, Trump scored a nice solid 79.9% in TX-13-- but just 8.7% in CA-12. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents one and Mac Thornberry, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, represents the other. For that reason, it was no small matter, politically, to hear that Mac Thornberry told reporters on a Defense Writers Group conference call in a discussion of Russian bounties that "We need to get to the bottom of it and we need to do it now. Again, this week before Congress leaves on the Fourth of July."

In matters of partisan politics, Thornberry is a lockstep Republican hack. But he is serious about national security, serious about the U.S. military and his Democratic colleagues do not see him as some kind of terminally-impaired fringe nut like Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Gym Jordan (R-OH), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Jim Banks (R-IN) or Devin Nunes (R-CA). Thornberry's comments were reported Tuesday morning by Stars And Stripes in a piece by Caitin Kenney on how bipartisan and bicameral leaders of the Armed Services Committees want answers from the Pentagon and White House about reports that a Russian military intelligence group had paid bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan. Trump is tap-dancing... desperately.

The House Armed Services Committee’s leadership has requested a briefing by the Pentagon for Monday or Tuesday on the intelligence to understand its credibility and how intelligence officials arrived at their conclusion, Thornberry said. The Pentagon had not responded to their request yet, he added.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, also said Monday that the House committee needs answers on the intelligence from the Pentagon and when it was known, in order to hold appropriate administration officials and the Russian government accountable.

“If the reports are true, that the administration knew about this Russian operation and did nothing, they have broken the trust of those who serve and the commitment to their families to ensure their loved one’s safety,” he said in a prepared statement.

A meeting about this intelligence occurred at the White House in March with President Donald Trump, according to news reports. On Sunday, Trump tweeted he and Vice President Mike Pence had not been briefed on the intelligence.

Trump later tweeted, “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or [the vice president.] Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News.”

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday reiterated Trump’s stance that intelligence must be verified before it is brought to him.

“There are dissenting opinions within the intelligence community, and I can confirm with you right now that there is no consensus within the intelligence community on these allegations,” she told reporters during a news briefing.

McEnany also said eight members of Congress were being briefed Monday afternoon at the White House on the intelligence, but she did not say who was in attendance.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) took to Twitter to write he had attended the White House briefing Monday and learned the New York Times “used unconfirmed [intelligence] in an ONGOING investigation into targeted killing of American soldiers.”

“Now it’s impossible to finish the investigation. All [because] the @nytimes will do anything to damage @realdonaldtrump, even if it means compromising [national] security,” he wrote.

Banks is a Navy Reserve officer who served in Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015, according to his official biography. He tweeted the alleged bounties were placed during the time he was serving in the country.

Mitchell Hailstone, Banks’ communications director, confirmed in an email that the other attendees were Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Elise Stefanik of New York, Chris Stewart of Utah, and Thornberry.

Thornberry said earlier Monday that he only knows about the intelligence from news reporting and Trump’s tweet that he was not briefed about the matter is “a very concerning statement.”

“But anything with any hint of credibility that would endanger our service members, much less put a bounty on their lives, to me should have been briefed immediately to the commander in chief and a plan to deal with that situation,” he said.

Thornberry also said he wants to know the timeline on “when we knew what” concerning the intelligence and in regard to the March briefing at the White House reported by news outlets.

“I don’t know how far this goes back, when we knew what. So, it is essential I think that Congress know it. And depending on those answers, it may be appropriate for people who should have briefed the president to be removed if they did not follow their responsibilities,” he said.

Claude Chafin, a House Armed Services Committee spokesman for Thornberry, said the congressman was briefed at the White House, though he still believes the full committee should also be briefed.

Ted Lieu (D-CA) is a senior member of both the House Judiciary Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee-- and is a full colonel in the U.S. Air Forces Reserves. He has a way with words. Last night he told me that "Trump either knew about the Russian bounty and did nothing, or he didn't know and is criminally derelict in his duties as Commander in Chief. Either way he isn't fit for office." Right to the point-- Lieu can always be counted on the talk straight and not waffle and beat around the bush.

Mike Siegel is running for the central Texas congressional seat occupied by Trump enabler Michael McCaul. McCaul has been covering up for Trump and Siegel is talking with 10th district voters about it. "As usual," he said yesterday, "Michael McCaul is protecting Trump, issuing statements that confuse the issue and try to relieve the COMMANDER IN CHIEF from his responsibility for US troops abroad. There are only two options: Trump is terrified of Putin and took no action, or didn't read or listen to his daily briefings. Treason or incompetence. Could very well be both. Suffice to say, we need to remove Trump and his enablers as soon as humanly possible."

Georgia progressive Democrat Lisa Ring is taking on Trumpist incumbent Buddy Carter, who is helping to cover up Trump's treason. Lisa wrote that "We have a president who has taken no action after learning the Russian government paid bounties to have American servicemembers killed in Afghanistan. And we have a congressman who represents a district with four military bases who says nothing about it. As a mother of a soldier, I am appalled at our political leadership and their failure to stand up to this atrocity. Our first action should be to create an independent commission to fully investigate these deaths in order to move forward swiftly and with international support."

CNN has reported that "numerous former senior intelligence officials are pushing back on the White House denials, saying it was 'absurd,' 'ridiculous,' and 'inconceivable' that the President would not have been briefed on such critical intelligence that potentially put US soldiers in harm's way. Trump's "response has incensed former members of the intelligence community. Not only should the President have been made aware of such intelligence, they say, but the notion that the President wasn't briefed because there was a difference of opinion among intelligence agencies is 'inconceivable,' said one former senior intelligence official, especially since it involved Russia. 'That's ridiculous,' the former official said about the White House's claim, adding that it is 'hard to believe' the intelligence community shared what it was hearing about Russia with allies like the British and not at least inform the President that it was a thread they were following. A second former intelligence official called the notion that the President is not informed unless there is unanimity and 100% certainty 'absurd. You would have trouble getting unanimity on tomorrow being Tuesday,' the source told CNN on Monday." Trump and Pence were both given written reports about the bounties.

Multiple former senior intelligence officials dismissed the White House's notion that intelligence would not reach the President simply because of dissent or because it hadn't been verified.

"You don't put things in the President's daily brief only when they are completely corroborated and verified because then it is not intelligence anymore; then it's fact," David Priess, a former CIA officer during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told CNN in an interview on Monday.

Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff who also served as senior director of the White House Situation Room, said intelligence rarely operates in the world of black and white. Instead, agents and officials often craft "assessments with assigned levels of confidence," which are "often presented with dissenting views," said Pfeiffer.

The 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden was based on intelligence that some characterized as 50-50, Pfeiffer added.

"Presidents are briefed on credible intelligence based on the best validation of the information we can provide, said one former senior intelligence official. "It's not a Court of law, it's an intelligence briefing."

Intelligence agents constantly make analytical judgments in the absence of absolute confirmation, the official said, adding that when the lives of US service men and women may be at stake, "we have an absolute duty to warn while we are attempting to validate the quality of the reporting."

Since the intelligence failures of the Iraq War, assessments now more explicitly lay out the level of confidence that various agencies have in the intelligence being reported, said another former senior official, adding that if the President was briefed only on things that were 100% certain, "his PDB would be very thin."

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia before retiring last summer, said it appeared that the Trump administration was "playing verbal gymnastics with the bounty issue" from Trump's Sunday night tweet, to McEnany's comments to the statement from Ratcliffe on Monday night.

"They are peeling back the onion, from denial to acknowledgment," said Polymeropoulos. "There seems to be little question that multiple streams of the raw intelligence was credible, with only a question of a need for further corroboration."

...Intelligence of this nature would normally be shared with top lawmakers on Capitol Hill who make up the "Gang of Eight."

On Monday, eight GOP lawmakers were briefed on the matter at the White House. Among them was Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on House Armed Services Committee, who indicated that he agreed with the idea that Trump should have been briefed, even if the intelligence was not completely verified.

"What the President and the DNI have said is that the President was not briefed, which to me is a very concerning statement," Thornberry told reporters. "Anything with any hint of credibility that would endanger our service members, much less put a bounty on their lives, to me should have been briefed immediately to the commander in chief and a plan to deal with that situation."

The US official familiar with the latest information told CNN that intelligence of this nature, with risk to US troops, should be assumed to be true until it is otherwise disproven.

Multiple former senior intelligence officials also said they were stunned that this threat had not been mentioned in intelligence products at a lower level than the PDB, which are routinely shared with oversight committees on Capitol Hill, and, at very least, the Gang of Eight.

One of those former senior intelligence officials told CNN that in a normal administration, "someone would have been ordered to get on a plane and tell the Russians to cut it out."

"That doesn't seem to have happened here. Why not? And why wasn't Congress briefed?" the official said.

A select group of Democrats is scheduled to receive a briefing from the White House on Tuesday. In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speculated as to the reason the intelligence may have been kept from Trump.

"One key question is if intelligence officials did not tell Trump about the intel that Russians offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops because they were concerned that he would tell Putin," Pelosi said.

A senior Republican official echoed that point, telling CNN: If he wasn't briefed, why wasn't he briefed. Did his staff know he didn't want to hear anything about Russia? Is this about making a deal with the Taliban? Why do all roads lead to Russia?"

Running For Congress-- In America's Reddest District

Texas' 13th congressional district, the panhandle, is the reddest in the country. The huge district, which stretches from the Oklahoma panhandle and the New Mexico border 450 miles east to the Dallas exurbs, includes Amarillo and Wichita Falls. The population has been declining or stagnant for 3 decades and the PVI is a horrifying R+33. Although Trump didn't do as well as Romney had (80.2%), it was close-- 79.9%. Hillary took 16.9% of the vote. Sad. Mac Thornberry, a complete Trump enabler and rubber-stamp, was first elected in 1994 and he's been re-elected with around 75% each cycle-- except for the cycles he has no Democratic challenger-- as in 2016, 2014, and 2012.

This year 70 year old Greg Sagan is running. As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Thornberry had spent $1,159,122 to Sagan's $23,594. Last week Hamilton Nolan published a piece on Sagan in Splinter News, The Loneliest Democrat in America. Sagan doesn't "stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ever. Nor does he wear an American flag lapel pin. Ever. He prefers a small golden pin of the Constitution, etched with the phrase 'We The People.' 'I don’t have to pledge my allegiance. I’m a Vietnam vet. I’ve already demonstrated it,' he says. 'None of these symbols of America mean anything to me any more.'... When he campaigns he wears a navy blue suit jacket and a blue name tag that reads: “Greg Sagan. Democrat for U.S. House. District 13.” Even though he had a column in the local newspaper for 14 years, he needs the name tag, because he hasn’t run any television ads. He hasn’t put up any billboards." He's been "driving around the district for the past year, holding town halls, asking people what they want. His driver is his wife Dianne, who is also his campaign manager. The fact that he is, statistically, the Democrat with the biggest uphill battle in the nation does not appear to bother him a bit."

Greg Sagan grew up in a military family. His dad moved them to Amarillo in 1960. In those pre-Southern Strategy days, it was a solidly Democratic city, though just as conservative as it is now. Sagan went and fought in Vietnam as a young man, did corporate work in the 1970s, then returned to the Navy in 1980, working as an HR consultant before leaving the military for good in 1984. He studied economics in graduate school. He did consulting for nuclear power plants. He moved back to Amarillo in 1996, got married, wrote weekly columns in the local paper, a rare (more or less) liberal voice around town. A few years ago, he retired. Then Donald Trump got elected.

Sagan had never thought of going into politics before. He is not exactly the activist type. He has the sort of strong but silent moral code that builds up in families that serve in the military for generation after generation. “The people I feel an affinity for are people like me who, out of the best intentions, went off to a terrible war, did their best in that war, and came off feeling guilty about it,” he says. His entire career path-- military, strategic consulting, economics-- has led him to value precision, competency, and dependability. It is not hard to see how a man like Donald Trump offends virtually every sensibility that he possesses. “There’s been nobody more dangerous in the White House in my lifetime,” he says. “And the Republican Party, as I feared they would, turned into a bunch of facilitators of his conduct.”

Sagan more or less unilaterally decided to run for Congress, informed the state Democratic Party, and was essentially told: great, good luck. Neither the state nor the national party are giving him money. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has offered nothing. The most outside support he’s gotten was from Joe Biden, who wished him well. This laissez-faire approach by the party is just fine with Sagan. He has a plan. He is ceding the political money and advertising fight to his opponent in favor of a grassroots (read: he and Dianne) effort to turn out the vote, by targeting young people and black people, LGBTQ people and Latinos and women and people who work hard and don’t make enough money. These are the people he sees as his base. They are not served by the Republican Party; they constitute a majority of the residents of the district; and, by and large, they do not vote. Sagan is encouraged by statewide polls that show Texans in general becoming more friendly to Democrats over the past year; but since no one has bothered to conduct real up-to-date polling in his hopelessly one-sided district, the efficacy of his bare-bones campaign strategy can only be judged when the votes are tallied.

It is not as though Mac Thornberry is an unassailable foe. He is a native Texan who has by now spent more time in Washington than in the family ranching business that features prominently in his biography. He was elected to Congress in 1994, in the “Contract With America” days, promising to serve no more than 12 years in office. That was 24 years ago. This fact is much grumbled about in the district. Still, Thornberry is comfortable in his seat. In 2016, running only against a Libertarian and a Green Party candidate, he won with nearly 90 percent of the vote. But Sagan points out that given the area’s low voter turnout, even that margin means that far less than half of the potential voters in the district actually voted for Thornberry. “If I can get half of the people who didn’t vote last time to come out and vote for me, I win,” Sagan says. It sounds so straightforward, in the same way that a pledge to climb Mount Everest does.

Notwithstanding the daunting party numbers in the district, there are things to be learned here. It’s not unreasonable to see Greg Sagan as a Frankenstein’s-monster type of Democratic candidate, assembled out of the ideal pieces of many different constituencies in the party. On one hand, he’s an old white man with a background in the corporate world; on the other, he uses that technical expertise to argue in detail for single-payer healthcare and leftist pro-worker economic policies to fight inequality. He carries a handgun, but he favors gun control. He’s a military veteran with a decorated family history, but he calls the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq “two magnificently myopic disastrous decisions.” He discusses the dangers of climate change with ranchers. He speaks Spanish. He dismisses Trump’s border wall as the idea of a “dope.” And he is zealous on the topic of good government, with specific plans to do away with gerrymandering, roll back Citizens United, and expand voter registration. He is not a California Democrat or a Chicago Democrat or a New York Democrat. He is an Amarillo Democrat. To a degree remarkable for an aspiring politician but unremarkable for a Texan, he truly seems to be guided only by his own logic and convictions to the stubborn exclusion of all other concerns. If the Democratic Party ever decided to really try and compete in the reddest part of this country, it might consider getting behind a man like him.

One remarkable thing about Republicans in Texas is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they believe they are the reasonable ones, and everyone else is crazy. Nowhere in the state is more sure of this fact than the 13th District. No one in Texas has put this psychic orientation to better use than Ted Cruz, a man who has a tight grip on the state’s Republican base even though he is the least Texan-seeming person you an imagine, a man who drips insincerity like a candle drips wax.

On a recent Friday evening, hundreds of people-- poor people, prosperous people, families dressed in church clothes, college girls in short skirts taking duckface Snapchat pics in front of the #MAGA shirt table-- filed into an outdoor amphitheater at the Amarillo Botanical Gardens, past the Cruz-branded #TexasCruzer RV, to rally behind Ted. “This is a battle between Texas and socialism!” Cruz thundered, to the hearty approval of the crowd.

The threat of socialism to the government of Amarillo seems scant at best. The amount that Americans fret about socialism is inversely proportional to the chance that they have ever met a socialist. Yet Cruz is a master at channeling the deep Republican conviction that they are a reasonable island in a world gone mad. His most effective refrain about his opponent’s policies (or at least, policies that O’Rourke has said he is “open to,” like abolishing ICE): “That’s just crazy talk!”

The reliability of this critique is interesting when you consider it is coming from the same organization that produced the official 2018 platform of the Republican Party of Texas. There may be no better document for pegging the current sanity level of the redder portions of America’s political spectrum. Among the illuminating sentences included in the platform: a commitment to “the traditional marriage of a natural man and a natural woman”; “We oppose all efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant”; “No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to sexual orientation (change) counseling for self-motivated youth and adults”; “We support the defunding of ‘climate justice’ initiatives, the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency, and repeal of the Endangered Species Act”; “We believe the Minimum Wage Act should be repealed”; “We oppose mandates on personal firearms storage”; “we believe the Department of Education should be abolished”; “We demand the State Legislature pass a law prohibiting the teaching of sex education”; “The official position of the Texas schools with respect to transgenderism is that there are only two genders: male and female”; and much more along these lines. The Texas Republican Party platform outlines an ideal state that is just one vast, heavily armed oil field, punctuated by churches preaching that homosexuality is a sin.

“Having an educated population” is also one of the platform’s stated principles.

With 55,000 registered voters encompassing most of Amarillo, Potter County is the urban heart of TX-13. The man responsible for ensuring that all of these people turn out to keep Republicans in power is Daniel Rogers, the chairman of the Potter County Republican Party. I meet him in the office of the property management firm he runs in Amarillo. He sits behind a large, cluttered desk wearing a large, white cowboy hat with a Ted Cruz button on the front and explains why the people here are so heavily Republican.

“They believe in hard work and traditional American pride and values,” he says. “We believe in property rights, and we believe in individual liberty and responsibility. It’s ranching and farming and agriculture is our primary economic driver. Those things people understand when you’re in those businesses, it kinda gives you a good perspective and grounding to understand really what’s important in life. Honesty. You don’t take what’s not yours and give it to somebody else. That doesn’t make sense to us out here. To me, it’s theft. So you have one party that just believes in theft… it’s foreign to [people here]. They can’t understand why that makes sense. They’re logical.” He rattles off the reasons why he believes Trump’s support in the county is strong: tax cuts, draining the swamp, “standing up to foreign countries.” In general, he says, people care about property rights and limited government far more than they care about social issues like gay marriage. But immigration is a strong concern of his.

“I think it’s huge. Especially when you talk to the black community and the Hispanic community, they love Trump because he’s doing something about it. Because those are the two groups that are negatively affected most by pouring in the aliens,” he says. “We’re all one big family up here. And that’s the way it oughta be. But when you bring in people illegally, they don’t assimilate, they don’t learn the language, they congregate in the one area. It’s bad for them, and that’s what creates the conflict. Cause they’re not becoming Americans.”

Rogers, a direct and open man, shares his thoughts on Democrats with little prompting. He suspects that much illegal immigration is a plot by Democrats “to bring in criminal elements into this country, that they want to subvert it.” And their plans do not stop there.

“I believe personally that the left’s ultimate goal is a dictatorship. That’s what they want,” he says. Indeed, his own motivation for being involved in politics is primarily one of civic duty-- to see to it that the hard but necessary work of self-governance is done well. “You take the Middle East, they’ve had strong dictators, because those people don’t wanna mess with ruling themselves. Because it’s hard. Takes a lot of time. I don’t like to have to do it. It’s a lot of work. But what’s the alternative?”

Ensuring that the local population stays Republican for years to come is also the job of people like Brennan Leggett, the vice president of the Amarillo Young Republicans. Leggett, an excitable 33-year-old brimming with diffuse political enthusiasm, was born and raised in Amarillo and works for his family’s fur and leather business. He calls himself a “unicorn of politics.” He supported Barack Obama in 2008, and then swung to working to elect Trump in 2016—motivated, he says, by Trump’s personal magnetism and the conviction that he would be a “wrecking ball” that would upend the established political order. He is somewhat less enamored of Mac Thornberry. “When he first ran, he said ‘I’m just going for a few years and I’m gonna come back and be a rancher.’ That was decades ago,” he says.

Still, both Leggett and Rogers are so sure of Thornberry’s reelection that they seem to have only the haziest idea who Greg Sagan even is. The game plan is simple: Republicans here will turn out for Trump, and they will turn out for Ted Cruz. Mac Thornberry does not need any real enthusiasm behind him. He can plan to just coast to Congress over and over again on sheer numerical supremacy. (His office could not point me to any public campaign events in his district during the entire week I was there.) How confident is Thornberry? He hasn’t bothered to update his campaign website since the last election.

What is it about the Texas panhandle that makes it the reddest place from sea to shining sea? The region sits at the center of a conservative trifecta. It has a strong military presence, both in active duty soldiers and major defense contractors; it has a strong Christian presence; and its economy is largely driven by oil and gas and ranching, two industries that tend to see government regulation as an existential threat. Add to this a frontier ethic that many people described to me as “we don’t like being told what to do,” and you have an area that is driven by the flag, the gun, and the cross.

At the same time, the characteristic headstrong resistance to any dictates from above could just as easily plant the seeds of anger towards the governing party. Steve Land, the head of the Potter County Democratic Party, believes, like Greg Sagan, that increasing voter turnout among everyone who’s not a white Republican can lead to real political change in Amarillo. He holds what seems like a genuine conviction that the backlash against Trump combined with Beto O’Rourke-style, unapologetic progressive campaigns can begin to turn even the Texas panhandle purple. But he’s equally pessimistic that the Republicans who are already entrenched here can ever be persuaded to change. “People in Amarillo are not used to having a difference of opinion. It’s been so heavily Republican for so long,” Land says. “The identity politics are involved. Whatever the Democrats say, I don’t think makes any difference to a Republican. He will not listen.”

If that is true, the math for Greg Sagan-- and for the Greg Sagans of the foreseeable future-- is grim. The blue wave may not break on the prairies of Amarillo. To do what Greg Sagan is doing takes something more than optimism. It takes an irrational sense of duty. “I really do see congressional representatives as being servants of the people, and not their masters,” Sagan says. “I think whenever we lose sight of that, we lose our legitimacy. And right after that we lose our voters.”

If the Navy man who has volunteered to be the most hopeless candidate in America has something to teach the Democratic Party, it is that in a battle, every ship must be manned. Even if it is bound to sink.

Compared to Greg Sagan, Mike Siegel is practically a shoe-in. His R+9 Austin to Houston corridor district is suddenly popping up on electoral maps where it didn't exist even one month ago. The DCCC ignored it completely-- probably a good thing, since it allowed a progressive to win the nomination without their toxic interference. Now the anti-red wave is starting to lap at Trump enabler Michael McCaul's ankles. The week started for Siegel with a nice endorsement by living legend Dolores Huerta. Take a look-- and consider contributing to Mike's campaign here:

Lobbyists Trying To Decide Who To Make Chair Of House Armed Services Committee When McKeon Retires Or Is Indicted

Wednesday, Michelle Ringuette from Amnesty International pointed to Buck McKeon's shameful hypocrisy over the den of torture that Guantánamo has become. But McKeon is unlikely to be in Congress much longer and the Military Industrial Complex top lobbyists are already working out who they want Boehner to make the next chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

McKeon, struggling with a still under wraps national security scandal stemming from his gambling addiction and immense sums he owes organized crime operative (and China puppet) Sheldon Adelson, is under immense pressure to retire. He's already told his closest associates and staffers that he won't run for reelection in 2014 and will seek a lobbying job instead. One of the most bribed congressman by the Military Industrial Complex in the history of the country ($1,396,400)-- and the father of the domestic spying drone industry-- should have no problem finding a job on K Street.

And the Military Industrial Complex will have no trouble in finding another patsy to run the House Armed Services Committee for them whether it's Boehner or Hoyer-- K Street's two top employees in Congress-- calling the shots. Their top candidates, along with the legalistic bribes they have accepted from arms makers, are:

• Mac Thornberry (R-TX)- $546,550
• Randy Forbes (R-VA)- $524,450
• Mike Turner (R-OH)- $446,720
• Adam Smith (D-WA)- $472,700

Politico coverage is-- as expected-- hackish and plain wrong. Even the DCCC, which ignored McKeon's obvious vulnerabilities in 2012 has moved to recruit Lee Rogers to run again in 2014 after seeing polling that shows McKeon would probably lose next year. Last year his 56-44% victory over Rogers was the closest call of his career... but budding pundits Juana Summers and Austin Wright have decided he "looks like a shoo-in." That's the problem with a shockingly shallow and lazy Beltway-based punditocracy.

“Congressman McKeon represents what’s wrong with Washington-- from out-of-touch sequester policies that hurt the local military to ethical questions that raise real concerns,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Even if McKeon decides to run, Ferguson said, Democrats would make it a tougher fight this time around.

“There are enough Democratic voters in this district, so Congressman McKeon should certainly be worried that this Republican congressional agenda makes him vulnerable and his best bet might be to get out while he can.”

McKeon took the helm of the committee in 2011, replacing Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton. McKeon had served as the committee’s ranking member from 2009, when President Barack Obama picked John McHugh, a New York Republican, to become secretary of the Army.

The Flash Report, an influential California political blog, reported last month that McKeon had been “talking with prominent political leaders in his district and informing them that he may be retiring at the end of his current term.” The site said it was “only a matter of time before McKeon makes his announcement formally.”

McKeon’s staffers have told industry leaders a decision could come before the end of this year.

But whether McKeon runs again or not, because of committee term limits, the Armed Services Committee could get a new chairman next Congress, provided Republicans hold the House and McKeon doesn’t receive a waiver to retain his seat.

Industry sources [which industry sources, the politics industry or the weapons-manufacturing industry?] pointed to Texas Republican Mac Thornberry as the committee’s “heir apparent,” and said he has been actively working to position himself to succeed McKeon... He has also been working to prove his fundraising mettle, hoping to show Republican congressional leaders that he has what it takes to be a successful committee chairman, according to a GOP defense industry source.

While it’s still early in the 2014 cycle, Thornberry has already raised more than $37,000 for the National Republican Congressional Committee. During the 2012 cycle, he raised more than $267,000.

And the list of top donors to his campaign committee reads like a who’s who of premier defense firms. Last cycle, Thornberry received major donations from Northrop Grumman, Textron, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and United Technologies, among others.

“He’s definitely been trying to position himself for that eventuality,” an industry lobbyist said. “If it’s not this cycle, it will certainly be the next one.”

Still, the lobbyist cautioned, “It’s never a lock with this leadership. … They’ve kind of thrown out the seniority system. It really has to do with what your current relationship with the leadership is.”

Thornberry could face GOP challenges from Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes, who chairs the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, or Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. In conversations with lobbyists and industry sources, their names came up time and again as possibilities for the committee chairmanship.

Both Turner and Forbes have similar ability to attract the defense industry’s top donors. Last cycle, Forbes raked in high-dollar contributions from SAIC, BAE Systems and Raytheon, while Northrop Grumman and SAIC made big donations to Turner.

Neither Turner nor Forbes has contributed to the NRCC so far this cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records. Spokesmen for the two declined comment.

A Republican congressional aide suggested Thornberry isn’t necessarily a lock if McKeon were to retire.

“I think Mr. Turner and Mr. Forbes are really the ones to look toward. Mr. Thornberry didn’t move up. He’s not really someone that people look to as a heavyweight on HASC issues,” the aide said, adding that Forbes and Turner-- both subcommittee chairmen-- are “the ones that people talk about and look to as national security experts.”

When it comes to fundraising, the aide said, “You can probably put a corpse in a wheelchair and they can raise money as a committee chair. Just raising money is a small part when it comes to running a massive and important organization such as a House Armed Services Committee.”

Even so, another industry lobbyist said he didn’t believe Forbes or Turner would mount a serious challenge to Thornberry.

“Mac is the vice chairman and McKeon is making it clear to people that he would like him to succeed him,” the lobbyist said. “In the end, I don’t believe that they will [challenge Thornberry]. I think they’re going to make some noise about it, but they’re not serious contenders.”

“It’s Mac’s turn-- he’s got the seniority,” the lobbyist added. “They’ve skipped over people who had seniority before, but it wouldn’t make sense to skip over someone who’s got the experience and has done all the right things. …They only skip over people who are pains in the ass.”

But McKeon might not be in a position to get what he wants, the GOP aide said.

“I find it interesting that anyone would think that Mr. McKeon, the guy who was responsible for not standing up to leadership on sequestration, would get to name the next chairman,” the aide said. “If McKeon can’t stand up for the prerogatives of the committee as well as speak out on an issue as devastating as sequestration, what ability does he have to help name a name?”

And, of course, no one thinks it in the least bit odd to go to a much of overpaid, sleaze-bag lobbyists, whose primary function is robbing the taxpayers blind, to find out what plans Boehner has for staffing one of Congress' most important committees. But like the man said, "You can probably put a corpse in a wheelchair..." or a drone.

Yes, There Are Congressional Districts Where Obama Won Less Than 25% Of The Vote

Nathan Deal & Mac Thornberry- accurate reflections of 2 uber-reactionary districts

Indiana's Republican Establishment has never much liked 14 term Congressman Dan Burton. It has nothing to do with his political positions or ideological predilections. He's an extreme right wing maniac and always has been, just like Indiana's Republican Establishment. His personality, on the other hand, is grating and he doesn't share his graft with the state party. They made a move to unseat him last year and John McGoff almost beat him in the primary. This year McGoff plans to try again-- as do 3 other Republicans. I was reading about this at The Hill yesterday and the article ends disappointingly: "The candidate emerging from the Republican primary would be favored in the reliably red district."

How reliable, I wondered. Well, the PVI is R+20. That's reliable. No other district in Indiana is afflicted with as many Republicans. Burton wound up with 66% of the vote in November and McCain-- who lost the state-- racked up his biggest majorities in Burton's district (59%), just as Bush did in 2000 and 2004.

But since my head was all in a statistics way I decided to see what districts, nationally, were even more reactionary than IN-05. I saw that there were dozens of districts that gave Obama far less than the 40% he got there-- far less. In fact there are plenty of districts that gave Obama less than a third of their votes! And these were, for the most part, the hardcore KKK districts-- in some cases where Kerry actually did better than Obama. Let me profile a couple of the standouts, to get an idea about what Democrats are up against in some parts of the country (primarily in really backward parts of unreconstructed former slave-holding states).

Worst of all is Texas' mammoth 13th CD that stretches across most of the northern part of the state. Mac Thornberry is a right-wing extremist first elected in 1994. The PVI is a startling R+25 and the district is 74% white Anglo and about 18% Hispanic. Bush won with 74% in 2000 and after his first 4 years of misrule, he was rewarded with 78% in 2004. McCain did nearly as well in 2008 as Bush did in 2004-- 77%, his best performance in any of the crazed Texas districts . McCain did 55% statewide. Thornberry won with an even greater margin in the district than McCain did-- 78%.

Let me quote from the CQPolitics Alamanac's description of the district that manufactures all of our country's nuclear bombs:

The conservative 13th encompasses much of the Texas Panhandle, including the city of Amarillo, then extends east along the Oklahoma border to take in the South Plains and much of the Red River Valley. It juts south twice to add more agricultural territory as well as pick up Jones County's small portion of Abilene. The district takes in Wichita Falls and reaches east to haul in the western half of Cooke County, about 50 miles north of Fort Worth. Monstrous and mainly rural, the 14th includes all or part of 44 counties, 40 of which have a population of under 25,000.

...The 13th is one of the most Republican districts in Texas. The GOP excels in many of the rural small towns that dot the area, particularly around Amarillo. Ochiltree County, in the Panhandle, gave 92 percent of the vote to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Closer to blue-collar Wichita Falls, voters have traditionally favored Democrats at the local level, but even this area votes solidly Republican in state and national elections.

TX-13 is the bottom of the barrel for Texas and for America. But there are other districts that are almost as reactionary and almost as steeped in ignorance, fear, superstition, darkness, and gross bigotry. TX-11 is almost as bad. A west-central Texas backwater, it's got the same R+25 PVI, same kind of rubber stamp extremist loon Representative, in this case Mike Conaway, and a 24% vote for Obama. Texas shares the distinction for being the most reactionary and politically backward state in the U.S. with Georgia and it's there that we find another district that gave Obama less than a quarter of its votes, GA-09, in the rural northern part of the state where chicken processing is the #1 industry. The congressman is a backward yahoo, Nathan Deal, who was first elected as a Dixiecrat Dem in 1992 but quickly realized all the like-minded kooks were on the other side of the aisle, which he skipped over to as soon as the GOP won majority status in 1994. He has been an important cog in screwing up American health care and has worked diligently to wreck the organic food industry. Deal won re-election with 75% of the vote in November, the same that McCain took there. CQPolitics Almanac again:

Anchored by North Georgia mountains, the 9th runs across most of the state's northern border... The 9th's economy has long depended on poultry processing and carpet manufacturing industries rooted in Gainesville and Dalton. As Atlanta expands northward, a surge of new residents in the district's south has brought white-collar and service sector jobs to the 9th and has helped diversify the local economy. The southern portions of Forsyth and Hall counties host suburbs full of Republicans and housing subdivisions.

...The 9th has the state's smallest proportion of black residents (3 percent), although its Hispanic population is expanding due to job opportunities in both the poultry processing and carpet manufacturing industries. More than half the school children in Dalton and Gainesville are Hispanic.

Deal, of course, is a rabid xenophobe and a tireless union-buster. You know how I love talking about how the same kind of right-wing obstructionism that the GOP is currently throwing against Obama resulted in just 88 Republicans in the 1936 House (and 16 Republicans in the Senate)? If trends continue in that direction in 2010 and 2012, Mac Thornberry and Nathan Deal will be among that small number of Republicans returning to Congress, with nothing to fear when espousing the most radical right destructive nonsense that educated and discerning voters in most of the country wouldn't put up with for one term.

But I want to leave this post on a hopeful note. Below are the Republican congressmen in districts that Obama won in November. Some were very close calls and some were landslides. Each of these seats should be carefully targeted by Democrats, although I fear that the DCCC is more interested in-- and will spend all its money on-- retaining Republican-voting incumbents in red districts like Bobby Bright (AL), Parker Griffith (AL), Walt Minnick (ID), Travis Childers (MS), Chris Carney (PA):

CA-03- Dan Lungren
CA-24- Elton Gallegly
CA-25- Buck McKeon
CA-26- David Dreier
CA-44- Ken Calvert
CA-45- Mary Bono-Mack
CA-50- Brain Bilbray
DE-AL- Mike Castle
FL-10- Bill Young
FL-18- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
IA-04- Tom Latham
IL-06- Peter Roskam
IL-10- Mark Kirk
IL-13 Judy Biggert
IL-16- Don Manzullo
LA-02- Ahn Cao
MI-03- Vernon Ehlers
MI-04- Dave Camp
MI-06- Fred Upton
MI-08- Mike Rogers
MI-11- Thaddeus McCotter
MN-03- Erik Paulsen
NE-02- Lee Terry
NJ-02- Frank LoBiondo
NJ-07- Leonard Lance
NV-02- Dean Heller
NY-03- Peter King
NY-23 John McHugh
OH-12- Pat Tiberi
OH-14- Steve LaTourette
PA-06- Jim Gerlach
PA-15- Charles Dent
VA-04- Randy Forbes
VA-10- Frank Wolf
WA-08- Dave Reichert
WI-01- Paul Ryan
WI-06- Tom Petri