Trumpanzee Or No Trumpanzee, Congressional Republicans Have A Very Bloody Civil War To Fight

Right-wing grifters Ann Couler and Paul Nehlen. Add Sarah Palin and Phyllis Schlafly and you come up with a mighty 16%

My favorite unheralded story over the weekend was about how the Trumpist nut Paul Ryan defeated last week, Paul Nehlen, is starting a SuperPAC to harass anti-Trump Republicans, Citizens Revolt PAC. According to Fox News, "A Nehlen aide said the political action committee is a grassroots effort with the primary objectives of electing a Republican president and putting those who would work against the Republican nominee on notice. 'Any political leader who would work against Donald Trump is working for Hillary Clinton,' the aide said."

“We are absolutely going to make sure Paul Ryan is being held accountable to the people,” Nehlen told FoxNews.com on Saturday. "You’ll be hearing from me shortly … like in less than week.”

A Ryan spokesman declined to comment for that story.

The Nehlen aide said the PAC aims to raise into the seven figures and “spend every available dime on communications and ground operations in key swing states in an effort to elect Donald Trump."

Said Nehlen: "Millions of hard-working Americans have had enough of the Clinton dynasty, and they've had enough of career politicians colluding to keep outsiders like Donald Trump … out of power."

According to a report in the Washington Post, "A senior GOP aide familiar with Wisconsin politics wrote in an email: 'Voters in Southern Wisconsin soundly rejected Paul Nehlen on Tuesday. His new endeavor will likely produce the same result as Nehlen's gimmicky campaign, meaning it will exist primarily to enrich himself and his consultants under the specious claims of advancing true conservative reforms.'" That's especially funny in light of the Politico confessional over the weekend by Paul Jossey about how his and other right wing greedy super PACs drained the Tea Party movement with endless pleas for money to support 'conservative' candidates-- while instead using the money to enrich themselves. He asserted that "the Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered-- and it was an inside job... [having] degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives." Ah... the story of the modern Republican Party and the brainwashed morons who believe in it. It kind of sounds like a right-wing version of the DCCC:

What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”-- which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds.

...Republicans inside the Beltway reacted to the burgeoning Tea Party with glee but uncertainty about how to channel the grass-roots energy usually reserved for the left. A small group of supposedly conservative lawyers and consultants saw something different: dollar signs. The PACs found anger at the Republican Party sells very well. The campaigns they ran would be headlined “Boot John Boehner," or “Drop a Truth Bomb on Kevin McCarthy.” And after Boehner was in fact booted and McCarthy bombed in his bid to succeed him, it was naturally time to “Fire Paul Ryan." The selling is always urgent: “Stop what you’re doing” “This can’t wait.” One active solicitor is the Tea Party Leadership Fund, which received $6.7 million from 2013 to mid-2015, overwhelmingly from small donors. A typical solicitation from the TPLF read: “Your immediate contribution could be the most important financial investment you will make to help return America to greatness.” But, according to an investigation by Politico, 87 percent of that “investment” went to overhead; only $910,000 of the $6.7 million raised was used to support political candidates. If the prospect signs a “petition,” typically a solicitation of his or her personal information is recorded and a new screen immediately appears asking for money. Vendors pass the information around in “list swaps” and “revenue shares” ad infinitum.

...For 18 months ending in 2013, I worked for one of these consultants, Dan Backer, who has served as treasurer for dozens of PACs, many now defunct, through his law and consulting firm. I thus benefited from the Tea Party’s fleecing.

...According to Federal Election Commission reports between 80 to 90 percent, and sometimes all the money these PACs get is swallowed in fees and poured into more prospecting. For example, conservative activist Larry Ward created Constitutional Rights PAC. He also runs Political Media, a communications firm. The New York Times reviewed Constitutional Rights’ filings and found: “Mr. Ward’s PAC spends every dollar it gets on consultants, mailings and fund-raising-- making no donations to candidates.” Ward justified the arrangement by saying Political Media discounts solicitations on behalf of Constitutional Rights.

Let that sink in. Ward takes his PAC’s money and redistributes it to his company and other vendors for more messaging and solicitations, but suggests critics should rest easy since the PAC gets a discount on Political Media’s normal rate. Constitutional Rights PAC may be extreme but it’s hardly an outlier.

...The PACs keep cash flowing by trolling the news for supposed apostasy. The government botches the rescue of employees in a foreign embassy? “Stand with us for Benghazi!” A bunch of kids are murdered in Connecticut? “Help us defend your Second Amendment rights!” “Sign our petition!”

Another favorite tactic is the “Draft Committee.” Pick a popular figure then start a committee to “draft” him or her to run for office. TPLF “drafted” Sarah Palin for Senate in Alaska and Backer “drafted” Newt Gingrich for Senate in Virginia. After I left his firm, Backer “drafted” new Texas resident Allen West for Senate in Florida. None of these candidates were remotely interested or associated with the effort, and in fact could not be by law. But there were signatures to collect and donations to request. (As a litigator, I rarely participated in the conduct described here. I nonetheless knew these schemes paid most of my salary.)

Yesterday, Politico followed up with a feature by Elena Schneider, The GOP Establishment strikes back about how the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican Party has declared a quiet-- but nonetheless ruthless and brutal war against the far right grassroots. As we said two weeks ago, Tim Huelskamp's primary defeat-- something engineered by Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy-- was revenge and warning-- and possible because of the moribund condition of the drained Tea Party. Ryan's wing of the party "is going on offense, pushing back hard against candidates backed by the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, including defeated GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp-- setting the stage for a titanic intra-Republican fight during the next Congress."

A collection of Republican donors and operatives loosely organized around several super PACs decided this summer to adopt newly aggressive tactics against GOP “obstructionists”-- or as John Hart, a former aide to ex-Sen. Tom Coburn, calls them: “Rebels In Name Only”-- after years of growing tea-party influence in Republican primaries and the halls of Congress.

...“The establishment’s position was always... [focused] in competitive seats, in situations where we believed [a different] candidate gave us a strategic advantage. It was never ideological. But now you’re seeing more and more activity in these safe seats,” said Brian O. Walsh, a GOP strategist and former National Republican Congressional Committee political director involved in these efforts.

“It’s like when you have a health problem,” Walsh continued. “First, you try to ignore it, see if it gets better. Then you try to treat it with meds. Now you just have to radiate it.”

That message comes at the end of the 2016 primary season but just a few months before a new Congress has to govern with a new president. The groups hope to show that 2018 primaries could be on the horizon if conservative rebels stand in the way of congressional Republicans’ legislative strategy.

“You have to get beyond saying only ‘no.’ You have to be effective. You have to propose solutions and govern,” said Rob Engstrom, the political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who noted that his group has backed House Freedom Caucus members in the past.

To “non-governing” members, “we want to put you on notice,” said a spokesman for Strong Leadership for America PAC, a new group that plans to focus on Republican and Democratic primaries, founded by donors who generally support the “No Labels” effort, which targeted Huelskamp with its first half-million dollars.

Conservatives in the House, used to playing offense, say they are under siege.

“Absolutely, we’re being targeted, absolutely,” said Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a House Freedom Caucus member who’s seen a group called Right Way PAC drop $211,000 on negative radio ads and mailers (and promise more to come) ahead of his late-August primary. “Over and over again [this year], you see the same thing with them. Look, the Freedom Caucus hasn’t challenged anyone who’s a sitting member. We’ve only played in open seats, but isn’t that interesting that K Street and Wall Street are playing against members?

“This isn’t a game for this year, but a game for next year. This isn’t just a short game, this is a long game,” said Gosar, who’s still expected to win his primary. “There’s no stopping them.”

On this, Gosar and one of the new establishment-oriented PACs agree.

“This is a long game,” the Strong Leadership for America spokesman said. “Kansas was just one race, and it doesn't fundamentally change anything, but if we scale it up over time, we can fundamentally change the dynamic [in Washington]."

Huelskamp’s loss in Kansas and the result in an open Georgia race the week before, where small-town Mayor Drew Ferguson defeated a Freedom Caucus-endorsed state senator, Mike Crane, represented a sharp and expensive turnaround from some earlier 2016 primaries.

Candidates backed by the conservative Club for Growth held an Indiana open seat and even captured former House Speaker John Boehner’s open district, a huge symbolic victory delivered in spite of some spending by Right Way Initiative, a nonprofit affiliated with the super PAC of the same name.

ESAFund and its sister nonprofit Ending Spending, which has a long primary-spending track record dating back to 2010, weighed in again heavily this summer. The group has backed hard-line conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz and South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney in the past, and its principal goals include eliminating earmark projects, “reducing the size, scope and cost of government” and “electing a governing majority,” said PAC President Brian Baker.

“The key thing to understand is that we support only strong, principled fiscal conservatives with a plan to do just that-- and grandstanders need not apply,” Baker said. “We have a long track record of engaging in both primary and general elections to support or oppose candidates to achieve our goals.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Freedom Caucus chairman, sees things differently.

“Let’s make one thing clear, Washington special-interest groups poured money into these races against conservatives to stack the deck next year in favor of their agenda of comprehensive immigration reform, reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, and raising the debt ceiling without making substantial cuts to spending,” Jordan said in a statement. “In these cases they were successful, but I believe the American people will speak out against this Washington-centric agenda going forward.”

...“The establishment has decided to gear up bigger, better and earlier, pouring in a lot of money,” said Sachtleben, who also pointed to two more Club-backed candidates in Florida and Arizona, races that will be decided later this month. “There’s a strong effort to undo any progress conservatives have made, and it’s going to take an effort to match that and overcome. It’s going to take a conservative response that’s already looking at 2018 and that needs to get serious, to get new seats and take back seats.”

That makes two sides ready to brawl in 2018.

Right Way Initiative and its super PAC also “intends to be a factor for a long time in deep red districts where one of the candidate choices represents constructive conservatism,” said Dan Flynn, a spokesman for the group who was involved in strategizing Huelskamp’s defeat in Kansas.

My friend at the RNC said he didn't know much more about this than what's appeared in print already. He did say, however, that they'd never be able to do this is the DCCC was "nimble" or prepared for "out of the box challenges." He told me this morning that his team feels "confident that the DCCC isn't capable of taking advantage of" a Republican civil war. "I never thought Pelosi could find someone stupider and less capable than Steve Israel. I think she managed to though."

There are no candidates on this list of Bernie-backers who the DCCC is eager to see win in November. These are the men and women we should be helping-- proven and potential leaders like Pramila Jayapal (WA), Tim Canova (FL), Zephyr Teachout (NY), Alina Valdes (FL) and Tom Wakely (TX).

What Do Mitt Romney And "Sir" Allen Stanford Have In Common?

The obvious, of course, is that both Romney and Stanford worked up business models that involved financial manipulation, lax off shore Caribbean islands and Swiss bank accounts. But Sir Allen is headed for another 110 years in prison for his fraud and Romney is headed for electoral victories in America's poorest, least educated and most socially backward states-- basically the South and the Mormon domains out West. We started covering Sir Allen in 2009 when he first got caught in a seven billion dollar ponzi scheme and it was revealed that he had found the most corrupt members of Congress-- from John Boehner to Rahm Emanuel-- to lavish immense amounts of bribery and protection money on. He gave at least a million and a half dollars to the Republican and Democratic election committees, like the corruption-soaked DCCC and NRCC.

Short version: Stanford bought a phony "knighthood" from Antigua and set up an offshore bank there that ran a Ponzi scam and ripped off billions from investors. At the time he was apprehended about 3 years ago, we mentioned that

U.S. prosecutors pointed out that Stanford's business practices put the “integrity of the markets” at risk. Stanford is being held without bail since he is considered a 100% flight risk, already having been apprehended trying to escape on a chartered jet. He's been in jail in Virginia and said he was anxious to get back to Texas, a state where they know how to take care of well-connected rich white people.

The update is that this week he was sentenced to 110 years in prison with no possibility of parole. He isn't taking it well-- nor is he in the slightest bit contrite. In fact, he sounds like a case study in billionaire entitlement.

Jaime Escalona was fleeced so thoroughly by the financier R. Allen Stanford that he could no longer pay for his grandson’s autism treatments, he said in a steady voice in court on Thursday, before turning to the defendant and declaring, “You are a dirty, rotten scoundrel.”

Mr. Stanford took the insult in stride, and stared right back.

Then Angela Shaw Kogutt, who said three generations of her family had lost over $4 million because of Mr. Stanford’s “financial terrorism,” asked all the scores of victims in the federal court gallery to stand before Mr. Stanford to show him their faces of misery. Judge David Hittner of the Federal District Court told Mr. Stanford he was under no obligation to look, but he swiveled his chair toward the victims anyway without a flinch or sign of caring.

For Mr. Stanford, his day in court on Thursday-- the day he was sentenced to 110 years in prison without parole for masterminding a $7 billion Ponzi scheme-- was anything but a time for contrition. Instead, after refusing to testify in his own trial, Mr. Stanford broke his silence to say that unlike Bernard L. Madoff, the most prominent of Ponzi scheme swindlers, “I am not a thief.”

Rather, he said, he was the victim of government “Gestapo tactics” that provoked a run on his Caribbean bank and then sold off his assets at bargain-basement prices. Anyone who lost their money, he said, did so because of the government’s “unnecessary” actions.

“I’m not up here to ask for sympathy or forgiveness,” he said in a rambling statement to the court before the sentencing, intermittently holding back tears and shuffling papers. “I’m up here to tell you from my heart I didn’t run a Ponzi scheme.”

In response, the federal prosecutor William J. Stellmach called Mr. Stanford’s version of events “obscene.”

“This is a man utterly without remorse,” Mr. Stellmach said. “From beginning to end, he treated all of his victims as roadkill.”

A federal jury in March convicted Mr. Stanford of running an international scheme over more than two decades in which he offered fraudulent high-interest certificates of deposit at the Stanford International Bank, which was based on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Stanford had consistently lied to investors, promoting safe investments for money that he channeled into a luxurious lifestyle, a Swiss bank account and various business deals that almost never succeeded. Mr. Stanford’s defense lawyers pleaded for a sentence effectively of time served because of the three years he spent in prison awaiting trial. Prosecutors recommended 230 years, the maximum according to sentencing guidelines, for his convictions on 13 counts of conspiracy, wire and mail fraud, obstruction and money laundering. He was acquitted of one count of wire fraud.

The prosecutors heavily relied on James M. Davis, Mr. Stanford’s former roommate from Baylor University, who served as his chief financial officer. Mr. Davis testified that the Stanford business empire was a fraud, with bribes paid to Antiguan regulators and schemes to hide operations from federal investigators. He described how Mr. Stanford had sent him to London to send a fax to a prospective client from a bogus insurance company office to reassure him that his investment would be safe.

...[T]he prosecutors contended that while Mr. Stanford told his clients that their CDs were insured and that the money he invested went into safe financial instruments, he was actually diverting it to his own real estate and private ventures, using more than $2 billion to finance his lifestyle. As prosecutors did in the trial, Mr. Stellmach painted him as a man “who for 20 years orchestrated a massive fraudulent scheme. He corrupted everything he touched.”

Ms. Kogutt and Mr. Escalona, representing two victims’ groups, described how investors had lost their homes, retirements and ability to pay for their children’s and grandchildrens’ educations. They said some victims had become suicidal.

“Mr. Stanford’s heartless actions were coldly calculated and premeditated,” said Mr. Escalona, a Venezuelan who spoke for Latin American investors. Ms. Kogutt, who is from Dallas, said Mr. Stanford “played with our futures as if playing a board game and with our money as if it were Monopoly money. He’s just a common thief.”

It took three years to bring Mr. Stanford to trial because he was severely beaten in a 2010 fight with another federal inmate in a prison outside Houston and then became addicted to prescription antistress drugs. He underwent a year of therapy before Judge Hittner ruled that he was fit to stand trial. The defense said Mr. Stanford could not properly defend himself because he had lost much of his memory.

In an apparent appeal for a lighter sentence, Mr. Stanford said in court Thursday that he had worked hard to recover his memory, though he said it was still like “Swiss cheese.” He spoke of the “toxic mix” of drugs that he been prescribed in federal prison and the assault that led to six hours of surgery.

“This was not three years of pleasure by any stretch,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” he added, not even the prosecution lawyers.

A couple dozen more billionaires behind bars and this country can get back to its ideals.

No Shame-- None At All: GOP Continues To Purposefully Wreck The Economy To Hurt Obama's Reelection Chances

Unless you accidentally wandered over here looking for mediocre TV show DWTS or mediocre Democratic Party operative DWSTweets, instead of DWT, you've no doubt seen Ken and I railing about the perfidy of Republican elected officials trying-- in many cases successfully-- to undercut the economy of the country and the financial well-being of their own constituents, in the hopes of turning voters against President Obama, a strategy that has borne them some fruit. Yesterday Michael Tomasky explained in no uncertain terms why so many people now think of them as the party of predators.

The four GOP congressional leaders-- John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, and Jon Kyl-- sent a letter to Fed chair Ben Bernanke warning him against further intervention in the economy. They released the letter the day before the Fed is to announce its next steps Wednesday afternoon. “We have serious concerns,” the letter said, “that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy.” What that sentence actually means, of course, is that they have serious concerns that an interventionist monetary policy might help the economy in the next 14 months, and thereby help Barack Obama’s reelection chances. ... [T]he Republicans have now covered both bases. Their first dose of poison to the economy has been to ensure that the federal government can’t do anything via legislation to spur economic growth and activity. As with the sentence from the letter above, the way to translate Republican-speak is to assume that the truth is the exact opposite of what they say. So when they say things like “the government can’t create jobs,” they actually know very well that the government can create jobs and can do so rather efficiently and easily, provided that Congress passes, say, a bill providing direct funding for jobs, which could put millions of people to work. So their task, in the name of preventing a Democrat from being a successful president, has been to ensure that Congress do all it can to keep the economy in dismal shape.

And now comes the second dose. If the government can’t create jobs legislatively, then perhaps it can do so through monetary policy. This letter very clearly is meant to pressure Bernanke not to try anything sneaky that might actually lower the unemployment rate before the election. From Robert Reich, on his blog: “To say it’s unusual for a political party to try to influence the Fed is an understatement. When I was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, it was considered a serious breach of etiquette—not to say potentially economically disastrous—even to comment publicly about the Fed. Everyone understood how important it is to shield the nation’s central bank from politics.”

In the face of things like this, it’s supposed to be controversial that Obama has decided to stop trying to meet the Republicans halfway? Meeting today’s GOP halfway is like letting a sexual predator take your clothes off. You haven’t been touched yet, but things are unlikely to end happily for you.

Ari Berman made much the same point in The Nation yesterday, starting with Miss McConnell's infamous exercise in self-exposure right after the 2010 election. "The single most important thing we want to achieve," he lisped menacingly, "is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Berman writes what most astute observers have seen for months: "Those words have become the guiding light for Congressional Republicans, and explain nearly every decision the GOP has made since the last election. The better the economy performs, the more likely it is that Obama will be re-elected. The longer the recession lasts, the better the chance that McConnell will get his wish. And it goes beyond sabotaging his new jobs program and his proposal to bring taxes for those making over a million dollars a year into some kind of semi-fairness range where they would have to pay the same rates as middle class workers.

With Congress eternally deadlocked because of Republican obstructionism, the Fed is perhaps the only institution that can still give the economy a boost.

The Fed, of course, is supposed to be politically independent and should pursue policies that are in the best interest of the American economy regardless of political pressure. But if those policies happen to improve the economy, which in turn improves Obama’s political standing, then Republicans will predictably resort to their default strategy: just say no.

Late yesterday the Fed basically told the right-wing leaders to take their transparent threats and go suck a lemon. They announced they'll be buying $400 billion in Treasury bonds, which will further lower interest rates and boost the economy by making it easier for businesses to borrow money.

This is now playing out politically with the Rick Perry wing of the GOP, especially a certain eager beaver who would like to avoid a bruising reelection battle and run for VP instead, jumping on board the doomed Ponzi Scheme Special. After initially refusing to go all the way with Perry, Paul Ryan is now an out-and-out Ponzi Schemer. (So is Tom Tancredo's equally psychotic replacement in Colorado, Mike Coffman, an extremist with one of the savviest progressives in Colorado, Joe Miklosi as an opponent.)

On Capitol Hill, it seems they just can’t stop saying “Ponzi Scheme.”

Mitt Romney’s not the only one imploring his fellow Republicans to, please, stop calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. The one-time establishment GOP superstar Mitch Daniels did it this week, in an interview with the New York Times. Here’s what that sounded like:

“If there’s a problem with ‘Ponzi scheme,’ it is that it’s too frank, not that it’s wrong,” Daniels said. There’s polling to back him up.

Republicans polled by Gallup recently didn’t have a problem with calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme (which for the record, it totally isn’t). But independents did, and there are signs that Rick Perry’s continued use of the term could hurt his electability.

So, Romney and Daniels (and others) say, don’t go near it. Apparently nobody told Capitol Hill.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who already dragged the GOP through a tough entitlement fight over his House Republican budget package, picked up on the phrase today on the Laura Ingraham radio show.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) joined in on the fun, too. While analyzing one of the presidential debates on radio TV recently, Coffman picked up on the shift in Perry’s rhetoric on Social Security-- namely from “it’s unconstitutional” to “I’m going to fix it and protect it forever”-- and praised it, while also jumping feet-first into the it’s a Ponzi Scheme camp.

Rep. Miklosi was more than a little shocked that Coffman would endanger the vital interests of so many people in the area around Denver they both represent. "Since being elected," he told us this morning, "my opponent has pursued a radical social agenda and served as an obstructionist to all else. He voted twice to destroy Medicare and now he's attacking Social Security. It is hauntingly hypocritical for someone to oppose a woman's choice in every instance, yet so carelessly cast aside a proven and vital lifeline to our seniors."

Late yesterday Boehner had a resolution on the floor, H.R. 2608, sponsored by Sam Graves (R-MO) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), which amends part B of title IV of the Social Security Act to extend the child and family services program through 2016. All 184 Democrats voted YES, as did 211 Republicans, so it passed, overwhelmingly 395-25. Many of the worst hard-core right-wing extremists, the ones hell-bent on wrecking the social safety net and abolishing Medicare and Social Security even if it were to mean electoral defeat, voted against it, deranged sociopaths like Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Joe Walsh (R-IL), Paul Broun (John Birch Society-GA) and Scott Garrett (R-NJ). Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul were running around making believe they're running for president, so neither voted-- nor did the new sociopath just elected from NY-9 (Bob Turner). But here's the list of the 25 Republicans who voted today, in effect, to end Social Security:

Justin Amash (R-MI)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
John Campbell (R-CA)
Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)
Jeff Duncan (R-SC)
Jimmy Duncan (R-TN)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
Tom Graves (R-GA)
Tim Huelskamp (R-KS)
Bill Huizenga (R-MI)
Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Raul Labrador (R-ID)
Doug Lamborn (R-CO)
Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
Tom McClintock (R-CA)
Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)
Ted Poe (R-TX)
Tim Scott (R-SC)
Austin Scott (R-GA)
Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)
Joe Walsh (R-IL)