How Many End Of The Republican Party Articles Will We See Over The Next Year?

Trump isn't as "un-Republican" as people sometimes paint him. Like the House Republicans, Trump seems to have agreed to making repealing Dodd-Frank, a bill meant to protect Americans from Wall Street excesses. "Trump told Reuters in an interview Tuesday that he will produce a plan that’s 'close to a dismantling' of the 2010 financial regulation law that came in response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis." Trump doesn't expect voters to judge him based on policy as much as on entertainment value and some kind of patina of "strength." He's disdainful of policy and doesn't seem to have a grasp of it. For a self-centered sociopath like Trump, everything is just about him and what he can get over on a gullible electorate. Wednesday Sahil Kapur pointed out that making profits has always trumped principles and values for Trump. For example, "Trump has been tough on American companies that have moved jobs to other countries. That hasn’t stopped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee from investing in them."

Matt Taibbi pinpointed the end of the GOP as the moment the RNC kissed his ring after Cruz's defeat in Indiana. It was, wrote Taibbi for Rolling Stone, "the death of the modern Republican Party," a party "undone by a surge of voter anger that was in significant part their own fault. In recent years, the Koch brothers/Tea Party wing of the GOP had purged all moderates from the party, to the point where anyone who was on record supporting the continued existence of any federal agency, said Mexicans were people, or spoke even theoretically about the utility of taxes was drummed from the candidate rolls. Their expected endgame here was probably supposed to be the ascension of some far-right, anti-tax, anti-government radical like Scott Walker, or even Cruz. Instead, this carefully cultivated 'throw the bums out' vibe was gluttonously appropriated by Trump, who turned the anger against the entire Republican Party before surging to victory on a strongman's platform of giant walls, mass deportation and extravagant job promises that made the moon landing or the Bernie Sanders agenda of free college look incrementalist in comparison."

Taibbi seems to think they got exactly what they deserved. He wrote of Trump that he's "a seemingly unrepentant non-Republican more likely to read Penthouse than the National Review." He managed to paint his last-standing Republican opponent, Ted Cruz, as "the son of a presidential assassin's accomplice, and himself an infamous uncaptured serial killer... During the campaign, surprising numbers of Americans were even willing to believe Cruz might also be the Zodiac Killer. The infamous Bay Area murders began two years before Cruz was born, but 38 percent of Floridians at one point believed Cruz either was or might be the Zodiac. Were they serious? In an age when Donald Trump is a presidential nominee, what does 'serious' even mean? As ignominious an end as this was for Cruz, it was a million times worse for the Republican establishment. The party of Nixon, Reagan and two Bushes had needed a win by Cruz, a man not just disliked but loathed by the party elite, to stave off a takeover by Trump."

Trump's naked disdain for the less-glamorous American flyover provinces he somehow keeps winning by massive margins continued to be one of the livelier comic subplots of the campaign.

From seemingly wondering if Iowans had eaten too much genetically modified corn to thanking the "poorly educated" after his Nevada win, Trump increasingly doesn't bother to even pretend to pander. This, too, is a major departure for the Republican Party, whose Beltway imageers for decades made pretending to sincerely prefer barns and trailers to nightclubs and spokesmodels a central part of their electoral strategy.

Not Trump. Hell, he went out of his way to brag about being pals with Tom Brady in the week before the Indiana primary, and still won by almost 20 points. Given the level of Colts-Patriots antipathy, this is a little like campaigning in Louisiana wearing a BP hat, or doing a whistle-stop tour through Waco with Janet Reno.

...After 9/11, it felt like the Republicans would reign in America for a thousand years. Only a year ago, this was still a party that appeared to be on the rise nationally, having gained 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, 11 governorships and 913 state legislative seats during the Obama presidency.

Now the party was effectively dead as a modern political force, doomed to go the way of the Whigs or the Free-Soilers.

After Indiana, a historic chasm opened in the ranks of the party. The two former President Bushes, along with Mitt Romney, announced they wouldn't attend Trump's coronation at the convention in Cleveland. Additionally, House Speaker Paul Ryan refused to say he would support the nominee.

There were now two Republican Parties. One, led by Trump, was triumphant at the ballot, rapidly accruing party converts, and headed to Cleveland for what, knowing the candidate, was sure to be the yuugest, most obscene, most joyfully tacky tribute to a single person ever seen in the television age. If the convention isn't Liberace meets Stalin meets Vince McMahon, it'll be a massive disappointment.

From there, this Republican Party would steam toward the White House, which, who knows, it might even win.

The other Republican Party was revealed in the end to be a surprisingly small collection of uptight lawyers, financiers and Beltway intellectuals who'd just seen their chosen candidate, the $100 million Jeb Bush, muster all of four delegates in the presidential race. Meanwhile, candidates whose talking points involved the beheading of this same party establishment were likely to win around 2,000.

Like French aristocrats after 1789, those Republicans may now head into something like foreign exile to plot their eventual return. But whether they will be guillotined or welcomed back is an open question.

This was all because they'd misplayed the most unpredictable and certainly most ridiculous presidential-campaign season Americans had ever seen.

If this isn't the end for the Republican Party, it'll be a shame. They dominated American political life for 50 years and were never anything but monsters. They bred in their voters the incredible attitude that Republicans were the only people within our borders who raised children, loved their country, died in battle or paid taxes. They even sullied the word 'American' by insisting they were the only real ones. They preferred Lubbock to Paris, and their idea of an intellectual was Newt Gingrich. Their leaders, from Ralph Reed to Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Rick Santorum to Romney and Ryan, were an interminable assembly line of shrieking, witch-hunting celibates, all with the same haircut-- the kind of people who thought Iran-Contra was nothing, but would grind the affairs of state to a halt over a blow job or Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

...In the weeks surrounding Cruz's cat-fart of a surrender in Indiana, party luminaries began the predictably Soviet process of coalescing around the once-despised new ruler. Trump endorsements of varying degrees of sincerity spilled in from the likes of Dick Cheney, Bob Dole, Mitch McConnell and even John McCain.

...Democrats who might be tempted to gloat over all of this should check themselves. If the Hillary Clintons and Harry Reids and Gene Sperlings of the world don't look at what just happened to the Republicans as a terrible object lesson in the perils of prioritizing billionaire funders over voters, then they too will soon enough be tossed in the trash like a tick.

If there are actually any Republicans out there looking to "learn lessons," here's one: "Be afraid. Be very afraid"

If I were to tell you that "the answer is Jeb Bush," could you guess what the question might be?

by Ken

As regular readers know, here at DWT we're not big fans of washingtonpost.com's "Fix"-master, Chris Cillizza, that fearless champion of Village-sanctified reality, and in a moment I'm going to offer an example of why.

For now, while I'm not going to make a big point of urging you to read his post "Republican Party could learn a lot from the Democrats of 1989," I'll say I think it's worth a look. He's taking off from a piece in the fall issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, "The New Politics of Evasion," by longtime Democratic "strategists" William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, who have more or less updated a piece they wrote in 1989 warning that Dems who thought happy times were about to be here again, with the departure of Ronald Reagan from the White House, were kidding themselves.

What Galston and Kamarck are arguing is that today's Republicans are kidding themselves in much the same way, and apparently the idea is taking hold in certain Republican circles. Today's GOP stands accused of succumbing to the same three myths as the 1989-vintage Dems, who they argued at the time were wrong in thinking that (a) what had shut them out of the presidence for three consecutive elections was insufficiently liberal candidates; (b) they just weren't turning out enough of "their" voters on Election Day; and the party, despite its presidential drought, showed enough political presence in Congress and in state governments to suggest a base to build on.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong, said G&K -- and say they again of today's R's. Alas for us, the authors' diagnosis apparently was and is salvation in the form of a "leader," by which the seem to mean a charismatic exponent of mealy-mouthed centrism -- like the Dems' savior in 1992, Bill Clinton. In case you're wondering where this logic leads today, it's in the direction of -- are you ready to be thrilled and chilled? -- Jeb Bush!!! (I know I've got goose bumps.)

Here's Chris:

Bush, like Clinton, spent much of his formative life as a governor and, on issues ranging from education to immigration, has shown a willingness to break from Republican orthodoxy and the party’s base.

Unlike Clinton, who long signaled his plan to run for president in advance of the 1992 race, Bush remains an elusive figure when it comes to his future plans. If Bush decides against a bid, there is no other obvious figure who fits the Clinton-circa-1992 mold, although Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) probably has the most chance to remake the Republican coalition among those candidates expected to run.

Have you calmed down yet? Or is your blood still racing with Jeb Fever? Do you think you can stand just a wee bit more? Actually, at this point we're only one short graf from the end.

History has a way of repeating itself. Republicans would do well to realize that the Democratic Party of 1989 has many lessons to teach the GOP of today. And they would do well to realize it sooner rather than later.

One thing that's not quite clear to me is who exactly these Republicans are who "would do well to realize blah-blah-blah." He certainly can't have in mind grass-roots GOP-ers who thrill to the demagoguery of the House Teabaggers and Sen. Ted "Brain of Stone" Cruz. And the rest of the party is busy shivering in its boots, hoping their currently energized base won't turn its guns against them. (And I wish I meant this figuratively. Probably they do too.)

The other point I would make now is Chris might do well to rememeber, or if necessary reread, some of his better clips. As I recalled in a March post, "The administration is wrong again in thinking it has the upper hand in the politics of the sequester,"

every now and then Chris's dogged Village tea-leaf readings actually get it right. And as we look at the prospects for the sequester, I think back to a December 30 post I wrote ("Why congressional Republicans don't have to pay even lip service to reality") about a post Chris wrote ("As 'fiscal cliff' looms, Republicans have no political incentive to make deal with Obama"), which began:

Amid the last-minute wrangling over a "fiscal cliff" deal, it's important to remember one overlooked fact of the 2012 election: Republicans in the House and Senate have absolutely no political incentive to compromise with President Obama.

The numbers are stark.

Of the 234 Republicans elected to the House on Nov. 6, just 15 (!) sit in congressional districts that Obama also won that day, according to calculations made by the Cook Political Report's ace analyst David Wasserman. That's an infinitesimally small number, particularly when compared with the 63 House Republicans who held seats where Obama had won following the 2010 midterm elections.

The Senate landscape paints the same picture -- this time looking forward. Of the 13 states where the 14 Republican Senators will stand for reelection in 2014 (South Carolina has two, with Lindsey O. Graham and Tim Scott up in two years time), Obama won just one in 2012 -- Maine. In the remaining dozen states, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney won only one, Georgia, by less than double digits. The average margin of victory for Romney across the 13 states was 19.5 percentage points; take out Maine, and Romney's average margin was 22 points in the remaining 12 states.

"All of which," I wrote in March, "is a prelude to explaining why I'm pretty doomy and gloomy about the outcome of the sequester." The Teabaggers, as I pointed out, wanted the sequester. And as many economists were pointing out, contrary to alarmist rhetoric, it wasn't likely to have immediately visible disastrous effects. "After all," I wrote --

contrary to the original theory of the sequester, that it would be so painful that both sides would move heaven and earth to prevent it, the Teabaggers -- far from finding it painful -- can smile smugly at having gotten just what they wanted: budget slashing. Never mind the consequences of mindless budget slashing, especially since the actual consequences won't be evident to the country. There are, however, a lot of Americans who don't grasp the difference between a family budget, where high levels of debt can be a crippling problem, and a national budget, which sets the economic pace of the country.

I also quoted from a NYRB blogpost by Jeff Madrick, "The Sequester's Hidden Danger," which argued that "the sequester is dangerous, but not for the reasons we think.

Contrary to what some alarmists predicted, there is little evidence that the automatic, across-the-board cuts to the US budget that went into effect on Friday are causing cataclysmic harm. . . .

[W]hat makes the sequester threatening is not that it will plunder the economy in 2013. Rather, it is that these arbitrary cuts are exactly the opposite of what the economy needs both in the short run, and—if the promised $1 trillion in further cuts over ten years is made—in the long term. In the coming months, it will make it difficult for the president to cut the unemployment rate from current levels around 8 percent, a fact that Republicans must enjoy since it reduces their chances of losing the House in 2014, and raises their chances of winning the presidency in 2016 if they can continue to cut spending.

And the sequester will be painful. Educational and housing subsidies will be cut, as will unemployment insurance and research spending. More than $40 billion will be cut from the defense budget, music to my ears, but not to those who will lose jobs at defense contractors. Above all, claims that economic growth down the road will be spurred by reducing the federal deficit through spending cuts are not credible.

Indeed, the real danger of the sequester lies in the misguided deficit-cutting mania that created it in the first place. . . .

I don't see that much has changed from December to now -- as we prepare to face the Scylla and Charybdis of the budget continuing resolution and the next round of debt-ceiling brinksmanship -- except that the GOP crazies have become even crazier and more inflexible, while the rest of the party has become even more cowardly.

Whoever these hypothetical lesson-learning Republicans may be who are supposed to profit from the example of the c1989 Democrats, I think there are some lessons here they might want to take a gander at. I mean, while they're waiting for Jeb Bush to lead them out of the wilderness. (Or is it Rand Paul?)

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Barney Frank is as quotable as a private citizen as he was as a congressman

I think [the Republicans] have a real crisis. If they do not break the grip of the tea party they will be very much a minority party. In the short term, they have a real problem because breaking that is going to be messy.

I was talking to a Republican senator the other night at the airport when I was waiting for Jim, my husband. I mentioned to him that the House Republicans were now thinking about changing the [fiscal cliff] deal, and he said, ''Boy, I went over a couple weeks ago to talk to the Republicans from my state to try to get them to be more reasonable. They're fucking nuts. We get the shit pounded out of us for being too much for the rich and they don't understand that.''

-- former Congressman Barney Frank, in
an interview with Metro Weekly's Justin Snow

by Ken

When Barney Frank, newly retired from the House of Representatives after 32 years of service, announced in a TV interview that he had changed his previously announced position and would indeed like the interim appointment to replace Sen. John Kerry after he's confirmed as secretary of state until a special election is held, a lot of us on the Left reacted immediately and energetically. This can't have made life easy for the man who'll make the decision, Gov. Deval Patrick, who has made clear that he won't have anything to say about the appointment until Senator Kerry is confirmed and Massachusetts has an actual Senate vacancy.

When the governor was asked if he would have preferred that Barney not go public on the matter, he said, "Does it matter in the case of Congressman Frank what I would have preferred?" He was smiling. The governor knows him some Barney Frank.

I admit it, I love Barney. I love him because he's a passionate liberal whose liberal passions remained operative at a higher level of government power than anyone I can think of in modern times.

I love him because he made the decision to do the long, grinding-hard work to achieve real inside power as either chairman or ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.

I love him because he's incredibly smart and knows how to channel that smartness directly into the related but distinctly different businesses of politics and government.

I love him because he has little hesitation in standing up to, and standing down, the opposition, and because he's incredibly funny, partly because he's so damned smart, but also in good part because, as I've noted here before, he actually listens to people, something that isn't exactly common among DC pols.

This particularly drives his opponents all kinds of nuts, because in their view it just isn't fair, Barney's habit of tying them in knots over stuff they've said. As we know, if there's anything right-wingers hate (and believe me, there is; these are people who often live for and on hate), it's being called to account for stuff they've said and done. After all, it's just stuff they said.

And I see I haven't even mentioned about Barney being gay. Of course I love him for that too, for the way, in the glare of the public eye, he found his courage to be public who he is. This is incredibly important for people who are gay and for people who aren't.

All of that said, was I sorry when Barney announced that his 16th term in the House would be his last? Well, of course. Is there any time when Congress could afford to lose a Barney Frank? Of course not. But especially at a time when Congress is in the state it's in, with the House in particular having been taken hostage by people who are by and large so dim and/or so crazed that they may not even realize they've created the country's first terrorist caucus.

And that said, could I blame Barney for packing it in? Again, of course not. It can't have been a decision taken lightly. After 32 years, he can't reasonably be asked to give more. He has a husband now, and has certainly earned the right to live a more normal sort of life.

In fact, as Barney explains in a nice interview with Metro Weekly's Justin Snow, he seriously intended to pack it in sooner.

In 2010, I thought I wouldn't run again. I thought I'd have one more term. I was too tired and doing full-time politics either for myself or for other political people since October of 1967. And I'm married and look forward to time with Jim.

But the Republicans retook the House, and --

I said, ''Well, if I leave now it'll look like I'm being a sorehead that I wouldn't stay as financial chairman.'' And so I was going to do only one more term.

The issue was finally decided for him when --

they changed the congressional districts . . . so drastically that I would've been going 325,000 new people to ask them to vote for me as their member of Congress for one term. And I couldn't do that. I think party responsibility is to work on people's problems and issues," and you can't ask for their vote knowing that "if a problem arises 18 months from now I won't be able to do much about it because I'll be gone six months after that.

All of which is perfectly logical and perfectly understandable. What I didn't expect to be let in on was this fairly stark personal revelation. Here's Justin:

Although he says he'll miss the drafting of legislation and passing of laws, Frank is looking forward to his own form of retirement, which, he says, will include public speaking and a couple books.

"I'm looking forward to working less hard and being under less pressure and having less tension," Frank says. "I'm just tired and my energy is gone," he adds, attributing the four years of the financial crisis that he witnessed from his post on the House Financial Services Committee as contributing to his exhaustion.

The other thing I most enjoyed learning from this interview is that Barney already has some quite concrete plans.

I want to write. I have a great respect for the written word. Some people can write while they're doing other things. Former Sen. [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan could do that — a great senator and great author. I can't do that. So I now will have a major opportunity to write a couple of books. I'm looking forward to that.

The first book, he says,

is about what liberalism should be. Basically, I believe we should acknowledge that of the two parties we are the ones that understand the positive role that government can play in our lives. And we need to figure out how to get people to understand that better.

After that comes "a history of the political activity around here. "

Accidentally, my political career and the gay-rights movement are exactly the same age. I got elected to the state Legislature in 1972 -- three years after Stonewall. I rode in, as a candidate, the second gay-pride parade in Boston history in 1972. I filed the first gay-rights legislation in Massachusetts in 1972 and Massachusetts was probably the fourth or fifth state to do that. And I got here in 1981 and I have been on the floor as a member of the House for every debate and vote on LGBT rights ever, so I want to write about that.

Barney has a lot to say in the interview about that chunk of history, and his optimism in the face of the mounting tensions between "this right-wing group [that] took over the Republican Party" and the kind of Republican with whom he was once able to do some of the nation's business.

Actually, he has a lot to say about quite a lot of things, like this, about his very public marriage:

I did make a point of being married while I was still [in Congress] because I wanted these people to, you know, I'm very pleased to run into some conservative Republicans and introduce them to my husband. And Jim is a very popular guy with the other spouses and we're the only same-sex couple other members of Congress really know. I think that's very important.

To make it kind of a teaching moment, one Republican member of Congress, a more moderate conservative, sent us a wedding present and then voted to reaffirm the Defense of Marriage Act. So I brought the present back and the response was, "Well, why?" And I said, "Are you kidding?"

"Are you kidding?" Is that pure Barney or what?

I'm still hoping Barney has that stint as interim U.S. senator ahead of him, but "private citizen" Barney should be a welcome guest too. And I look forward to putting those books he's writing on my reading list.

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McCain's Daughter Warns Of Imminent GOP Civil War-- And Tattoos And Hybrids For Conservatives

It wouldn't be as bloody as Texas Governor Rick Perry's lead balloon of seceding from the Union and sparking another real Civil War, but Meghan McCain warned at the Log Cabin convention yesterday that her party is on the brink of their own civil war. (Interestingly, the gay Republicans have just broken into two warring factions, an extreme right version having formed their own "less gay-oriented," more selfishness-oriented entity called GOProud opposing the Log Cabin Repugs which McCain and GOP consultant Steve Schmidt addressed this weekend.)

This morning we talked about the ferocious and potentially deadly Republican civil war over immigration reform and yesterday we watched as far right extremist Gresham Barrett (R-SC) was mercilessly booed and heckled by further right and even more extremist GOP teabaggers on Friday.

The California Republican Party has erupted into a full blown civil war between mainstream conservatives and ideological extremists from beyond the fringe. They are trying to recall several of their own elected officials and one far right congressman, Devin Nunes, demanded that the state's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, resign. Up in Alaska the Republican Senate president and House speaker joined with a bipartisan majority of state legislators to reject Governor Sarah Palin's choice of bizarre and extremist loon Anthony Ross as Alaska Attorney General. There's barely a state in the Union without a fratricidal bloodletting in GOP-land. It's wrecking the party in Pennsylvania, New York, Kansas, Minnesota, Florida, Colorado and even Utah (despite Rich Frank's claim today that the Mormons have grown all warm and fuzzy and mainstreamish)! Today's GOP stands for nothing but obstructionism... to everything. There's nothing left for them to talk about but secession and cow farts.

Their own base is deserting them in a fit of unfocused rage and ratings-generating ad revenues. As the torment the South Carolina teabaggers put Barrett through showed, the teabaggers are like a genie the GOP and their media allies let out of the bottle. It may be harder to get it back in again.

If Republicans are thinking these are the guys who are going to be manning their phone banks in 2010, the ones who are going to be knocking on doors, or coughing up checks for the RNC-- they better think again. These folks are gone. They've left the reservation-- a lot of them left it back in 1992-- and they're not going to come back.  

This was a Ron Paul crowd. This was a Constitution Party crowd. This was a third party all the way crowd. Campaign for Liberty wasn't just helping out with the show-- this was their show, and any GOP candidate who thought guys waving "Pelosi Sux" signs were an automatic win, missed the zeitgeist of this group by a Bob Barr Country mile.

So back to Meghan for a moment, who probably does not speak for her father, the senator-- at least not entirely. She's still using far right icons Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham as foils in her huge and successful publicity barrage. And the 24-year old blogger and soon-to-be author told the Log Cabin convention that in a battle between the reactionary forces of the past (the Coulter/Ingraham wing) and the more progressive forces of the future, there's "a war brewing in the Republican Party."

Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future... I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes…I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past… I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots and lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.

Meghan complains Karl Rove is stalking her-- on Twitter; he's just a tweet-talkin' guy.

HOUSE VOTES TO TAX CORPORATE BONUSES-- GOP COMPLETELY SPLIT

Limbaugh shatters GOP cohesion-- Repug caucus splits in two

With Republicans trying every maneuver they can to prevent a vote, both the House and the Senate moved forward to pass taxes on the bonus money corporate executives are taking from taxpayers. The House bill imposes a 90% income tax on bonuses of $250,000 and more for companies subsidized with taxpayer money. The Senate is also aiming at recovering 90% of the bonuses and the Justice Department is working on the same goal.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has been very tough on Tim Geithner, but he's not falling into the Republican trap that seeks to blame Obama and the Democrats for a situation created primarily by Bush, the Republican rubber stamps in Congress and the right-wing ideology that drives the Party of Greed and Selfishness. As he points out, virtually every single Republican-- including, of course, those currently screaming the loudest, have been harsh critics of every effort to limit executive compensation for companies taking TARP money. He points to a story in the Post by Ryan Grim last month:

President Obama has proposed capping compensation for executives at banks that take taxpayer bailout money at $500,000. Republicans hate the idea-- a position puts them uncomfortably on the side of people currently about as popular as child-porn producers and subprime mortgage brokers.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the "tone deaf" bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.

"Because of their excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That's not a good thing in America," Kyl told the Huffington Post.

"What executives have done is troubling, but it's equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives," said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL). [Because of Republican opposition, shareholders do NOT set executive compensation-- another reform Democrats tried to institute. Instead management does, sometimes "overseen" by laughably in the pocket boards of directors.]

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he is "one of the chief defenders of Obama on the Republican side" for the president's efforts to reach across the aisle. But, said Inhofe, "as I was listening to him make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?"

Glenn points out that the debate is emblematic of a greater battle the Republican Party is having with reality and with the American people: "That's the Republican Party:  vehemently advocate positions that result in great harm, and then, once political controversy erupts, once the destruction becomes transparent, shamelessly pretend to have opposed the policies in the first place."

As we suggested earlier this morning, the real issue here is that we allow special interests-- primarily corporate money-- to finance our entire political system. The $6 billion in legalized bribes and lobbying Big Finance spent since 1990 to "influence" politicians is at the root of the collapse not just of AIG but of the whole economy. Chris Dodd was the #1 recipient ($281,000) of the $9 million AIG handed out to politicians. When Chris Matthews asked him about it, Dodd had a good-- but ultimately meaningless-- answer: "If I could write the law myself, we’d have public financing of campaigns instead of having to go out and raise the money. But, candidly, in the absence of that, in order to run for office, Democrat and Republicans, you raise money." Leadership would call for reform, not excuses.

Rather than let the Republican obstructionists use the debate over AIG bonuses to play their partisan games, the Democrats called a vote on an up or down-- no amendments-- vote that requires two-thirds to pass. Democrats were wary about the shrill clamor from the far right peanut gallery and from the out of whack Republican Party media dictators. When the vote on the rule came up at noon, all 172 Republicans voted no, 242 Democrats voted for it-- and 8 conservative Democrats, all but 3 reactionary Blue Dogs, joined the GOP. The Democrats voting as Republicans today:

John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)
Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS)
Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL)
Jerry McNerney (D-CA)
Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID)
Harry Mitchell (D-AZ)
Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA)

When the vote on the bill itself came, it passed overwhelmingly, 328-93. Boehner voted no and Cantor (his #2) voted yes. 85 Republicans voted for it, 87 against it; the worst split the party has had in decades, the ones voting against it too scared to oppose Limbaugh and the kooks on the far end of the political spectrum. Nancy Pelosi explains the bill, and why it was needed, on her website.

Among the Republicans (87) and Democrats (6) voting against their constituents and for corporate exploitation of the taxpayers were many of the worst Big Business shills in Congress:

Todd Akin (R-MO)
Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
Gresham Barrett (R-SC)
Melissa Bean (Blue Dog-IL)
Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
Mike Coffman (R-CO)
David Dreier (R-CA)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Peter King (R-NY)
Steve King (R-IA)
Steve LaTourette (R-OH)
Dan Lungren (R-CA)
Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)
Patty McHenry (R-NC)
Buck McKeon (R-CA)
Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID)
Erik Paulsen (R-MN)
Mike Pence (R-IN)
John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Lynn Westermorland (R-GA)
Joe Wilson (R-SC)

Looks like somebody scared Republican rubber stamp Paul Ryan away. Although he's considered one of Big Business' half dozen most acquiescent handmaidens in Congress, he actually found the guts to oppose them-- for the first time ever-- and vote against Boehner's pro-bonus stance.


UPDATE: LARRY KISSELL HAS A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW

Larry was a Blue America candidate last year (and in 2006). He's 100% dedicated to the aspirations and well being of working families. So I was shocked today to see he was one of the six Democrats who voted with Boehner and the other corporately owned Republicans against the bill to take back the bonuses. So I asked what's up. Short version: Larry doesn't want them to keep the bonuses, of course but, like many progressives, he doesn't think this bill will actually be enacted. He worries it is unconstitutional and then the folks who did this will get off without penalty-- particularly all the non-Americans who were given bonuses (with our tax dollars). Larry:

“Tax penalties should be used to go after those who violate tax laws,” Kissell said. “AIG and its executives should be severely penalized, but arbitrary and retroactive manipulation of the tax code is not the right way to do it. Rather than be taxed at 90 percent, AIG executives-- in America and abroad-- should be forced to repay at 100 percent the money they received as part of this bonus package. The American taxpayer is the majority owner of AIG, and we demand a 100 percent refund of these shameful and ridiculous bonuses. That is why I signed on to the bi-partisan Paulsen bill... Passing a 90 percent, retroactive tax sets a dangerous precedent from which no industry, business or person may be safe in the future. Egregious taxation is not the answer to our nation's ills, even those as blatant and shameful as the ones committed by AIG. The department of the Treasury has the responsibility to regulate these matters and they should do so. We must not always turn to tax hikes to solve every problem presented to us in Congress.