Midnight Meme Of The Day!

-by Noah

For yesterday's meme, I threw a glaring prison yard spotlight on the 22 Republican creeping lowlife senators who, led by Mitch McConnell, voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act back in 2013. You can consider today's meme Part 2. It too, reflects the basic attitude of Republicans towards women. It's not just about their legislation ideas. Groping is bad enough but, to them, as evidenced by Trump's own recorded statements, republicans just consider groping and forced kissing to be "foreplay."

You can start with the cretin in today's meme, Maine state representative Lawrence Lockman. As additional evidence, I offer the exact quotes from a few of our most disgusting lawmakers. I'm surprised that a psychotic like Paul Ryan hasn't introduced a bill to make rape legal. It would be so Taliban of him and his party of sociopathic knuckle-dragging cavemen. It would certainly fit the rest of his personality profile.

Here they are. You know there's a lot more where this came from. Some will be familiar to you as being from the lengthy catalog of the GOP's Greatest Hits. Others, not so much, but every bit as grotesque and heinous. I've added editorial comments in parenthesis for each of these sub-human morons. And, yes, there are bad Democrats, but this is about overwhelming percentages and an attitude that serves as a qualification of party membership every bit as much as being a racist does.

1. Clayton Williams (R-TX) - Rape is kinda like the weather. If it's inevitable, relax and enjoy it. (Texas. Say no more.)

2. Todd Akin (R-MO) - If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down. (Oh, the mysteries of them female bodies!)

3. Rick Santorum (R-PA) - Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation. (It's bad enough that Santorum dresses like the neighborhood perv, but, apparently, he wants credit for admitting that rape is bad.)

4. Richard Mourdock (R-IN) - Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, it is something that God intended to happen. (Wow, that some god these republican talibanistas have!)

5. Jodie Laubenberg (R-TX) - In the emergency room, they have what's called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out. (Saving the "best" for last. This one comes from a woman, but, like Clayton Williams, she is from Texas. Do you think she'd feel the same way if, one night, her fellow Texan offered her a ride home and stopped the car on a dark side street and raped her?)

Like I always say, context is everything. Given the above quotations from such republican luminaries as these, is it any wonder that something like a Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) can just laugh at the press about pedophilia when they ask about his support for Roy Moore? For all we know, rape of an underaged girl is the best rape of all, in the mind of a Republican.

Can the GOP learn that pretending to be inclusive isn't the same thing as being inclusive?

The result of this deception is very strange to tell,
for when I fool the people I fear, I fool myself as well. . . .
Make believe you're brave, and the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave as you make believe you are.

--  "I Whistle a Happy Tune," from The King and I

"The spectacle of the Republicans, like teenagers longing to be invited to the prom, floundering about in search of more popularity with American voters, would be comical if it didn’t present the sad picture of a once great and proud party—the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower—working its way into near irrelevance."

-- Elizabeth Drew, in "Are the Republicans Beyond
Saving?," in the March 21 NYRB

"“Republicans like [Alaska Rep. Don Young] will soon be extinct, and that's a good thing for the GOP. But in the meantime, when they make these remarks, it makes it harder for those of us who are trying to grow the base of our party."

-- GOP consultant John Weaver ("who has worked for moderate Republicans in recent years") in The Fix's "Don Young and the Archie Bunker Problem"

by Ken

Sorry about the performance of "I Whistle a Happy Tune," but after sampling 20 or 25 "real" performances on YouTube, I was kind of relieved to settle for this one. (Do the people who post these clips really not know how wretched they are?)

You see, we're going to be talking tonight about pretending to be things you aren't. It's a strategy being pressed on 2013 Republicans by consultants as well as voices within the party, and I'm getting the weird feeling that they don't see the difference between pretending to be something and being it. And I couldn't help thinking of Anna in The King and I, and the lesson she tries to teach her son Louis at the top of the show. But the point here, surely (she makes it pretty explicitly), is that in the act of pretending to be brave, you may actually wind up being brave.

I'm not as optimistic about the strategy being pressed on depressed R's.

"Bemused" is what I've been, watching from the sidelines as those R's -- coming as close as they're apparently capable of coming to self-reflection -- at least consider the possibility that their 2012 electoral disaster was self-inflicted, that Republicans had come to be viewed by alamring numbers of U.S. voters as a party of exclusion, as a party whose only mission is to defend the interests of the 1%.

I had occasion to wonder the other day about the claim of some of these self-accusing elements in the party that they need to hearken back to the days of their old "big tent." The Republicans had a big tent? When was this? Even when Richard Nixon was fashioning the new Republican Party by adding Southern racists to the seething Silent Majority of Americans sick to death of challenges to orthodoxy and the status quo, it was a gathering of people housed in a number of modest-size tents coexisting on the same campground because they were all so mad at all those damn commies and hippies and assorted other riffraff out there.

The only difference, really, it seems to me, is that the tents have gotten even smaller. But the purpose of the little tents was always to exclude the people who weren't inside them, even if for strategic purposes they voted in multi-tent unison on a lot of issues, especially when manipulated with the finesse of a Nixon or a Ronald Reagan or even a George W. Bush for as long "Chimpy the Prez" could hold his coaltion of excluders together.

A COALITION OF EXCLUDERS ISN'T THE
EASIEST THING TO HOLD TOGETHER

Rather obviously, you have to wonder how long it's going to be before they start excluding one another. Already, for example, there's a deep fissure between right-wing excluders who worry that they've been somehow perceived as too exclusionary and right-wing excluders who believe that 2012 happened because they weren't exclusionary enough.

I'll leave that to them to slug out. And among many considerations of the implications for Republicans if they don't come to grips with their exclusionary tendencies, I can recommend Elizabeth Drew's "Are the Republicans Beyond Saving?" in the March 21 NYRB, whose opening I quote atop this post. I just want to register a modest note of bemusement about this notion that the R's' problem is being perceived as too exclusionary. As too hating of (take your pick) women, immigrants, Hispanic voters, LGBT voters, etc.

What bemuses me is this apparent notion that the problem is perception. I look at it differently. If you get all huffy about being unloved because mean people keep saying you're bigoted, changing the perception may required that you be less bigoted.

Which brings me to the other piece from which I quoted atop this post, the post "Don Young and the Archie Bunker Problem" by Aaron Blake and Juliet Eilperin today on washingtonpost.com's "The Fix." It begins:

Less than two weeks after the Republican National Committee unveiled its 2012 election autopsy an emphasis on broadening the party's tent, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) used an ethnic slur for Latinos in a radio interview Thursday. Young's comments served as the latest wake-up call for Republicans in their nascent effort to woo a more diverse cross-section of America.

The message: whatever effort they make toward modernizing their brand, there will always be a few Archie Bunkers out there -- people, like the lead character in the 70's sitcom "All in the Family," who are unconcerned with or unwilling to moderate their tone. And these days more than in the past, their offhand remarks can derail the most carefully orchestrated PR campaign.

Young, 79, set off a fresh round of recriminations and hand-wringing among Republican leaders while talking about the people his father employed on his California ranch years ago.

"We used to hire 50 or 60 wetbacks and -- to pick tomatoes," Young said in the interview with KRBD. "You know, it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It's all done by machine."

Oops!!! Or should I say: Whoops!!!

Now Don Young is an old DWT fave, not so much because he's an excluder and hater as because he's a crook, a man who seems capable of sizing up any situation that comes to his attention from the standpoint "What's in it for me?" (As a result of which, he tends to find himself facing far more than even the normal congressional share of big-league "What's in it for me?" opportunities.)

A constant thread in Aaron Blake and Juliet Eilperin's "Fix" piece is that R's are unjustly associated with louts like Don Young, or singled out for unfair heightened scrutiny, or subjected to a double standard -- the suggestion being that a Democrat could get away with reminiscing about "wetbacks." It seems to me, though, that on the contrary R's get away with far more than they're gotcha-ed for.

Various and sundry Republicans are quoted to the effect that Don Young isn't their guy, and they're all being tarnished by the same brush. And in the particular case of immigration, it's true that some Republicans are less exclusing than "Wetback Don." However, most of the Rs who are "enlightened" on immigration merely have a more "enlightened" view of the importance to the U.S. economy of all that cheap labor, which comes doubly cheap because so many of the immigrant workers -- directly contrary to the myth of being benefits sponges -- don't claim any benefits at all despite all the taxes they pay.

THE OCCASIONAL GOP "INCLUDERS"
ARE APT TO BE SERIAL "EXCLUDERS"

In addition, Republicans who happen to be "includers" with respect to one unfavored group tend to be extra-exclusive with many of the others. So those who may hold arguably inclusive views with regard to, say, immigration, or LGBT equality, are apt to be viral excluders when it comes to, say, the "47%" of so-called "takers not makers." It's a weird world indeed where cynical paper-pushers who produce primarily "deals" that don't produce anything except big profits for themselves and their cronies are considered "makers" while people who do the actual work in our society are dismissed as "takers."

A favorite GOP-apologist theme, for example, is that they're victimized as the perpetrators of a "so-called" War on Women. But again, the best way to answer such objections is to stop waging war on women. During the 2012 campaign, for example, when R's found themselves stuck with the obscenely frothing abortion imbecilities of Senate nominees Todd Akin (Missouri) and Richard Mourdock (Indiana), Howie and I pointed out frequently that there was no difference whatsoever between their beliefs about abortion and the law and those of right-wing darling Paul Ryan. But Ryan, unlike the neanderthal Akin and Mourdock, knows how to put a smiley face on his ignorance and savagery.

If Akin or Mourdock were to try whistling a happy tune, the effect would be creepy. (I think it's important, thought, that we not ignore their pre-2012 electoral successes. They were every bit as creepy before, just not as indiscreet, or perhaps more important, no so brightly spotlit when they were being creepy.) To me, Paul Ryan and the less visibly crackpotty R's are even creepier when they pretend to be wise or just or courageous.

#

Ohio Republican Steve LaTourette Admits The GOP Is Losing The War Against Women

Fox News Sunday hosted former Republican Congressman Steve LaTourette yesterday. He's a mainstream conservative who never appreciated the extremism of the Tea Party or the Southern racists who have managed to take over the GOP in recent decades. He warned his brethren, many of whom had just seen Republicans arguing at CPAC whether or not slavery had been a good thing (for the slaves) that "If we ever want to be a national party, then we have to look like America. Today we look like a bunch of white guys below the Mason-Dixon line." The Republican he singled out for infamy, though, only looks and sounds like a yahoo from below the Mason-Dixon line. Technically speaking Indiana Treasurer and failed Senate candidate Richard Mourdock is from above the Mason-Dixon line (even though Vanderburgh County, his political base and where he served on the Board of Commissioners is the southernmost tip of Indiana. Interestingly, although Romney took the county 39,504 (54%) to 31,659 (44%), Mourdock lost his home county to ConservaDem Joe Donnelly 35,369 (50%) to 32,870 (46%). Mourdock, who was actually born in Ohio, seems to have disgusted LaTourette.

"Mr. Mourdock, for instance, I mean... we're supposed to wonder why we don't have the women's vote in this country when we have a candidate suggesting that a child born as a result of rape is a gift from God? I'm not wondering why we don't have more women voting for Republicans."

Fox faux-Democrat Pat Caddell-- who has been a Republican in all but name since the 1980s-- spoke at CPAC and blamed the Republican Party's troubles on "racketeering" Republican consultants. "I blame the donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers... It's time to stop being marks. It's time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get real," he told the sheeple at a panel discussion menacingly entitled "Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?" Caddell, who could have easily made an identical critique of the Beltway Democrats, told the CPAC mob that "When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at the end of the campaign for the 'fantastic' get-out-the-vote program... some of this borders on RICO violations. It's all self dealing going on. I think it works on the RICO thing. They’re in the business of lining their pockets... The Republican Party, is in the grips of what I call the CLEC-- the consultant, lobbyist, and establishment complex."

Exactly the same as in the Democratic Party-- as Caddell well knows: "Just follow the money. It’s all there in the newspaper. The way it works is this-- ever since we centralized politics in Washington, the House campaign committee and the Senate campaign committee, they decide who they think should run. You hire these people on the accredited list otherwise we won't give you money. You hire my friend or else... These people are doing business for themselves. They are a part of the Washington establishment. These people don’t want to have change." He predicted that unless the GOP becomes even more of an anti-establishment, anti-Washington, teabagger/secessionist party it will become extinct, like the Whigs did. These conservatives aren't wrong to chastise the consultant class-- but both parties are equally scammed and burdened by them. What the conservatives are desperate to avoid is looking at the hated policies they're wed to that defines them and that really is turning them into the Whigs. How do you think a message like this by wildly popular freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren resonates with women trying to hold their households together the same week that every single Republican in the House voted against raising the minimum wage?

The Republican Party: Come For The Misogyny. Stay For The Racism!

-by Noah

First, let's get one thing straight. If you are a Republican and you object to me posting this fine piece by comedian Andy Borowitz, why don't you take some time off from emailing each other pictures that feature the trifecta of nooses, watermelons, and the President Of The United States, and, while you're at it, stop your voter intimidation efforts and stop tearing up voter registration forms, and, also, why don't you stop your stark-raving mad parroting of the insanity of FOX, CNN, Glenn Beck and the rest of their ilk for just 2 minutes out of your busy hate-filled paranoid day. Then, put on your hoods and sheets, and go out and light up your fires of crosses, books, and Sponge Bob Square Pants DVDs, and chant to your mindless content about legitimate rape, forcible rape, permissible rape or whatever you call it this week. It's still a free country. You can also whine about secret Muslims under your beds and socialists lurking around every corner.

Or, if you don't like the reality of the big bad outside world that threatens every damn second to force you to grow the F up for a moment or two, you can just stay home and yell at your empty chairs for all I care. Either way, maybe just maybe, you will come to your grand moment of enlightenment whereupon, by your Republican "reasoning," you will realize that Borowitz wrote this and I posted it for the simple reason that God intended us to do it!

How far into 2013 will we get before we hear of some twisted, sicko perp offering "God intended me to do it" as a defense"? Maybe it will be Rep. Issa himself. Maybe it'll be a defeated, cracked up Mittens trying to explain his tax subterfuge once it is finally exposed, but, alas, probably not. It just isn't a just world!

With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, there is a deep divide among Republican leaders over whether to emphasize misogyny or racism as the campaign’s closing theme.

In one camp is the Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who says that his view that God is sometimes O.K. with rape is “gaining real traction with a key demographic: men who don’t like women very much.”

“I can’t tell you how many misogynists have come up to me at my rallies and said, ‘Thank you for saying what you said',” he told reporters today. “I think they’re like, finally, someone’s taking a more nuanced position on rape.”

But in the other camp is the former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, who worries that the Republican Party’s emphasis on misogyny is threatening to drown out its “winning message of racism.”

“I understand the appeal of Mourdock’s anti-woman theme, but I worry that it’s going to overshadow our core value of racism, which is still our best shot at winning this thing,” he said. “In politics, you’ve got to dance with the one who brung you.”

Hoping to heal a possible rift with so little time left until Election Day, the R.N.C. chairman Reince Priebus said today that there is room for both views in today’s Republican Party: “Our ‘big tent’ message to voters should be this: come for the misogyny, stay for the racism.”

Thank you Andy Borowitz! Your column is a "Gift From God"!

Because Just One Todd Akin In The Senate GOP Circus Isn't Enough?

The Republican War Against Women is gearing up in the final thrust towards November. Let me just say from the outset that Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is the worst incumbent Senate Democrat running for reelection and that Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN) is easily the worst House Democrat hoping to get into the Senate. Both vote with the Republicans on crucial issues as a matter of course. Both are cowardly, craven, corporate oriented... the worst the Democratic Party has to offer. There's no circumstance I would vote for either, regardless of how horrible their opponent was. And in both cases, their opponent is vile and contemptible beyond anything currently in the Senate, one of the most vile and contemptible institutions in America.

Let's not go over the "legitimate rape" controversy that swirled around Akin last month, or the arrest record that showed him involved with an anti-woman terrorist group that physically blocked women's health clinics. The newest news is in Indiana, coincidentally the state where the KKK once grew to even more prominence and power than it did in any state in the South. Like Akin, Richard Mourdock was favored to win a Senate seat in November. Like Akin, his psychotic hatred for women has bubbled over in such a way that he may actually propel and nearly equally reactionary Democrat into the Senate. Mourdock, a far, far right radical, who swamped mainstream conservative Richard Lugar, in the GOP primary, told a debate audience Tuesday that although he opposes rape per se, he also opposes women being allowed to abort a fetus if she is raped because the resulting child is "something God intended." Let that sink in for a minute. Or watch him say it in the video above and contemplate the ramifications of something like this in the already dysfunctional Senate.

Romney put out a tepid statement of disagreement: "Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," but has-- so far-- refused to withdraw his endorsement of Mourdock the way he withdrew his endorsement of Akin. Former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (R-NJ) says Romney has to unendorse Mourdock or at least get him to stop running the endorsement ad. "Mourdock's comments damage all Republicans and especially Romney as the fight for the women's vote intensifies. This could be a defining moment for Romney and he should immediately denounce both Mourdock and the comment." The NRSC has also made it clear that they're sticking with Mourdock, although they had followed Romney into an anti-Akin posture. Patty Murray, head of the DSCC wasn't letting the GOP get off the hook so easily. "While Mitt Romney is rightly distancing himself from Richard Mourdock today, his ad endorsing Mourdock's extreme candidacy continues to air in Indiana. If Mitt Romney is serious about repudiating these heinous views on rape, he will take down this ad immediately. National Republicans cannot paper over Richard Mourdock's heinous views on rape. Enough is enough. The Republican Party needs to stop the coddling and take a stand against the horribly offensive and dangerous views of the Tea Party and their extreme candidates."

It's ironic that it may be Choice that sinks the polarizing extremist Mourdock (and the GOP's hopes of taking over the Senate)-- since Donnelly is a fanatic anti-Chopice freak himself and has been a dependable vote against Choice for the entire time he was in the House. His ProgressivePunch score on Family Planning issues over his entire congressional career is 14.29, one of the lowest of the Democrats and lower than several Republicans. After the debate, Donnelly realized he had a winning issue with which to clobber Mourdock and told reporters, "I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance. The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen-- ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."

And what about anti-Choice fanatic Paul Ryan, who has partnered with Akin on several misogynistic bills and has campaigned with Mourdock? Ryan, who has himself referred to rape as "a method of conception," has been consistently against exceptions for rape and incest. Rob Zerban, the progressive running against Ryan for Congress, issued a statement castigating Ryan for his anti-Choice mania. “Of course, Paul Ryan will keep backing away from the dark corners of his party from where these disturbing comments about rape and violence against women are emanating. But Ryan can't back off their shared anti-women worldview. Ryan himself has called rape just another 'method of conception,' and co-authored the infamous Todd Akin bill to redefine rape. Ryan can no longer duck responsibility for his extreme views against women's most basic rights.”

If I lived in Indiana or Missouri I wouldn't vote for Senate-- and I'd try to think of a way of moving. And I'd think about helping the rest of the country stop Paul Ryan.

Primary Season Ends For Another Cycle

Christine O'Donnell must be missing student loans payments or mortgage payments again. She's threatening the Republican Party that she may run for the U.S. Senate again. Her successful primary challenge to popular mainstream Rep. Mike Castle in 2010 in universally thought to be the reason the GOP doesn't hold the Delaware Senate seat occupied by Chris Coons now. “I think I owe that to my supporters, to at least consider a run,” O’Donnell said in an interview last week. “People sacrificed. Not only came out of their comfort zone-- sacrificed to work hard in order to win the primary. And I think that I owe it to them to give it every consideration.” (She has also said she is available for a paying gig in a Romney Administration if he wins the November election.)

If Democrats are cheering, mainstream Republicans must be rolling their eyes at the thought. Primaries by right-wing extremists like O'Donnell have hurt the GOP in general elections, not so much in deep red states where the brain-dead citizens would vote for a lump of shit labeled "Republican"-- think Utah or Texas-- but in normal states. This primary cycle, for example, saw 15 congressional incumbents defeated-- 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats, although, to be fair, one of the Republicans, Bob Turner, was gerrymandered out of his district and then lost the GOP Senate primary.

All but 2 of the Democratic losses were incumbent vs incumbent matches-- Jason Altmire lost to Mark Critz in western Pennsylvania. Both are extremely reactionary right-wing Democrats who commonly vote with the GOP. In New Jersey moderate Steve Rothman lost to more progressive Bill Pascrell. In Ohio, quirky economic progressive/social conservative Marcy Kaptur beat progressive icon Dennis Kucinich, in a district that was drawn to predict those results. In Michigan under-funded progressive Hansen Clarke was beaten by ConservaDem Gary Peters and St. Louis political fixture Russ Carnahan, a moderate, was beaten by the more progressive William Lacy Clay in a 63% to 34% landslide. In the two districts where there were actual non-incumbent challengers, corrupt Blue Dog Tim Holden was beaten by a more progressive Matt Cartwright, 57-43%, a stunning and rare upset. A few weeks later a similar primary battle in El Paso resulted in longtime Establishment Democrat Silvestre Reyes going down to defeat at the hands of popular young reformer, Beto O'Rourke, 50.5 to 44.4%. (Beto, pictured on the right, will be the Blue America live guest at Crooks and Liars tomorrow at 11am (PT, noon El Paso time.)

In Republicanville, there were 3 incumbent vs incumbent races. Florida Establishment shill John Mica swamped teabagger Sandy Adams, widely considered the stupidest Member of Congress (yes, dumber that Gohmert). He swamped her financially, spending $1,214,486 to her $451,281, and beat her 60-40%. The Republican Machine wiped out an annoying teabagger without much effort. In Illinois, the GOP Machine got behind freshman zombie Adam Kinzinger and helped him beat Don Manzullo, 56-44%, even though the redrawn 16th CD included 44% of Manzullo's constituents and 31% of Kinzinger's. Kinzinger spent $1,548,515 on the primary and Manzullo spent $1,257,113 but outside groups orchestrated, possibly illegally, by Eric Cantor and Aaron Schock (widely rumored to have a gay crush on Kinzinger) spent a great deal of money to defeat Manzullo. The third incumbent vs incumbent race pitted Dan Quayle's lunkhead son, Ben, a leadership lackey, against David Schweikert. Ben Quayle was never popular in the Arizona district and was remembered for having been an on-line pornographer (DirtyScottsdale.com/Brock Landers) before narrowly winning a wild primary against 10 other Republicans (outspending all his rivals combined). This year Schweikert spent $1,289,381 and Quayle spent $1,537,407. An Adelson-funded superPAC, Friends of the Majority, spent another $1,120,000 in negative ads against Schweikert. But Arizona voters were tired-- after just one term-- of being embarrassed by the clownish Quayle and he went down 53-47%.

Far more interesting were the 4 races where non-incumbents beat incumbents. The headliner, of course, was far right extremist Richard Mourdock beating Indiana GOP icon Richard Lugar with a stunning 60% of the vote. Lugar was viewed (disapprovingly) as a mainstream conservative when the GOP primary voters wanted someone more like... Christine O'Donnell. Mourdock spent $3,162,191 on the primary and Lugar spent $8,301,994. But outside spending, mostly from extremist groups, was tilted in Mourdock's favor. Club For Growth spent $947,991 in negative ads against Lugar and $517,810 in favor of Mourdock. The Koch brothers' FreedomWorks spent $341,503 against Lugar and another $330,129 in favor of Mourdock. Similarly the NRA spent over a quarter million dollars tearing down Lugar and approximately $638,000 bolstering Mourdock.

In the Tulsa, OK-area and Jacksonville, FL-area House races, unknown challengers came from nowhere to beat, respectively, John Sullivan and Cliff Stearns. Jim Bridenstine beat Sullivan, an extremist and drug addict, 54-46%. Sullivan spent $1,113,091 on the primary and Bridenstine spent $293,890. The PACs from opthamologists and anesthesiologists, who had felt dissed by Sullivan, spent around $100,000 against him and seem to have made the difference in the race. And in the case of the never-popular Mean Jean Schmidt, it was podiatrists who did her in. In fact, a podiatrist, Brad Wenstrup, beat her 49-43%, in a district east of Cincinnati. Wenstrup sent $357,260 and Mean Jean spent $657,489. The good government group, Campaign for Primary Accountability, spent $132,022 against Schmidt. (It's worth noting that they also spent $240,000 against Reyes, $130,875 against Hoden and $224,529 (some of it funneled by Cantor and Schock) against Manzullo.

Primary season is over and it's time to get serious about November. Normally this would be a time when we could safely say that there isn't a single congressional race anywhere in America where the GOP nominated someone better than the Democrats. That may not be the case this year. We're still investigating, but Republican rebel and libertarian may well turn out to be a less odious choice for voters than anti-Choice fanatic Steve Pestka in the Grand Rapids/Battle Creek area of south-central Michigan. We'll get back to you on that one.

In Case You Missed It... Richard Mourdock Makes His Supreme Court Announcements

I get up between 4 and 5 every morning to start blogging. So I never see Colbert in real time anymore. My pal Jeff told me I had to see this routine though and... he was right. I don't know how many DWT readers go to sleep by 10 like I do but I figure there must be someone besides me who missed this. Keep in mid, of course, that we're strictly neutral on the Indiana Senate race, which pits the worst Republican anywhere against the worst Democrat anywhere. There's nothing that would ever make me vote for Blue Dog Joe Donnelly, an anti-Choice, anti-gay reactionary who votes with the Republicans far more frequently than he does with the Democrats. In fact, this session, Donnelly's 25.57% ProgressivePunch crucial roll call voting score is worse than that of 5 Republicans! If I lived in Indiana I'd probably write in someone... even the independents running for Senate there are out of their minds.

Would I vote for an 80-year-old U.S. Senate candidate? I don't think so. (Not without grave reservations, anyway)

We know that Senator Dick isn't going to get his six more years. My question is, should he even have asked for them?

by Ken

I understand the conventional wisdom about Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar's Republican primary defeat Tuesday by Teabagging thug Richard Mourdock, until recently a classically unelectable "joke" candidate in his home state. Even though I find it hard not to still think of Dick Lugar as Richard Nixon's favorite mayor, when he was mayor of Indianapolis, I understand that he is what passes today for a Republican "moderate." Heck, even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says so.

As CNN expresses that conventional wisdom, "Lugar's loss further polarizes U.S. Senate." And I'm not here to challenge this wisdom. I even have enough curiosity about the Indiana situation to have read Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake's Tuesday-morning washingtonpost.com "Fix" blogpost, "Dick Lugar is going to lose. Did he have to?" (If I may encapsule the verdict: If he had recognized the Teabag peril and acted early on to crush it, and if he had been willing to do absolutely whatever it took to hold onto his seat, he might have been able to -- leaving open the question of whether either of these conditions applied in the real world.)

Of course we'll never know whether Senator Dick (a) could have obliterated the Teabag challenge with prompt action, or (b) whether he could have turned himself into a sufficiently Teabag-preempting candidate to withstand the challenge -- the indications from his own statements are that that he wasn't prepared to present himself as a frothing extremist lunatic. My own hunch is that he wasn't as clueless about the political shape the race would take as is generally being assumed, that he wanted a seventh Senate term provided he could secure it on the same terms he had the previous six.

But on the whole, no, for once I'm not here to quarrel with the conventional wisdom. I just want to throw something out.

On April 4, Lugar turned 80. In Tuesday's primary, he was presenting himself for reelection to another six-year term in the Senate. Is it possible that this was a factor? I can't imagine that this hasn't been discussed. I just don't happen to have encountered any serious discussion of it. Of course, I wasn't really paying that close attention. Still, I confess that I'm surprised.

I realize I will be thought of as "ageist" for daring to suggest that the senator's age should perhaps have disqualified him from that elusive seventh term. So let me take this into the realm of the hypothetical. Is it ageist to ask: Would you vote to give a hypothetical 80-year-old candidate a six-year Senate term? Even this is arguably too presumptuous, so let me ask instead: Would I vote to give a hypothetical 80-year-old candidate a six-year Senate term? And the answer, I think, is I don't think so -- quite possibly not even if he or she was my all-time favorite pol.

Now I'm assuming that our hypothetical 80-year-old candidate is in manageable physical condition and still-alert mental condition. (At least for now.) Otherwise what is there to talk about? And I certainly don't assume that he won't be able to serve out a six-year term, still in manageable physical and alert mental condition. There are certainly many such 86-year-olds dwelling among us.

Not that many, though. And I would like to think that even our hypothetical candidate would be realistic and honest enough to recognize that in making ongoing commitments, it's prudent to be realistic and honest in how far ahead he or she projects. I am certainly not proposing that we automatically declare anyone unfit for further service to the public weal based on reaching a particular age. We already have too many mandatory retirement ages in place in our society which don't take into account the actual condition of the mandated retiree.

The stark reality is that we all age differently. Goodness knows, I cheered Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on for as long as he felt competent to serve, trusting that he would know when his time came. And I'm delighted to see that he still seems to have a fair amount of juice left in him now that he's retired. That's a lot of responsibility to put on an individual, to know when it's time to hang 'em up, and I suppose we have all those mandatory retirement ages because by and large we don't trust workers to know when it's time.

I don't think there's any question that there are all sorts of commissions, boards, and what-all on which Senator Dick would have been welcomed and where he could have made a real contribution, for as long as he cared to and was able to. But again, an 80-year-old Senate candidate? I would have to know way more about the voters of Indiana to know whether this played any significant part in their thinking. But I think it probably would in mine.

As it happens, my own congressman, Charlie Rangel, is in sort of this situation. Not identical, mind you, but similar. Congressman Charlie is almost two years older than Senator Dick, and as I was writing last month, something in him seems just unwilling to let go. But in his case, at least he's only presenting himself to the voters in his congressional district for a two-year term.

I don't know. I'm just asking.


A REAL-WORLD HYPOTHETICAL POSTSCRIPT:
MIGHT I HAVE VOTED FOR SENATOR DICK?

Yes, of course, I myself might have voted for 80-year-old Senator Dick on Tuesday if I was an Indiana Rerpublican and if I was faced with the choice between him and the Teabagger assclown. But that's a couple of more hypotheticals than I'm comfortable hypothesizing.

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DC Dems Think They Have A Way To Win In Indiana Now-- Who Is Dick Mourdock? And Who Is Joe Donnelly?

The extreme right-wing victor in Tuesday's Republican primary in Indiana, Dick Mourdock, was interviewed the following morning by Chuck Todd on MSNBC. “I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view." That point of view isn't out of step with the standard, garden variety Republican line and it's certainly the operating principle by which Miss McConnell and his cronies have obstructed virtually everything Obama and the Democrats have tried to do in the past three years. Making the government into a farce plays into their thesis that government is bad and should be shrunk, made impotent and drowned in a bathtub. They don't want government having the ability to protect ordinary people from the deprecations of financial and ecological predators and other Republican Party financiers. The last votes in Indiana hadn't been counted when the Democratic Party-- many of whom take the same bribes from the same predatory special interests-- wasn't already trying to capitalize on Mourdock's extremism. This is a letter Guy Cecil, Executive Director of the DSCC sent out immediately:

Meet the next Ken Buck-- Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock.

By defeating Dick Lugar and nominating Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party has done it again, handing another strong pick-up opportunity to Democrats.

Like Ken Buck, Richard Mourdock is another right wing extremist who is too far out of the mainstream for independent voters.

This is what Senator Lugar had to say about Richard Mourdock last night:

He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.  In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party.  His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook.  He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

Today there are tens of thousands of disillusioned Hoosiers who have supported Dick Lugar their entire voting lives and are likely dismayed by the polarizing, extreme forces that defeated him. While Richard Mourdock is poorly positioned to appeal to these voters, Joe Donnelly is exactly the kind of reasonable, honest, job-focused, centrist these voters have always supported.

In 2010, I served as Chief of Staff to Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, and saw firsthand how Ken Buck’s extremist ideology was rejected by independent voters after his divisive GOP primary. Buck spent weeks trying to untie himself from his previous statements and positions, but the voters in Colorado knew better -- and so will the voters of Indiana.

Like Buck, Mourdock already possess a long rap sheet of misstatements and Tea Party positions that will offend independent voters. 

·         Mourdock spent $2 million of taxpayer money on a lawsuit that could have endangered 124,000 Indiana jobs-- including 4,000 high paying jobs in Kokomo, Indiana-- by killing the Chrysler’s bankruptcy restructuring. Mourdock called the lawsuit his “Rosa Parks moment." Mourdock’s Tea Party opposition to the entire auto industry rescue could have cost the state 140,000 jobs in total.

·         In his defense, Mourdock says, “I didn't take a pledge that I would support every job in Indiana under whatever means it takes to do it.”

·         Mourdock says that “I think there needs to be more partisanship” in Washington.

·         Mourdock has questioned the constitutionality of Social Security and Medicare. 

We’ve seen this movie before, but you don't have to take my word for it. Even Senator Lugar recognizes that Mourdock is a flawed candidate with extreme views, specifically saying “Democrats understand Joe Donnelly will beat Richard Mourdock.” Or, as one Lugar supporter said in an ad warning seniors about Mourdock’s position on Social Security – one that calls for $2,500 cuts in annual benefits-- “Heaven help us-- ‘cause Mourdock won’t.” 



Meanwhile, Joe Donnelly has always had broad appeal with independents. Donnelly was reelected in a Republican-leaning district in 2010 even though the National Republican Congressional Committee and their Republican allies spent more than $2 million trying to defeat him. In fact, Donnelly survived the Republican wave last cycle despite being an original member of the NRCC’s 2010 target list. 

POLLING TODAY: Polling shows that Donnelly starts off with a six point lead against Tea Partier Mourdock.

Donnelly leads Mourdock, 34 to 28. While both candidates still have low name ID, Donnelly already has significant leads with important swing voting blocs that make up the undecided vote, including women, seniors and independents.
 
·         Donnelly leads by 10 among women

·         Donnelly leads by 7 among seniors

·         Donnelly leads by 8 among independents

Last night’s results make Indiana a prime pick up opportunity for Democrats.  There are a lot of longtime Lugar supporters waking up this morning and looking for a mainstream moderate. Richard Mourdock’s ideological extremism doesn't fit the bill. Joe Donnelly does.

If you want to know more about who Mourdock is, the Washington Post had a revelatory article about his freaky career yesterday. But right now I want to do something that Guy Cecil and other DC Democrats don't want anyone to do-- look at just who Joe Donnelly is. We've covered him here at DWT plenty. I wonder if he'll use this ad again this year; it wouldn't surprise me.



But it's not just a matter of throwing progressives-- or even Obama-- under the bus to curry favor with the lizard brains. He practically morphed into a Republican even though he was in a pretty blue district. On crucial roll calls since he was elected to Congress, his ProgressivePunch score is a dismal 32.26%. Yes the DSCC engineered a sneaky, primary-free coup so that someone who has voted against progressive ideas 67.74% of the time would get the Senate nomination. His voting score since he decided to run for Senate, by the way, has only gotten worse-- much worse. This year that score sunk to 25.80. By way of comparison, Ron Paul (R-TX) and Walter Jones (R-NC) vote with the Democrats far more often than Donnelly. Paul's score is 35.60 and Jones' is 37.01. Donnelly is down at the bottom of the Blue Dog pack with reactionary Confederates like John Barrow (GA), Mike Ross (AR) and Dan Boren (OK). He's 100% anti-Choice, anti-gay and votes for Big Business interests over the interests of ordinary working families. He was one of the most enthusiastic of the 64 Democratic supporters of the Stupak Amendment, restricting women's choice, voted to defund Planned Parenthood all 3 times the GOP tried to do that, and was one of only 17 viciously homophobic Democrats to join the Republicans in voting against including the LGBT community in Hate Crimes protection. And this wasn't an anomaly of his part. When Patrick Murphy's amendment came up to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell only 26 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP against it-- and one of 'em was Joe Donnelly. Only 4 "Democrats" voted both against the DISCLOSE Act and for the Republican effort to end voluntary public funding for presidential elections. One of those 4, of course, was Donnelly.

This year Eric Cantor and John Boehner have come to depend on Donnelly as someone they know they can always count on to allow them to proclaim to the world that their unhinged right-wing drivel has "bi-partisan" support. All this in a district that Obama won with 54% (the same percentage that Donnelly got when he defeated incumbent imbecile Chris Chocola in 2006). Two years later Donnelly was reelected with 67% and won every single county in the district, even the reddest of them! By 2010 Democrats and left-leaning independents were sick of him-- and showed their displeasure by staying away from the polls on election day. He barely eked out a miserable 48-47% win. He held onto 91,330 voters, down by about half from 2008, while Jackie Walorski, his GOP opponent, took 88,787, more than the Republican candidate against Donnelly did in 2008. And on the county level, the worm had turned. For example, Donnelly's 53% win in red-leaning Carroll County in 2008 turned into a staggering loss (31%) 2 years later. And he spent double the money Walorski did. When the DSCC started maneuvering to get Donnelly his primary-free ride to the Senate nomination, I mentioned that it was "absolutely perverse for the DSCC to even consider recruiting a slouch like Donnelly who will do nothing but confuse voters about which party stands with working families and which party stands with Big Business. In fact just last week, the GOP brought up 3 bills rewarding Big Oil-- and Donnelly was one of the few Democrats to vote with the Republicans all three times. He was also one of the few Democrats who ran TV ads attacking Nancy Pelosi and Democratic energy and immigration policies in last year's midterms. If you think Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin and Blanche Lincoln are good Democrats, you'll love Joe Donnelly in the U.S. Senate as well." And that was even before he helped force Dick Lugar into backing away from his support of the DREAM Act. Expect hysteria type solicitations from the DSCC that the existence of the universe depends of you contributing to Joe Donnelly's campaign. Let the special interests he serves pay for his campaign. This is one Senate page that Joe Donnelly will never-- not in a billion years-- be part of.

UPDATE: It Starts

The DSCC just sent me a donor letter signed by Big Oil corporate shill Mark Begich, the horribly disappointing Alaska senator. It went to everyone who ever donated to Begich, a mistake I made when he first ran. "I'm a strong supporter of Democrat Joe Donnelly in the Indiana Senate race," he burbled. "He's a hard worker and an effective Congressman-- and he's going to be the kind of Senator I can work with to get the country back on track. In the House, Joe has been a common sense voice for progress. He's shown that he knows how to get things done, and we need more of that in the U.S. Senate-- not more destructive Tea Party obstructionism. Joe Donnelly isn't just the best choice for Indiana. His victory in November will be good for America and good for Alaska."

What's Behind The Chrysler Deal Hold Up? Ever Hear Of Far Right Loon Richard Mourdock?

Richard Mourdock (R-IN), batshit crazy

Last time we caught up with Gary Peters (D-MI) he was trying to help his congressional colleagues understand that the excuse for paying out millions and millions of dollars in bonuses to failed corporate executives-- the sanctity of contracts-- never seem to apply when anyone is talking about the employment contracts regular working Americans have... like the auto workers, for example. But no sooner did that die down-- corrupt members of the Senate moving the protect their corporate paymasters-- when Gary took on General Motors in a way that I would have thought the Obama Administration would have-- demanding that they do not take American taxpayer bailout money and build cars in China.

You see, that was General Motors plan and they announced they were going to build a new subcompact car in China and re-import it here. Addressing GM management, Gary was very clear. “I am extremely concerned with the affect this plan will have here in Michigan. Our state has been hit hard enough already and we cannot afford to be disproportionately impacted by GM job losses. The purpose of providing General Motors taxpayer funded loans was not just to keep GM in business, but to preserve American jobs and bolster the U.S. economy.  We all know that GM must make cutbacks, but preserving as many American jobs as possible must be the primary goal of all restructuring efforts.” And GM paid attention, scrapping their plans to build the cars at a Chinese factory and promising to build them here in the U.S.

That hardly gave Oakland County's most proactive Representative ever a chance to relax. Suddenly the Chrysler deal started to unravel-- and Chrysler world headquarters sits right in the middle of Gary's district. Today's Washington Post explained the ruling from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that is holding up, at least temporarily, the sale of Chrysler to Fiat.

Fiat can back out of the deal if it is not finalized by Monday, and the government has warned that the only alternative would be to force the nation's third-largest automaker into liquidation, throwing the industry in turmoil and leaving tens of thousands of people without jobs.

The stakes may be higher for the Obama administration: If the court backs some of the claims, it could disrupt plans to rescue General Motors and weaken the government's hand in stabilizing the troubled economy.

"Every day that Chrysler remains in bankruptcy without consummating the sale threatens to postpone the resumption of production even further and to prolong the period of $100-million-per-day losses" financed by taxpayers, Elena Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, said in a 26-page filing with the high court.

Behind the trouble, an extreme right-wing ideologue from the Rush Limbaugh fringe of the GOP, Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who's as crazy as they come and sees more than willing to put his lunatic fringe ideologue ahead of the best interests of the people of his state (and the rest of the states). Chrysler debt was trading at 20 cents on the dollar.  Moody’s estimated it was worth 20 cents in liquidation.  The government offered secured lenders nearly 30 cents on the dollar, and most took it.  It was a good business decision.  Mourdock is making a really egregious business decision, at the expense of his state and his people. Bankruptcy law requires the court to ensure that secured lenders receive at least as much as they would in liquidation-- and in this case they likely get more. So, as the bankruptcy court and appeals court have said, the Indiana Treasurer’s case does not hold water and should not stop Chrysler from emerging from bankruptcy.

Mourdock says he represents working peoples’ pension funds-- why were those funds buying highly speculative securities at a discount?  These pension funds were turned into one of the vulture funds hoping to profit off of Chrysler’s demise.  Now he's pushing them towards liquidation.  Knowing Gary would be more in touch with this looming catastrophe than anyone else in Congress, we called him and got this response:

“What we have here is a State Treasurer who doesn’t know how to count.  He is willing to give up tens of millions of dollars in a fight over less than five million, and put four thousand workers out of a job in the process.  The legality here is clear; the bankruptcy judge and the appeals court are in agreement on that, and experts expect the Supreme Court to follow suit.  His actions are based on ideology rather than the best interest of his state and his country.  His case is wrong on the legal merits, it’s a bad business decision and it’s bad for the people he’s supposed to be representing.”

UPDATE: Supreme Court Tells Mourdock To Go Back And Study Economics 101

Gary was on Bloomberg today. He predicted the Supreme Court would end this delay immediately. And they did: "The U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay on the Chrysler-Fiat deal on Tuesday, ending its role in the case. Earlier in the day, a bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved Chrysler’s plan to terminate 789 of its dealer franchises."



Gary's response to the fast Supreme Court action was one of greta optimism. "Today’s decision is good news for the country. Chrysler’s swift emergence from bankruptcy has put the company in position to become more globally competitive and continue to support hundreds of thousands of American jobs. These proceedings were able to move so swiftly because Chrysler, the president’s auto task force, autoworkers, majority debt holders and others worked to help Chrysler undergo extraordinary restructuring prior to the bankruptcy filing. Major stakeholders realized that shared sacrifice was in their best interest, as a Chrysler liquidation would have caused massive job losses and ultimately cost secured lenders far more. The legally sound decisions of the U.S. district court and court of appeals provide an encouraging sign that General Motors can also emerge from bankruptcy quickly and continue supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.”