Which Character in HBO's Chernobyl Is Analogous To Rick Perry?

Many of us are watching the HBO mini-series, Chernobyl now. It's a mega-hit. It's a picture of what happened in 1986 and it's absolutely horrifying. The Russian government is so upset that they want to make their own film. [One jokester told me they'll ask Glenn Greenwald to direct it.] Fred Weir, reporting from Moscow for the Christian Science Monitor wrote that what happened in Ukraine "was a global wake-up call, a human tragedy that is still unfolding. It was also a deathblow to the credibility of the Soviet Union, which had proudly developed the reactor’s deeply flawed technology and whose bureaucracy tried to deceive the world for several days about the accident’s scope and consequences." But, he also wrote that "Everybody seems to agree that the miniseries goes overboard with its characters, depicting Soviet officials and plant management as too evil and conniving. And the protagonists-- especially the scientists who fought to reveal the truth about the accident-- are portrayed as just a little too all-knowing and heroic... A lot of the facts presented are just not true."

Less well-know is the story of what happened at Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Pike County in southern Ohio, an economically depressed part of Appalachia that has swung dramatically right in recent years. Once the bluest county in the state, Pike County was Trump country in 2016. Trump beat Ohio Governor (and everyone else) in the GOP primary. In the general election, he crushed Hillary, better than two to one-- 66.6% to 29.9%. The blue wave never hit there last year. In the Senate race, Jim Renacci beat Sherrod Brown 55.7% to 44.3% and in the gubernatorial race, Mike DeWine eviscerated Richard Cordray 60.5% to 36.5%. And the county GOP lean in the congressional race was R+29.




Over the weekend, Stuart Smith, author of Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, told the story of how, in 2017, "federal regulators from the U.S. Department of Energy testing the neighborhood around a 20th century uranium plant in Pike County, Ohio, made a startling discovery in the air near a middle school attended by hundreds of local children-- traces of neptunium-237, an extremely radioactive particle, typically a by-product from nuclear reactors" and how they hushed it up. "The U.S. government," he wrote, "said absolutely nothing. For two years."

It was only this spring-- after local residents finally learned of the DOE readings and brought in researchers from Northern Arizona University, who found enriched uranium at the school-- that Pike County officials closed down the school, weeks before the scheduled end of the year. Now the plant’s neighbors, who’ve been disturbed by several cases of childhood cancer, including three deaths, wonder how many kids were exposed for how long-- and why they were never told.

“I can’t believe our government is doing that to our kids,” Vina Colley, who worked at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant for a time in the 1980s and now is a local activist warning about health hazards, told a local station, WSAZ. There is virtually no trust remaining between the local community and the DOE, which owns the site of the plant where uranium enrichment halted in 2001.

And can you blame them?

Last week, a team of top environmental lawyers-- with me as the lead counsel-- filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of residents within a 7-mile radius of the Portsmouth plant, naming United States Enrichment Corp., which oversaw uranium enrichment at the site after 1993, as well as a number of other contractors that have processed recycled radioactive materials there. Our goal is a total cleanup, health care and monitoring for the plant’s neighbors, damages-- and, more broadly, justice in one of the worst cases of reckless negligence I’ve seen in 30 years as an environmental lawyer.

Indeed, the egregious nature of the Pike County case is one reason why I’ve chosen this matter to bring back my blog about important environmental issues, which has been sitting dormant for several years. Allow me to take a very brief detour to explain where I’ve been during this time-- because that story also helps to explain why this Ohio case is so important to me.

It was right around the time that my book, Crude Justice, was released in 2015 that I was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer. Despite what was thought to be a successful operation, I soon learned that the cancer had spread. The initial diagnosis was grim, but I decided not to give up. Instead, I sought the best and most advanced treatments, at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and eventually in Germany at the Gisunt Klinik in Wilhelmshaven. After suffering enormous pain and other significant symptoms for several years, by 2018 my health had improved dramatically. And I was advised by my doctors to try to do some work.

Still, it would have been easy to stay retired. I’d already had a successful career as a lawyer pursuing radiation pollution and other cases, including a 2001 case against Exxon Mobil where I was lead counsel which in a $1.056 billion jury verdict (which, to this date, remains the largest for this type of litigation). But I’m not the kind of person who easily sits still.

More importantly, we live in an age in which-- with the Industrial Revolution petered out and the Atomic Age that spiked after World War II now well past its half-life-- the American heartland is dealing with pollution and degradation caused by decades of corporate and governmental neglect. In short order, I’ve found myself involved in major cases involving massive dumping of radioactive waste right outside of St. Louis and a failed uranium plant in southern Illinois-- and that wasn’t all. That same region of the country is also suffering-- probably not coincidentally-- from a major opioid crisis. And so I became deeply involved with a team of lawyers fighting to win justice for thousands of babies who were born to parents hooked on these painkillers and who are now coping with severe psychological and medical consequences.

America was in the midst of multiple crises, and most were caused by the kind of corporate and political negligence I’ve been fighting my entire life. So instead of slowing down after my medical treatment, I find myself busier than ever. And I intend to use this blog to tell you about some of the worst abuses that I’m fighting against.

Even in this sea of malfeasance, what we’ve found in and around Pike County, Ohio, is particularly disturbing. At the center of the controversy is the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which opened in 1954 at the height of the Cold War to enrich uranium for America’s atomic weapons but by the late 1960s had switched to nuclear energy work. The site has seen a variety of uses, including as a location for nuclear centrifuges and for storage of giant cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride, after the original uranium-enrichment work ceased in 2001.

The one thing that has remained constant have been concerns about pollution of both the air in Pike County and the groundwater underneath it, as well as radioactive contamination of the thousands who worked there over the years. In 2006, for example, an investigation by the Dayton Daily News found five separate plumes of groundwater polluted by radioactive materials as well as PCBs, asbestos and other assorted toxins, and also more than 400 accidental releases of uranium gas or toxic fluorine.

In spite of this tainted history, every year about 300 children continued to attend classes at the Zach’s Corner Middle School, located only two miles away from the plant. With the prevailing winds blowing from the plant-- where nuclear-waste decontamination and decommissioning work has been ongoing-- toward the school, local activists have long pressed for more information.

Scioto Valley Local School District officials insist they were never made aware of the DOE’s 2017 test showing the presence of neptunium-- even though any exposure can create severe health risks for humans and for animals. After release of the two-year-old report in March of this year, community members brought in the independent, outside experts from Northern Arizona.

Their discovery this spring of the presence of enriched uranium inside the school forced the district into actions that-- in hindsight-- should have been undertaken years ago. Not only was the Zahn’s Corner school immediately shut down several weeks before the 2018–19 academic year was supposed to end, but officials announced that it won’t reopen in September, with kids now parceled out to other buildings farther away from the plant.

Meanwhile, in a classic governmental case of closing the barn door after all the animals have long escaped, the Trump administration’s DOE, led by Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, has finally sent a team of inspectors in to test the school. Local officials have already complained about a lack of information from DOE and expressed concerns about how the tests are being conducted-- not surprising considering the total breakdown of trust between the community and the federal government.

Never fear, our team is there testing numerous properties to find out the truth. Our team is led by the eminent scientist Dr. Marco Kaltofen, who has developed techniques which can see these radioactive materials at a microscopic level. And we are finding them all over the place.

Jennifer Chandler, a town council member in Piketon, recently told CNN that five children from the Scioto Valley district have been diagnosed with cancer in the last five years. Three of them died, she said, including her young cousin who’d been diagnosed with leukemia. Based upon my discussions with epidemiology experts, this cancer rate-- if true-- is very statistically significant.

Already, my environmental researchers who’ve been to the area surrounding the plant have documented elevated levels of radioactive materials in nearby properties. More importantly, our lawsuit demands that that responsible parties pay for medical monitoring and treatment of the injured victims. Our class action lawsuit is on behalf of all current and former property owners within a seven-mile radius of the plant, all residents who lived within that radius for more than one calendar year, and on behalf of all current and former students of Zahn’s Corner Middle School as well as their parents.

It’s a tragedy that this environmental degradation of southern Ohio has gone on for so long. But it’s not too late to demand justice-- as well as an immediate cleanup of the Portsmouth facility and the surrounding contaminated properties, along with measures to ensure the public’s health and safety. To get the job done, the people of Pike County need answers: What did the government know about radioactive contamination of their community, and when did it know it?

Is Trump Really Thinking Of Naming Rick "Oops" Perry Energy Secretary?

Or is Trump just enjoying humiliating Perry, the way he humiliated poor pathetic Mitt Romney by publicly dangling the Secretary of State job over his head, forcing him to prostrate himself at Trump Tower and then be photographed eating frogs' legs at a foo-foo restaurant. And to top it all off, Trump then named someone who's probably not confirmable to the post. Why would Trump do that to former Governor Perry? You forgot? Watch-- while remembering that Trump is a vindictive asshole and is proud of that aspect of his repulsive personality:



Or maybe Trump figures Perry's from Texas so he "gets" energy policy-- even though that was one of the three departments (albeit one he couldn't remember during a 2012 debate) that Perry claimed he wants to abolish.

Or maybe it's all about mutual mega-donor, Kelcy Warren. Warren, Chairman and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners-- the company putting in the North Dakota pipeline that is endangering Native American drinking water (DAPL)-- was Perry's #1 campaign contributor this year: $6,000,000. And, after Perry was driven from the race by Trump terrorizing him, he gave Trump $103,000.

Reports emanating from Trump Tower say el Presidente-elect Señor Trumpanzee's short list includes Perry, 2 red state right-wing Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Ray Washburne, a Dallas real estate investor and major GOP campaign contributor. Trump hung out with Washburne and Perry at the Army-Navy game in Baltimore Saturday. Tomorrow he's supposedly meeting with Manchin. He's supposedly leaning towards giving Heitkamp the Secretary of Agriculture gig and has Perry at the top of his list for Energy. I'll believe it when I see it.

Trumpists Want To See Executions Before Trials? Is That Deplorable?

A couple of weeks ago, WBUR did a poll for the 2018 Massachusetts Senate race, which may wind up as Elizabeth Warren versus notorious former Boston Red Sox pitcher, and outspoken Trumpist, Curt Schilling. No one was surprised that the results showed Warren way out ahead with 54% to Schilling's 29%. Schilling is an extreme right-wing psycho who hates Elizabeth Warren-- bad motivation for a senatorial run, but what does the GOP have to lose? Schilling, who was fired by ESPN a few months ago, is now a hate talk radio host who debuted his show a couple weeks ago with an interview with another extremist crackpot, Ann Coulter.

Sunday night Schilling posted a hate-filled screed on this Facebook page that certainly explains what he has in common with Herr Trumpf.

[S]omeone just asked me "Well what would your solution be"? With regards to yesterdays violence. Sitting in my officer here's what came to mind just spitballing. "Solution" denotes a remedy or cure. It won't be that quick. You must, immediately, suspend immigration. You must, immediately, deploy national guard to points of entry and border crossings. You must immediately stop ALL foreign nationals from entering this country via air. You must then gut the dept of immigration of corruption and other forms of illegal activity, you must create a set of NEW rules regarding immigrants emanating from countries that support terrorism. Unless an immigrant can PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt no links with terrorism, they cannot come here. You must immediately detain ANY and ALL illegal aliens linked to terrorism or terrorists, and ANY and ALL illegal aliens who have a felony on their record. You immediately return these illegals to their "home country". You must immediately create a bidding process for the private sector to construct their version of the Berlin Wall on our southern border. You pay for that with money and assets seized around the country in criminal arrests. Last year it was just north of 5 billion dollars. That should begin to cover the bill. We're america, we will take "your tired, your hungry and your poor" but NOT at the expense of American citizens safety and lives. Also? Anyone doing ANYTHING resembling the events of yesterday? You do NOT get your 'rights' under the law, you become an enemy combatant. Which means “No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.” The defendant does not have the right to file Habeas Corpus petitions and can receive the death penalty."

Now there's a brouhaha because Schilling has accused the Washington Post of lying about his post, inserting the word "accused" in a story entitled Curt Schilling’s solution for terrorism: Executions without trial. The Post lede was "The New York City bombing and other incidents over the weekend prompted Curt Schilling, the former Major League Baseball pitcher whose outspokenness led to his dismissal by ESPN, to take to Facebook to offer his solution to terror: suspend immigration and subject people accused of terrorism to execution without benefit of a trial."

OK, now you sort it out. I'd say Schiller's screed speaks for itself. I'd also say that he should be lots of fun for Elizabeth Warren. Thanks for reading DWT. Here's today's bonus-- a video that you might want to show your friends and family.

Voting In Arizona And Utah Isn't Until Tuesday But The Stop-Trump Movement Has Already Decamped For Wisconsin

The NeverTrump movement doesn't really seem to be getting off the ground, although some of the OurPrinciplesPAC ads aren't bad, even if they seem to be largely ineffective. Over the weekend, the New York Times' Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin looked at the GOP establishment's puny efforts against the fascist bully who's been running circles around them. Ignoring that most observers now see him as unstoppable, the reporters' assessment is that "There is no longer room for error or delay, the anti-Trump forces say, and without a flawlessly executed plan of attack, he could well become unstoppable. But when they fail, they have a secret weapon: "consensus candidate" Rick Perry. (No, seriously; the first incompetent candidate Trump drove out of the race is supposedly the guy they can run as a third party candidate to guarantee Trump loses and doesn't take over "their" party... you know, the one Trump has already taken over.

First choice is to steal the nomination and give it to Paul Ryan. If that doesn't work: 3rd party spoiler effort. That's the best the moneybags of the GOP establishment could come up with. (If not Rick Perry, other third party sacrificial lambs include Tom Coburn, Ben Sasse...

David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, which has spent millions on [ineffective] ads attacking Mr. Trump, said his group met on Wednesday and concluded it was still possible to avert Mr. Trump’s nomination. The group plans a comprehensive study of Trump supporters to sharpen a message aimed at driving them away from him.

“This is still a winnable race for a free-market conservative that’s not Donald Trump,” Mr. McIntosh said, adding, “It’s not a layup, but there’s a clear path to victory.”

Central to this plan is stopping Mr. Trump in Wisconsin, the next major showdown after contests that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz are expected to split this week in Arizona and Utah.

On Thursday, the Club for Growth sent a three-page memo to influential Republican donors promising to spend as much as $2 million in Wisconsin and arguing that “the only viable option to defeat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz.”

The memo conceded it was “very unlikely” that Mr. Cruz could overtake Mr. Trump in the delegate count, but outlined a strategy to deny Mr. Trump the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the nomination before the convention in Cleveland in July.

Mr. Cruz and Mr. Kasich also see the Wisconsin primary as pivotal. Mr. Cruz’s campaign is dispatching additional staff members there and opening a “Camp Cruz” to house volunteers. The campaign will begin running ads there in the next few days, aiming to get a head start on Mr. Trump in the state.

Beginning with Wisconsin, the race moves into states that apportion delegates based on who wins in each congressional district, which would allow anti-Trump forces to peel delegates away from him in states like New York and California, where he is expected to run strong. A few of the remaining winner-take-all states, like Montana and South Dakota, appear friendly to Mr. Cruz.

Anti-Trump Republicans said they would use the six weeks between the last primaries and the mid-July convention to woo individual delegates.

A number of states, including Pennsylvania and Colorado, send large numbers of uncommitted delegates to the convention, making those party regulars especially ripe targets for courtship. Other states will be sending delegates bound to candidates who have left the race, like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeb Bush. Those delegates could be persuaded to vote for Mr. Cruz or Mr. Kasich after the first ballot.

To justify rejecting Mr. Trump in Cleveland, Republicans say they will have to convince both delegates and the public that it was not the party’s obligation to hand him a nomination he did not secure on his own.

Trump has threatened to unleash a riot in Cleveland if he doesn't get the nomination, whether he has the number of delegates he needs or not. Paul Ryan has already taken the necessarily steps to-- somewhat hypocritically-- ban guns from the Quicken Loans Area in Ohio, an open carry state, where the Republicans usually insist-- but not this time-- that we're all safer if everyone is armed. And Ryan's pollster, David Winston told The Times that "the burden is on Trump, not the party, if he fails to clinch the nomination. He has presented himself as the ultimate dealmaker, and it’s on him to close this one."

One of the problems is that all the establishment characters hate Cruz as much as they hate Trump-- some more so-- and that no one takes Kasich seriously. And... can you really beat someone with no one? Thursday Erick Erickson convened a meeting on anti-Trump types in DC at a private club where an effort to get behind Cruz failed and the ad hoc group instead implored Cruz and Kasich to avoid competing in states where one of them is favored. Erickson, who the Times described as "influential" for some reason: "They’re going to have to come to terms and lay off each other." Kasich and Cruz have ignored them entirely and there is no détente in sight, probably because both men-- unlike Rubio-- realized that the establishment groups just want to use them to destroy Trump and then replace him with a faux-reluctant Paul Ryan. Romney and other establishment types are still threatening to vote for a 3rd party alternative to Trump or Hillary, though not Jill Stein. One strategy is to push former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson aside and buy the Libertarian line for... well, whomever wants to go down in history for destroying what theu call the Grand Old Party.

Late Saturday, Ross Douthat dubbed the whole mess profiles in paralysis-- pretty pithy: "a curious mix of denial and resignation," a lack of conviction and an inability "to adapt swiftly, resist effectively, or both." He can't stop himself from mocking Paul Ryan, who he half-heartedly assures his readers is "not some corrupt functionary, some time-serving Roman official eating grapes while the barbarians come over the wall" but, he asserts, is an intelligent, principled and effective, rhetorically optimistic "pro-immigration free trader, a supply-sider and an entitlement reformer" who happens to claim he believes the way to save America is to cut taxes for the rich and cut Social Security, Medicare and the rest of the New Deal for everyone else. Douthat can't escape Beltway talk about how brilliant and peachy-wonderful Ryan is, but he still ended his column with a couple of teensy weensy doubts:

So in sum, faced with a potentially-existential threat to his vision of conservatism (not to mention his House majority), Ryan’s answer is first, change nothing; second, do nothing.

Sit still. Just sit still.

Everyone might return to normal.

The hawk might pass. It might.

It might.

Deep dark Beltway secret revealed: Paul Ryan is a fitness trainer who memorizes his lines relatively well and speaks them with relative conviction-- but with a rapidly approaching expiration date.

How Will The Republican Establishment Get Rid Of Trump When They No Longer Need Him To Get People To Pay Attention To Their Primary Race?

If Trumpy falters, there's worse waiting in the wings

The GOP establishment is drooling over Jeb's tax plan to enrich the very rich,  and they are horrified by Trump's nod toward economic populism. Derailing Trump's campaign-- rather than waiting for him to self-destruct-- is becoming more and more of an establishment obsession. Third-rate GOP media consultant Liz Mair, recently fired by the flailing Scott Walker campaign, tries telling them how to do it. Her advise to the Deep Bench:

• Focus on moving an anti-Trump message to where low-information voters actually get their information (O'Reilly)
• Focus attacks on Trump’s support for single-payer and socialized medicine systems
• Focus attacks on his business record
• Raise the religion point with appropriate audiences
• Call a spade a spade, like he does
• Don’t replicate the policies, replicate the tone (provided that you plausibly can)
• Don’t be a politician. Be a human
• Do you have non-political experience? Talk about that
• Go after your other rivals, not just Trump
• Remember, what is a concern today probably won’t be in three months time

They're setting some of the congressional hounds on Trump, like Walker supporter Reid Ribble (R-WI) and Jeb supporter Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), but their critiques of Trump are like farting in the wind. Jeb's attacks on Trump-- based on reason-- have been ineffective. So now the GOP will deploy the bottom-of-the-barrel candidates, who have no chance to be president but could get an appointed position in a Republican administration, to try to muddy up Trump in the language low-info zombified Fox viewers can understand.

Can Bobby Jindal play a 12-year-old asshole as well as Trump? He said Trump "looks like he's got a squirrel sitting on his head." Thursday Jindal opened up on Trump, not necessarily because he was hoping Trump would attack back and give him some attention that could turn around his failed campaign-- that's just hopeless-- but to ingratiate himself with whomever emerges as the GOP candidate after Trump is hacked to bits by the GOP establishment. In his rant he tried using "carnival act," "insecure," "narcissist," "egomaniac," "substance-free," "weak," "shallow" and "unstable" to tar Trump. Did anything stick?

"Donald Trump," he raged to a tiny, nearly empty room at the National Press Club, "is for Donald Trump. He believes in nothing other than himself. He's not for anything, he's not against anything... everyone knows it to be true." And then, to show he's in touch with the zeitgeist, he added, "Just because a lot of people like watching Kim Kardashian, we wouldn't put her in the White House either." Jindal also hinted Texas fascist Ted Cruz, Trump's only ally among the contenders, is just as bad as Trump by enabling him.

Although almost no one was in the room when he unloaded, Fox-- which definitely had been tipped off in advance-- had a camera rolling and broadcast the diatribe live, including the crowning zinger:

"Donald Trump's never read the Bible. The reason we know he's never read the Bible, he's not in the Bible."

Even Glenn Beck got in on the action:

I’m telling you, dealing with Donald Trump is like dealing with a third grader. And I’m not dealing with a third grader anymore because the world is on fire. You want to come on the show, great. You don’t want to come on the show, great. I don’t really care… Enough of the third grade politics. Grow up, Donald Trump. Grow up.

And you can probably guess who Rick Perry's parting shot was aimed at as he ended his campaign yesterday: "We can secure the border and reform our immigration system without inflammatory rhetoric, without base appeals that divide us based on race, culture and creed… Demeaning people of Hispanic heritage is not just ignorant, it betrays the example of Christ. We can enforce our laws and our borders, and we can love all who live within our borders, without betraying our values."

Yesterday right-wing nut and former congressman David McIntosh, currently head of the Club for Growth, blamed the Trump phenomenon on Boehner and McConnell. It sounds like he and Jindal had been put up to it by the same political operatives out to get Trump.

The Donald Trump Show should be a wake-up call to establishment Republicans in Washington. Let’s face it-- at its core the Trump phenomenon is an expression of deep anger and frustration at Washington’s lack of leadership.

Less than a year ago, conservatives, libertarians, and independents gave Republicans a majority in the Senate and their largest House majority in more than 80 years. They trusted Republicans who campaigned on the promise that a Republican majority would at least put up roadblocks to the Obama agenda.

Voters fully expected this Congress to take real steps to rein in spending with a transparent appropriations process, and to preserve the modest spending caps established under sequestration. They believed Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) a year ago when he said tax reform was “in the realm of doable.”

Yet today, we’ve not only seen none of the above-- it’s actually gotten worse. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said recently that tax reform will have to wait until at least 2017. Rather than cut spending, this Republican Congress has cut deals with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to try to create $9 billion in new mandatory spending, and voted for a Medicare bill that adds more than $100 billion to the deficit over the coming years. Boehner still wants to resuscitate the Export-Import Bank, an example of the worst of government cronyism and the first federal agency to be put out of business in years. And, both McConnell’s Senate and Boehner’s House are expected to bust through established spending limits this fall with a massive spending bill that will likely be passed with a lot of Democrat votes, over the objections of many fiscal conservatives in both chambers.

Is it any wonder that the conservatives, libertarians, and independents who elected this Republican Congress are rallying behind the angry voice of Donald Trump? They’re even willing to overlook Trump’s far left positions: single-payer universal health care, a massive tax increase, anti-trade policies, and eminent domain to allow developers to seize private property. None of those are conservative, pro-growth positions.

Trump has made it clear that he’d be happy to use the massive power of government to force U.S. businesses to do what he believes is best for the country. That’s not economic freedom and it’s not a path to opportunity. He’s even recently rejected a flat tax in favor of the progressive tax rates that liberals applaud as part of their class warfare rhetoric.

Trump is not a conservative. He’s a showman who loves to talk about himself and who knows how to attract a crowd. And he’s tapped into the frustration of average Americans who have been saying for years that the country’s on the wrong track. They elected Republican majorities to change that course, or to at least begin bending its trajectory back toward less spending and smaller government. But now it’s clear that Boehner and McConnell have failed to even take up the fight with Democrats to do this. So millions of Americans are rejecting Washington wholesale and turning to the loudest anti-Washington voice they can find.

The irony, of course, is that, as Trump says, he’s been in the business of buying and selling politicians for years, and he boasts of how he’s manipulated the laws to ensure his own financial success. Trump is all about making himself great, but he’s now cloaked that scheme in pro-American, anti-Washington rhetoric. His so-called policies will not fix health care, lower taxes, or shrink government. But many Americans, who are completely and rightfully disillusioned by Washington Republicans, are willing to take a risky gamble on the unknown, rather than settle for the ongoing frustration of the known.

Boehner, McConnell, and the rest of establishment Republicans now own this mess. The 2016 presidential cycle started out, and still has, some of the best, pro-growth, conservative candidates that we’ve seen in many years; candidates with actual plans to end Obamacare, cut spending, and do real tax reform.

Unfortunately, those good candidates and their good proposals are getting drowned out by the Donald Trump Show. And, unless Republican leaders in Congress use the next four months to do the people’s business, to finally put up a strong fight against Obama, and to vote on a clear fiscally conservative agenda, they will be totally abandoned by the people who gave them the gavel, and they will be overwhelmed by more of the Trump tidal wave.

Before running away with his tail between his legs, Ben Carson tried taking on Trump as well-- also based on his lies about faith. Watch:



In case you think that Carson's "the reasonable one" among all the clowns and freaks, think again. Being soft-spoken doesn't make him reasonable, or even sane. He told GOP voters, as Right Wing Watch's Brian Tashman put it,

that the science of evolution is a sign of humankind’s arrogance and belief "that they are so smart that if they can’t explain how God did something, then it didn’t happen, which of course means that they’re God. You don’t need a God if you consider yourself capable of explaining everything." He claimed that "no one has the knowledge" of the age of the earth "based on the Bible," adding that "carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time."

Carson also claims Christians in America are facing widespread persecution and are "being bludgeoned into silence," and argued that Obamacare will lead people to lose their health coverage-- even though the opposite is happening. He said he has "prayed to God that he will expose even to people of low information what is going on. Sometimes things have to be so blatant, it’s like hitting them over the head with a two-by-four, before people wake up." Well, that would be his and Trump's (and Huckabee's and Cruz's) audience, all right.

The new Quinnipiac poll for Iowa released early yesterday morning shows Carson creeping up on Trump, and already beating him among GOP women-- and, ironically, among college-educated Republicans. College-educated Republicans should get beyond the misleading soft-spokenness. Quinnipiac reported:

Carson gets a 79 - 6 percent favorability rating and likely Republican Caucus-goers say 88 - 4 percent that he is honest and trustworthy, and 85 - 5 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. Voters say 76 - 11 percent that he has strong leadership qualities and 72 - 14 percent that he has the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis.

Who Will Be The First Republican(s) To Bow Out?

Is Darwinism at work inside the Republican Party? Beltway journalists have a new game-- speculating on who the first presidential contender to head for the exit will be. Yesterday, Politico, always a fount of Beltway conventional wisdom, was predicting it would be Rick Perry. They've finally stopped laughing about when Trump would bow out. Christie will certainly want to wait until after he fails in New Hampshire. And Rand Paul probably wishes he had never tossed his hat into the ring in the first place and is probably trying to figure out how to do this gracefully, without looking like Trump drove him out. 

Perry, points out Politico "spent the last year and a half seeking to rehabilitate his image. It's too late." They revealed that a survey of "top strategists" reveals that 40% of early-state Republicans and nearly half of early-state Democrats believe Perry will be the first candidate to drop out of the presidential race.

“No money and cannot gain traction, even though he has the best record and a superb message,” lamented an Iowa Republican. “Best retail politician I have ever seen, yet not able to pick up interest against a strong field. Where was this guy last time around?”

Less charitably, another Iowa Republican said, “When you’ve suspended all staff pay, the writing is on the wall. His team suggests he’ll have a memorable debate moment. Unfortunately for Rick Perry, that moment happened in 2011, oops.”

Those responses come following a rough week for the former Texas governor: News broke Monday that he is no longer paying his staff amid fundraising woes, a major setback for any candidate-- but particularly for Perry, who after a disastrous presidential run in 2012, spent the last year and a half seeking to rehabilitate his image and emerge as a more serious contender. It’s too late, insiders said.

“He is out of money and out of time,” a New Hampshire Republican said.

“Perry’s just not getting the second look from voters he hoped for,” agreed another GOP Granite Stater. “He’s rehabilitated his reputation to some extent by being serious and competent this time, and he needs to consider that success.”

Jim Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia, was the runner-up for the first to drop out among Republicans.

“Jim who?” said one New Hampshire Republican.

“Does anybody know he’s in the race? He’s the only one not included in the Reagan Library debate. What is his base?” pondered another.

Jonathan Allen, writing for Vox, went even deeper, speculating that several contenders are on the verge of getting out and that their departures will help Trump because Trump will pick up their supporters.

Until recently, I was certain that a winnowing of the field would be a good thing for the Republican frontrunners not named Donald Trump-- Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio. That's because it seemed like Trump was bound to be locked into a certain percentage of the GOP electorate, somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent, and the removal of any candidate would reapportion his or her support to a non-Trump candidate. But after some careful thought — and conversations with Republicans-- I'm not so sure that's true. Because Perry already has bled support after taking on Trump, he may be the exception to a new rule: Early exits are almost certainly a good thing for Trump.

There are three scenarios in which Trump benefits from the departure of a lesser candidate.

1- Trump actually collects the majority or plurality of a losing candidate's supporters and increases his lead in the primary.

2- That candidate's backers reshuffle into the camps of other lower-tier candidates, revealing that Bush, Walker, and Rubio aren't popular alternatives to Trump.

3- The candidate's supporters divide among Bush, Walker, and Rubio, bolstering their campaigns but keeping Trump in the driver's seat. Think about it this way: What if a bunch of candidates quit and Bush, Walker, and Rubio can't break out of low double digits in national polling?

...[U]nless Trump gets bored or self-destructs-- which it appears he's incapable of doing-- he'll be a factor not just before the Iowa caucuses but well into the primary season. Even if he doesn't win the Republican nomination, he's positioned to be influential in the outcome and, again with the boredom or self-destruction caveat, he's likely to have a prominent role at the Republican National Convention next year.

Lack Of Intelligence Doesn't Hurt Conservative Candidates With Conservative Voters

"You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate, though," giggled conservative Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor on the big screen. He was unseated by an undistinguished right-wing extremist, Tom Cotton, 476,309 (56.5%) to 332,669 (39.5%). I don't know how much his remarks to Bill Maher played into his defeat. I don't know how much Arkansas voters care about IQ test results or intelligence in their elected officials at all for that matter. And this week, a neighboring state's governor, Rick Perry, was playing up on that sentiment in his "I'm back and I'm different this time" plea for support in his quest for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Perry's polling support hovers around 2% among GOP voters-- better than Rick Santorum, tied with Bobby Jindal.

But Perry's handlers are telling big donors he's kicked his drug addiction problems and he's telling interviewers his awkward, stumbling nature and low IQ don't matter in a Republican primary. He says "life experience is more important than book smarts in a president." Book smarts, though, isn't what IQ measures. IQ measures human intelligence and conservatives, by nature, are extremely distrustful of any such thing. General intelligence refers to the ability to reason deductively or inductively, think abstractly, use analogies, synthesize information, and apply it to new domains. We'll get to that in a minute. Back to Perry first.

"Running for the presidency's not an IQ test. It is a test of an individual's resolve. It's a test of an individual's philosophy. It's a test of an individual's life's experiences," Perry said in an interview at the Governor's Mansion, which he's leaving as his term ends. "And I think Americans are really ready for a leader that will give them a great hope about the future."

Perry said he probably has less "margin for error" after he famously couldn't remember one of the federal agencies he said he'd ax during a November 2011 Republican debate. But "I think, over the course of the last two years, people realize that what they saw in 2011 is certainly not the person they're looking at at 2013, 2014, 2015," he said.

Perry also said he'd have no problem convincing Republicans that he can win in 2016, saying potential backers "are pouring in here to sit down with us, to talk to us."

"The policy individuals that have said 'listen, we want to come help you become even better prepared as we go forward' is already the answer to that," he said.

A few years ago Professor Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics published a piece, Why Liberals And Atheists Are More Intelligent, in the Social Psychology Quarterly that turned political conservatives off to intelligence permanently. His study found that higher intelligence directly correlates with liberal political ideology. "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Kanazawa. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles." He argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals. Here's how Time covered the report back in 2010, noting that Kanazawa is a libertarian and non-partisan.

The notion that liberals are smarter than conservatives is familiar to anyone who has spent time on a college campus. The College Democrats are said to be ugly, smug and intellectual; the College Republicans, pretty, belligerent and dumb. There's enough truth in both stereotypes that the vast majority of college students opt not to join either club.

...What's new in Kanazawa's paper is a provocative theory about why intelligence might correlate with liberalism. He argues that smarter people are more willing to espouse "evolutionarily novel" values-- that is, values that did not exist in our ancestral environment, including weird ideas about, say, helping genetically unrelated strangers (liberalism, as Kanazawa defines it), which never would have occurred to us back when we had to hunt to feed our own clan and our only real technology was fire.

Kanazawa offers this view of how such novel values sprang up in our ancestors: Imagine you are a caveman (if it helps, you are wearing a loincloth and have never shaved). Lightning strikes a tree near your cave, and fire threatens. What do you do? Natural selection would have favored the smart specimen who could quickly conceive answers to such a problem (or other rare catastrophes like sudden drought or flood), even if-- or maybe especially if-- those answers were unusual ones that few others in your tribe could generate. So, the theory goes, genes for intelligence got wrapped up with genes for unnatural thinking.

It's an elegant theory, but based on Kanazawa's own evidence, I'm not sure he's right. In his paper, Kanazawa begins by noting, accurately, that psychologists don't have a good understanding of why people embrace the values they do. Many kids share their parents' values, but at the same time many adolescents define themselves in opposition to what their parents believe. We know that most people firm up their values when they are in their 20s, but some people experience conversions to new religions, new political parties, new artistic tastes and even new cuisines after middle age. As Kanazawa notes, this multiplicity of views-- a multiplicity you find within both cultures and individuals-- is one reason economists have largely abandoned the study of values with a single Latin phrase, De gustibus non est disputandum: there's no accounting for taste.

Kanazawa doesn't disagree, but he believes scientists can account for whether people like new tastes or old, radical tastes or Establishment ones. He points out that there's a strong correlation between liberalism and openness to new kinds of experiences. But openness to new experience isn't necessarily intelligent (cocaine is fun; accidental cocaine overdose is not).

So are liberals smarter? Kanazawa quotes from two surveys that support the hypothesis that liberals are more intelligent. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which is often called Add Health. The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study is huge-- more than 20,000 kids-- and this difference is highly statistically significant.

No, that isn't Michele Bachmann above. Still Perry... celebrating. Hard to fathom though, that in the middle of the fight to keep the government open/deregulate Wall Street, the White House not only hosted a Christmas Party, but invited dangerous right-wing radicals to it. I hope they all got thoroughly patted down. Even Michele Bachmann, who is being allowed to walk away from a serious criminal investigation in return for her retirement from Congress, was permitted to attend.

Why would she even bother? She wanted to tell President Obama, in person, to nuke Iran, which has over 77 million inhabitants, more than the population of Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Throw in Libya and Qatar and we're still not there yet. First she promised her family she wouldn't make a spectacle out of herself when it was time to pose with the president for photos. But as soon as they had left the stage, that special Bachmann derangement gene kicked in.

“I turned to the president and I said, something to the effect of, ‘Mr. President, you need to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, because if you don’t, Iran will have a nuclear weapon on your watch and the course of world history will change,’” she told the Washington Free Beacon.

“And he got his condescending smile on his face and laughed at me and said, ‘Well Michele, it’s just not that easy.’ And I said to him, ‘No, Mr. President, you’re the president, it will happen on your watch, and you’ll have to answer to the world for this.’ And that was it and then I left. Merry Christmas,” she said with a laugh.

...Bachmann now plans to travel across the country, giving speeches and writing op-eds ahead of what she called a “consequential” election in 2016. Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will simply continue Obama’s widely criticized domestic and foreign policies, Bachmann said. Republicans for their part need to ensure that they do not nominate a candidate who is “changing their stripes just for an election.”

“If we get a very bold conservative who has a strong identification of where they want to take the country, both economically and in terms of national security, we do have a chance to have a major course correction for America in the future,” she said.

It's A Slow News Weekend But I Have Some Good Art So... Want To Read About Rick Perry's Presidential Fantasies?

Leave it to Politico to try to make something out of nothing. Nothing? Rick Perry is the governor of Texas, a big deal-- especially in Republican politics. But still... nothing; just watch the drug-addled closet case on the video above. In 2012, Perry came in fifth in the Republican Iowa caucuses-- between Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. The new poll from Quinnipiac shows Perry with support from two percent of Republican voters-- behind Mitt Romney (19%), Jeb Bush (11%), Chris Christie (8%), Ben Carson (8%), Rand Paul (6%), Ted Cruz (5%), Mike Huckabee (5%), Paul Ryan (5%), Scott Walker (5%) and tied with also-rans Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich... but better than Rick Santorum.

But Politico's Ken Vogel reported yesterday-- with a perfectly straight face-- that Perry is rebuilding a presidential campaign infrastructure, "inviting hundreds of prominent Republican donors and policy experts to a series of gatherings next month that are intended to rebuild his damaged national brand and lay the foundation for a potential 2016 presidential campaign" starting Tuesday in Austin; mostly donors though. And there are hints-- "tip top health is how they phrase it-- that he's kicked his drug addiction.

Perry’s intensive month of foundation-building comes as other prospective Republican presidential candidates-- notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz-- are engaging with the wealthy Texans who for years have been among the GOP’s most significant sources of cash. As the heir to a political dynasty with deep Texas ties, Bush in particular could seriously cut into Perry’s financial base. Bush over the last few months has met with major Texas donors.

Perry has long enjoyed support from Texas’s biggest wallets for his state campaigns, but some of the donors remain skeptical of his presidential viability as a result of his bumbling 2012 run, during which some abandoned him in favor of eventual nominee Mitt Romney.

Perry had entered the race to much fanfare as the most formidable GOP foe to Romney. But his debate performances induced cringes, his anti-establishment tough talk prompted grumbles in the business community and he had only limited success expanding his fundraising base beyond Texas. When he dropped out not long after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses, Perry further alienated his party’s business wing by snubbing Romney and backing the long-shot rival campaign of Newt Gingrich.

While some in the party wonder if his star dimmed even further this summer when he was indicted on public corruption charges, Perry has nonetheless tried to remake his public image over the past year. In a series of high-profile interviews, the governor, sporting trendy new glasses that give him a more studious look, has admitted that he bungled 2012. He’s said the experience “humbled” him, and admitted he erred by jumping into the race without sufficient preparation and just six weeks after back surgery that left him in pain and unable to sleep.

Things would be different if he ran again, say sources who have interacted with the three-term governor, who is leaving the office after having held it longer than any other person in Texas history. They describe his health as “tip-top” and his policy expertise as light years ahead of where it was in the last presidential cycle-- all of which he intends to highlight in his December donor meetings.

...“If Gov. Perry is going to run, he’s going to be better prepared, and he’s going to have the resources necessary to compete,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican national committeeman who is helping plan for a Perry 2016 campaign and organizing next week’s donor sessions.

Several major donors and bundlers who supported Perry’s last White House run-- including some who have been invited to the Austin sessions-- were cautious or even skeptical when asked this week if they’d back a Perry 2016 campaign.

“I’m a huge fan of Gov. Perry’s and would do whatever I could to help, but other stars have emerged in the party, and I want to hear what they have to say,” said Matt Keelen, a GOP lobbyist who rallied Capitol Hill support for Perry’s 2012 campaign. Keelen specifically cited Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida as intriguing presidential prospects.

Fort Worth investor and GOP bundler Hal Lambert supported Perry in 2012. He described the governor as “very good at working crowds and talking to people, but he’s really going to have to pick it up on the debate side. Those debates really ruined his chances last time.” While he said he wasn’t ready to commit to Perry-- or anyone else-- in 2016, Lambert said he’ll bring an open mind when he attends a dinner with Perry at the governor’s mansion on Dec. 17.

“I’d need to hear what the overall strategy would be for victory,” he said.

A Washington lobbyist who supported Perry last time but has since cooled on him was more blunt, asserting that Perry “ran a crummy campaign in 2012” and hasn’t demonstrated that he’s figured out how to do things differently. Donors also are concerned about the unresolved corruption indictment hanging over Perry’s head, said the lobbyist. Perry has adamantly asserted his innocence in that case, and many across the political spectrum have rallied to his defense, calling the prosecution a witch hunt.

“None of the D.C. lobbyist crowd who were supporting Perry in 2012 are planning to support him this cycle,” said the lobbyist, who is considering supporting Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Scott Walker of Wisconsin should either run in 2016. “He is a good guy, but Perry’s time has passed.”

...A GOP fundraiser who has worked with Texas donors said some of the richest among them have been meeting with Jeb Bush in Texas, and that his brother, the former president-- and former Texas governor-- George W. Bush has been talking up Jeb to rich Texans. “Perry is responding to that, and a lot of these donors are caught in the middle,” the fundraiser said of Perry’s Austin meetings.

Lambert, however, said Jeb Bush’s primary reason for visiting Texas was supporting the successful campaign of his son, George P. Bush, for Texas land commissioner.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily been about meeting donors. He’s not going to have any problem there,” said Lambert, who conceded that Texas donors could have divided loyalties in 2016.

“Ted Cruz could compete as well,” Lambert said of the junior senator from Texas. Cruz is a favorite of the conservative grassroots, but he has struggled to win over GOP establishment donors, who view him as an impractical ideologue.

“There will definitely be a difference in the donor base, but I think he’s right in the mix,” said Lambert, who praised Cruz and added, “It will be a tough decision.”

Meanwhile, there's no vision beyond Hate Talk Radio bromides and no actual reason beyond lazy careerism for a Rick Perry presidential run. But GOP ideology folks are being brought in, between the donor calls, to tutor him on basic Republican policy agenda items so that he knows, if just vaguely, what's going on and how to answer pesky questions if anyone gets to ask him any.

That Republican Civil War… It's Still Burning Out Of Control

One's indictable and one's… another Bush

The University of Florida released a poll last night showing Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio (and Hillary) with the highest popularity ratings in the Sunshine State's newest twist on a 2016 presidential survey. Nationally, the Big Money elites who call the shots in the GOP, want a top tier candidate to start focussing on already. Believe it or not, among GOP voters, Chris Christie, most likely next governor to face the fate Bob McDonnell just ran into yesterday in court, is still the highest ranked "candidate." The sad Republican Party rankings:

• Chris Christie- 11.5%
• Jeb Bush- 10.8%
• Rand Paul- 10.3%
• Paul Ryan- 9.3%
• Ted Cruz- 8.8%
• Rick Perry- 8.3%
• Marco Rubio- 7.5%
• Scott Walker (losing his reelection battle and also facing a possible indictment)- 5.3%
• Rick Santorum (perennial crackpot candidate)- 2.8%
• Bobby Jindal- 2.3%

Top GOP Establishment financiers from the Northeast look at that list and get sick to their stomachs-- and they're the ones who are serious about persuading Mitt Romney to give jot another go. One political scientist referred to the top Republican contenders as "the Seven Dwarfs without Snow White." Larry Sabato says the whole field is nothing but a bunch of second and third tier hopefuls. "For once, the GOP has no one who is arguably next-in-line-- no crown prince-- which is the way the party prefers to approach presidential nominations. Just as important, this is a party badly divided and riven by factionalism."

Sabato contends that Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush and the brother of former President George W. Bush, has the makings of a front-runner and the anointed “Establishment candidate” if he decides to run.

However,  Bush would not be a shoe-in by any means, because he polls poorly among his party’s hard-core conservatives and has alienated many with his support of liberal immigration reform policies and the unpopular Common Core educational initiative. What’s more, his wife reportedly doesn’t want him to run.

“Bush has done absolutely nothing to suggest that he’s truly interested in taking on the campaign,” Sabato wrote.

Not so fast, Last night, the Wall Street Journal made the case that Jeb is sending out signals that he's interested in going up against Hillary. "Republican strategists and fundraisers," they reported, "say Jeb Bush's closest advisers have been quietly spreading the word that they should avoid committing to other possible presidential candidates until he decides on his own course after the November election."

Jim Nicholson, a Bush supporter who served in President George W. Bush's cabinet, said: "I think the chances are better than 50-50 that he runs, and that is based on some conversations I've had with members of the Bush family."

…Bush is a top choice of the establishment wing of the Republican Party. His entry would help define the policy fights of the primary process, as his support for overhauling immigration law and for the Common Core national educational standards has drawn strong opposition from many conservatives.

…Mike Feldman, an aide on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, said both Mr. Bush and likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would campaign with tremendous advantages-- and baggage-- due to their families' long political history.

"Both of them would have to wrestle with the trade-offs involved in emphasizing their considerable experience and presenting a vision for the future while having to defend their records and litigating the past," he said.

…Attention among some in the GOP returned to Mitt Romney, the party's nominee in 2012, who has said he is "not running,'' but has allowed that "circumstances can change.'' Messrs. Bush and Romney would compete for a similar set of fundraisers and political hands.

Many donors are both looking for a signal of intent from Mr. Bush but also are happy to stay on the sidelines until after the midterm elections, when the field will start to crystallize. For them, Mr. Bush's indecision is helpful.

"It's frozen the field a bit, in that it's a convenient excuse for finance people to stay neutral and wait to commit," said Republican strategist Dave Carney, a top adviser to Rick Perry's 2012 campaign who worked in the White House for George W. Bush.

"It's not like Jeb would walk into the race and clear the field, but his gravitas and fundraising network makes him a first-class competitor," Mr. Carney said.

In addition to keeping potential donors and supporters on deck, Mr. Bush is taking other steps that typically precede a presidential campaign: traveling the country, engaging in public policy debates and raising money for his party.

A newly established fundraising committee allows him to funnel donations from his financial backers to GOP candidates key to winning a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Bush is slated to headline a Sept. 23 event in Tampa that organizers hope will raise as much as $1 million for GOP Senate candidates Cory Gardner in Colorado, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Monica Wehby in Oregon, Tom Cotton in Arkansas and Dan Sullivan in Alaska. A Bush aide said the goal was $500,000.

The host committee of more than three dozen people is expected to form the backbone of a finance committee should Mr. Bush run for president. Chairmen include John Rood, a real-estate developer and the former ambassador to the Bahamas; Al Hoffman, a real-estate developer and former Republican National Committee finance chairman; and John Kirtley, a school-choice proponent and the co-founder of the KLH Capital investment firm.

My own best guess is that in the end, the GOP Establishment will realize that nothing will stop America's yen for another go-round with a Clinton and they'll nominate Ted Cruz, let him take the fall for a landslide debacle and hope to get back to "normalcy" in 2020 or 2024. His Tea Party allies are busy huffing and puffing in their attempts to eviscerate his rivals and this week they turned their guns on hapless moron, Rick Perry. One Cruz booster, Keli Carender, the national grassroots coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, has been referring to Perry-- and not incorrectly, as normal Americans have known for many years-- as a "complete imbecile." The latest anti-Perry brouhaha is because he hired 3 operatives anathema to the far right fringe groups who hold some sway over the GOP base, even if the Chamber of Commerce wing has been kicking its ass all cycle. Henry Barbour, former Bill Clinton aide Mark Fabiani, and McCain-Palin campaign chief and MSNBC pundit Steve Schmidt are part of Team Perry… and the teabaggers are ready for war.

“The only two options are that Rick Perry is a complete imbecile and he has no idea who these people are and what they’ve done and how the conservative base—who votes in primaries—feels about these guys, or he’s doing it on purpose because that’s the kind of message he wants to send,” said Keli Carender, the national grassroots coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. Either way, she assured: “It will be an issue. We will make it an issue.”

Barbour is already working on Perry’s 2016 bid for the White House. But conservatives know him best for his role running the political action committee Mississippi Conservatives, founded by his uncle, Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi. In this year’s Magnolia State primary fight-- and “fight” is an understatement-- between U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Barbour reportedly played an influential and controversial role. According to National Review, his PAC funneled money to produce ads against McDaniel that alleged he would set back “race relationships between blacks and whites and other ethnic groups.” The ads, which seemed intended to drive African-American voters to the polls, enraged McDaniel’s Tea Party supporters.

As reported by Breitbart News, some conservatives loathe Barbour so much that they tried to get the Republican National Committee to censure him, to no avail.

“Republicans should not hire Henry Barbour unless and until he apologizes for the tactics he helped fund in Mississippi...I don’t think [keeping Barbour around] necessarily means Perry is endorsing what he did, but it means he’s certainly not properly condemning it or taking it seriously enough,” Quin Hillyer, a conservative writer and activist, told the Daily Beast. “What he helped finance was so far beyond the pale that he should be blackballed by conservatives, and if Perry wants to be considered a conservative, he should no longer employ Henry Barbour.”

Rick Shaftan, a Republican consultant who involved himself in the Mississippi primary, offered a somewhat different view of Barbour to the Daily Beast: “I don’t like what he did in Mississippi, but you know what? It shows he’s a ruthless, cutthroat operative, and there’s something to be said for that on the Republican side. Because we don’t have enough of them. If the force of evil can be brought to do good, then that’s a good thing.”

Normally, staffers don’t matter much to voters, Carender noted. But Mississippi is different for many on the far right. It’s become the ultimate test of Tea Party fidelity, a measuring stick for whether a conservative will sell out his principles to inside-the-Beltway Washington RINOs or will stay true to the cause and the grassroots activists who are the heart and soul of the movement.

People don’t recognize, Carender said, just “how plugged in the conservative base is to Mississippi…If you’re a man of integrity, you don’t associate with Henry Barbour as far as we’re concerned.”

…Perry also has hired Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former consultant to John McCain in 2008. Schmidt has long enraged Tea Party conservatives with his candor about members of his own party. Schmidt has called McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, “someone [who] was nominated to the vice presidency who was manifestly unprepared to take the oath of office should it become necessary and as it has become necessary many times in American history.” Asked whether Palin would have a future in politics, Schmidt once remarked: “I hope not...And the reason I say that is because if you look at it, over the last four years, all of the deficiencies in knowledge, all of the deficiencies in preparedness, she’s done not one thing to rectify them, to correct them.”

Then Schmidt described Palin’s unflattering qualities, which could, unfortunately for Perry, double as descriptions for most members of the Tea Party: “She has become a person who, I think, is filled with grievance, filled with anger, who has a divisive message for the national stage...”

Conservative radio host Mark Levin wondered of Schmidt, “Why would Perry hire this conservative attacker and Palin hater?”

Schmidt made those comments on MSNBC, where he is employed as a political analyst. Shaftan said of Perry hiring the strategist: “If they have Steve Schmidt working for them, why are they telling people? That I don’t understand.”

Perry has been basking in the glory of the conservative credibility his fight with Texas Democrats has lent him-- so much so that his mugshot features a prominent smirk, one you can wear on a T-shirt being sold by his PAC for just $25. Some Republicans made that same image their Facebook profile pictures in a show of support, in the way some do for gay marriage, or to end violence against children. But you’re only as good as the company you keep, according to some members of the far right who have in the past proved themselves to be loud enough to get their way.

Conservative HQ columnist Richard Viguerie wrote of Perry’s team: “When you hire a consultant, you hire his reputation, strategy, and tactics. We doubt that Governor Perry plans to win the Republican presidential nomination by race-baiting, recruiting Democrats to vote in Republican primary elections, and trashing as ‘poisonous’ conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh…”

Hillyer agreed: “A very important law of politics and government, as emphasized again and again by conservative movement leader Morton Blackwell, is that personnel is policy. If somebody wants to get a sense of how a political leader might govern, it certainly is important to see who he hires.”

2 guys with very serious dad problems