DC Is a Fetid Cesspool Of Anti-Democracy Corruption-- Whether We're Talking About Cheri Bustos (D) or Moscow Mitch (R)... Same Garbage

real picture of two fascists

This week AP reporter John Hanna reported how McConnell is moving to deny Kansas Republicans the opportunity to pick their own Senate nominee this year, basically using the same anti-democracy tactics that Schumer uses with the DSCC and that Cheri Bustos uses in the House.

I'm no fan of Kansas racist and neo-Nazi Kris Kobach but he's the best representative of what Kansas Republicans are all about regardless of what McConnell's calculus for staying in power is all about. There are plenty of decent people in Kansas. In fact, I never met a Kansan I didn't like and respect. But the dominant wing of the Kansas Republican Party is a different species altogether. And McConnell knows it-- and is willing to take them on. Once Mike Pompeo-- a far right, Koch-owned theocrat and Trump loyalist who imagines himself as a future president-- announced last week he isn't going to run for the empty U.S. Senate seat, McConnell almost had a heart attack.

Schumer has already recruited a mainstream conservative Republican, state Senator Barbara Bollier, a recent convert to the Democratic Party, although not to anything it stands for. But there are at least a dozen Republicans seeking the seat, including, of course, Kobach, whose racism, xenophobia and fascist tendencies are very popular among Republicans but less so among normal Kansans. In 2018 Kobach won the Republican gubernatorial primary against GOP incumbent Jeff Colyer by just 343 votes-- 128,549 (40.62%) to 128,204 (40.51%). With independents and some mainstream Republicans backing her, Democrat Laura Kelly beat him in the general election 506,727 (48.0%) to 453,645 (43.0%).

Nor is that the first time an election played out that way for Kobach. In 2004, he won the Republican nomination for Congress in the 3rd district (by just 0.3%) and then went on to lose the general election to a Democrat by more than 11 points. McConnell is petrified that that's what will happen again, endangering his own job as majority leader. So he may get behind a not very well known congressman, Roger Marshall, as a replacement candidate for Pompeo.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee questioned Kobach’s ability to win a general election when he announced his candidacy last summer.

And Scott Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief political strategist, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, said, “We continue to think Kobach is a loser.”

Some Republicans want to winnow the field by urging candidates at the back of the field to drop out. Kelly Arnold, another former state GOP chairman, said if candidates can’t conduct effective fundraising, “it’s time for them to get out.”

Kobach said Tuesday that his independence bothers the Republican establishment-- including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell-- and led it to woo Pompeo. His supporters argue that with Trump on the ballot in November, fears of losing the Kansas seat are misplaced.

“We’re seeing a race where conservatives are lining up behind me,” Kobach said.

Kobach also believes his background is an asset with tensions high in the Middle East. At the Justice Department, he helped develop a system that forced more than 80,000 foreign residents to register with the U.S. government so that it could know why they were there for security reasons. Widely derided by civil rights groups, it was abandoned in 2011 by President Barack Obama’s administration.

Marshall spokesman Eric Pahls said the congressman’s seven years in the Army Reserve are more crucial.

“Kansans want to know there’s someone with military experience helping to make these decisions,” he said.

But Bob Beatty, a Washburn University of Topeka political scientist, said Kobach has built a reputation among Republicans as “someone who doesn’t back down.”

“A foreign policy crisis is going to bring out more conservative voters,” Beatty said.

The leading Democratic candidate is state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a retired Kansas City-area anesthesiologist who made national headlines by switching from the GOP at the end of 2018. She has endorsements from Kelly and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former two-term Democratic governor, and she already is pursuing moderate voters.

Bollier’s campaign announced Tuesday that she’s raised more than $1 million over the past three months-- a sizable amount in a low-cost media state like Kansas.

But Marshall began his race with a sizeable balance from his House campaign and entered the final three months of 2019 with nearly $1.9 million in cash. That was twice as much as the combined total of his main GOP rivals, Kobach, Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle and Dave Lindstrom, a Kansas City-area businessman and ex-Kansas City Chiefs professional football player.

The U.S. Chamber helped Marshall win his congressional seat in 2016 by defeating tea party firebrand Rep. Tim Huelskamp. Reed said they’re considering helping him in the Senate race and the “onus is on him” to show he can win the nomination.

Marshall launched his first television ad before Christmas, describing himself as a foe to “Trump haters and their phony impeachment.”

Yet Marshall hasn’t yet convinced some Republicans. Shallenburger sees his pro-Trump statements as “pandering” and says his ouster of Huelskamp has him perceived as a moderate, despite a conservative voting record.

Kobach is better known and, to some conservatives, just more exciting. University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller said Kobach excels “at the theater” of politics, while Marshall seems “vanilla.”

“If central casting called for a generic Republican congressman, that could be Roger Marshall, right?” Miller said. “Someone to just, like, be in the background of the movie shot.”

photo shop

Bloomberg News reporters Laura Litvan and Jennifer Jacobs made it clear that McConnell will make the final decision who the nominee is, not anyone in Kansas. He seems to be leaning towards Marshall. And why not? Isn't that why Congress tends to be so generic and why the establishment is so utterly repulsive? Bollier, for example, has not one single policy on her website, and says she's running to be "a voice of reason in Washington." She makes it clear she isn't partisan and when she has to spit out in her ad that she's a Democrat, she says she's a "pragmatic Democrat." She could have said, 'don't worry about me; I'm a Chuck Schumer Democrat, just like Kyrsten Sinema and I'll never vote like a progressive. Never!'

Republicans Have A Sense Of Foreboding About 2020-- And They Should

Trump still has a motley collection of apologists-- the Fox News crew, hate talk radio hosts, self-serving politicians, neo-Nazi crackpots and their partners in the white evangelical movement-- but there is no longer anyone with an ounce of intellectual integrity defending Trump or unwilling to admit that he is, far and away, the worst "president" in American history-- off the scale (or on an entirely different scale) relative to unworthy past presidents like Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Calvin Coolidge, George W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, James Buchanan, JohnTyler and Warren G. Harding. And now things are going to get even worse. Early Sunday morning, Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhei, writing at Axios, noted that with the departure of John Kelly, the tidal wave of fake news emanating from Señor Trumpanzee has "escalated." Kelly controlled the paper flow in and out of the Oval Office and that process has now collapsed into complete anarchy. [Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is running the United States government.]

Wednesday was Kelly's last formal day in the White House, but his influence had declined since he announced his departure on Dec. 8.

Since then, Trump has made several unusually specific factual assertions that were quickly shown to be inaccurate, suggesting more unvetted information may be reaching him than had been the case in the heyday of Kelly's control:

• Arguably the most notable one ... During Wednesday's devil-may-care, 95-minute Cabinet meeting, Trump said that back in 1979, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan "because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there." A Wall Street Journal editorial scolded: "We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President." [Watch Maddow explain what happened.]

• And then there's the president's depiction of how tariffs work. "China is paying us tremendous tariffs. We’re getting billions and billions of dollars of money pouring into the Treasury," he said Friday at a Rose Garden news conference. The N.Y. Times points out: "The United States does not send China a bill for the cost of tariffs, which are often passed on to American importers or consumers."

The Washington Post called the Cabinet meeting "a fact-checking nightmare." ...The president believes he pays no price for escalating inaccuracies, even ones that have been repeatedly debunked...With most of his human guardrails gone, the unvetted language of Trump's rallies is once again a staple of his governing.

Are congressional Republicans abandoning him in droves? Not yet. The first House votes of the new session are always rules packages and it's always a party line vote. 3 Republicans-- Tom Reed (NY), John Katko (NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)-- broke with their party and voted with Pelosi on her changes. Then came the appropriations bills to reopen the government without giving Trump money for his wall. You can rest assured he understood what this serious of votes meant better than the ones about the rules package. 8 Republicans abandoned him on all or some of the 3 roll calls-- Will Hurd (TX), John Katko (NY), Chris Smith (NJ), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Greg Walden (OR), Peter King (NY), Elise Stefanik (NY) and Fred Upton (MI). He'll notice. These was the percentage of the vote each of these members got in November (along with Trump's 2016 percentage):

• Will Hurd- 49.2% (46.4%)
• John Katko- 53.1% (45.3%)
• Chris Smith- 55.8% (56.8%)
• Brian Fitzpatrick- 51.3% (47.1%)
• Greg Walden- 56.5% (56.5%)
• Peter King- 53.3% (53.0%)
• Elise Stefanik- 56.7% (53.9%)
• Fred Upton- 50.2% (51.3%)

Upton, Katie, Hurd, Fitzpatrick and King are all seriously vulnerable for 2020 and have to walk a fine line between being seen as disloyal by Republicans and as too enabling by independents. All 5, perhaps all 7, will be targeted by the Democrats. On the Senate side, two Republicans up for reelection in blue-trending states, Susan Collins (ME) and Cory Gardner (CO), have called for reopening the government without money for Trump's wall. Matt Gorman who was this past cycle's NRCC communications director remarked that "You’re not just walking a tight rope, you’re eating, sleeping, and breathing on it."

This evening, John Bresnahan and Sarah Ferris reported for Politico that dozens of Republicans may cross the aisle and vote with Pelosi against Reump's government shutdown. "White House officials and Republican congressional leaders," they wrote, "worry that GOP support for the shutdown is eroding, weakening President Donald Trump’s hand as he seeks billions of dollars for a border wall that Democrats have vowed to oppose, according to GOP lawmakers and aides... Despite the White House PR blitz, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and other senior Republicans believe that 'a significant bloc' of House Republicans could vote with Democrats on the funding measures, according to GOP lawmakers and aides." McCarthy says between 15 and 25 will vote against Trump.

GOP leaders say they can keep that number below 55, a key threshold. That many Republican defections, coupled with all House Democrats, would reach 290 "yes" votes, a veto-proof majority. House Democrats can't overcome Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) refusal to bring up their bills, but such a vote would signal the House can override a Trump veto, a major blow to the president and his allies.

NBC News reported that "Cracks in the GOP ranks have already emerged as skittish Republicans, many of whom face difficult elections in 2020, have begun asserting their independence.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) who might have the most difficult race in in 2020 in a state that is edging more Democratic each election, was the first Republican to say that Senate should vote on the House bills to reopen the government.

He acknowledged the perils of opposing Trump but said that the president understands that he has to broaden his support if he’s going to win re-election, which would in turn help him.

“The president also has to win the states he either barely carried or didn’t carry to win re-election,” Gardner told NBC News in an interview. “While this (border funding fight) is maybe more a base-appealing measure, there are other issues he’s going to have to do to broaden the base.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another member up in 2020 who is looking for a solution to the stalemate, wrote an op-ed in The Hill floating the idea that agreement on a border wall could be coupled with relief for Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Democrats plan to try and put pressure on vulnerable Republicans on controversial issues by painting them as allies with a president who is increasingly less popular among independent voters, starting with the shutdown. The Democratic campaign arm in the Senate, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has already begun targeting potentially vulnerable Republicans like Gardner and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

“Senate Republicans own every miserable consequence of their pointless shutdown and those up for election this cycle have a choice: join Democrats in reopening the government by passing the legislation they’ve already supported or give voters another reason to throw them out of office in 2020,” said David Bergstein, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman.

Collins has said that she’d support the House bills if Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell brings them to the floor, telling reporters she sees “no reason why the bills that are ready to go, on which we’ve achieved an agreement, should be held hostage to this debate over border security.”

In the House, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who narrowly won his re-election and whose border spans 1,500 miles of the Texas border with Mexico, voted to reopen the government. Political strategists have said that the last-minute attention on immigration and the caravan by the president nearly cost Hurd his re-election.

And Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who easily won her re-election in her upstate New York district, is positioning herself as an independent voice in the Republican Party, said she voted for the bills because “I oppose government shutdowns.”

Perhaps an indicator of the challenge for some Republicans, two veteran Republican senators from red states-- Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Pat Roberts of Kansas-- have already announced that they won't seek re-election in 2020. Both are conservative senators who have a history of working across the aisle.

“I’ve learned that being true to myself and sticking to my principles will always win the day,” Roberts said in his speech announcing he would not run in 2020.

And others are seeking their own independence from the president. Freshman Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah started his congressional career with a strong statement of opposition to the president in an op-ed. While he doesn't have to run for re-election for six years, he does have to serve with a president who he said has fallen short of presidential leadership.

And Trump himself? He's probably going to have a primary coming. In an Op-Ed for CNN, Joshua Spivak, an academic at Wagner College, wrote that Trump may be a shoo-in for renomination but, "if history is any judge, an intraparty battle-- even if the challenger is unsuccessful-- could be devastating for the incumbent. No sitting President who sought his party's nomination has been denied it since Chester Arthur in 1884-- Arthur only got the office following President James Garfield's assassination. And presidents who face a serious re-election challenge have regularly gone down in defeat in the general election."

While the story of 19th century presidents is generally a tale of one-termers, presidents since McKinley have been very successful at winning re-election. It's notable that none of the 13 presidents (including the four VPs who moved up following the death of a president) who won re-election faced a serious primary challenge. They all were essentially handed the ballot line.

The presidents who did not win re-election tell a much different tale. Five presidents lost in their quest for another term (in the case of Gerald Ford, it was a first full term). Four of them-- all but Herbert Hoover-- faced a noteworthy challenge in their party's primary. In addition, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both pulled out of the race after seeing serious primary challengers emerge.

Even when sitting presidents prevailed in the primaries against serious contenders, their authority was often undermined and they went on to lose in the general election. In addition to William Howard Taft in 1912, this was the case for Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Ford, Carter and Bush all faced difficulties in their first terms, which created an opening for a primary challenger to run. But beyond those challenges, the primary fight forced the President to dirty his hands with politics early on, instead of staying above the fray and focusing on governing.

Even worse, it shows that the president does not have complete control over his party. A challenger also pushes the president to take on positions that alienate centrist voters at exactly the time he needs to be wooing independents in the center.

Trump, of course, has been dirtying his hands every minute of every day since he managed to worm his way-- likely with Russian help-- into the White House. A significant number of Americans don't consider him a legitimate president and would rather see him imprisoned or dead than back for a second term. He's been an Oval Office occupant like no other and you can count on his reelection campaign also being like no other. At this point I'd bet almost any of the leader Democratic contenders could beat him. Note: there's more than just beating him; it will all be for naught if we aren't also thinking about what come after him? Want your cake and the ability to eat it too? Please help bake the winning cake-- winning for 2020 through 2025.

How Badly Has Paul Ryan Screwed Up The GOP's Chance To Repeal Obamacare?

The other day, Alex Samuels reported in the Texas Tribune that Barbara Bush, the daughter of George W. Bush, was the keynote speaker at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Ft. Worth on Wednesday, where she insisted that the work the organization is doing is especially important after the ascension of the Trump Regime. She told the thousand guests at the Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas' annual luncheon that "In October when I was asked to speak, I said yes and I was thrilled, but I was under the assumption that history was going to go differently. That was not meant to be a political statement; I just thought the cards were going to fall in a different way. I’m so happy I said yes because this work could not matter more... Our belief that health is a human right is not reflected in today’s reality. Millions of people's potentials and futures are undermined simply because they do not have access to the health care that they deserve. We have these incredible tools to solve problems, yet health systems are weak, and we need new leaders to fix them... To me, Planned Parenthood is a one-stop-shop for everything that has to do with women’s health and all social problems that don’t have to do with women’s health. I hope you all realize the incredible investment that you’re making for both women and also their kids, their kids' education and their income level. And that is unique and incredible. It’s a silver bullet, if you ask me."

And Barbara Bush isn't the only Republican uncomfortable with their party's bizarre jihad against Planned Parenthood. The idea of tying it to repealing Obamacare looks, in fact, like a poison pill of some kind. I doubt it will matter that much among House Republicans-- from where the idea comes-- but it could kill the package in the Senate. In 2015 Susan Collins (R-ME) voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act precisely because defunding Planned Parenthood was in the bill. There's no reason to think she's changed her mind and recently she was quoted saying that she doesn't think it makes sense to link the two issues. "If the House Republicans want to bring it up, it should be in a separate bill. I would oppose that bill, but it further complicates the negotiations to have it included in this bill."

And it's not just Collins. Ever since the national GOP stabbed Lisa Murkowsky (R-AK) in the back in 2010-- supporting Tea Party sociopath Joe Miller instead of her-- she's felt pretty independent for a Republican. Miller has the official Republican Party ballot designation, but she beat him-- and a weak Democrat-- as a write-in candidate (with 39.5% of the vote). Ever since, she's been one of the half dozen Republicans most willing to cross the aisle-- thumbing her nose at Miss McConnell on the way-- and vote with the Democrats. A couple of weeks ago, she addressed the state legislature and told them she's likely to vote against repealing Obamacare for two reasons-- the rollback of Medicaid expansion that the legislature had approved and which is extremely popular in Alaska, and the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

"As long as Alaska wants to keep the expansion it should have the option," Murkowski said. "I will not vote to repeal it."

Other parts worth preserving, Murkowski said, are provisions that prohibit insurers from discriminating against pre-existing conditions, aim to ensure mental health parity and allow young people to remain on their parents’ health insurance up to the age of 26.

Murkowski also stood in support of Planned Parenthood, which she said has no place in the ACA debate.

"Taxpayer dollars should never be used to pay for abortions, but I will not vote to deny Alaskans access to the health services that Planned Parenthood provides," said Murkowski.

Planned Parenthood provides health care for 7,700 Alaskans annually. Yesterday Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) told Chris Cuomo and CNN viewers yesterday that she had been "very forceful in repeatedly saying that the expansion of Medicaid is tremendously important to 184,000 West Virginians. That is something-- every time we talk about how has it moved to change-- I am constantly talking about." When Cuomo pressed her about whether or not Medicaid expansion is preserved in Ryan's secret bill, she said "it better be." That, of course, is at odds with GOP extremist who would just as soon abolish Medicaid altogether. One more Senate Republican bails-- for whatever reason-- and Obamacare repeal goes back to the drawing board... if it even gets off the drawing board. No one knows at this point because Ryan has "the plan" under lock and key. He wouldn't even allow Senator Rand Paul-- who says he's inclined to "leave it," not take it-- to look at it Thursday.



Kansas' gigantic, empty 1st congressional district takes up most of the state-- 61 full counties and part of two others. There are no actual cities although in includes Dodge City (pop- 27,340), Salina (pop- 47,707), Manhattan (pop- 52,281), Emporia (pop- 24,916), Liberal (pop- 20,525), Hutchinson (pop- 42,080) and gets into the western suburbs of Topeka. With a PVI of R+23, it's one of the most reliably Republican congressional districts in the country. Romney beat Obama there 70-28% and last November Trump beat Hillary by an even great margin-- 69.3% to 24.3%. And at the same time they elected a new congressman, replacing radical right lunatic Tim Huelskamp with... radical right lunatic Roger Marshall. With the surreptitious help of Paul Ryan, Marshall beat Huelskamp in the primary 58,808 (56.5%) to 45,315 (43.5%).

It isn't likely you've heard of Marshall, a natural born back-bencher destined to have no impact on anything ever, unless you live in one of the farms or towns that make up KS-01. He seems right out of the 1950s, a small town obstetrician delivering babies in a 79% white district, harboring frightening and antiquated ideas about healthcare. In an interview in Stat Friday, that ugly, mind-numbing, narrow-minded ignorance was on full display.

The law’s Medicaid expansion, which Kansas has not adopted despite support from many hospitals, including some of Marshall’s former colleagues, is one of the big sticking points for Republicans. Many GOP-led states adopted it and want to see it preserved in some form.

Marshall doesn’t believe it has helped, an outlook that sheds light on how this new player in Washington understands health policy.

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.

“Just, like, homeless people… I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care,” he said. “The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER.”

...“Our vision was that we would look more like a hotel with customer service that delivered five-star health care,” he said. “So our cafeteria looks more like a coffee shop than it does a sterile hospital dining room. We have bright windows everywhere, and outside of every window there’s a garden. Thinking that healing is more than just a knife and a needle.”