I Don't Feel Sorry For Paul Ryan-- He Made This Bed

As I sat down to write this post, the big headlines at Bannon's and Mercer's extreme right website were a series of attacks on Trump chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kushner-in-law and on the Senate's most vulnerable Republican, Dean Heller. The anti-Heller diatribe was something that has many congressional Republicans wondering when they should break with the Trump Regime for their own political survival.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Danny Tarkanian for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, an endorsement Palin and Tarkanian provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release.

“Danny Tarkanian is a conservative outsider who will support the ‘America First’ policies our nation needs to survive and thrive, including building the border wall, ending sanctuary cities, and finally repealing Obamacare,” Palin said in the statement endorsing Tarkanian, provided exclusively to Breitbart News. “Commonsense Conservatives in Nevada and across America need to unite and help win this critical fight. I strongly endorse Danny Tarkanian for the United States Senate and look forward to helping him win this important election.”

...Tarkanian’s race against Heller comes as Heller, a far-outside-the-mainstream establishment Republican, has not stood with President Trump on most issues. For instance, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Heller “bragged about his dissent against the Republican-backed health reform bills” and he “stated he would continue to uphold” support for former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty for illegal alien youths.

In addition, Heller announced his opposition to the idea that President Trump would pardon Arizona’s former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Meanwhile, a top player inside the Mercer/Bannon operation contacted Blue America to ask if we would partner with them on a project to topple Paul Ryan who they hate with a fierce passion. They really hate Ryan-- probably as much as we do. The WI-01 congressional race will hinge on independent voters choosing between Ryan's increasingly ugly and deteriorating brand and the vibrant and sparkling everyman brand Wisconsin iron worker Randy Bryce has patiently built up for years. A little over a third of the midterm voters will be Republicans and a slightly smaller number will be Democrats. But over a quarter of the voters will be independents who are indicating in no uncertain terms they don't think Ryan has earned another reelection. Trump-leaning independents are as adamant as Democratic-leaning independents that Ryan is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Politico's Rachel Bade covers Ryan from a very sympathetic perspective. Yesterday she asked the country to feel sorry for his plight. "For all its power and prestige," she empathizes for her idol, "the speaker of the House is one of the most thankless jobs in Washington-- just ask John Boehner. Now, with Congress barreling toward major fiscal fights this fall, Paul Ryan is about to get a taste of the Boehner treatment-- and then some. Consider what's on the immediate horizon for the GOP wunderkind: President Donald Trump is ready to shut down the government over his border wall with Mexico. Breitbart has all but declared a renewed, Steve Bannon-led war on GOP leaders, with Ryan in its cross hairs. And conservative lawmakers are exhorting the speaker to play hardball on raising the debt ceiling-- even as the White House demands a no-strings-attached increase to calm nervous creditors."

"Conservatives aren’t going to roll over when it comes to the debt ceiling,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) in a Tuesday interview. “I can tell you: It’s going to be a battle.”

Asked about Ryan’s leadership on such matters, Walker added: “I would like to see his genius in policy manifest itself… Behind closed doors, there are strong conversations when it comes to holding the line for the will of the bulk of the conference. And I would like to see some strength in that area.”

When Ryan reluctantly took the reins of the House Republican Conference in late 2015, he went out of his way to say he was only heeding the call of duty and didn't really want it. Two years later, he faces the most treacherous stretch of his speakership as September showdowns over the budget and debt ceiling approach.

Like Boehner, Ryan will be forced to mediate the long-running hostilities in his conference-- between the always-potent Freedom Caucus and a newly-empowered faction of centrists. Only this time, Ryan also has a demanding and unpredictable president thrown into the mix, too.

Trump isn't making it easy. On Thursday he attacked Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for rejecting his proposed strategy of pairing a debt ceiling increase, a toxic vote for Republicans, with a popular veterans bill to garner more support.

GOP leaders rejected the approach because they ran out of time before recess and worried some Republicans would fume that they got arm-twisted into voting for the debt bill they'd otherwise oppose but for the vets provision.

Trump didn't care about those sensitivities, tweeting Thursday: “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval.... They didn't do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!”

That slight came just days after Trump said he'd be willing to shut down the government in order to secure funding for his border wall-- a strategy that could backfire on the Republican congressional majority in next year's midterms. And as if that's wasn't enough stress, Ryan will almost certainly be forced to rely on Democrats for the fall’s big fiscal votes-- a move that was eventually Boehner’s undoing.

No one is saying Ryan's job is in jeopardy. But the way he handles all these situations could well determine his standing and popularity within the GOP.

Meanwhile, frustration is mounting among Republican voters that Congress failed to deliver on campaign promises like repealing Obamacare. While Ryan points out that the House passed legislation and it was the Senate that came up short, the public isn't necessarily interested in that distinction.

Neither, it seems, are Trump and his allies. In fact, the president has shown he has no compunction about blaming Republicans in Congress for not enacting his agenda. And while Bannon engaged politely with Ryan and GOP leaders in the White House, he’s made clear that he plans to pound them relentlessly from his new perch atop Breitbart.

"You can see the emerging theme from Trump world is that Trump doesn’t fail; Trump has been betrayed," said longtime Ryan acquaintance Charlie Sykes, a prominent conservative commentator based in Wisconsin. "They’re going to line up the scapegoats... No matter how much [Ryan] appeases Trump, it won’t take long for Trump for turn on him."

Most of Trump's ire has lately centered on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in retribution for failing to pass a bill to repeal Obamacare. But the Trump-Ryan marriage has always been one more of convenience than true love, so many are wondering how much longer it will last.

Here in Ryan’s southeast Wisconsin district, longtime Ryan supporters worry their congressman will be crippled from all the impossible demands and pressures. Marlene Lamberton, a Ryan constituent and retired manufacturing employee from Caledonia, Wis., said this week that Ryan is being “forced to do many unpopular things” and “make a lot of compromises" because his conference is so divided.

“Being speaker of the House has become a setback… It’s basically ruined his career for a while,” she said. “I think Paul Ryan is a good person. I think he’s one of the most honest politicians I’ve ever known and heard. But I think he is compromising his values a little.”

We contacted David Keith, Randy Bryce's Racine-based campaign manager about how this is playing out in southeast Wisconsin. He told us that "Ryan finds himself in a very precarious situation: does he hug the far right in the hopes of fending off a revolution from the Bannon-types, or does he dismiss the far right in the hopes of winning enough of the independent vote to get him to 50+1? The latter is the type of tactic Ryan is normally comfortable with. In Ryan world, his cookie-cutter style will be: dump millions of negative advertising on Randy Bryce while amplifying the 'aw-shucks' Mr. Nice Guy/I'm your wonky neighbor type to target milk toast moderates (a vote that I believe is becoming few and far between).

"There is a problem with this approach however. 1/3 (maybe slightly less) of the vote will be independent, meaning that he would have to win 75% of the independent vote in addition to winning ALL of the Republican vote. If Ryan deserts Trump and his Bannon-type extremists, he CAN'T win 100% of the Republican vote, or even anything remotely close to that. They may stay home. They may vote for the iron-worker, or they may vote for a third party...

"So this dynamic begs the question: is Paul Ryan nearing a check mate scenario? No matter how bad the Koch Regime and their money apparatus muddy up Randy's name, Democrats are eager to vote, Independents hate the President and his agenda so their vote will likely mirror the Democratic voter sentiment, and the far right hates Ryan. I don't see a majority coalition there for Ryan.

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't, might be the phrase increasingly playing in Lyin-Ryan's head for the next 15 months."

Ryan And Trump Threaten Primaries Against Republicans Who Vote Against Trumpcare

The other day we mentioned that a SuperPAC controlled by Paul Ryan is running threatening negative TV ads against 30 Republican incumbents. The one above has been on TV all weekend in Grand Rapids, it's suburbs to the north and east and in Battle Creek in central Michigan. The implied threat is that Ryan will destroy independent-minded libertarian Justin Amash's career the same way he destroyed the careers of Republican incumbents Tim Huelskamp (KS) and Scott Garrett (NJ). Most of the Republicans Ryan has targeted are in deep red districts where there have never been negative TV ads run against them. Crackpot extremists like Mo Brooks and Gary Palmer in Alabama, Paul Gosar, David Schweikert and Trent Franks in the Phoenix area, and Ted Poe, Louie Gohmert, Randy Weber, Michael Burgess and Brian Babin have never had to worry about Democratic opponents. But Ryan's threat is to take them out with a primary, like he did with Huelskampo-- and already tried doing once before to Amash. (Tulsa-area Congressman Jim Bridenstine is one of the congressmen being targeted. He's retiring at the end of the current session and doesn't care how much money Ryan wastes threatening him. He told a donor who I know earlier today that "Ryan should remember what happened to Julius Ceasar before he tries anymore of this kind of bullshit."

But, apparently, the threats-- at least to the other 29 besides Bridenstine-- are serious. Right-wing website, the WashingtonExaminer.com reported on Friday that it isn't just Ryan. Señor Trumpanzee "has told Republican leaders that he's prepared to play hardball with congressional conservatives to pass the GOP healthcare bill, including by supporting the 2018 primary challengers of any Republican who votes against" Trumpcare. At least that's what he was boasting to Steve Scalise and his whip team last week. (Ryan was on Face the Nation this morning threatening that he agrees with Trumpanzee that there'll be a "bloodbath" in 2018 if the GOP doesn't pass his Trumpcare bill.)

Remember, Trump has a terrible reputation for failing to get his candidates elected. His picks in North Carolina and Kansas got their asses handed to them despite Trump's backing and his GA-06 crony to replace Tom Price, Bruce Levell, is polling below the margin or error!

Thompson Twins

Still, the Trumpists behind the Examiner website claim his threats "could resonate" because the congressmen he and Ryan are targeting are in such strong Trump-supporting districts and "could be the most susceptible to a midterm primary challenge, especially if Trump tells those voters that their member of Congress is blocking him from fulfilling his promise to repeal President Obama's healthcare law.

"The president will respond as circumstances dictate," a House Republican said Friday, on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. "He has unique capacities; I wouldn't want to be the one he tests them out on."

If negotiations don't reach fruition as the bill readies for a floor vote, Republican insiders said, watch Trump's tweets and travel schedule for signs that he's dispensed with the carrots and brought out the stick to try to get wayward members on board.

Party insiders say the president at that point could choose to make an example of one or two resistant Republicans to send a message.

Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, the primary group of House Republicans opposed to the healthcare bill, is a possible target. His western North Carolina district voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November, and Meadows has come out in opposition to the bill.

Meadows was still opposed this week but seems to recognize that it would be difficult to win an argument with the president at home.

"The president has a very powerful bully pulpit and a very powerful tweet and so I would never want to take on the president in either of those realms," he admitted.

...The whip team was expected to present Trump with a list of Republicans that need convincing on Tuesday. That's when they are next scheduled to meet at the White House, in what is to become a weekly check-in session until the House passes health reform.

So far Amash, for one, has been laughing at Ryan's threats and even went on CNN Thursday to mention that the Ryan-Pence-Price Trumpcare bill "has no constituency. Republicans at home don’t like it. Democrats at home don’t like it. It seems like the only constituency for it is the political class in Washington, and maybe some of the insurance companies. So I don’t see how this bill goes anywhere... The sole objective of our leadership team is to ram this through, then go to Phase Two and have the HHS secretary make the changes, and those changes are only in place as long as he’s the secretary. The third phase requires us to be working with Democrats, so I think we should be working with them now to see where we can find common ground. I think that we can convince Democrats… major reforms to the healthcare system are needed... The president is the kind of guy who will work this hard. I think he’s going to go and use his political capital on this. At the end of the day, what they’re trying to do is a political plan… They’re trying to pass essentially Obamacare 2.0 and they want to pretend it’s 'repeal and replace.' Because they don’t want to upset people at home who like some of the features of Obamacare, and they want to fulfill their promises to Republicans. That’s the wrong strategy. You should really be looking at the policy… and trying to find a way we can all come together... It doesn’t address healthcare costs, and I feel very comfortable voting against that because Republicans and Democrats at home don’t support such a bill."

Can Amash stand up to a primary? Be beat back one from establishment shill Brian Ellis in 2014. Ellis spent $1,820,123 against Amash ($1,057,006 from his own bank account) but Amash beat him 39,706 (57%) to 29,422 (43%). Trump won Amash's district 51.6% to 42.2% while Amash beat his Democratic opponent 59.4% to 37.5%. Since the election, Trump's popularity has waned, especially in Kent and Calhoun counties-- where virtually all the votes are cast-- while Amash's popularity has soared.


This morning, on ABC's This Week, far right Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton, now a senator, warned his old colleagues in the House not to get suckered by Ryan. He said the bill Ryan, Pence and Price cobbled together can't pass the Senate in its current form because it would have "adverse consequences for millions of Americans." He thinks Republicans who vote for it are putting their 2018 reelection prospects in serious jeopardy. "Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote," he said. "I'm afraid that if they vote for this bill, they're going to put the House majority at risk next year." Republican NY Times columnist David Brooks was also on Meet the Press today. He mentioned that his party's Trumpcare proposal is "declaring war on their own voters."

Still remember Alaska crackpot Sarah Palin? I don't think she's a big fan of Ryan's Trumpcare bill either-- although with her garblygook way of expressing herself, who knows. She dubbed the Ryan plan "RINO-care" and said "not another word from them until we are definitively told that there is no provision whatsoever allowing Congress to exempt itself whatsoever with this law. As with anything else mandated by Congress, every single dotted I and crossed T better apply to them, too, and not just the people who they are lording this thing over because remember this is government-controlled health care, the system that requires enrollment in an unaffordable, unsustainable, unwanted, unconstitutional continuation of government-run medicine, and even in this new quasi-reformed proposal, there is still an aspect of socialism. That’s the whole premise here... It would be really helpful if every single one of these politicians would do like the NASCAR drivers do-- and it’s been said before-- but let them wear their sponsors plastered all over their three-piece suits when they show up so we know what side they’re on and who they’re actually doing their bidding for... It’s so wrong because it’s still so unconstitutional. It’s still taxation without representation. It still picks winners and losers because some corporations get to opt out of the requirements that hit everyone else. It still infringes on states’ rights, and it still weaponizes the IRS against Americans who just simply seek freedom and choices and sensibility in their families’ health care. The IRS will be taxing aspects of this without representation because we have no choice. We’re shackled to politicians’ whims and special interests’ bullying interests, which does violate the Constitution, and it actually allows government to have a lien on our health... I don’t know why we’re still even giving an inch on aspects of socialized medicine via this new RINO-care proposal. Is that okay with conservatives, with Republicans in office? They say they want the patient first. They say they want freedom. They say they want a free market to drive the insurance system that we have in America. But no, government is still in control. Government actually has a lien on our health because they lord over us penalties if we want to opt out of a big government mandate... I have great faith that President Trump is one who will fulfill campaign promises. He already has a track record of doing so well in these first months, I’m just really proud to have been part of the constituency that wanted him in there and worked hard to get him in there. So, yeah, I’m sure that President Trump is going to do the right thing and listen to all sides, of course, but understand, especially, that as a businessman, he’s going to understand whether this makes sense in his vision of how to grow businesses and how to get government off our back and back on our side. How will we create a smaller, smarter government with a proposal like this that basically allows for the continuation of a growth of government? That’s what any aspect of Obamacare or RINO-care does. So asking President Trump specifically about how running a business, not a Wall Street business, but mom-and-pop main street business, how does RINO-care help their business get to grow and drive and survive in this economy?"

The Humiliation Of Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, The Republican Party-- While The Demented Donald Laughs At America

The superficially crafted messaging of the Republican convention has been stepped on and obliterated every day. But Hillary better not feel powerful for having had anything to do with it. It's all Trump and his incompetent, deranged micro-campaign that's causing all the seemingly self-destructive chaos. Trump lifted those plagiarized passages from Michelle Obama's speech and put them into Melania's address and ate up two-and-a-half days of headlines that might have gone to republican messaging. Trump lured Ted Cruz into an untenable position last night, overshadowing, Mike Pence's introduction to the nation as the two squared off in some kind of an alternative universe 2020 preview.

I'm not Ted Cruz fan, but you almost feel sorry for the guy. Trump had originally said that unless his former rivals endorsed him in advance, they wouldn't get convention speaking slots. It kind of worked on sweaty, wormy Rubio but Ted Cruz-- who was not going to humiliate himself by publicly fellating the man who denigrated him and his family so violently-- well that turned into the kind of chaos Trump loves to spark and then take advantage of. Cruz decided to address the convention-- packed with really dumb Trump supporters-- without endorsing the legitimate party nominee. Trump was waiting for him, with a well-coordinated whip plan for strategic booing and camera-chaos. This is what America woke up to this morning:

David Frum referred to what Cruz did last night as "his brave and noble act" and I tend to see it similarly-- with reservations. Many others put Cruz in a far less heroic light-- even as a backstabber. Patricia Murphy at Roll Call: Having already identified Trump "a narcissist and a pathological liar," Cruz "exacted his revenge and refused to endorse Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention meant to unify GOP support behind his nomination." Politico noted that "Boos rained down on Cruz, and his wife had to be escorted from the hall amid verbal taunts in an unreal scene that marked an end to a surreal primary season."

“We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love,” Cruz said. “That is the standard we should expect from everybody.”

It was a standard that Cruz determined Trump did not meet.

“Don’t stay home in November,” Cruz told the audience. “Stand and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

But he wouldn’t say Trump’s name.

In doing so, Cruz handed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats a potentially devastating cudgel of a slogan-- “vote your conscience”-- with which to hammer Trump all the way through November. Clinton grabbed it immediately, tweeting the phrase and a link to a voter registration page.

So... yes, Cruz kicked off his 2020 election campaign-- probably against Hillary, in the GOP's alternative universe, against President Gas. Byron York pointed out Cruz is taking a big gamble with his political future. "No one," he correctly asserted, "will know whether he won or lost until a few years from now... The upside of Cruz's gamble is that in one brief appearance, he won the intensified support of those Republicans who cannot reconcile themselves to Trump. And, if Trump goes down to defeat in November-- and it's safe to say everyone in that group believes he will-- Cruz will have serious I-told-you-so cred. Then, the theory goes, he will be in a strong position to put the party back together and run in 2020.

The scene irritated the still-raw feelings of some veterans of the 2016 GOP race. Veteran Republican strategist Curt Anderson, who ran Bobby Jindal's campaign, saw in Cruz's action far more calculation than principle, recalling the days when Cruz expressed admiration and affection for Trump.

"No one did more to create Donald Trump than Ted Cruz did," Anderson wrote in an email shortly after Cruz's speech. "While others were attempting to stop Trump, Cruz was complimenting him and sucking up to him. It was a political calculation that failed. Everything he does is a political calculation. Tonight he calculated that not endorsing the Republican nominee will be good for him. That will be another failed calculation, no matter whether Trump wins or loses in the fall."

Anderson was by no means alone in that feeling. Talking to attendees leaving the hall Wednesday night, most were unhappy with Cruz's performance. They didn't like the fact that Cruz would not fall in line behind his party's choice, and they could not understand his decision in light of their strong belief that the country has gone downhill fast under President Obama and will continue unless Hillary Clinton is stopped.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin, one of Trump's most blood-thirsty lady enforcers, has declared Cruz, henceforth, a persona-non-grata in the Republican Party:

Cruz’s broken pledge to support the will of the people tonight was one of those career-ending “read my lips” moments. I guarantee American voters took notice and felt more unsettling confirmation as to why we don’t much like typical politicians because they campaign one way, but act out another way. That kind of political status quo has got to go because it got us into the mess we’re in with America’s bankrupt budgets and ramped up security threats.

It’s commonplace for politicians to disbelieve their word is their bond, as evidenced by Cruz breaking his promise to endorse his party’s nominee, evidently thinking whilst on the convention stage, “At this point, what difference does it make?” We’ve been burned so horribly by that attitude that voters won’t reward politicians pulling that “what difference does it make” stunt again. Politicians will see — it makes all the difference in the world to us.

Who knew Palin was such a Talking Heads fan!



Josh Marshall tried to make sense out of what happened last night for normal observers-- but found it almost impossible. "Trump's convention is everything you could have predicted: a mix of bracing disorganization, provocation, aggression and lies. It is simply impossible to pick apart the incompetence from the transgressive behavior and pettiness... Years from today we will still wrestle with the meaning of Cruz for once leveraging the awesome power of his assholery in a righteous cause. Perhaps there is a salutary bravery or solidity there I hadn't noticed, or at least a quality vouchsafed for this moment. This is Trump. His convention would be his presidency-- entertaining and hilarious if he weren't also a live wire against the fumy gasoline can set against our national home. It is quite literally a terrifying prospect. He's quite likely to lose his quest for the presidency. But he might not. He's that close to the unimaginable. And he's brought almost an entire political party along with him. We will be blessed if we can escape this with no more harm."

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How Serious Will The Trumpist War Against Paul Ryan Get?

Trump surrogate Sarah Palin was a guest on Jake Tapper's CNN show yesterday, where she endorsed efforts to defeat Paul Ryan's reelection bid back in Wisconsin because of his refusal to embrace Trump yet. "I think Paul Ryan is soon to be 'Cantored,' as in Eric Cantor," she told Tapper. "His political career is over but for a miracle because he has so disrespected the will of the people, and as the leader of the GOP, the convention certainly, he is to remain neutral, and for him to already come out and say who he will not support was not a wise decision of his." She insists Ryan's motivation for not backing Trump stems from his own ambitions to run for president in 2020. Palin admitted she doesn't know the Trump-supporter, Paul Nehlen, who's challenging Ryan in the August 9 primary but vowed to work for his election over the Speaker. "I will do whatever I can for Paul Nehlen," she burbled, like a drooling idiot.

Palin isn't the first high-profile right-wing crackpot to endorse Nehlen over Ryan. Lunatic fringe blogger Michelle Malkin endorsed him last month and is hosting a fundraiser for him May 27 in the district. So far Trump is playing coy but if Ryan doesn't buckle under quickly, Trump could very well weigh in himself, stirring up even more of a intra-party hornet's nest than he already has. It's worth mentioning that the congratulatory call Trump claims he got from Ryan 3 weeks ago, never happened, at least according to Ryan's office. Ryan's spokesman, Brendan Buck, says Trump is lying about Ryan calling him.

Nehlen will need a lot of help. As of the March 31 FEC reporting deadline, Ryan had raised $9,192,271, spent $4,189,511, and was sitting on $7,683,081, while Nehlen hadn't reported raising any money at all. Undoubtably the noisy contretemps between Ryan and the Trump mob will boost Nehlen's fundraising capacity. Ironically, the DCCC has failed to recruit a candidate although two implausible Democrats, Tom Breu and Ryan Solen will face off in the August primary. Breu has $2,132 cash-on-hand and Solen has $887. Rob Zerban, the progressive Ryan-opponent who raised $2,265,721 in 2012 and won 43% of the vote would have run this year but was tired of being ruthlessly sabotaged by DCCC power-brokers like Steve Israel and Steny Hoyer in DC who undercut both his previous races.

In an uncharacteristically thoughtful piece, The Hill ran a list of ten policy issues that profoundly divide Trump and Ryan's orthodox conservatism. At best, Thursday's meeting can only paper over them, if they even get discussed at all.

• Ryan on Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.: "This is not conservatism,” the Speaker said, standing in Republican National Committee headquarters. “What was proposed ... is not what this party stands for and more importantly it’s not what this country stands for."

• When it comes to the issue of taxes, Trump has been all over the map. But he recently told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie he absolutely supports raising taxes on the wealthy. Ryan, if he stands for only one thing politically, it is lowering taxes on the wealthy.

• Ryan and Trump are worlds apart on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with Trump insisting it's "a horrible deal" that he's vowing to kill and Ryan being the leader of the congressional establishment forces pushing it through for Obama.

• Ryan and Trump have bioth flip-flopped on Cuba-- Ryan is now opposed to easing trade restrictions and Trump is now OK with it.

• Ryan wants to shut down Planned Parenthood and Trump says Planned Parenthood is helpful to women as a health resource.

• Trump says he'd ship 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the U.S. and Ryan likes the cheap labor for Big Business and backs some version of what xenophobes call amnesty.

• Ryan would like to abolish the minimum wage altogether while Trump is now open to raising it, although in the course of the weekend now says he's ready to see it abolished as well, moving closer to Ryan's orthodox right-wing, anti-worker position.

• Trump is a die-hard proponent of eminent domain, which Ryan sees as a form of tyranny.

• Ryan fights tooth and nail to cut Social Security benefits; Trump opposes any cuts and opposes raising the retirement age, another unpopular right-wing proposal Ryan loves.

• Trump wants to see Medicare negotiating from strength with drug companies for cheaper prices, something Ryan-- who has taken $494,607 in legalistic bribes from drug manufacturing companies-- opposes.

Ryan's southeast Wisconsin district has all or part of 6 counties. Last month's presidential primary saw Ted Cruz win the district; Trump triumphed, with narrow pluralities, in two counties-- Kenosha and Rock. This was Trump's county score in the GOP primary:

• Racine- 32.1%
• Kenosha- 42.2%
• Rock- 41.6%
• Walworth- 34.1%
• Waukesha- 22.1%
• Milwaukee- 26.1%

Nehlen has called Ryan's refusal to endorse Trump despicable and he's very aggressively milking it for all that it's worth. On a right-wing radio show he told the listeners that "Paul Ryan's not a unifier. He's no unifier. He's not on the side of the voters... It's the will of the people that we have to get behind. Paul Ryan has been the never Trump, never Cruz, never Rand Paul, he makes me crazy, that's who he's been. Paul Ryan is the #onlyme guy. That's who he is. He's been cranking up his PR machine. He's been just absolutely despicable I think in this whole thing... I think he either wants to be the nominee himself or he's trying to position somebody else, but I certainly think he thinks he's going to get this and the question I would ask is, why would you promote somebody who's failed in the world we're currently in? Why would you do that?"



This fits in with Nehlen's narrative that hammers Ryan as the face of the despised Republican Establishment. "Paul Ryan is right at the head of a small group of party elites who continue to tell the American people they know better. He’s demonstrated that he’s not the unifier he claims. If he were a unifier, he would look for ways to work with the candidate that the American people have chosen in state after state. It’s clear that he’s right out in front of the establishment’s #OnlyMe team. The people have spoken. But Paul Ryan somehow thinks that the People are incompetent and that GOP elites should step in and guide them. The last time I checked, we lived in a representative republic. Paul Ryan seems to think we’re living in an oligarchy."

Much of Nehlen's case against Ryan could have easily been made by a progressive Democrat-- particularly Rob Zerban-- if the DCCC hadn't been staunchly and overtly protecting Ryan since 2008. It's unlikely that Ryan could be defeated in a Republican primary-- even if Nehlen does manage to fund his campaign adequately-- but WI-01 is a classic swing district where Democrats have won and could win again. All that stands in the way is Nancy Pelosi's ugly little deal to not target GOP leaders. Once she and Hoyer are gone-- if the congressional Democrats manage to break the grip of the K Street/Wall Street axis over their own leadership-- Republicans like Ryan in marginal districts will be swept out of office. Remember, when you hear high-paid, useful idiots like Maddow, the self-proclaimed "smartest person on TV," promise that Democrats can take back the House, you can't beat a candidate-- even one being weighed down by Trump's sewer-- unless you have a candidate running. The DCCC has made sure, once again, the Paul Ryan will have no plausible Democratic opponent.

Maybe Trump Will Eventually Think Of Even More Ways To Trivialize The GOP Primary Contest

I don't remember if Palin's son Track (above, with his legs in the air invitingly) and her kind-of-son-in-law Levi ever actually became gay porno stars or not. I do remember that about a decade ago Track was arrested for vandalizing the entire Wasilla school bus fleet and that he decided to join the Army instead of serve time in jail. Sometimes odd things happen in jail-- and the Army-- and he was arrested this week, now 26, for beating up his girlfriend and threatening to shoot her. He was drunk at the time. Same day mommy bear Palin was endorsing Herr Trumpf in Iowa. Yesterday Sarah, campaigning with Herr in Tulsa, blamed President Obama for giving poor Track PTSD in Iraq. (Veterans think Palin is wrong to try to blame her son's mental illness on Obama. "It's not President Obama's fault that Sarah Palin's son has PTSD," said Paul Rieckhoff, who heads Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "PTSD is a very serious problem, a complicated mental health injury and I would be extremely reluctant to blame any one person in particular.") Palin attempted to use her son's misfortune as political fodder, telling the Trumpian audience that Commander-in-Chief Herr Trumpf would never leave "our wounded warriors" behind, which sounded like a bizarre nonsequitor Tuesday but was more understandable in Tulsa yesterday.

“I can talk personally about this,” Mrs. Palin said. “I guess it’s kind of the elephant in the room, because my own family, going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet having served in a Stryker brigade fighting for you all, America, in the war zone.”

The crowd cheered. “My son, like so many others, they come back a bit different,” she said. “They come back hardened.”

She said soldiers needed a president who understands their sacrifices. “So when my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kind of feel these ramifications of some PTSD and some of the woundedness that our soldiers do return with,” she said, “and it makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we have that commander in chief who will respect them and honor them.”

Did you listen to the endorsement speech in Ames, Iowa Tuesday? That's it above. Pretty low energy from the crowd and she sounded kind of rusty and mechanical. Lines like "He is the master of the art of the deal; he is the one who would know what to negotiate," drill, baby, drill," and "He is from the private sector, not a politician; can I get a hallelujah? He knows how to lead the charge. So troops hang in there, he’s on the way" sounded a little shop-worn and scripted. And now the pill-poppin' wing-nut is already AWOL and not showing up at events that have advertised her. The Trumpf p.r. team explained that announcing she would be a "special guest" wasn't meant to imply she would be "on the stage." Oh; I'm sure that makes sense in RepublicanWorld. No doubt Cruz would have loved to have had the endorsement but what does it really do for Herr, beyond win a news cycle? Is she still relevant, even to Republican voters?

Writing for ABC News, Rick Klein said the Palin-Trump alliance marks the ultimate triumph of personality over policy in the Republican Party, which sounds about right. He thinks she still may have some clout though. "In backing Trump, Palin is putting her considerable pull among tea partiers and other grassroots conservatives to the test. She’s signaling to them that ideology matters less than attitude-- a proposition she tested, intentionally or not, when she joined John McCain’s ticket in 2008. That was as intense a national roller-coaster as we’ve witnessed in politics, so it’s fair to expect dips and turns along the way. It’s also fair to note that Palin is unlikely to motivate many possible Trump voters in Iowa who weren’t already on board. But in its timing and its implications, with Ted Cruz having just started to break through by questioning Trump’s conservative credentials, you betcha this matters for Iowa and beyond. Trump has a figure who can be described as Trump-like to campaign on his behalf-- one famously boosted to national prominence by none other than John McCain. The revolving door of politics and reality TV has opened to a new pairing at the center of the presidential race."

The GOP Brand Is In The Toilet And Herr Trumpf Is The Most Hated Candidate Of 2016

Before dropping out of the primary race, Lindsey Graham may never have reached the 3% threshold of support anywhere but the mass media loves his sassy demeanor anyway, and gives him more airtime than almost any other member of Congress. This morning he was on Fox and Friends again demeaning Herr Trumpf and Ted Cruz, rivals to Jeb Bush, the candidate who would presumably give ole Lindsey a cabinet position so he would never have to pander to a bunch of racist rednecks and Know Nothings in Spartanburg, Greenville and Anderson again. He told Fox viewers that Ted Cruz, with whom he serves is the "most divisive figure I've ever seen in the United States Senate. I don't think he can bring us together. His foreign policy is all over the board." He has equal disdain for Herr Trumpf who he asserted "is all-over-the-board crazy. I think you're crazy if you think you're going to deport American born citizen children of illegal immigrants. I think that's just demagoguery." And he doesn't think either is fit to be commander in chief (although he claimed Jeb is).

Today in a blistering attack, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a Chris Christie pal who hasn't endorsed any candidate and says he doesn't plan to, warned his state's Republicans about Cruz. "Ted Cruz is ahead right now. What we’re trying to do is educate the people in the state of Iowa. He is the biggest opponent of renewable fuels. He actually introduced a bill in 2013 to immediately eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard. He’s heavily financed by Big Oil. So we think once Iowans realize that fact, they might find other things attractive but he could be very damaging to our state" and added that he wants to see Cruz defeated. Cruz returned the compliment tonight: "Terry Branstad is a crony capitalist who is part of the GOP establishment," a comment sure to lose him some votes in Iowa.

As part of the grand build up to the big endorsement today, Sarah Palin set Bristol loose on Cruz:

After hearing what Cruz is now saying about my mom, in a negative knee-jerk reaction, makes me hope my mom does endorse Trump. Cruz’s flip-flop, turning against my mom who’s done nothing but support and help him when others sure didn’t, shows he’s a typical politician. How rude to that he’s setting up a false narrative about her!

America doesn’t need that. We need someone who has a vision for economic prosperity, who won’t let us get kicked around in the world, and who will fight for our future.

I didn’t go to Harvard Law School, but I know this:  You can like two people in a race, but there will only one president.

The audacity to suggest that because she chooses one over the other will somehow “damage” her just shows arrogance.

You’ve also said, “She can pick winners!” I hope you’re right, and that she endorses Donald Trump today for President.

NBC reported today that their polling shows all the ugliness and negativity around the Republican race further damaging the party's already tattered brand. 42% of registered voters-- regardless of party-- are saying they feel more negatively about the Republican Party because of the primary. Only 23% of Republicans say they feel more negatively about the party now, though. Regardless, Nate Silver's website reports that Herr Trumpf is even more unpopular with general election voters than most people imagined. Independents and Democrats really don't like him. Silver: "Gallup polling conducted over the past six weeks found Trump with a -27-percentage-point net favorability rating among independent voters, and a -70-point net rating among Democrats; both marks are easily the worst in the GOP field. (Trump also has less-than-spectacular favorable ratings among his fellow Republicans.)"

We’ve got an unpopular set of presidential candidates this year-- Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in either party with a net-positive favorability rating-- but Trump is the most unpopular of all. His favorability rating is 33 percent, as compared with an unfavorable rating of 58 percent, for a net rating of -25 percentage points. By comparison Hillary Clinton, whose favorability ratings are notoriously poor, has a 42 percent favorable rating against a 50 percent unfavorable rating, for a net of -8 points. Those are bad numbers, but nowhere near as bad as Trump’s.

Palin Does Trump-- And She Speaks For All The Paranoid Racist Misanthropes Of America

Part of the reason Trump has shot to the top of the polls-- and has increased his standing while elite journalists and pundits consistently predicted he would implode-- is because media consumers can't get enough of him. He's an outspoken TV celebrity who can get away with saying outrageous things and making up his own facts-- the way Reagan used to do-- and the media covers him as if he were an OJ Simpson car chase. He's great for ratings. It might not compute in my own world-- I never slow down to stare at a highway accident-- but I know that people with sad, shallow lives get something out of identifying with a brash in-your-face asshole and bully like Donald Trump.

Perhaps overexposure will eventually kill off his run, in which case the GOP nomination will go to Trump favorite and fellow fascist Ted Cruz. But watching the embarrassingly pedestrian interview Sarah Palin did with Trump Friday night on some network no one had ever heard of before, OAN (above), maybe people will eventually just grow bored with his antics. There's plenty of time. The Iowa caucuses aren't till the beginning of February. The New Hampshire primary is a week later. The South Carolina Republican primary is February 20-- Dems go a week later-- and the Nevada Republican caucuses are February 23 (three days after the Democrats caucus in that state). So we have five full months before any voting even gets started. 

I was interested in one number from the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll released yesterday. It wasn't that the give-day moving average showed Trump at the head of the pack with 28.4% (with almost five times more support than Establishment fave Jeb Bush) but that in the #2 spot was "wouldn't vote"-- 25.2%.

One would like to think that Trump's compulsive lying would do him in, but we're talking about a thoroughly Foxified, dumbed-down Republican primary electorate, so... facts don't matter. When Trump says "millions" of "illegals" are streaming over the southern border, he's appealing to ugly, naked fear, not trying to score points in a debate. The facts-- that deportations of undocumented Mexican immigrants soared after George W. Bush left office, that the number of Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. illegally has declined, and that more Mexicans have left the U.S. than arrived since Obama became president-- aren't something Trump (or Fox) would ever deem information to impart to Republican primary voters. Why confuse them further?

A few weeks ago we started looking at the similarities between Trump's appeal and the classic appeals fascists were using to reach voters in Europe before World War II. More and more of the mainstream media is starting to notice the same thing. Evan Osnos, writing in The New Yorker, remarks on Trump's flirtation with fascism by noting that his "nationalist coalition" is taking shape.

What accounts for Donald Trump’s political moment? How did a real campaign emerge from a proposition so ludicrous that an episode of The Simpsons once used a Trump Presidency as the conceit for a dystopian future? The candidate himself is an unrewarding source of answers. Plumbing Trump’s psyche is as productive as asking American Pharoah, the winner of the Triple Crown, why he runs. The point is what happens when he does.

In New Hampshire, where voters pride themselves on being unimpressed, Fred Rice, a Republican state representative, arrived at a Trump rally in the beach town of Hampton on an August evening, and found people waiting patiently in a two-hour line that stretched a quarter of a mile down the street. “Never seen that at a political event before,” he said. Other Republicans offer “canned bullshit,” Rice went on. “People have got so terribly annoyed and disenchanted and disenfranchised, really, by candidates who get up there, and all their stump speeches promise everything to everyone.” By the night’s end, Rice was sold. “I heard echoes of Ronald Reagan,” he told me, adding, “If I had to vote today, I would vote for Trump.”

To inhabit Trump’s landscape for a while, to chase his jet or stay behind with his fans in a half-dozen states, is to encounter a confederacy of the frustrated-- less a constituency than a loose alliance of Americans who say they are betrayed by politicians, victimized by a changing world, and enticed by Trump’s insurgency. Dave Anderson, a New Hampshire Republican who retired from United Parcel Service, told me, “People say, ‘Well, it’d be nice to have another Bush.’ No, it wouldn’t be nice. We had two. They did their duty. That’s fine, but we don’t want this Bush following what his brother did. And he’s not coming across as very strong at all. He’s not saying what Trump is saying. He’s not saying what the issues are.”

Trump’s constant talk of his money, his peering down on the one per cent (not to mention the ninety-nine), has helped him to a surprising degree. “I love the fact that he wouldn’t be owing anybody,” Nancy Merz, a fifty-two-year-old Hampton Republican, told me. She worked at a furniture company, she said. “But the industry went down the tubes.” Her husband, Charlie, used to build household electricity meters at a General Electric plant, until the job moved to Mexico. Now he parks cars at a hospital. Trump, in his speech, promised to stop companies from sending jobs abroad, and the Merzes became Trump Republicans. They are churchgoers, but they don’t expect Trump to become one, and they forgive his unpriestly comments about women. “There are so many other things going on in this country that we’ve got be concerned about,” Nancy said. “I’ve seen a lot of our friends lose their houses.”

Trump’s fans project onto him a vast range of imaginings-- about toughness, business acumen, honesty-- from a continuum that ranges from economic and libertarian conservatives to the far-right fringe. In partisan terms, his ideas are riven by contradiction-- he calls for mass deportations but opposes cuts to Medicare and Social Security; he vows to expand the military but criticizes free trade-- and yet that is a reflection of voters’ often incoherent sets of convictions. The biggest surprise in Trump’s following? He “made an incredible surge among the Tea Party supporters,” according to Patrick Murray, who runs polling for Monmouth University. Before Trump announced his candidacy, only twenty per cent of Tea Partiers had a favorable view of him; a month later, that figure had risen to fifty-six per cent. Trump became the top choice among Tea Party voters, supplanting (and opening a large lead over) Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Governor Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, both Tea Party stalwarts. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted last month, the “broad majority” of Trump’s supporters hailed from two groups: voters with no college degree, and voters who say that immigrants weaken America. By mid-August, Trump was even closing in on Hillary Clinton. CNN reported that, when voters were asked to choose between the two, Clinton was leading fifty-one per cent to forty-five.

In Hampton, I dropped by Fast Eddie’s Diner for the breakfast rush. “He has my vote,” Karen Mayer, a sixty-one-year-old human-resources manager, told me. Already? “Already,” she said. Her husband, Bob Hazelton, nodded in agreement. I asked what issue they cared about more than any other. “Illegal immigration, because it’s destroying the country,” Mayer said. I didn’t expect that answer in New Hampshire, I remarked. She replied, “They’re everywhere, and they are sucking our economy dry.” Hazelton nodded again, and said, “And we’re paying for it.”

When the Trump storm broke this summer, it touched off smaller tempests that stirred up American politics in ways that were easy to miss from afar. At the time, I happened to be reporting on extremist white-rights groups, and observed at first hand their reactions to his candidacy. Trump was advancing a dire portrait of immigration that partly overlapped with their own. On June 28th, twelve days after Trump’s announcement, the Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news site, endorsed him for President: “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people.” The Daily Stormer urged white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.

Ever since the Tea Party’s peak, in 2010, and its fade, citizens on the American far right-- Patriot militias, border vigilantes, white supremacists-- have searched for a standard-bearer, and now they’d found him. In the past, “white nationalists,” as they call themselves, had described Trump as a “Jew-lover,” but the new tone of his campaign was a revelation. Richard Spencer is a self-described “identitarian” who lives in Whitefish, Montana, and promotes “white racial consciousness.” At thirty-six, Spencer is trim and preppy, with degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago. He is the president and director of the National Policy Institute, a think tank, co-founded by William Regnery, a member of the conservative publishing family, that is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States and around the world.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Spencer “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.” Spencer told me that he had expected the Presidential campaign to be an “amusing freak show,” but that Trump was “refreshing.” He went on, “Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have-- that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one person who can tap into it.”

Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance, a white-nationalist magazine and Web site based in Oakton, Virginia, told me, in regard to Trump, “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me, but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.”

...Ann Coulter, whose most recent book is ¡Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, appeared on Sean Hannity’s show and urged fellow-Republicans to see Trump’s summer as a harbinger. “The new litmus test for real conservatives is immigration,” she said. “They used to say the same thing about the pro-life Republicans and the pro-gun Republicans, and, ‘Oh, they’re fringe and they’re tacky, and we’re so embarrassed to be associated with them.’ Now every one of them comes along and pretends they’d be Reagan.”

From the pantheon of great demagogues, Trump has plucked some best practices-- William Jennings Bryan’s bombast, Huey Long’s wit, Father Charles Coughlin’s mastery of the airwaves-- but historians are at pains to find the perfect analogue, because so much of Trump’s recipe is specific to the present. Celebrities had little place in American politics until the 1920 Presidential election, when Al Jolson and other stars from the fledgling film industry endorsed Warren Harding [who ran on deporting Mexican immigrants and promptly did so after he was elected]. Two decades ago, Americans were less focussed on paid-for politicians, so Ross Perot, a self-funded billionaire candidate, did not derive the same benefit as Trump from the perception of independence.

Trump’s signature lines-- “The American dream is dead” and “We don’t have victories anymore”-- constitute a bitter mantra in tune with a moment when the share of Americans who tell Gallup pollsters that there is “plenty of opportunity” has dropped to an unprecedented fifty-two per cent; when trust in government has reached its lowest level on record, and Americans’ approval of both major parties has sunk, for the first time, below forty per cent. Matthew Heimbach, who is twenty-four, and a prominent white-nationalist activist in Cincinnati, told me that Trump has energized disaffected young men like him. “He is bringing people back out of their slumber,” he said.

Ordinarily, the white-nationalist Web sites mock Republicans as Zionist stooges and corporate puppets who have opened the borders in order to keep wages low. But, on July 9th, VDARE, an opinion site founded to “push back the plans of pro-Amnesty/Immigration Surge politicians, ethnic activists and corrupt Big Business,” hailed Trump as “the first figure with the financial, cultural, and economic resources to openly defy elite consensus. If he can mobilize Republicans behind him and make a credible run for the Presidency, he can create a whole new media environment for patriots to openly speak their mind without fear of losing their jobs.” The piece was headlined “WE ARE ALL DONALD TRUMP NOW.”

Trump has succeeded in unleashing an old gene in American politics-- the crude tribalism that Richard Hofstadter named “the paranoid style”-- and, over the summer, it replicated like a runaway mutation. Whenever Americans have confronted the reshuffling of status and influence-- the Great Migration, the end of Jim Crow, the end of a white majority-- we succumb to the anti-democratic politics of absolutism, of a “conflict between absolute good and absolute evil,” in which, Hofstadter wrote, “the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do.” Trump was born to the part. “I’ll do nearly anything within legal bounds to win,” he wrote, in The Art of the Deal. “Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition.” Trump, who long ago mastered the behavioral nudges that could herd the public into his casinos and onto his golf courses, looked so playful when he gave out Lindsey Graham’s cell-phone number that it was easy to miss just how malicious a gesture it truly was. It expressed the knowledge that, with a single utterance, he could subject an enemy to that most savage weapon of all: us.

Trump’s candidacy has already left a durable mark, expanding the discourse of hate such that, in the midst of his feuds and provocations, we barely even registered that Senator Ted Cruz had called the sitting President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” or that Senator Marco Rubio had redoubled his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a mortal threat to the mother. Trump has bequeathed a concoction of celebrity, wealth, and alienation that is more potent than any we’ve seen before. If, as the Republican establishment hopes, the stargazers eventually defect, Trump will be left with the hardest core-- the portion of the electorate that is drifting deeper into unreality, with no reconciliation in sight.

Meanwhile, the Des Moines Register published the newest Iowa Poll today and it looks like dissatisfaction with the Establishment isn't just a Republican thing. Iowa Democrats have swung strongly away from Establishment candidate Hillary Clinton and towards... Bernie:

Here's a shocker: The Sarah Palin Channel goes SPLAT! (But don't worry, you can now get crapnews from Princess Sarah for free!)

No, the "LEARN MORE" link in the above screen grab (click to enlarge) isn't live. It's a video you can watch by going to the Sarah Palin Channel website.

by Ken

"The who-what channel?" you say. "Uh, the Sarah Palin Channel? Oh, right, I vaguely remember that. Sorta."

Ah, it was only a year ago that this breakthrough in America media was announced to great fanfare -- or at least as much fanfare as a a heavily over-fanfare-laden media world could muster. You could get a month's worth of content from America's Princess at a monthly rate of a mere $9.95, or a full doggone year for a mere $99.95. It sounds as if those who were quick enough on the draw will just about get their year's worth of, well, whatever the hell the princess was peddling.

The good news, if you're a glass-half-full kind of person, is that the channel is still there, sort of. Not only is Princess Sarah not simply vanishing into . . . well, wherever dark hell she came out of, but now her content is being repriced to more accurately represent its actual value. (It still seems way overpriced to me, but that could just be me.) Here's the news from the AP:

Palin says she's making her content free on Facebook and her political-action-committee website

(JUNEAU, Alaska) — Sarah Palin’s foray into a subscriber-based online channel, where she could connect directly to viewers without a media filter, is shutting down.

The Sarah Palin Channel launched last July, with membership rates of $9.95 a month or $99.95 annually. Starting Aug. 1, Palin says she’s making her content free on Facebook and her political action committee website.

In a recent video announcement, Palin said that with a presidential election coming up, she wants to make sure her voice and others are heard by the widest possible audience. She told subscribers she looked forward to continuing to hear their ideas and sharing her own.

The channel was part of the TAPP video platform. A spokesman for the public relations firm representing TAPP said the company doesn’t disclose subscription numbers and wishes Palin well.

I don't know anything about the TAPP video platform, but that kiss-off sounds to me like your old Bob and Ray "Write if you get work" bye-bye wave.

Over at Daily Kos, Walter Einenkel shares the news about "everyone's favorite quitter" with the ungracious thought that making her content free isn't an entirely philanthropic gesture on the part of the Sarah Palin Channel's proprietor.

Come on now, Sarah. You're a grifter. If your subscription site was making money you wouldn't open it up. We know that.

Walter also provides an, er, public service by sharing the following information, which you can be damn sure I wouldn't go through the ordeal to gather:

You can get free Sarah Palin content here!

Videos with titles like:

Religious liberty

Honoring Selfless Heroes

Raising Patriots

Still No Obama Plan To Defeat ISIS

Moose Meat: It's What's For Dinner!

No, none of those titles are made up.

It should be a relief to all to know that they won't have to face this challenging election season without the kind of wisdom and inspiration, not to mention moose recipes, that only America's Princess can provide.

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