You don't suppose the ambush and shooting of Boris Nemtsov in Moscow could have been, like, an accident?

Somebody clearly didn't wish Boris Nemtsov well.

"During the first decade of Putin’s rule, the Kremlin depicted its opponents as freaks or idiots, but now they are portrayed as outright enemies of their country."

-- Joshua Yaffa, in a newyorker.com post,
"Assassination in Moscow"

by Ken

Of course the murder of Boris Nemtsov not far from the Kremlin could have been a coincidence. Just like the apparent murder of Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Risman sometime after he had drafted a warrant for the arrest of the country's president and foreign minister.

Hey, as we all know, stuff happens. It's a dangerous world out there. And not just "out there" -- prosecutor Risman, after all, was found dead of that gunshot wound in his own home. With regard to Boris Nemtsov, maybe there's nothing more to be known than The New Yorker's Joshua Yaffa sets out at the outset of his post the other day, "Assassination in Moscow" [links onsite]:

Just after midnight on Friday, Boris Nemtsov, a fifty-five-year-old Russian opposition politician, was gunned down as he walked across a bridge just outside the Kremlin walls. A car drove past, shots rang out, and Nemtsov was killed by four bullets to the back. His body lay on the sidewalk as police, journalists, and colleagues rushed to the scene.

Or then again, maybe there remain a couple of unanswered questions. At the very least, it would be a coincidence with a history, as Joshua points out:

The last assassination in Moscow was that of Stanislav Markelov, a human-rights lawyer, who, along with the journalist Anastasia Baburova, was killed outside a subway stop in 2009. Before that, it was the renowned journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in her apartment building in 2006. It had been six years since such people were shot dead in Moscow.

Let me make clear up top that Joshua doesn't claim to know who ordered the hit. He just thinks that, "without knowing who gave the orders, it’s possible to understand that the current political environment allowed for this to happen." And there is, he thinks, enough here to wonder about the possibility that there are some nasty doings in store.

But to back up. Who was this guy Nemtsov? He's invariably been described as an "opposition leader," and to some of us it comes as a surprise to learn that Russia has such a thing. Here's what Joshua has to tell us about him:

In the nineteen-nineties, Nemtsov was among the bright young reformers who quickly ascended the ranks under President Boris Yeltsin. He served as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, then, in 1998, took the position of Deputy Prime Minister. When Putin came to power, Nemtsov failed to adjust, and he was pushed out of the Russian parliament in 2003. He went on to start various opposition parties and movements; although he was known for his energy and charisma, he never found wide popularity as a politician. He ran in the 2009 mayoral race in Sochi and lost. His latest party, R.P.R.-PARNAS, which had a liberal, free-market platform opposed to Putin’s centralization of power, failed to clear the five-per-cent threshold needed to gain seats in the State Duma (not that electoral results are the truest indication of potential in a political system as tightly controlled as Russia’s).

Yet Nemtsov remained one of the most visible and consistent figures of the opposition, though he had been eclipsed in recent years by people like Alexey Navalny, and was a forceful speaker at nearly every demonstration in Moscow’s short-lived season of protest in late 2011 and early 2012. He also published a series of reports on Putin-era corruption; his 2013 report on bribery and fraud in the preparations for the Sochi Olympics was widely cited by Russia’s independent press and by Western journalists. After his death on Friday, Nemtsov’s longtime friend and ally, Ilya Yashin, said that he had been preparing a new report on Russia’s participation in the war in Ukraine, which will now be published posthumously.

There's kind of an interesting, even possibly suggestive timeline here.

Nemtsov had been preparing for an anti-Kremlin march scheduled for this Sunday. Hours before he was killed, he did a radio interview urging people to attend the march, and connecting the country’s economic woes to Putin’s policy in Ukraine. “The most important reason for the crisis is aggression, which led to sanctions and, in turn, isolation,” he said. Nemtsov understood that he, along with everyone else involved in anti-Putin politics, was being pushed to the fringes, having less of a voice and a foothold in Russian society than ever before. “Three years ago, we were an opposition. Now we are no more than dissidents,” he told the Financial Times earlier this week.

BACK TO THE "POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT"
THAT "ALLOWED FOR THIS TO HAPPEN"

"Over the past year," Joshua writes, "in the wake of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine, Russia has seen the rise of a new, much coarser and more doctrinaire political language."

During the first decade of Putin’s rule, the Kremlin depicted its opponents as freaks or idiots, but now they are portrayed as outright enemies of their country. In a triumphant address to parliament last March, as Russia was formalizing its takeover of Crimea, Putin warned of “a fifth column,” a “disparate bunch of national traitors” determined to sow discord inside the country. Its members were obvious, if at first unmentioned: people like Navalny, an anti-corruption activist who had become the most popular leader in the country’s fractured opposition; Aleksei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, a long-beleaguered radio station that is one of the last homes for critical and liberal voices; and of course Nemtsov, a recognizable face from all his years in politics, and a favorite opponent of pro-Kremlin activists and propagandists.

It wasn’t long before the political technologists in the Kremlin and those who do their bidding in the media—whether at state-run television channels with national reach or on pro-Kremlin Web sites that publish memes and jokes disparaging the West and Russia’s small number of liberals—seized on the idea, releasing pseudo-documentaries on the evils of the fifth column and designing graphics that surrounded their disembodied heads with images of space aliens. For a while, a giant poster hung on the side of Moscow’s main bookstore with the face of Nemtsov, among others. “The fifth column: there are strangers among us,” it read. The most apocalyptic and vile of Russia’s television hosts, Dmitri Kiselyov, a man who once warned that Russia could turn the United States into “radioactive ash,” took pleasure in naming and insulting members of the so-called “fifth column.”

What's more, Kiselyov said, "Putin legalized that term in the political language of Russia. We know their names." And "that act of legalization, as Kiselyov aptly put it," Joshua writes, "means any number of people or factions could have murdered Nemtsov. " And he notes that "in an interview two weeks ago, Nemtsov admitted that he was afraid Putin could have him killed, but 'not that much.' " Apparently not enough -- though it could be argued that if President P really, really wants you dead, there's not all that much you can do about it.

Of course we don't know whether that's what happened. Just that somebody sure didn't wish Nemtsov well, and went to a fair amount of trouble to make that wish come true. Still, there is that "political environment. "In the hours after Nemtsov’s death," Joshua writes, "Vladimir Ryzhkov, a co-founder of R.P.R.-PARNAS with Nemtsov, told Echo of Moscow that he blamed 'the atmosphere of hate that was artificially created' by the state and its supporters." At the same time, President Putin, calling the killing "a provocation," said "that he would personally oversee the investigation."

Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to reassure Joshua. It has, in fact, pretty much the opposite effect, "evoking Stalin’s oversight of the prosecution of Sergei Kirov’s supposed killers in 1934."

Will Nemtsov’s death similarly presage a wave of political purges? In the current climate, almost anything seems possible. Either the authorities would kill someone who poses little real political danger, or they have given rise to a venomous hatred that they can no longer control.

You don't suppose it could have been an accident after all, Nemtsov's death?

#

Today's GOP-- At The Very Un-American Intersection of Fascism And Stalinism

You know the old adage almost universally-- if incorrectly-- attributed to Soviet totalitarian Josef Stalin: "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." Though he never said any such thing, it certainly sums up his view of "democracy." It also sums up the Republican Party's view on democracy.

It was more than a little ironic when Grover Norquist tried comparing President Obama to Stalin yesterday. Norquist, who, like Stalin, was never elected to anything, holds dictatorial power over his authoritarian political party. He may not have the clout of the Koch brothers but he's become the symbol for right-wing intransigence, obstructionism and hatred of American government. And when it comes to discarding any and all rules for the sake of obtaining power, there's no light whatsoever between the Kochs, Norquist, Hitler and Stalin.

In the video above, Rachel Maddow goes into admirable depth in explaining the Republican Party's current Koch-financed, ALEC-dominated jihad against the mortal enemy of right-wing politics: democracy itself. The Republican governors and legislatures in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Maine and Georgia are making the ultimate grab for the golden ring in 2012. If it succeeds, American democracy will be altered in a way that goes against the grain of the country's history, a history that has seen the inexorable expansion of voter participation from the day when only white, Christian male property owners were allowed to participate in government-- or even vote. If you think this isn't exactly what the Republican fascists are aiming for, you haven't been paying attention. Watch Rachel's report up top.

Inside The Beltway Stalinism Crumbling?

[Wander down to the bottom of this post to find out how you can win a k.d. lang platinum album award without having to read about what a destructive jerk Rahm Emanuel is.]


This morning CQPolitics made the case that the out-of-touch, Inside-the-Beltway, Stalinist party organs are shattering. If it turns out to bee true, it would be a blow in favor of participatory, grassroots democracy. Insiders blame everything from a lack of an easily identifiable (and galvanizing fiend), like Bush, to the recession, but the conventional wisdom is that "[t]he inability of Washington Democrats to shape the political playing field has grown more acute with the onset of the primary campaign season," meaning, in effect, that the Beltway types are starting to recognize what everyone in America has seen all year.

Veteran Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania could find themselves out of a job at this time next week, the victims of restless Democratic primary voters and activists who no longer take their cues from the national party establishment in Washington.

Unlike the previous two election cycles, when Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill cleared the field for their incumbents and muscled preferred primary candidates to the nomination in targeted seats, 2010 has witnessed a dramatic slide in party influence beyond the Beltway. Not only are the Arkansas and Pennsylvania incumbents vulnerable in primaries, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s hand-picked candidate in North Carolina also is in trouble.

...In Pennsylvania, Specter is fighting Rep. Joe Sestak one year after leaving the Republican Party to avoid an uphill primary battle against former Rep. Pat Toomey. Specter was immediately embraced and backed by President Obama, and the DSCC is now working overtime to salvage his campaign. Specter is running even with Sestak after leading by wide margins just a few months ago.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said he expects Specter to win the May 18 primary, adding that the incumbent is working hard and always expected a tough race. Casey won a contested Democratic primary in 2006, but his nomination was never in doubt after Schumer worked to clear out any serious competition.

Yes, Schumer at the DSCC and Emanuel at the DCCC were the heart and soul of insider, anti-grassroots Democratic Party Stalinism-- although Schumer messed up and failed miserably in Montana, where his corporate shill was beaten back by Jon Tester, who went on to beat the Republican corporate shill in November; and Rahm messed up when his signature shill, a bona fide corrupt Republican who Rahm persuaded to change party affiliation-- i.e., jersey color-- days before the primary, Tim Mahoney, got hoist on a petard of delicious irony, ceding the seat back to a red jersey wearing Republican.

Ignoring the shock this past weekend of stalwart grassroots progressive Claudia Wright standing up to reactionary Blue Dog incumbent Jim Matheson and Emanuelist Steny Hoyer in Salt Lake City... and prevailing, the Village is certain that "[t]he first shot across the bow came May 11 in West Virginia, where 14-term Rep. Alan Mollohan fell in the 1st district Democratic primary to state Sen. Mike Oliverio, who hit the incumbent for supporting health care overhaul on his way to a 12-point victory." Always the comfortable default position for Villagey wisdom-- the loser was "too liberal," even when he's a conservative, like Mollahan is, and when the whole campaign was about how incredibly corrupt he is. No room for primaries against Blue Dogs and other conservatives by progressives in that narrative! This morning Greg Sargent at the Washington Post at least came close, closer than anyone else in the DC press corps, to getting the narrative right about the anti-incumbent-- rather than an anti-progressive-- mood. And yesterday's Macon Telegraph was clearly sensing what barnacles like David Broder and Charlie Cook will try to explain in retrospect. Furthering what Sargent alluded to, there is room in the anti-incumbent fervour for insurrgent progressives to oust reactionaries like John Barrow.

Rep. John Barrow's vote against health care in Congress has cost the Georgia Democrat key support within his own party, from officials quietly withholding endorsements to one party leader calling for his defeat.

While other Democrats up for re-election are being targeted by Republicans for passing President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in March, Barrow faces backlash for his "no" vote from fellow Democrats in southern Georgia... Democrats fuming over the three-term congressman's vote will have a chance to vent their anger in the July 20 primary, when Barrow faces a rematch with Democratic challenger Regina Thomas, a former state senator.

"We are very angry about the way John Barrow has sold us down the river," said John Brewer, Democratic Party chairman for rural Montgomery County. "I will go to the polls on primary day and I will vote, but it won't be for John Barrow."

...[S]ome Democrats say Barrow went too far in alienating his own party and Obama on health care, particularly for many black leaders to justify supporting him. Black voters make up 41 percent of Barrow's constituents, and account for a solid majority in Democratic primary races. It's unknown whether Obama will weigh in with an endorsement.

State Rep. Mickey Stephens, a black Democrat from Savannah, made the rounds of local churches stumping for Barrow in past campaigns. However, Stephens refrained from taking sides in Barrow's 2008 primary race with Thomas.

This year, Stephens is openly supporting Thomas in the Democratic primary. Barrow's health vote, he says, wasn't just the last straw - it "was a piece of timber."

"Most African-Americans are under-insured or don't have insurance at all. They need it the most," Stephens said. "John didn't just turn his back. He turned his back and ducked on this vote."

Two other black lawmakers who endorsed Barrow in the 2008 primary have backed off this year. State Rep. Bob Bryant of Garden City says he's now supporting Thomas. State Rep. Quincy Murphy of Augusta said, while he's unhappy with Barrow's health vote, he hasn't decided whether to endorse either candidate.

It's much easier for Villagers to deal with the defeat of conservative Republican Bob Bennett at the hands of a Glenn Beck/Dick Armey-backed teabagger (who wound up coming in second to an even more deranged teabagger) than it is to talk about Claudia Wright's low budget success against Matheon and Hoyer, something the Village is just absolutely not willing to talk about. Wright, a great great granddaughter of Brigham Young, prevented Matheson from winning the Democratic Party endorsement and could actually beat him in the June 22 Utah primary. (Please give her a hand at the Blue America anti-Blue Dog page.) Yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune reported a further worry for Matheson, one that could doom his re-election hopes-- Operation Chaos, Utah style:

Some Utah Republicans who harbor hopes of taking a congressional seat that a Democrat has held for a decade are raising the possibility of crossing over to vote for the candidate they perceive as the weakest in the Democrats' open primary.

State Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, became a topic on KSL Radio's Doug Wright Show on Tuesday after he posted a Facebook suggestion that Republicans vote for Claudia Wright over five-term Congressman Jim Matheson in the June 22 Democratic primary. While Utah Republicans reserve the primary vote to registered party members, Democrats have an open primary that enables independent voters-- with no declared party affiliation-- to vote.

Wright has a great deal of momentum against a Republican-voting Democrat whose only real asset among Democratic primary voters is father's name, and she could very well beat Matheson with or without Winner's version of Operation Chaos. "[S]he believes she has enough interests in common with moderate Republicans and "tea party" activists-- starting with opposition to bank bailouts-- to win the district" and says Republicans are more afraid of Matheon's massive corporate warchest than anything else.

When Wright's BadDogs page hits $2,000 I'm going to pull the name of a contributor out of a hat and send them a Blue America thank you in the form of an RIAA-certified platinum award disc for k.d. lang's Ingenue.

Stalinism Inside The DCCC-- Beware The Red To Blue Program

The DCCC's hopelessly corrupt and widely discredited Red to Blue Program, co-chaired by the ambitious and venal Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), who is working vigorously for the re-election of far right Republican fanatics in South Florida, has declared for 45 candidates so far in this cycle. Very few grassroots donors give to this project but it is a veritable stamp of approval for wealthy and institutional Democrats who don't pay much attention. Savvy activists learned long ago that the DCCC is entirely untrustworthy and that many of their hand-picked candidates are the mirror image of brainwashed or brain-dead Republican rubber stamps and that, in fact, way too many support Republican principles and values.

Typically, the DCCC advises Democratic candidates to disguise their stances on controversial issues that separate the two parties. With ABC News reporting today that the lines are starting to blur between which party is pro-choice and which party is anti-choice, socially conservative candidates are meticulous in hiding their anti-choice and their homophobic manias from voters. There will always be one or two like Chris Carney (PA) who will actually lie about it when asked, but most just refuse to discuss it. Take a look at "courageous" Ohio Democrat John Boccieri tap dancing around these two issues.

Last year many of the Red to Blue candidates got into Congress and immediately started voting like Republicans-- but just on crucial issues like the war in Iraq, warrantless wiretaps, immigration reform, trade policies... If you don't pick and choose your own candidates and you instead just give blindly to DCCC Red to Blue candidates you will have donated to candidates who are social conservatives and who will oppose women's right to choice and not fight for equality for gay men and women (like, for example, current reactionary Democrats on this endorsement list Don Cravins, Paul Carmouche, Steve Driehaus, Bobby Bright, John Boccieri, and Kathy Dahlkemper, who are, essentially just like John McCain when it comes to social issues). Although they try keeping it on the down low, several on the Red to Blue list are pro-war and some are corporate-leaning shills. It's never about Democratic ideal, values, principles... it's always getting as many members willing to call themselves "Democrats," for whatever reason, into Congress. That's how Democrats wind up in the majority in the House and can't get anything accomplished.

There were 17 Democrats who voted more frequently with Republicans than with Democrats on the key substantive issues that divide the two parties. Of the 17, nine are freshmen. They are, from bad to worse, Don Cazayoux (LA), Zach Space (OH), Harry Mitchell (AZ), Travis Childers (MS), Chris Carney (PA), Heath Shuler (NC), Jason Altmire (PA), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Joe Donnelly (IN), and-- with a ProgressivePunch score of 28.91 out of 100, Nick Lampson (TX). Further, 2006 Red to Blue candidates Tim Mahoney (FL) and Gabby Giffords (AZ) voted with Republicans as much as they voted with Democrats on these substantive matters. Last year if you donated to the DCCC's Red to Blue program, you helped elect people who are determined to keep the war in Iraq going, who voted to allow warrantless wiretaps, and who were willing to rubber stamp Bush trade policies that throw American workers out of their jobs... and who actually applaud Nancy Pelosi's decision to take impeachment off the table. In fact, they are a big part of the reason why Nancy Pelosi did take impeachment off the table.

That said, quite a few Red to Blue candidates this year happen to be absolutely outstanding, such as Darcy Burner (D-WA), Vic Wulsin (D-OH), Joe Garcia (D-FL), Gary Peters (D-MI), Larry Kissell (D-NC), Tom Perriello (D-VA), Eric Massa (D-NY), Judy Feder (D-VA), Bob Lord (D-AZ), Linda Stender (D-NJ), Gary Trauner (D-WY), Mark Schauer (D-MI), Jim Himes (D-CT), Judy Baker (D-MO), Charlie Brown (D-CA), Ashwin Madia (D-MN), John Adler (D-NJ), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Dan Maffei (D-NY), Dan Seals (D-IL), Jon Powers (D-NY).

But what I want to look at today isn't who is good and who is bad but at the candidates who have already been endorsed by the DCCC but who are still in the midst of hotly contested primaries: Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), Jon Powers (D-NY), Michael McMahon (D-NY), Ethan Berkowitz (D-AK), and Suzanne Kosmas (FL). The Chris Van Hollen first took over the chair of the DCCC from Stalinist Rahm Emanuel he promised-- in accord with democratic norms and Party rules-- to allow hotly contested primaries to play themselves out and not take sides the way Emanuel had done. Emanuel, you may recall, backed reactionary Establishment candidates in tough primaries against dozens of progressive and grassroots Democrats. In some cases his shills won and we wound up with pseudo-Democrats who vote with the GOP, like Tim Mahoney in Florida, or with a victorious Republican, like Vern Buchanan, who was able to beat a weak, vacillating me-too-Democratic who stood for nothing. In other cases the grassroots beat back Emanuel's anti-democratic strategy and that is why we now have progressives in Congress like John Hall (D-NY), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), and Jerry McNerney (D-CA). Van Hollen promised to not follow the Stalinist path Emanuel had lain out. But he has.

4 of the 5 endorsed candidates still contesting primaries are conservative, Establishment hacks fighting progressives. The DCCC's strategy of funneling money and the sense of inevitability into the candidacies of the conservatives makes it extremely difficult for the grassroots candidates to tap into traditional sources of Democratic funding. Even unions-- and not just notorious Democratic Party lap dogs like AFSCME-- often succumb to DCCC pressure to support candidates whose election is not in the best interest of progressive goals.

Recently I saw Ann Kirkpatrick speak at a Red to Blue event. My heart sank. With an outstanding, brilliant and articulate candidate like Howard Shanker in the race, the DCCC is backing a card board cutout of a candidate who stands for nothing whatsoever and is as inspiring as a potato. Better than the neo-fascist Republican running in AZ-01 (Sydney Hay)? Yes, but a C is always better than an F. What about going for an A+? Standing in front of an audience of Democrats Kirkpatrick was unable to make the case of why anyone should even bother to go out and vote. The Republican brand is so damaged in AZ-01, after the indictment of Congressman Rick Renzi, that it will be hard for the Democrats to lose the election. But if anyone can do it, it is Ann Kirkpatrick. The primary is on September 2.

Michael McMahon is so reactionary that his races for New York City Council have been endorsed by the Conservative Party-- which is to the right of the Republican Party. The Staten Island Conservative Party was about to endorse him for Congress-- they love his pro-war approach to Iraq-- when the state party jumped in and forced them to toe the line and endorse whichever Republican was the nominee that particular week. Steve Harrison is a far better choice and an actual progressive. It is unconscionable for the DCCC to try to swing the primary to someone who, of he is elected, will oppose Democratic Party positions for as long as he's in Congress. The primary is on September 9.

Similarly, in Florida's 24th CD Clint Curtis is the grassroots candidate; and the DCCC shill, Suzanne Kosmas, is just some rich person who promises to be easily led around by the nose. In Alaska Ethan Berkowitz is the Rahm Emanuel establishment candidate who is running against a grassroots independent-minded progressive, Diane Benson.

The one case where the DCCC did the right thing was in NY-26, where they added Jon Powers to their list in order to forestall another disaster with disgruntled and crazy ex-Republican Jack Davis-- who switched parties and vowed vengeance when Cheney refused to shake hands with him after he gave the GOP a pile of money. Davis is spending millions of his own dollars to try to buy the seat-- even bribing third party officials to try to guarantee himself a place on the ballot after Powers kicks his reactionary ass in the September 9 primary.

If you're in the mood for helping battle this DCCC Stalinism, please consider donating to Howard Shanker today. He can win his September 2nd primary if he has the resources he needs to get out his message. In fact, everyone who donates at least $30 to Howard's campaign today at the Blue America ActBlue page will get a free copy of the book 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Fight The Right.

Nevada Republican Party Squashes Ron Paul Supporters In Blatantly Stalinist Move

Ron Paul has 2 authoritarian foes within the GOP

At the end of April we noted how the bosses of Nevada State Republican Party decided to abruptly close down their state convention rather than watch the Party nominate a Ron Paul slate for the Minneapolis Hate Fest.

The far right's presumptive nominee couldn't keep the Nevada state Republican Party convention from disbanding in confusion as a majority of delegates proved to be loyal to Ron Paul, rather than McCain. The Party establishment closed down the whole shebbang and will probably reconvene in Guantanamo or someplace else where the GOP can keep everything buttoned down and under control.

There's been a little update on that today from Reno. The GOP referred to a rare outbreak of democracy within its own ranks as "supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention." Heaven forbid!

Claiming that the delegates are too broke and/or uninterested to come to the convention, the GOP executive board said they will save everyone the trouble and just pick the delegates themselves. Stalin would be proud! Many of the legally-elected delegates, however, aren't. They're filing a complaint.

Republican delegate Wayne Terhune says more than one thousand delegates have been silenced with the decision and deprived of their ability to select national delegates.

"The State Executive Committee announced yesterday that they won't bring the Nevada State Republican Convention out of recess," said Terhune, a Republican activist in Washoe County. "They shut down the Convention in April, and now they aren't giving delegates a chance to have their voices heard. This is a violation of the law."

Mike Weber, a local Republican who has served on the National Republican Rules Committee, announced early today he is shifting the focus of his State Assembly race to make sure state delegates have their voices heard. "Most Republicans are getting fed up with party leaders because of underhanded tactics instead of principled leadership," he said in a press release. "The announcement that national delegates will be appointed by a small group behind closed doors only reinforces this distrust."

I wonder if this is part of what Nevada Republican congressman Dean Heller meant when he said the Republican Party needs to “clean house” and “the next couple of election cycles are going to do that.”

STALINISM TAKES OVER AT THE DCCC AND NRCC-- EXPLODES INTO A PUNK ROCK EXTRAVAGANZA ON STATEN ISLAND

Staten Island candidate Fran Powers

You may recall that a few days ago we rued the DCCC's decision to follow the NRCC as it descends into brutish Stalinism. Only time will tell if Chris Van Hollen's old style Soviet style decision to purge grassroots candidates like Howard Shanker while tricking Democratic contributors to the DCCC to donate to anti-choice candidates like Steve Dreihaus (OH-01) or incumbents who oppose ending the war in Iraq (John Barrow), oppose S-CHIP (Jim Marshall), support retroactive immunity (Chris Carney), rubber stamp Bush's vindictive class warfare agenda (Dan Boren), countenence bigotry and homophobia (Mike McIntyre) and conspire to poison the environment (Mike Ross) pays off. Of course, paying off for us is different from paying off for power-monger insiders who, after all, just want better offices and... well, more access to bigger bribes.

But Van Hollen, Emanuel and their conspirators might learn a lesson from their dopplegangers at the NRCC whose decision to remove the choosing of Republican candidates from the people and taking it over for themselves is working out rather poorly. Staten Island has become ground zero for the tragedy of John Boehner's and Tom Cole's catastrophic tenure as leaders of the Republican House caucus.

After forcing two-family values Republican Vito Fossella to retire from Congress, Boehner and Cole were turned down by half a dozen plausible Republicans they asked to replace him. Finally the GOP settled on a guy named Francis Powers who agreed to accept the party's nomination. It was bad enough that Powers had nothing to recommend him at all but it's only gotten worse.

An already topsy-turvy political year grew even more so yesterday when Francis M. Powers, the son of GOP designee Francis H. Powers, said he would seek the Libertarian Party line to run for Congress.

"This is not about my dad," said the younger Powers, 47, a master carpenter from Clifton who plays and sings with the Staten Island band Box of Crayons and runs an indie record label called Penny for the Guy Records. "I'm running against the Republican candidate."

Known as Fran, Powers is the eldest of five children from his father's first marriage, which ended in divorce 30 years ago.

Fran Powers insisted his candidacy is not a "vendetta" against his father.

"I'm not going to say that my dad treated me bad when I was a kid," Fran Powers said. "I know his policies. I'm running against someone I know."

When asked about the timing of his entry into the race, Powers said, "Me being his son gives me a different platform than normal," a platform that Powers said he wouldn't have against another candidate.

"We can't have the Republicans take this seat again," he added. "A vote for my father is a vote for the straight Republican ticket."

"I've tried very hard for many years to help my son," the elder Powers said in a statement released by his campaign.

"Unfortunately, he's rejected everyone's help to live a healthy lifestyle. Regardless of whether he wants to run for Congress, I still stand ready to help him move his life in a positive direction."

The elder Powers did not comment beyond the statement, but a Republican source said that Powers was referring to his son's "carefree" lifestyle in the music business.

It's likely that the father-son electoral brouhaha will lead to the election of a Democrat. But perhaps the Republicans can hire Powers' band to play at the Republican National Convention, even if it doesn't sound very Republican:

Molinari: Most Republicans "Would Rather Vote For A Democrat Than" Than The Only Republican Who Wants To Run For Fossella's Seat

GOP stuck with Bob Straniere, a Manhattan hot dog peddler

Like we hinted over the weekend, the NRCC has adopted a Stalinist system for picking their congressional candidates. John Boehner and Tom Cole are slugging it out over the new policy, though both essentially agree that if you leave it to the crazed lunatic fringe that the GOP has become, they will keep picking extremist losers like the ones defeated in overwhelmingly Republican districts in Mississippi, Louisiana and Illinois. Boehner's solution is to just back corporatists like himself and let the base grouse about not having bigots, racists and religionist nuts to vote for.

But, as John Steinbeck once mentioned, "the best-laid plan or mice, men and boners, go oft awry." These days, for poor Boehner, the key word there is "oft." And as our pals at the Albany Project pointed out today, Boehner's hopes for instituting his new Stalinist policy in Staten Island hit a brick wall: none of his top choices to replace two-families Fossella are eager to play the roll of sacrificial lamb in a year shaping up to be the worst for the Republican Party since the 1930s.

The GOP recruiting meltdown in NY-13 continues. It's becoming increasingly obvious that there just isn't any top line Republican in the district that is willing to run for this seat. After their best bet, Staten Island DA Dan Donovan took a pass, we learned that their Plan B, state Senator Andrew Lanza might want the job, but his Senate majority is under siege and needs all hands on deck this fall for what is shaping up to be an epic battle for control of that chamber. (And, let's face it, they can't recruit for crap for the state Senate this year either.) Their Plan C, County Clerk Stephen Fiala, decided better of a run over the weekend and now the only Republican making overt noises about running (again) is a guy the Staten Island GOP absolutely despises, former Assemblyman Robert Straniere.

Today's NY Times agrees: "Finding a candidate to replace Representative Vito J. Fossella, who will step down at the end of the year, is proving much harder than Republican Party leaders ever imagined... 'We’re hurting,' said Guy V. Molinari, the former Staten Island borough president and dean of the island’s Republicans. 'I think that the Congressional seat is probably the most coveted seat locally. And yet, with the vacancy approaching, those that we thought would be the leading candidates in this case, particularly the incumbent elected officials, are taking a pass.'”

So let's see how Stalinism is working out for the GOP on Staten Island. Boehner's dream candidate, D.A. Daniel Donovan Jr thanked him and said "no thanks." He was quickly followed by Stephen Fiala, the Staten Island county clerk, James Oddo, Republican leader in the City Council, James Simpson, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, and Jamshad Wyne, someone's rich doctor. So the one guy who does want the gig is the loony Robert Straniere, who was defeated in both his most recent GOP primaries.

Republican leaders seemed cool if not hostile to the idea of Mr. Straniere as a candidate. They pointed out that he had long feuded with other party officials, particularly with Congressman Fossella and Mr. Molinari.

In fact, Mr. Molinari described Mr. Straniere’s chances of being supported by the Republican leadership as “impossible.” He said that Mr. Straniere “would not be at all acceptable to the Republican Party. I would speculate that 98 percent of the Republican County Committee would say, ‘No dice.’ They would rather vote for a Democrat than for Straniere.”

Maybe Boehner and Cole can ask Jim Oberweis or Woody KKK-pecker to move to Staten Island and try there.