Republican Civil War Heating Up Again-- This Time AP Names The Names Of So-Called "Moderate" Republicans

Nothing left of the Tea Party Caucus but garbage

The latest battleground is over the debilitating and draconian spending cuts extremist rightists who are in the pockets of the 1 percent are demanding. These are cuts even greater than the cuts neo-liberals in the Obama administration and among the New Dems and Blue Dogs have been implementing. The extremists want to get rid of public education, food stamps, Amtrak and start the process of ending Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, their longtime bêtes noires. AP insists there is a significant "backlash" from more mainstreamish conservatives against the "tea party shrillness." So who are these mainstream conservatives? Not Paul Ryan (R-WI). It's his crackpot budget that the teabaggers have embraced and that would do the most harm to the American economy and to ordinary American working families. Ryan is the problem.

Voting in the spring for the tea party budget developed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who was Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate last year, was one thing. But as long as a Democrat occupies the White House, Ryan's budget is little more than a nonbinding wish list-- cutting Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps and slashing budgets for domestic agencies funded annually through appropriations bills.

Many tenured Republicans, particularly members of the House Appropriations Committee, have viewed Ryan's sweeping cuts as unworkable all along. When more than $4 billion in entirely new cuts came to the House floor in the form of an actual bill for funding transportation and housing programs, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, confronted shaky support from less ardently conservative Republicans and decided to pull the $44 billion package on July 31.

That sparked a frustrated outburst from the committee chairman, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky. He called for abandoning the Ryan budget and starting bipartisan negotiations that would provide appropriators with "a realistic spending level to fund the government in a responsible-- and attainable-- way."

"Attainable" is code for something that can pass the Senate and get signed by President Barack Obama. That's rarely a recipe for tea party fun.

The House has passed just four of 12 appropriations bills that are all supposed to be on the president's desk by Sept. 30. The Senate hasn't passed any, though it also tried and failed last week to advance its version of a transportation-housing bill.

The four House-passed bills largely embrace Obama's funding levels for homeland security, the Pentagon and veterans' programs. The House has yet to pass one with significant spending cuts in the mold of the Ryan budget.

"When it came time for the general (Republican) conference to affirm the Ryan budget in the form of 12 appropriations bills, the conference balked," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "We need to regroup and say, 'OK, was your vote for the Ryan budget a serious vote or was that just some political fluke that you don't intend to follow up on?'"

On the night before the transportation bill was pulled, the House restored, with little debate and a voice vote, some money for Community Development Block Grants that had been cut in half to $1.6 billion, the lowest level since the program began in 1975.

Mayors love the flexibility of block grants. They can be used for almost anything, from sewer projects and revitalizing slumping downtown business districts to paying for homeless shelters and community health centers. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. stepped in with an amendment to add $350 million back. [She's running for the Senate, statewide and needs to come across as vaguely mainstream in the hope that voters won't examine her radical right record.]

"This program has provided much-needed help for our senior citizens, for road repairs and our homeless shelters," she said. "Our local governments need this funding."

Voices of GOP pragmatists such as Rogers and Capito had been drowned out largely since early in the year when Boehner scheduled a succession of votes on bills advancing Democrats' priorities and raising tea partyers' hackles-- a $600 billion-plus tax increase on the wealthy, a Superstorm Sandy relief bill and a liberalized renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.

Each of those bills passed the House in contradiction of a practice instituted by former GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert to only bring up bills that are supported by a majority of Republicans. Since then, Boehner has walked lightly and catered to the party's conservative wing when scheduling legislation.

The most recent squabble is a prelude of what's to come in the fall. When Congress returns in September, it has only nine working days to figure out at what level to temporarily fund federal agencies beyond Sept. 30.

The alternative is a government shutdown that only the most strident tea partyers want to use as a bargaining chip to "defund" Obama's health care overhaul about to go into top gear. GOP leaders like Boehner oppose that idea but have been unwilling to publicly condemn the effort.

In the Senate, the GOP's pragmatic wing includes John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Johnny Isakson of Georgia. They've been meeting frequently with White House staff chief Denis McDonough and other top Obama aides seeking ways to replace deep, nondiscretionary automatic cuts known as sequestration with gentler, more targeted cuts.

Graham and McCain are chiefly motivated by a desire to restore Pentagon cuts they say will cripple the military. Other Senate Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine are going to bat for domestic programs.

Of course, Congress could simply keep the government on autopilot at current funding levels, continuing the automatic spending cuts that kicked in last March. One veteran Congress-watcher says passing it in the 435-member House might again require violating Hastert's practice.

"What Boehner has done successfully in the past, is you have to write it to levels that actually get support in the Senate and get some Democrats in the House," said former Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio.

Some conservatives among the House's 233 Republicans may "then squeal ...," LaTourette said, "but if they're not going to supply the votes to get to 218 in a way that makes everybody in the (GOP) conference comfortable, then that's the strategy that's left to them. And I think that's probably where we're headed."

Bachmann-- "We're not the mouthpiece... We are the receptacle"-- is still the head of the House Tea Party Caucus but many members have left and the caucus isn't as powerful inside the House GOP as it once was. It hasn't even met once in the last year. This is the garbage left in the Caucus:

• Rodney Alexander (LA)
• Michele Bachmann (MN)
• Joe Barton (TX)
• Gus Bilirakis (FL)
• Rob Bishop (UT)
• Diane Black (TN)
• Michael C. Burgess (TX)
• Paul Broun (GA)
• John Carter (TX)
• Bill Cassidy (LA)
• Howard Coble (NC)
• Mike Coffman (CO)
• Ander Crenshaw (FL)
• John Culberson (TX)
• Jeff Duncan (SC)
• Blake Farenthold (TX)
• Stephen Fincher (TN)
• John Fleming (LA)
• Trent Franks (AZ)
• Phil Gingrey (GA)
• Louie Gohmert (TX)
• Vicky Hartzler (MO)
• Tim Huelskamp (KS)
• Lynn Jenkins (KS)
• Steve King (IA)
• Doug Lamborn (CO)
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO)
• Kenny Marchant (TX)
• Tom McClintock (CA)
• David McKinley (WV)
• Gary Miller (CA)
• Mick Mulvaney (SC)
• Randy Neugebauer (TX)
• Rich Nugent (FL)
• Steven Palazzo (MS)
• Steve Pearce (NM)
• Ted Poe (TX)
• Tom Price (GA)
• Phil Roe (TN)
• Dennis Ross (FL)
• Ed Royce (CA)
• Steve Scalise (LA)
• Pete Sessions (TX)
• Adrian Smith (NE)
• Lamar S. Smith (TX)
• Tim Walberg (MI)
• Lynn Westmoreland (GA)
• Joe Wilson (SC)

Of the 49 members, 31 (63%) are treason-minded Confederates.Thirteen were defeated for reelection-- like loudmouths Allen West and Joe Walsh-- defeated in bids for higher office or retired and another 4 still in the House just quit. The most likely 'baggers to lose their reelection bids in 2014 are Gary Miller, Mike Coffman, Steve Pearce and Steve King. Several others, including Bachmann, have announced that they're retiring from Congress. Domestic terror suspect and Texas congressman Steve Stockman was kind enough to point out a post at the Washington Examiner teabaggy website, The Republican Establishment's incoherence on government shutdowns, Obamacare, and the debt limit.

According to establishment Republicans like Karl Rove, it would be absolute armageddon for the GOP if conservatives pursued delays/cuts to Obamacare through the continuing resolution process. “Remember, when Republicans shut down the government in 1995,” Rove wrote at Fox News, “they had funded half the fiscal year’s budget including all of defense and still the GOP lost badly in the court of public opinion.”

FreedomWorks’ Dean Clancy has already addressed some of the factual errors in Rove’s post here, unfortunately many in the House Republican Leadership seem to have bought into Rove’s analysis.

For example, House Majority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., told National Review August 9, “No one is advocating a government shutdown... In order to avoid a government shutdown, we need 60 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House to pass a continuing resolution,” he explained. “To get 60 votes in the Senate, you need at least 14 Democrats to join Republicans and pass a CR that defunds Obamacare. Right now, I am not aware of a single Democrat in the Senate who would join us. If and when defunding has 60 votes in the Senate, we will absolutely deliver more than 218 votes in the House.”

Which is a fine argument. Except for the fact that Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is also on record threatening not to raise the debt limit unless Obama agrees to dollar-for-dollar spending cuts. On July 24, Boehner said, “We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling without real cuts in spending. It’s as simple as that.” “I believe the so-called Boehner Rule is the right formula for getting that done,” he added, referring to his rule matching new debt authority with spending cuts.

House Republicans can’t announce they are willing to surrender on Obamacare funding in the CR because they are afraid they will be blamed for a government shutdown, and then turn right around and threaten not to raise the debt limit unless Obama agrees to more spending cuts. There is no reason anyone should take them seriously.

If anything, a government shutdown is much safer ground to fight on. Hitting the debt limit would trigger far harsher consequences than a government shutdown.

If Republicans in Washington don’t want to fight Obamacare through the CR, that’s fine. But they shouldn’t then pretend that Obama and the Democrats should take their debt limit threats seriously at all.

Below is a video of Tom Cole, a very senior mainstream conservative Republican congressman from Oklahoma, being questioned by someone who has apparently pre-set Rush Limbaugh in his tractor. Cole is calmly trying to explain why shutting down the government, despite what the far right propagandists are braying about, is NOT a good idea for anyone. No wonder most Republican congressmen are avoiding Town Hall meetings this year. Is Cole even in the majority of his party anymore?

Another Look At What Happened In Boehner's Dysfunctional House Yesterday

By now you already know the whole sorry Boehner bill story, which was like a Frankenstein monster that finally passed late Friday, without a single Democratic vote (not even a stray Blue Dog-- not even Dan Boren or Jason Altmire, who, respectively, have voted 83% and 79% with the GOP on crucial issues this year!) and still managing to lose 22 deranged Republican teabaggers. The 22 deranged Republican teabaggers who absolutely insist on a default and financial armageddon, for those keeping track, were:

Justin Amash (Grand Rapids)
Paul Broun (John Birch Society)
Jason Chaffetz (Provo, UT)
Chip Cravaack (Duluth, MN)
Scott DesJarlais (central Tennessee)
Jeff Duncan (Anderson, SC)
Trey Gowdy (Greenville, SC)
Tom Graves (rural north Georgia next to SC)
Tim Huelskamp (rural Kansas)
Jim Jordan (a rapidly changing OH-4, just east of Boehnerville)
Steve King (Council Bluffs, IA)
Tom Latham (Ames, IA)
Connie Mack (Ft. Myers, FL)
Mick Mulvaney (Sumter, SC)
Ron Paul (his own world)
Tim Scott (Charleston, SC)
Steve Southerland (Tallahassee, FL)
Joe Walsh (Deadbeat Dads)
Joe Wilson (Columbia, SC)

How ironic that these madmen passed a bill to, in effect, prevent the federal government from paying bills run up mostly by Republican presidents and with overwhelming support from Republican congressmembers going back to the early 1950s! Obama's press secretary sent out an official statement from the White House:

The bill passed today in the House with exclusively Republican votes would have us face another debt ceiling crisis in just a few months by demanding the Constitution be amended or America defaults. This bill has been declared dead on arrival in the Senate. Now that yet another political exercise is behind us, with time dwindling, leaders need to start working together immediately to reach a compromise that avoids default and lays the basis for balanced deficit reduction.

Senator Reid’s proposal is a basis for that compromise. It not only achieves more deficit reduction than the bill passed in the House today and puts a process in place to achieve even more savings, it also removes the uncertainty surrounding the risk of default. The President urges Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to find common ground on a plan that can get support from both parties in the House-- a plan the President can sign by Tuesday.

I enjoyed what Keith Ellison (D-MN), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, had to say after the bill limped to passage:

At a time when our country is on the brink of a catastrophic default, it is reckless and irresponsible to bring a bill to the floor that not only has no chance of becoming law, but would also devastate the working and middle class. This bill would cost an untold number of Americans their jobs, stunt our already fragile recovery, and destroy vital programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That is why I did not hesitate to vote against this legislation.

The stakes are too high now for us to continue this way. If there were ever a time for Republicans to put aside ideological attacks for the good of the country, now is that time. Never in the history of the United States of America has our nation’s credit been held hostage. If Republicans fail to join us in avoiding default, they will distinguish themselves as a party that has deliberately harmed the American economy because of obstinacy, stubbornness and recklessness.

But for me the highlight of the day came a few minutes before the vote on Boehner's bill, when Kathy Hochul (D-NY) offered a Motion to Recommit for the Democrats which would have directed the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction in the Boehner bill to eliminate subsidies for the five largest oil and gas companies, and corporate jet owners, before gutting education initiatives that create jobs, spur growth and invest in the country's future. Only one Republican, the intrepid and independent Walter Jones (R-NC), had the decency and the nerve to vote for it. It failed in this demented House 183-244. And half a dozen Democrats voted against it, a Texas oil industry water-carrier (Gene Green) and 5 of the most disreputable and reactionary Blue Dogs:

John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)

If you want to help Blue America eradicate the scourge of Blue Dogs... we have a page for that. As for the scourge of Republicans... we're working on that too. Although with leaders like Boehner, they may take care of themselves, the way Mike Pence seems to have this week, utterly destroying the teabag-cred he worked so hard to build up for so long.

Why Have None Of The Minnesota Or Wisconsin Republicans Joined Bachmann's Crackpot Tea Party Caucus?

Minnesota and Wisconsin share a stake in Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes, in fact, the largest freshwater lake in the entire world. Several years ago Minnesota's most environmentally unfriendly politician, Michele Bachmann, signed on as a co-sponsor to a bill, the No Excuses Act, to drill, drill, drill, drill. Bachmann is one of several Republicans eager to lift the ban on drilling under the Great Lakes. She claims "offshore exploration of oil and natural gas will be very helpful in the short term to resolve our energy crisis, and I also understand that alternative energy solutions are the future. But living in the here and now, we need to take all steps within reason to help drive oil costs down." 40 million people get their drinking water from the Great Lakes. Most rational politicians, including some Republicans, oppose drilling under the Great Lakes. But not all. As Senator Russ Feingold told DWT this morning, "The possibility of drilling for oil in the Great Lakes has been a serious threat and may well be again. I absolutely oppose it and my opponent, Mr. Johnson, specifically said he was open to it." And as Bachmann assumes a great role in the leadership of the Republican Party, especially now that she is the founder and leader of the far right Tea Party Caucus, will her view take on an aura of political respectability even if just inside the GOP? As Joe Barton can tell you, Big Oil pays very, very well for those willing to espouse those views and push that agenda.

Minnesota and Wisconsin share more than a long border and some Lake Superior shoreline. Each state has 8 congressmen and each state currently has 3 Republicans in Congress. But not even far right Minnesota colleagues Erik Paulsen or John Kline have joined Bachmann's Caucus. And none of the Wisconsin Republicans have either. Neither Paulsen nor Kline is willing to comment on why they won't join the Tea Party Caucus. Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel, however, reached the 3 Republicans who represent Wisconsin in Congress and asked them why they haven't made common cause with Bachmann and other lunatic fringe Republicans like Steve King (R-IA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Joe Wilson (R-SC), and Paul Broun (R-GA).

Sensenbrenner, the dean of the delegation, tried to duck the question sensing a political sticky wicket. His spokesperson said he joins caucuses on a "'very limited basis' given his demands in Congress as the top Republican on two committees."

Rep. Tom Petri of Fond du Lac said that although he agrees with tea party groups on a number of issues, "most are concerned about maintaining their independence from politicians and parties."

"The Tea Party Caucus implies a formal relationship between politicians and the tea party, which I think should remain informal," he said. "I think the right attitude is that we should talk with each other, but neither of us should try to speak for each other."

Rep. Paul Ryan of Janesville did not explain why he hasn't joined the caucus but says he loves the message of the tea party movement and has "been inspired by their tireless efforts to advance America's timeless principles. It is truly grass-roots and will continue to flourish with or without an official organization in Washington."

None of them mentioned an even more obvious explanation. The Tea Party claims as a primary organizing principle opposition to big government bailouts. The Mother of All Bailouts was the 2008 no-strings-attached Bush bailout of Wall Street. This was the doozy and this is the one that was defeated one week and then passed the following week mostly because John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan were able to twist enough GOP arms to switch from no votes to yes votes. In all 91 Republicans voted for the Bush bankster bailout. Ryan may claim he "loves the message of the tea party movement" but all he loves is that they're stupid enough to help him push his 100% Wall Street agenda. Ryan was unable to get either of his older Wisconsin colleagues, Petri and Sensenbrenner, to vote for the bailouts but John Kline also supported it and voted for it.

Among the other Tea Party Caucus members who voted for the bailout are hypocritical Wall Street shills Rodney Alexander (R-LA), Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Gary Miller (R-CA), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Joe Wilson (R-SC).

Are Far Right Politicians Inciting Violence? Perish The Thought

In their awesome new book, Over The Cliff-- How Obama's Election Drove The American Right Insane, John Amato and Dave Neiwert carefully document the dramatic uptick in violence, threats and domestic terrorism since President Obama was elected, much of it-- if not most of it-- driven by unadulterated racism. Amato and Neiwert make the case, and more convincingly than anyone else, that the violence and paranoia have been stoked by the ranting and raving of the right wing media, from Hate Talk Radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham to Fox News hosts like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, the sole source of information for many of the most demented perpetrators.

Obama’s election appeared to feed extremist right-wing paranoia and inspire violent fantasies of a “revolution.” On February 27 in Florida, for example, a mentally ill man named Dannie Baker walked up to the window outside the recreation room of a Miramar Beach apartment complex and opened fire on the gathering of Chilean exchange students therein, killing two people-- Nicolas Corp, 23, and Racine Balbontin, 22-- and wounding three others. After police arrested the 60-year-old Baker at his apartment, neighbors told reporters that Baker had asked them if they were ready for a “revolution”-- and warned them that if they were harboring illegal immigrants, to get them out.

Baker had worked as a local volunteer for the Republican Party during George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. However, when Baker turned out to volunteer in 2008, his mental state had
apparently deteriorated; a county GOP official said he “just made people feel uncomfortable,” so they asked him to stay away.

Baker fired off a number of angry e-mails to GOP officials, which so disturbed and alarmed them that they turned them over to the Walton County sheriff, who did nothing. In one e-mail, Baker wrote: “The Washington D.C. Dictators have already confessed to rigging elections in our States for their recruiting dictators to overthrow us with foreign illegals here, and have allowed them to kill and run for office in the States to extend their influence into our States.” In another missive, Baker claimed there is a plot to “give our homeland to foreign states and their representatives here in America. Lets execute them and reinstate a legal government that will do something for us.”

Especially remarkable about the Baker case was how little attention it attracted in the United States. In Chile and much of Latin America, the Miramar Beach shootings were front-page national news. Francisco Vidal, the Chilean government minister, denounced the crime as “macabre” and “brutal.” The deputy consul general personally oversaw the return of the two students’ bodies to their homeland. One of the ironies of the murders was that the students were not “illegal immigrants”-- they were studying abroad as part of an exchange program, and all of them planned to return to Chile. In the end, Baker was found incompetent to stand trial and remanded to the custody of the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee for treatment; if he regains competency within five years, he will then stand trial. The story again received no attention outside of Walton County.

Similarly, the case of James Cummings received little national attention. After a day or so of headlines, the case of the Tennessee skinheads and their assassination plot [against Obama] disappeared from the news. And no one, outside of a handful of reporters, followed up on the Denver would-be assassins and Troy Eid’s nonfeasance.

That’s because the mainstream media have their preferred narratives and stick to them like glue. The preferred narrative when it came to these violent acts committed by right-wing extremists was that these were all “isolated incidents” with no connection, no set of radical belief systems that wove them together, and, most of all, nothing to connect them to the hyperbole from mainstream conservatives. As Glenn Beck said, these were just nutcases who had nothing to do with anything he or his fellow right-wing pundits told people.

Perish the thought. If you dared harbor or express it-- as Beck also made abundantly clear-- then you were just trying to silence and oppress poor helpless right-wing pundits. That was the conservative way, and it was about to become one of their favorite and most repeated themes.

And perish the thought that anyone would connect this violence to extremist politicians like Steve King (R-IA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Paul Broun (R-GA) or any number of radical right hacks embracing bitherism and other divisive memes intended to drive wedges between Obama and confused, frightened, angry white people who are being told that their world is under attack. No one can deny that the extremists who flocked to Bachmann's House Tea Party Caucus are the ones making serial incendiary comments and are the ones working the hardest to undermine Obama's efforts to rescue the economy. Yesterday at Netroots Nation Paul Hodes (D-NH) referred to this crew as "extremist, obstructionist, lying hypocrites who think you don't have to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest but are holding up help for the neediest." But working families are the only thing these partisan hacks have in their sites.

Paul Broun, a vicious and unrepentant racist, has repeatedly flown his KKK flag when discussing the President and was one of the first members of Congress to accuse Obama of trying to install a Marxist dictatorship. "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," the demented Georgia reactionary told his already very right-wing and paranoid constituents. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist... We can't be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road." Broun has repeatedly suggested that the President isn't a U.S. citizen and that he may be a Muslim.

Bachmann's entire career seems to be based around mixing religious fanaticism and McCarthyism with fundraising for herself. “I said I had very serious concerns that Barack Obama had anti-American views and now I look like Nostradamus.”

Iowa psychopath Steve King has made even more inflammatory statements:

"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name-- whatever their religion their father might have been," I'll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States-- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam? I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror. Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world... If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."

This is a guy who coddles crooked K Street lobbyists, appeals to racism at every opportunity, and defends and lionizes domestic terrorists. On the radio with convicted traitor G. Gordon Liddy, King told Liddy's neo-Nazi audience of volatile conspiracy freaks that "The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race-- on the side that favors the black person."

You may not want to call it incitement. The media certainly doesn't. I do-- absolutely. Watch Arizona closet case Trent Franks (R-AZ) calling Obama "an enemy of humanity" and tell me what else it can possibly be if not incitement:

Olbermann Gets The Last Word On Shirley Sherrod

... for now:



But you can count on rightists to just keep moving forward with their nihilism. More and more of the Republican House extremists have joined Michele Bachmann's so-called Tea Party Caucus. Today's Salt Lake Tribune looked at it's own state's DC contingent-- and remember, Utah right-wing activists, already ousted mainstream conservatives (Cannon and Bennett most recently) when they didn't appear extreme enough-- to see who was jumping in and who isn't.

Rep. Rob Bishop hitched his wagon to the new Tea Party Caucus this week, though his Republican colleague from Utah, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, wants nothing to do with the effort... Chaffetz, a tea party supporter, thinks a formal caucus could choke the life out of the grassroots movement.

“The more you try to put structure around the tea party, the more compromised it will be,” he said through his Twitter page. “If any one person(s) tries to co-opt it, the tea party will lose its identity and effectiveness.”

At least 38 of his House Republican colleagues view the matter differently. They have joined the caucus, formally created Wednesday. No Democrat has joined.

Utah’s Republican candidate for Senate, Mike Lee, hopes to join a similar caucus in the Senate if he wins in November. Lee would like to team up with Sens. Jim DeMint, of South Carolina, and Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, along with Republican candidates like Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul in Kentucky, to form a Senate Tea Party Caucus.

He seems to have left out Sharron Angle, the teabagger candidate from Nevada. Is she too crazy even for kooks like Mike Lee? No one seems to have the definitive list of the extremists willing to be identified as members of Bachmann's crazy caucus. Some, like Houston whack-job John Culberson, seem to be in and out several times a day. As of tonight we've been able to confirm these lunatic fringe members of the Republican Party as falling in behind Bachmann: B.P.'s favorite congressman Joe Barton (TX), half a dozen other nutcase Texas racists-- Lamar Smith, John Carter, Michael Burgess, John Culberson, Louie Gohmert, Pete Sessions-- only one of the half dozen active Republican closet queens-- Trent Franks (AZ)-- would-be Michigan governor Pete Hoekstra, Gary Miller (CA), Rob Bishop (UT), Walter Jones (NC), Todd Akin (MO), Doug Lamborn (CO), Dan Burton (IN), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Roscoe Bartlett (MD), Gus Bilirakis (FL), Cliff Stearns (FL), 3 of the craziest of the Georgia loons (Broun, Gingrey and Price), Steve King (IA), Joe "You Lie" Wilson (SC), John Fleming (LA), both Kansas House members running for the Senate (Tiahrt and Moran), and one member of the Republican leadership: Mike Pence (IN). Of these Tea Bag Caucus members 5 voted for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout: Pete Sessions (TX), Lamar Smith (TX), Joe Wilson (SC), Pete Hoekstra (MI), and Gary Miller (CA), all of whom take big bucks-- thinly veiled bribes-- from Wall Street CEOs and lobbyists.

Who'll Get On Board The Michele Bachmann Crazy Train Caucus?

How comfortable can Republicans be with Michele Bachmann's brand new House Tea Party Caucus? (Fringe candidates Rand Paul and Sharron Angle plan to start the Senate branch-- with Jim DeMint-- if they're elected... something that is looking increasingly unlikely as voters start focusing on who these people are and what crazy ideas they stand for.) But in the House it now officially exists. Bachmann (R-MN) started it and Mike Pence (R-IN) was the first kook to sign up; Steve King (R-IA) said he would join (perhaps if he can dress like the Mad Hatter?) And this is one caucus that no one is going to keep Georgia lunatic fringe maniac Paul Broun out of [And, sure enough-- here's Broun making an ass of himself at a Tea Party Caucus press conference a few minutes ago-- guaranteeing that teh Caucus will have as much of a racist component as the overall movement!] The only Democrat endorsed by the Tea Party, Idaho reactionary Walt Minnick, who votes like a conservative Republican and is someone Boehner can always count on when needed, rejected his Tea Party endorsement this week-- the racist thing finally sunk in-- and he was certainly the most likely to make it a bipartisan caucus.

But Bachmann is demanding her House colleagues answer the Bushian questions-- are you with us or are you agin us? Remember, 91 House Republicans voted FOR Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bail out. Can they be in the caucus too. One of the architects of that Wall Street victory, John Boehner (R-OH), has already rejected the notion of jumping on Bachmann's crazy train. The other Republicans who twisted arms after the bill was initially defeated and got the job done for Bush, like Paul Ryan (R-WI) refuse to answer whether or not they will join the caucus. Cantor, one of those bailout boosters-- and one of Wall Street's biggest bribe recipients in history ($4,148,935) says he's thinking about joining. Why would they accept him? This whole crazy caucus thing could be a problem for mainstream conservatives.

Until now, they have had the luxury of enjoying the benefits of tea party enthusiasm without having to actually declare membership. But now that Bachmann has brought the tea party inside the Capitol, House Republican leaders and rank-and-file members may have to choose whether to join the institutionalized movement.

It’s easy to see why some Republicans may be hesitant, even as the tea party itself fights over the sentiments expressed by the movement’s most extreme elements.

The Tea Party Federation expelled its most prominent faction, the Tea Party Express, after a spokesman wrote a racially charged letter framed as a satirical jab at Ben Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Tea Party Express fired back, with a spokesman calling the decision “arrogant and preposterous.” ...Bachmann’s formation of the new caucus has made her a force to be reckoned with inside the Republican Conference; indeed, at last fall’s tea party march on Capitol Hill, demonstrators yelled out, “Palin/Bachmann 2012.” Partially as a result of Bachmann’s-- and Sarah Palin’s-- star power, nearly a quarter of Americans believe the tea party “will become a viable third party in American politics,” according to a Politico poll released Monday.

Bachmann’s office said it hasn’t worked out many of the details of how the caucus will operate and interact with the tea party movement outside Congress. The group’s first step will be to find members to put tea party “principles into practice,” Dziok said. Its first meeting will be Wednesday.

Lawmakers and aides said there’s room for both the Tea Party Caucus and the conservative Republican Study Committee, whose members quite likely would provide a pool for Bachmann’s group.

Tom Price, a very, very, very far right ideologue from Georgia is the chairman of the extremist Republican Study Group, voted against Bush's bailout and is likely to join the Tea Party Caucus. But some members of the Study Group were pulled in two directions-- huge bribes from Wall Street urging them to vote for the no-strings-attached bailout and fear of the nutroots making them reluctant to do so. Among the members of the Republican Study Group, which calls itself the Caucus of House Conservatives, who took Wall Street's side and voted for the bailout, were John Boozman, the GOP candidate for the Arkansas Senate seat, Spencer Bachus, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the biggest boosters of the bailout (and one of the biggest recipients of bankster cash-- the only GOP House member to scarf up more than Cantor, $4,338,674-- corrupt California "conservatives" Gary Miller, John Campbell, George Radanovich, Dan Lungren, Buck McKeon, and Wally Herger, Mary Fallin, currently running for governor of Oklahoma, Pete Hoekstra, running for governor of Michigan, NRCC chair Pete Sessions, Sue Myrick, Lamar Smith, Mac Thornberry, John Kline, Mean Jean Schmidt, John Sullivan, and the plan with the plan (to wreck Social Security), Paul Ryan. These are all Study Group Conservatives who voted for the bailout and who will probably join Bachmann's ridiculous caucus.

Is There Room In Congress For A Tea Party Caucus... Filled With Supporters Of Bush's No-Strings-Attached Wall Street Bailout?

Last week, two of the most extremist crackpots on the American political landscape, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and non-Board certified Rand Paul (R-KY), each promised to start a Tea Party Caucus in Congress. “I think I will be part of a nucleus with [Sens.] Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK), who are unafraid to stand up,” Paul said. “If we get another loud voice in there, like Mike Lee from Utah or Sharron Angle from Nevada, there will be a new nucleus.” Two more pathetic panderers would be hard to find anywhere-- and the fact that this comes during the same week that the NAACP has asked the tea partiers to ostracize the racists among them, makes one wonder about the racism that is always hovering above the heads of these two far right politicians. One has to wonder, outside the Old Confederacy, what mainstream politicians would join such a caucus. In fact, Shailagh Murray did just that in yesterday's Washington Post. Senator Bob Corker, a mainstream conservative from Tennessee, ran for the hills when Murray managed to ask him. "I don't know about that," he replied with a nervous laugh. "I'm not sure I should be participating in this story."

Republican lawmakers see plenty of good in the tea party, but they also see reasons to worry. The movement, which has ignited passion among conservative voters and pushed big government to the forefront of the 2010 election debate, has also stirred quite a bit of controversy. Voters who don't want to privatize Social Security or withdraw from the United Nations could begin to see the tea party and the Republican Party as one and the same.

NRSC head, John Cornyn, worried that Rand Paul's and Sharron Angle's fanatic views-- which he politely calls "provocative"-- will tar the whole party with their destructive apocalyptic nihilism, is very cautious. He wants wins in Kentucky and Nevada, but he's petrified that if lunatic fringe teabaggers like Paul and Angle become the face of the GOP, the party will be doomed outside of the Deep South.

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), now a D.C. lobbyist, warned that a robust bloc of rabble-rousers spells further Senate dysfunction. "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott said in an interview. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

But Lott said he's not expecting a tea-party sweep. "I still have faith in the visceral judgment of the American people," he said.

Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), who failed to survive his party's nominating process after running afoul of local tea-party activists, told a local Associated Press reporter last week that the GOP had jeopardized its chance to win Senate seats in Republican-leaning states such as Nevada and Kentucky and potentially in Colorado, where tea-party favorite Ken Buck has surged ahead of Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in their primary battle.

Bennett warned that such candidates are stealing attention from top GOP recruits such as Mike Castle in Delaware and John Hoeven in North Dakota, both of whom are favored to win seats held by Democrats. Nor are they helping the Republican Party to resolve its deeper identity problems, he said.

"That's my concern, that at the moment there is not a cohesive Republican strategy of this is what we're going to do," Bennett told the AP. "And certainly among the tea-party types there's clearly no strategy of this is what we're going to do."

Democrats are hopeful that voters will focus on the potential consequences of tea-party proposals as they decide whether to hand over control of Congress to Republicans. Democratic Party officials said their easiest target, given the recent economic meltdown, is the push to privatize Social Security. A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 48 percent of voters were "very uncomfortable" with the idea of private retirement accounts, while another 18 percent had reservations.

In Nevada, when state Sen. Joe Heck told a local reporter that he was open to a limited and voluntary version of Social Security privatization, his Democratic opponent, Rep. Dina Titus, declared he had endorsed "Sharron Angle and her radical agenda." The Senate candidate has said she wants to phase out Social Security and Medicare as government programs.

Democrats also are trying to tarnish Ron Johnson, a DeMint-endorsed businessman who is backed by tea-party groups and establishment Republicans in his bid take on Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). When Paul raised his caucus idea, Democrats put the question to Johnson.

"The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is asking Tea Partier Ron Johnson to tell Wisconsin voters if he would join Rand Paul's 'tea party caucus,' " read a DSCC statement released Thursday. Johnson's campaign did not respond to The Post's request for comment.

The teabaggers claim their main motivation is not racism-- although if you've spent time at a teabagger rally you know that for most of the participants it's almost entirely about angry, primitive, barely disguised racism-- but about how Congress voted for the Wall Street bailouts. Yet few of them seem to recall that the big no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout happened before the 2008 election, was proposed by Bush and pushed through both Houses of Congress by... Republicans! In the Senate 34 Republican followed Bush and McCain to help the bill pass 74-25. GOP stalwarts like Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John Thune (R-SD), John Ensign (R-NV), Richard Burr (R-NC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Tom Coburn (R-OK, yes the same guy who Rand Paul expects to help him for the Senate Teabagger Caucus), John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), to name a few, all voted for the bailout. Today teabaggers are campaigning for Burr, even though his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, is on the record as having said she would never have voted for the bailout without real protections for consumers and small businesses. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold did vote NO, but his state's crazed teabaggers are getting behind some corrupt multimillionaire who knows how to pander to them, though few doubt he would have voted in favor of the bailout-- which would have served his personal financial interests, the same way he supports and has defended BP without disclosing that he owns hundreds of thousands of dollars in BP stock.

In the House, the bill was defeated-- and then Wall Street shills and bailout advocates John Boehner (R-OH), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Mike Castle (R-DE), and Mary Fallin (R-OK) went to work twisting the arms of reluctant Republicans to vote for it-- after Bush made it even worse the following week. And it passed with 91 Republican votes. And the teabaggers, who claim this is their #1 issue, are trying to make the bill's architect, John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and pushing for it's biggest GOP cheer-leader, Paul Ryan, to be in contention for the presidency and support bailout voters Blunt, Kirk, Boozman, and Castle for Senate openings and Hoekstra, Wamp and Fallin for governorships.

Another bailout champion, Joe Wilson (R-SC), is deemed by his boorish behavior at the State of the Union racist enough to become a teabagger demi-god even though he voted for the bailout and his Democratic opponent, Rob Miller, opposed it. Similarly teabaggers are supporting re-election bids by Ken Calvert (R-CA), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Wally Herger (R-CA), David Dreier (R-CA), John Campbell (R-CA), Pat Tiberi (R-OH), and Charlie Dent (R-PA), even though each was a no-strings-attached bailout supporter-- each with campaign coffers stuffed with Wall Street bribes-- and each has a Democratic opponent who opposed the bailout!