Mark Walker (R-NC)-- More Likely To Land In Prison Than Back In Congress

Bribee Mark Walker (R-NC) and briber Greg Lindberg

Right-wing ideologue Mark Walker (R-NC) isn't ready to retire, despite now representing an un-gerrymandered Greensboro-based district that will never be won by a Republican again-- unless the GOP gerrymanders it again in 2021. This week, when a panel of state judges ruled to accept the new, less gerrymandered electoral map, it was a signal that two Republicans, George Holding (NC-02) and Mark Walker (NC-06). Obama lost the gerrymandered NC-06 both times he ran-- with around 40%. In 2016 Trump beat Hillary there 59.4% to 37.9%. Under the new boundaries Hillary would have beaten Trump by around 20 points!

In the last election the north-central district included all or part of Person, Caswell, Rockingham, Guilford, Alamance, Chatham, Lee and Randolph counties. The city of Greensboro in Guilford County was split between Walker's 6th district and Ted Budd's 13th. Guilford County itself is very blue and countywide, Hillary beat Trump there 147,949 (58.7%) to 97,461 (38.7%). In 2018 Guilford was one of the keys to now Governor Roy Cooper (D) beating then-Governor Pat McCrory (R). Cooper took 154,386 (60.9%) to McCrory's 93,893 (37.0%). Democratic Senate candidate Deborah Ross (R) also won in Guilford-- 56.4% to 40.6% for incumbent Richard Burr (R).

Guilford county has provided the most voters in both the 6th and the 13th and has been a nightmare for both Walker and Budd. It was obvious neither could win in a district that included the whole county. In 2018 the performance in the Guilford portion on NC-06 was D+9 and the partisan performance in the Guilford portion on NC-13 was D+26. Now the county is reunited in NC-06 (along with some of Forsyth County). Worthless Blue Dog millionaire Kathy Manning, a pathetic establishment shill who will do nothing in office but waste air and a seat, is running in NC-06 and unless a good African-American candidate steps in to challenge her, she'll soon be in Congress. Last cycle she spent $4,182,467, almost $600,000 of which came from her own pocket. The DCCC and related PACs spent around $1.8 million trying to help her, to no avail.

So... what about Walker? He's polling to see if he could beat Budd in the considerably redder 13th and he's polling to see if he could take on incumbent Senator Thom Tillis (now that rich crackpot Garland Tucker has just dropped out of the race). About half of Walker's constituents, primarily white Republicans, now live in NC-13 and the polling shows he could beat Budd in a primary.

Walker has a developing major problem with a serious corruption scandal in which he took at least $150,000 in bribes from big-time GOP campaign donor Greg Lindberg in return for helping Lindberg in a matter being decided by North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey. Lindberg and the former head of the North Carolina Republican Party, Robin Hayes, another ex-congressman, have been indicted and Walker is likely to be next. If Walker pushes a primary challenge against Tillis the details around the scandal will be front and center and he is more likely to wind up in prison than in the Senate. Filing closes December 20 and Walker won't have to decide until then.

Thom Tillis Is Counting On Trump And Schumer To Keep Him In The Senate

Thom Tillis is betting that pledging fealty to Trump will help him keep his Senate seat. He needs to beat multimillionaire neo-fascist crackpot Garland Tucker in a primary in which Tucker is self-financing his campaign ($1,274,643 million so far, 74% of his campaign war chest) and painting Tillis "as an enemy of the Trump agenda."

Trump beat Hillary in North Carolina, a swing state, by 3 points in 2016-- 2,362,631 (49.83%) to 2,189,316 (46.17%). Since then, though, Trump's image has crashed and burned. He's popular among Republicans but has utterly lost independents-- in a state where independents determine the outcomes of every election. According to the most recent Trump Tracker polling, Trump's job approval has steadily decreased since he was inaugurated. Since then, he has lost 21 points and today his approval is minus 3%. In way of comparison, Trump's approval is in positive territory in both Kentucky (+11) and Louisiana (+12)-- where he just presided over the loss of two gubernatorial allies, Matt Bevin and Eddie Rispone. It's worth mentioning that an impeachment inquiry was favored, even before it started, by 48.8% to 41.0% of North Carolinians polled.





Burgess Everett took a look at Tillis' strategy for Politico, reminding readers that "Tillis began the Trump era by negotiating with Democrats on immigration and co-authoring legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller. He even briefly opposed President Donald Trump’s national emergency to build a border wall." That was then. "Now the North Carolina Republican's independent streak is fading. He’s deploying the president as a shield against a conservative primary challenger and he’s hugging Trump tightly... It’s a shrewd political strategy amid a well-funded primary challenge from Garland Tucker, a conservative businessman who paints Tillis as an enemy of the Trump agenda. But Tillis’ role as Trump’s new best friend threatens to undermine his profile as a diligent, unpredictable senator-- and could damage his general election chances."

Everett himself is a good example of how Tillis can avoid losing in November. Everett is the kind of Inside-the-Beltway shill for the party power-mongers so that his Politico pieces sound like they were written, in part, by the DSCC and the NRCC. Let me show you some typical Everett: Standing behind Tucker is potential Democratic opponent Cal Cunningham, an establishment-backed military veteran eager to cast Tillis as a lackey who 'married himself to Donald Trump.'" Straight from Chuck Schumer's press shop. Virtually all polling shows state Senator Erica Smith, a progressive African American woman, is preferred to Schumer's conservative what male candidate. The most recent polling (Oct 7) is by Meredith College and it shows Schumer's Cunningham losing to Tillis 33.3% to 32.6%... but the more independent-minded Erica Smith beating him 33.5% to 33.1%. Schumer's propaganda team manages to get lazy lunkheads and Beltway sheep-- Everett is just one of dozens-- to stick with the party line.

Everett is correct when he points out that Tillis' most immediate task is to win the primary. (Presumably he can hope Schumer is successful in sabotaging smith's campaign and handing him the easily beaten Cunningham as an opponent.)

“He probably has more of a challenge in a primary than he does in a general,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a close ally of the president who has not endorsed Tillis.

Meadows added that Tillis’ support for the special counsel bill and his shifting stance on the national emergency declaration “created an opening in a race that would generally not have seen a credible primary challenger."

The wealthy Tucker is spending heavily on ads highlighting Tillis’ “flip-flop” on the border-- Tillis’ most infamous episode as a senator-- when he voted to uphold the national emergency after announcing his opposition in a Washington Post op-ed. Tillis boasts a 94 percent voting score with the president, but Tucker is pouring enough money into pointing out Tillis’ perceived dalliances away from Trump that the senator felt compelled to respond with an ad barrage of his own.

Tillis acknowledges his style isn’t necessarily built to appeal to his party’s hard-liners. At a North Carolina Federation of Republican Women event, he lamented that sometimes he gets “criticized because I don’t speak too fiery or talk too angry.”

“Some people, I think, perceive my style as being something that’s soft,” he said during a 25-minute interview at the state party headquarters. “But I’ve got a good conservative track record to run on. And we believe if people know it, they know where I stand on immigration, they know where I stand to the level where the president will endorse me? We’ll win.”

These are rare moments of self-reflection for Tillis, a confident bordering on cocky 59-year-old former state House speaker who helped rebuild the North Carolina GOP. He said Trump would campaign for him in the primary if necessary but dismisses Tucker: “I don’t believe the race is even close.”

Most Republicans still feel Tillis can ride Trump’s coattails to reelection, though he risks running behind the president in a state known for close elections. GOP alarm bells go off every few years in North Carolina, sometimes warranted and sometimes not: In 2016, GOP Sen. Richard Burr was easily reelected despite running a laid-back campaign, while the Republican governor was cast out.

This year, Tucker is essentially operating as a Democratic super PAC, draining Tillis of resources and allowing national Democrats to sit back and enjoy the show. It’s a situation that most other vulnerable incumbents have avoided, but Tillis’ plight is unique, having riled up parts of Trump’s base with his limited dissent.

...Facing attacks from the right and left, Tillis harbors few regrets. He’s dropped any notion of deal-making on immigration with Democrats, walking away from 2018 talks to help Dreamers and dismissing comprehensive immigration reform as something that could happen “maybe 20 years from now” after the border is fully secured.

He even argues that his bill protecting the special counsel from a Trump firing was all about defending the president.

“I had a concern and it actually proved to be wise: to let the special counsel play out its role. Because there was no collusion and no obstruction,” Tillis said. “Obviously, I support the president. I thought, like he did, that it was a witch hunt.”

Tillis concedes he could have “probably spent more time explaining” his queasiness with Trump’s national emergency to his constituents, but doesn't disavow what in North Carolina political circles is now simply called “the op-ed.”

It’s an example of the dissonance surrounding Tillis. He tells Republican supporters he’s been with Trump “every step of the way” on the border wall but also emphasizes his willingness to take criticism from his own party.

“If all you do is take the easy way out and be silent on things that you feel strongly about institutionally, then you’re not really doing your job as a U.S. senator,” Tillis said. “I’m not going to be that person.”

It’s a difficult argument for him to make, but it doesn’t surprise close friends. Tillis is a partisan Republican, but he bristles at the idea that he’s become a rubber stamp.

“There have been times where Tillis has stopped and truly deliberated,” said Carolyn Justice, a former GOP state lawmaker and longtime ally. “People confuse that with his support for Trump overall. And that’s a mistake.”

“We live in an environment where people are out to get you if you stray one inch,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has told Trump directly that Tillis is a strong general election candidate.

Tucker says he’s put $1.5 million of his own money into the race and will put in still more, hoping to tap into what he describes as long-standing conservative dissatisfaction with Tillis.

“It wasn’t necessarily that [conservatives] were waiting for me to run, but they were waiting for someone,” Tucker said in an interview in North Raleigh, flanked by adviser Carter Wrenn, a former aide to the late firebrand conservative Sen. Jesse Helms.

As he chomped on a lit cigar, Wrenn insisted Tucker has narrowed the race to about 10 points. Tillis has put more than $2 million of his campaign money into ads attacking Tucker as someone who “lies like a dog,” and he scoffed when told of Wrenn’s account.

A recent Fox News poll showed Tillis with the support of 54 percent of primary voters, with Tucker garnering just 11 percent.

“This is Carter Wrenn’s retirement fund. That’s the only reason he’s got Garland running,” Burr said of the race.

Tillis said he’s spending early to introduce himself to the fast-growing state’s new voters who have arrived since his previous election in 2014. Public polling shows Tillis still has work to do. Public Policy Polling, Fox News and Morning Consult surveys show at least 25 percent of voters have no opinion of him, hampering his approval ratings.

“He is not really in control of how he’s defined,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster. “This double whammy of being seen as not different enough from Trump among suburbanites and not supportive enough among rural conservatives could end up being the kiss of death.”

Whether Tucker comes anywhere close to beating Tillis is irrelevant to Democrats. They are just happy that Tillis is moving further to the right and putting the 2.2 million unaffiliated voters here in play.

“Extraordinarily weak, extraordinarily vulnerable,” Cunningham said of Tillis during an interview in nearby Cary. “I’d rather be me than him right now.”

North Carolina could easily be the tipping point for the GOP’s 53-seat majority. After losing the 2010 Senate primary here, Cunningham again has a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsement and is credible enough that Senate Republicans acknowledge Tillis is a top concern.

But Cunningham also has hurdles to overcome before he can face Tillis. The Fox News poll showed him trailing state Sen. Erica Smith, with Cunningham coming in at 13 percent of the vote to Smith's 18 percent.

“Every poll that has been conducted since this race started has me as the frontrunner,” Smith said.

Still, a 20-to-1 financial edge over Smith and the DSCC endorsement could prove decisive for Cunningham.

Cunningham is taking a centrist posture, distancing himself from “Medicare for All” and the suspension of deportations, while Tillis ties Cunningham relentlessly to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. In gauging Cunningham’s chances, Tillis strikes a Trumpian note, dubbing him “Silent Cal” after tight-lipped President Calvin Coolidge.

The incumbent senator said he takes his primary “seriously” but considers Cunningham his opponent, not Tucker. Tucker retorted that since his entry in the race, Tillis is “Trump’s new best friend... he’s desperate to make the race about Trump.”

Tillis insisted he “never” directly asked Trump for his June endorsement, which followed Tucker’s campaign launch. But he’ll be damned if anyone is questioning his Trump credentials.

“We’ve got the full support of the president,” Tillis said. “You can’t start out a campaign on the premise of thinking that you’re going to support the president more” than me.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

If Wednesday night's batshit insane "Send Her Back" chanting at Trump's North Carolina rally (as he nodded along and stifled a smile) showed us one thing, it's that republicans are now in a (to them) glorious full racist meltdown. They hardly even pretend to hide their racism anymore, and those like the propagandists at FOX "News" who push racism and then claim what they just said or did isn't racist have been encouraging racism for years. It would be hard to believe that anyone is happier about the storm we're in than Rupert Murdoch, unless his name is Trump. Neo Nazi's know they have sympathetic partners in FOX and Trump and they are letting their freak flags fly.

It's not like any Republicans in the media or among the voters every really did hide their racism, at least not completely. They may have thought so but now they don't even bother with the pretense or they will deny that what is obviously racist is racist, with a smirk of course. The racism has always been there to see. It's just that now, even more than before, Republicans are proudly and even more loudly proclaiming it. Trump's rallies are now the stuff of lynch mobs. The doors to the Republican Party closets have been blown off their hinges by a wind that howls right out of 1963 Mississippi and Alabama.

I don't know who the racist FOX "News" goon in the above picture is but, really, does it matter? You could just plug in virtually any FOX "News" goon. Sure, some airhead defenders of the white supremacist network who might claim to be Independents or even Democrats, will point to Shep Smith and claim "Not him, he's ok. They'r not all bad." But, let's get real, if you're happily riding in the back seat, you're still going along on the ride to whatever mayhem the cretin behind the wheel is driving to. The rhetoric that the White House, FOX "News" and the rest of the Republican notables is engaging in is the same as the "rotten apple" rhetoric that led us to Oklahoma City, Jackson State, Kent State, and the bodies of 3 civil rights workers being buried in an earthen dam.

One, FOX a-hole named Chris Stirewalt even recently tried to minimize republican racism by shrugging it off and saying-

Democrats will tell you every Republican is racist. Republicans will tell you every Democrat is a socialist.

Talk about your false equivalencies! Think about that one. Play it over in your mind. To Herr Stirewalt, being a racist is as acceptable as being a socialist. I'd love to see him say something like that in a crowd in Denmark, or even at a Social Security office here in the good old U.S.A. for that matter.

Well, to Republicans, being a racist is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it's encouraged and, as I've said here for years, being a racist is among the qualifications to join the Republican Party. This was well-evidenced by Tuesday's House vote on a resolution to condemn Trump's racist tweets and remarks in the White House Rose Garden. Only 4 out of all of the House Republicans voted against the resolution and they will henceforth be ostracized. The rest fiercely made their embrace of Trump's racism and their own a matter of public and congressional record. This is the Republican Party in 2019 and, horrifically, the future.

Another Republican goofball who has embraced his racism, is North Carolina $enator Thom Tillis who met Trump at the airport and was thrilled to ride with him to the rally. Thursday morning, the morning after the now infamous rally, Tillis ran as fast as he could to the FOX cameras where he enthused about all of the support for Trump in North Carolina as exemplified by crowds along the route to the rally and at the rally itself. Among other statements, he played the "fake news" card claiming media "obfuscation" of recent events and joining in with a FOX "News" blonde bozo who appeared to be right out of a Nazi S.S. central casting call as he whined to Tillis that the people in the rally arena "are being characterized as racists." Aw, poor baby! Gee, now why would people characterize racists as racists? This has been a standard tactic at FOX that they've really stepped up in recent days. Just like the White House, at Fox, whatever actions or statements by republicans that are racist just aren't racist. It's Queen of Denial Journalism 101. It's getting so bad that I expect the next time I put FOX "News" on, they'll all be looking at a picture of a lynched black man hanging from a tree and saying "that's not racist." It's FOX. It's who they are, from Rupert Murdoch on down. These are the people who turned over their shows to birtherism when Barack Obama was running for and then serving as president. These are the people who dismissed the circulating pictures of President Obama dressed as a witch doctor with a bone in his nose while the healthcare bill was being put together as not racist. That just wasn't enough for them and they will continue to escalate and escalate and escalate.

Here's Tillis joining in on the whining-

We've gotta shift the attention back to some of the positions they're taking that are extreme. Now the media here on Capitol Hill only wanna talk about parsing the president's words. I'm not gonna answer a question of them (sic) unless they come back and talk about the things that actually lit this candle and it's the extreme positions taken by A.O.C., Omar, and the so-called gang.

Yeah, there you have it. Tillis thinks the media's time would be better spent reporting the so-called "extreme" views held by the 4 congresswomen of color that republicans are focusing so much hate upon these days. Right. As if there's nothing extreme in saying that they should go back to where they came from. Hey Thommy, how about you tell that to the president's wife and her family! Go ahead. We're waiting asshole!

A parting note: On most Sunday's, I devote the Midnight Meme Of The Day! to a subcategory I call "Sunday Thoughts." Events, however, are overrunning us. I will point out, though, that tonight's meme does contain a cross and the KKK is as Republican Jesus-like as penny loafers and Mike Pence's khakis, and has been since Nixon took the racist dixiecrats, with the notable exception of former klansman Robert Byrd, into the Republican Party back in 1968. Byrd, however, unlike the rest, repudiated his former ways. Don't hold your breath waiting for that from any modern day Republicans. They have a true white supremacist messiah in Donald Trump now and it is him in whom they place their trust, no other, and certainly not the Constitution.

Cheri Bustos Has Some Kindred Souls-- At The NRSC

Same kind of authoritarian, anti-democratic mindset and instincts. Bustos, chair of the DCCC, is trying to prevent primaries of Blue Dogs and New Dems in Congress, while she recruits New Dem and Blue Dog-types to run against progressives. Yesterday evening, Politico ran a report by Alex Isenstadt showing how the McTurtle and Todd Young, who are running the NRSC, are coming from the exact same place. Does this sound familiar? "Senate Republicans and their establishment allies are vowing to blackball any political consulting firm that works to defeat GOP incumbents, a dramatic step likely to further inflame intraparty tensions over 2020 primaries."

McTurtle and Young are all riled up because the far right is attempting to primary Thom Tillis (R-NC), who's more like the near-right. McTurtle was heard screeching that there will be a "zero tolerance policy." That kind of thing is more likely to work in a fascist-oriented party than among Democrats, where Bustos is rapidly destroying her own credibility and her career.

“It is the policy of the NRSC that we will defend any member of our caucus from any challenge-- be it in a primary or general election-- by any means necessary,” Kevin McLaughlin, the National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director, said in a statement. “It is a zero tolerance policy and we will not work with any vendors who work for campaigns or outside groups challenging incumbent Republican senators.”

The announcement is the most public brushback to those working for primary challengers since 2014, when the NRSC-- looking to beat back a wave of conservative insurgents-- cut off a consulting firm that had targeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other incumbents up for reelection that year.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a well-funded super PAC closely aligned with McConnell, joined the committee in its decision.

“We have a long-standing policy of not using consultants who are assisting primary challenges against our Senate incumbents,” said Steven Law, the group's president.

The Club for Growth has not opposed an incumbent Republican senator since 2014, when it tried to unseat then-Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. But this week, the organization indicated it was trying to nudge North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker, a staunch Trump ally, into the primary. The Club for Growth also released a poll suggesting that Tillis would be vulnerable in a primary and general election.

The flare-up threatens to divide Republicans in a state at the center of the party’s 2020 strategy. Senate GOP campaign officials have warned aides to President Donald Trump that a disruptive and chaotic North Carolina Senate primary could hurt Trump in the battleground state.

North Carolina had already become an early focus of GOP concerns. The state Republican Party, whose chairman was recently indicted in a corruption case, has been wracked by turmoil. And there is considerable angst within the party about a field of lackluster gubernatorial candidates.

Senate Republicans are vigorously working to protect Tillis. In recent weeks, NRSC officials raised concerns with Trump campaign aides over the work that John McLaughlin, one of the president’s pollsters, was doing for Tillis primary challenger Garland Tucker. On Tuesday, McLaughlin’s firm withdrew from the North Carolina race.

The NRSC has indicated that it’s prepared to aggressively go after Walker, a third-term evangelical pastor. The committee, for example, has pointed out that the congressman has become entangled in the same federal corruption probe that led to the indictment of state party chairman Robin Hayes.

Major donors and outside groups are also coming to the senator’s defense. A spokesman for GOP megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson said the couple “stands by Thom Tillis.”

Ending Spending Action Fund, a super PAC that in the past has received funding from the billionaire Ricketts and Adelson families, said it “will proudly support his reelection and vigorously oppose candidates or groups that seek to challenge the senator.”

Club for Growth officials say Tillis’ past differences with the White House have made him vulnerable in a state where Trump is popular among Republicans. Last year, the senator was criticized by fellow Republicans for co-sponsoring legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller. Earlier this year, Tillis wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he announced his opposition to Trump’s national emergency declaration to build a border wall, though he ultimately voted in favor of it.

The Club for Growth tried to defeat the president in the 2016 GOP primary but has since refashioned itself into a pro-Trump outfit. On Friday, the group said it is still assessing whether to oppose Tillis.

“The Club for Growth has not made a determination if we will support a primary challenge to Sen. Tillis’ seat in North Carolina,” said Joe Kildea, a spokesman for the organization. “If we do endorse Walker, it will only be if we believe he is a stronger candidate in the general election.”

Republicans are not alone in trying to cut off oxygen to primary challengers. At a time when progressive insurgents are looking to unseat establishment incumbents, the House Democratic campaign arm has said it will no longer do business with vendors who are working to defeat sitting lawmakers.

The Club for Growth’s threat to Tillis puts some of the Republican Party's incumbents, who typically treat their fellow colleagues with deference, in an awkward position. Arizona Sen. Martha McSally has previously used two consulting firms, Axiom Strategies and WPA Intelligence, who have done work for the Club for Growth and Walker.

WPA Intelligence oversaw the Club for Growth’s new North Carolina survey, though a person familiar with the arrangement said it was done through a firewalled division of the polling firm. Jeff Roe, founder of Axiom Strategies and a top McSally adviser, said his firm would not be involved in any effort to defeat Tillis.

McSally is one of the most endangered senators up for reelection in 2020. A spokeswoman for the senator suggested that she took the same no-tolerance approach as the party committee.

"Sen. McSally strongly supports the reelection of Thom Tillis,” said McSally spokeswoman Katie Waldman, “and has made it clear that she will not use any vendors who are involved in a primary against the senator or any other Republican senator in the 2020 cycle.”

Dan v Dan in North Carolina-- It Doesn't Matter Who Wins, Not Even A Little; Both Candidates Suck

Dan the crackpot Republican vs Dan the untrustworthy Blue Dog

No one is forcing me to write this post but if there's one congressional race whose outcome I could care less about, it's the re-do for NC-09, a swingy district that borders South Carolina and shoots from Colonial Heights in Charlotte to Savoy Heights in Fayetteville. The 9th was severely redistricted in 2016, and now encompasses rural areas to the east of Charlottesville as well as the Fayetteville part of the district. The African-American population went from 13% to 20% but the overall political lean remained Republican. The PVI was R+8 and is still R+8. In 2012 Romney took the district 55.4% to 43.8% and in 2016 Trump beat Hillary 54.4% to 42.8%.

What shook things up there is that far right crackpot Mark Harris, a Trumpist, stole the Republican primary from relatively mainstream conservative incumbent Robert Pittenger. On May 8, 2028, Harris was declared the primary winner, with 17,302 votes (48.5%) to Pittenger's 16,474 (46.2%). By the time the scope of Harris' vote theft operation became known, Pittinger seemed tired of the whole process and just let it slide. There wasn't much of a primary on the Democratic side, the DCCC having already picked a very conservative, Republican-lite Blue Dog, Dan McCready as the candidate. He spent close to $700,000 to Fernando Cano's $41,000 and crushed him on primary day 38,098 (82.8%) to 7,922 (17.2%). It may have scared Harris that on primary day more people voted for McCready than for he and Pittinger combined.

Harris kept the firm on that had stole the primary election for him so that it could also steal the general. Harris claimed a 139,246 (49.3%) to 138,341 (48.9%) victory, but on November 27 (2018), the North Carolina State Board of Elections, which is comprised of four Democrats, four Republicans, and one independent member, voted unanimously not to certify the results and Harris wasn't sworn in. After Harris' ballot-tampering was proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the state Board of Elections threw out the results and declared there would be a new election. Harris knew he couldn't run but he endorsed another neo-fascist crackpot and Trumpist like himself, Stony Rushing, AKA Boss Hogg. Club for Growth endorsed state Senator Dan Bishop, author the state's "bathroom bill," who decisively beat 9 other primary candidates last Tuesday. He needed 30% to avoid a run-off and he took 14,178 votes (47.7%) to Rushing's 5,820 (19.6%) and will face McCready on September 10. Whoever wins that, will have just over a year before being forced to compete in the 2020 general election.

So that's where we are. The Republicans have a terrible right-wing nut and the Democrats have a Blue Dog who has the potential to do more harm from inside the party to the progressive movement than any Republican serving in the minority ever could. Both candidates suck. If I lived in the district I wouldn't consider voting for either. AP ran a piece yesterday by Emery Dalesio, North Carolina Candidates On The Attack In Election Redo. Yawn. Dalesio wrote that they both launched their new campaigns Wednesday "deflecting questions about controversial policies and refusing to rule out a bid for higher office in the near future."

In a bit of guerrilla theater, Bishop appeared outside McCready’s campaign headquarters with a cardboard cutout of the Democrat. Bishop described McCready as a liberal who has been as mum as the prop when it comes to talking about his views on current issues.

“I think what voters expect and need is contrast and clarity on issues,” Bishop said. “So that’s exactly what we’re going to do is be clear about the issues from my perspective and we invite Dan McCready to be clear about where he stands.”

Both candidates dodged questions, however.

At his own news conference minutes after Bishop spoke, McCready refused to pledge not to run for U.S. Senate next year. Bishop said McCready is using the congressional election to angle for a 2020 shot against Republican Senate incumbent Thom Tillis.

Bishop, meanwhile, deflected questions about his sponsorship of the headline-grabbing “bathroom bill,” which cost the state billions in projected economic activity. The 2016 law known as House Bill 2 voided anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and also directed transgender people to use public bathrooms matching their sex at birth.

“HB2 is an old issue and there’s a lot of fantasy about it, including a lot in the media, but I think voters are tired of hearing about it,” Bishop said. “We’ve got a lot of new issues in this campaign we’ve talk about.”

McCready cited a 2017 analysis by The Associated Press estimating that the law cost North Carolina more than $3.76 billion, primarily from businesses that decided to skip intended moves to the state.

“His agenda is nothing but a track record of making things worse for people here in North Carolina,” McCready said of Bishop.

Bishop said he agrees with President Donald Trump that the country should build a wall on the Mexican border and that the current high rate of Central American citizens seeking asylum in the United States amounts to an emergency.

McCready responded that he supported comprehensive immigration reform, one version of which passed the U.S. Senate in 2013 but died in the House as Republican hard-liners opposed legal status for immigrants living in the country illegally.

“It’s absolutely important that we secure the border,” McCready said. “It’s also important that we uphold American values at the border.”

That's how McCready talks-- very general terms that allows the listener to read whatever he or she wants into it. I've watched slippery Blue Dogs like him for years and years. They never make good Representatives. Never! But speaking on Thom Tillis, the current Republican senator who has to face the voters in 2020, he just got a primary challenge from the right, announced on Sean Hannity's Hate Talk radio show. The wing nut running is Garland Tucker III, formerly a very wealthy Never-Trumper but now claiming to be the defender of Trumpanzee from Tillis, who hasn't always been loyal enough.

The White House, which is sending Pence to North Carolina next week to help shore up Tillis, and the NRSC are sticking with Tillis. NRSC spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez didn't mince any words: "This primary is nothing more than an opponent of the president’s agenda with money to burn teaming up with a past-his-prime political consultant [Carter Wrenn] who is desperate to cash a paycheck."

Tucker is a big right-wing donor who backed Scott Walker, then Rubio, then Ted Cruz and finally Kasich before finally facing up to the fact that his party had been taken over by the fascists and that Trump was the nominee. He mostly writes $1,000 checks to garden variety conservative candidates but he spent major money on Scott Walker and Walker's PAC.

Tucker already has his first ad up on Fox-- attacking Tillis for not being slavishly committed to Trump:





The Raleigh News & Observer reported that Tucker only voted for Trump in 2016 because he saw him as the lesser of two evils. (In other words, he decided to vote for someone he recognized as evil to be president. There's something wrong with that-- which is why I would never consider voting for either Dan McCready or Dan Bishop in the NC-09 congressional special election.)

Tucker, who turns 72 in June, called the federal debt “immoral” and criticized votes by Tillis to raise the debt ceiling and go over budget spending caps. In 2015 and 2018, Tillis voted yes on budget deals that raised the spending caps. Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina’s senior senator, voted no on both. In February, the federal debt reached $22 trillion, up $2 trillion from when Trump took office in 2017.

Tucker, who founded Triangle Capital Corporation in the early 2000s and was on the board when it was sold last year, is putting his own money into the campaign as it ramps up fundraising. He would not disclose how much he has committed to spend.

“I’m committed to do whatever it takes to get the operation up and going,” he said.

He has donated to Republican candidate for years, including giving $2,600 to Tillis’ first Senate campaign in 2014, according to federal election records. He said Tillis ran on “a good solid conservative platform. In a couple very important areas, he’s really failed to deliver.”

Despite that record of Republican giving, the National Republican Senatorial Committee called Tucker’s campaign a “quixotic adventure for a wealthy, out-of-touch liberal.”

The Tillis campaign and its allies have tagged Tucker as an “anti-Trump activist” for a September 2016 opinion piece he wrote for the News & Observer. In it, Tucker outlined his concerns about Trump, whom he called a “flawed candidate,” and expressed doubts about his character, temperament and consistency on policy. But Tucker said he would vote for Trump over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.


“I wouldn’t retract anything I said in that,” Tucker said. “Since then, it has been one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve ever seen. Trump’s policies, forget the tweets and any noise around him, his policies are right in line with my conservative heroes.

“I’m really pleased he got elected and I shudder to think there’s any chance he might not get re-elected.“
 Carter Wrenn, the longtime Republican political strategist who is working for Tucker, said the early television ads are aimed at giving Republican voters a choice.

“Garland needs to become well known. We need to say to voters here’s where Garland stands, here’s where Tillis stands,” Wrenn said. “If you’re a challenger to an incumbent senator, not unusual to try to go on television early.”

Elect any of these guys to Congress-- to the Senate or to fill the laughably empty NC-09 seat-- and you get more of this... more and more and more and more. Something needs to be done to break this cycle. And it's NOT just about Trump and impeachment. It's about polarization and enforced, systemic deadlock and, as Steyer says, a broken system. If the corrupt political parties don't give you a choice, don't vote in their elections. Boycott their elections. Starting with NC-09 in September. It's a good place to begin, because it makes no difference at all. Imagine if no one showed up. Cheri Bustos and Nancy Pelosi want to primaries? How about if we delegitimize their hold on the Democratic Party by ignoring their wretched general election candidates? No more lesser-of-two-evils elections.

The Sad, Sad Acceleration Of The Remaking Of Trump's GOP

On Thursday, by a large bipartisan majority, the Senate approved HJ 46, the resolution of disapproval for Trump's phony state of emergency declaration. A dozen Republicans voted with every single Democrat against Trump. The Republicans on Trump's shit-list today: Lamar Alexander (TN), Roy Blunt (MO), Susan Collins (ME), Mike Lee (UT), Jerry Moran (KS), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Randy Paul (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Marco Rubio (FL), Pat Toomey (PA) and Roger Wicker (MS). But not two of the most vulnerable senators up for reelection in 2020, Thom Tillis (NC) and Cory Gardner (CO).

If you go by their 538 Trump adhesion scores, the biggest Trump suck-ups in Congress are Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven, both of North Dakota, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, David Perdue of Georgia, John Cornyn of Texas and Pat Roberts of Kansas. The 7 of them vote with Trump no matter what; they're like broken machines stuck on "grind America into the ground." (Only two Democrats get anywhere near Trump-suck-up status, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom are with Trump more than they're against him. Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly were in that camp too-- and lost their seats for their efforts.) Thom Tillis and Cory Gardner, on the other hand, are pretty garden variety Republicans. Gardner's score is 90.3% and Tillis' is 94.6%-- far Trumpier than some of the senators who voted for the resolution, like Rand Paul (71.6), Mike Lee (77.7), Mitt Romney (70.0), Susan Collins (72.3) or Lisa Murkowski (78.9).



Friday, North Carolina media started dumping all over Tillis for his cowardly and hypocritical flip-flop. WRAL:

A month ago Sen. Thom Tillis was one of the first Republicans to say he'd oppose President Donald Trump's border emergency. It violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. He wasn’t going to cede the legislative branch’s constitutional responsibility.

Thursday with his vote to the contrary, he said “never mind.”

Looking at the likelihood of a difficult re-election campaign next year, the last thing his chances of returning to the Senate needed was the added possibility of a potent GOP primary challenger-- an open threat Trump promised Republicans who opposed him.

At about the same time Tillis was back-tracking, Republican Rep. Mark Walker, who represents the state’s 6th Congressional District and was rumored as a GOP primary challenge to the incumbent senator, had his office issue a brief statement. “Congressman Walker is humbled to have the support and consideration of conservatives across North Carolina but is not planning to primary Thom Tillis.”

After the vote, N.C. GOP Chairman Robin Hayes offered Tillis more reassurance. “We look forward to supporting President Trump and Senator Tillis as they work to secure our borders and fix the broken National Emergencies Act.”

So, Tillis kicked the Constitution into the back seat and drove into the sunset with the President. It was quite a turn-around for someone who’d taken to The Washington Post’s op-ed columns to declare there was "no intellectual honesty" in supporting Trump when he’d objected to what he considered presidential excesses during Barack Obama’s administration.

“Congress has allowed executive overreach to continue unabated from one administration to the next because both sides are fine with it as long as they agree with the policy goal,” Tillis said in a statement a month ago. “While I agree with President (Donald) Trump’s policy goal, I don’t believe in situational principles.”

What Tillis says he believes and what he does are now revealed to be VERY different things-- particularly when a re-election is on the line.

...If the senator goes looking for the definition of “situational principles,” now, he may find his picture beside it in the dictionary.

The New York Times dubbed him "Senator Hypocrisy (R-NC)" in a Friday morning editorial. Cory Gardner is faring just as badly back home in Colorado. The state's biggest newspaper, the Denver Post, which endorsed him in 2014, basically withdrew the endorsement on Thursday evening, blaring in an editorial Our Endorsement of Cory Gardner Was A Mistake. "We endorsed Sen. Cory Gardner in 2014 because we believed he’d be a statesman," they wrote. "We knew he’d be a conservative voice in Congress, to be certain, but we thought his voice would bring 'fresh leadership, energy and ideas.' We see now that was a mistake-- consider this our resolution of disapproval. Gardner has been too busy walking a political tight rope to be a leader. He has become precisely what we said in our endorsement he would not be: 'a political time-server interested only in professional security.'... Trump’s declaration is an abuse of his power, a direct overturning of Congress’ deliberate decision to pass a federal budget without funding for a wall. Put simply this is a constitutional crisis and one of Colorado’s two senators has failed the test."

In our endorsement this November of former U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican from Aurora who was soundly defeated by Rep. Jason Crow, we stuck by someone who had shown a willingness to oppose that which he found morally reprehensible in his own party.

In contrast, Gardner was a never-Trumper in the primary who in recent months endorsed the president’s re-election campaign even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation continues to unveil the worst of this administrations web of lies and deceit. Tuesday’s vote was the last straw.

We no longer know what principles guide the senator and regret giving him our support in a close race against Mark Udall.

Trump's bumpersticker tweet before the balloting: "A vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!" White House aides texted it to GOP senators to make sure they'd see it. The failed effort "was a reminder that White House aides have long acknowledged the futility of speaking for or negotiating on the president’s behalf, a position they now are openly conveying to lawmakers: passing along his tweets rather than attempting to twist arms or hash out a compromise themselves... The Republican revolt on the Senate floor followed a haphazard and erratic persuasion effort from Trump that offers a vivid encapsulation of how this White House has struggled to influence Congress. In the days before the vote, the president initially made few moves to try to stem GOP defections. Trump told senators that he knew they wouldn’t be able to override his veto and appeared to see little upside to cutting a deal on his signature issue. He made little effort to whip wavering GOP senators during a Wednesday afternoon meeting on trade, and said they could vote however they pleased. By Wednesday evening, however, he had grown disturbed by the brewing condemnation from his own party."

Friday morning, the NY Times ran a piece by Stead Herndon about how the quality of Republican candidates is changing in response to Trumpism. He wrote that "Far from the power centers of Washington, the early 2020 primary states or the money-rich coastal cities that fund many national campaigns, a shift in the political winds is growing stronger. The Republican Party and its candidates, particularly in state and local campaigns, are increasingly being reshaped in President Trump’s image, adopting his laundry list of political opponents and his willingness to go to great lengths to spite them. But the most common reflection of Mr. Trump’s brand of grievance politics… was the pervasive belief that the country is being undermined by undeserving outsiders and the Democrats who represent them." It'a an ultimately ugly, divisive message of Know-Nothingism. And Herndon uses last Tuesday's state House special election in northeast Pennsylvania, a Lackawanna County district north and west of Scranton.

The results weren't a shock. The district has been trending blue and Democrat Bridget Malloy Kosierowski beat Republican Frank Scavo III decisively. More interesting was what a Trump-like campaign Scavo ran. "Many of Mr. Scavo’s supporters," wrote Herndon, "were upset that he had drawn significant negative attention for his series of bigoted Facebook posts over the past four years, including ones that painted Muslims as 'infidels' and others that promoted conspiracy theories like 'Pizzagate,' the false story that Democrats ran a child sex trafficking operation out of a Washington pizza parlor."

“Democrats are rats!” yelled Mr. Scavo’s wife, Caren [drunk], a local hair stylist who had started crying. She and others contended that he should have doubled down rather than apologize for the posts, as he did in the closing days of the race.

“I’m furious,” said Laureen Cummings, an Old Forge resident who is also a county commissioner. “Our poor president is getting hammered and the same thing happened to Frank.”

Another man interjected: “This is our tea party!” Big applause followed.

Here, among Republicans in the northeastern Pennsylvania region that has suffered with the gutting of the steel industry and the ravages of the opioid crisis, Mr. Trump’s language is endlessly repeated. He is not ensnared in several investigations of possible wrongdoing, but the victim of a “witch hunt.” The discovery of Mr. Scavo’s anti-Muslim Facebook posts was the work of the “fake news media.” The federal bureaucracy is the scheming “deep state.”

But the most common reflection of Mr. Trump’s brand of grievance politics-- and the reason Mr. Scavo’s loss was treated as an existential threat in that Old Forge banquet hall-- was the pervasive belief that the country is being undermined by undeserving outsiders and the Democrats who represent them.

Herndon didn't see fit to mention that Lackawanna County has not exactly embraced Trump, despite the crackpot Republicans getting drunk and addicting themselves to opioids while nursing their racist grievances. In 2016 more voters cast ballots for Bernie (17,265) than for Trump (14,406) in the primaries. In the general election, Lackawanna went for Hillary 50.2-46.8%. Even the disastrous Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Katie McGinty-- an EMILY's List concoction-- beat GOP incumbent Pat Toomey 52.9% to 39.8% in Lackawanna. And in 2018 Lackawanna gave Democrat Bob Casey at 61.1-37.9% landslide victory over Republican Lou Barletta in the Senate race and Democrat Tom Wolff and 64.6-34.1% win over Republican Scott Wagner. And in the House race, Matt Cartwright won all 3 of the biggest counties in the district but completely crushed it in Lackawanna. So... not everyone in this part of the state is a KKK sympathizer. Still, Herndon wants to lead his readers into believing Lackawanna County is a racist bastion and emphasized that "In conversations with Mr. Scavo and his all-white supporters, this was not a race-blind anxiety, but a conscious fear around what they see as the replacement of traditional, white American culture. The message was constantly amplified by ominous reporting and commentary from conservative, pro-Trump media outlets."

He asserts that "to many in Lackawanna County, which has long trended Democratic but only narrowly went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, such feelings are integral to the worldview of local Republicans." Yeah, Hillary was a terrible candidate-- who still won-- but Lackawanna went heavily for Casey, Wolff and Cartwright. Presumably Herndon's editor's had no idea. He wrote that in "In Old Forge, the region’s most conservative bastion... mayor, Robert Legg, is currently embroiled in scandal after he posted on Facebook that the New York governor, Andrew M. Cuomo; the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, are treasonous and 'should be shot.'"

The Republican National Committee and its affiliates have long insisted that they remain a big tent, open to people of all races and backgrounds. However, some former Republican leaders, pollsters and former candidates say Mr. Trump has brought formerly fringe sentiments of explicit nativism and racism to the fore-- and the result is a party that is growing more racially monolithic in an increasingly diverse age.

During last year’s midterm elections, Republicans fielded a nearly all-white slate of candidates for governor. In the House, 90 percent of the Republican caucus is now white men, while about two-thirds of the Democratic caucus is not.

But locally, Mr. Scavo’s supporters-- many of whom vocally supported Mr. Trump’s re-election-- are unsure such a dichotomy is a problem. Mr. Scavo said his fatal election mistake was taking the advice of outside Republican groups and not going with his gut, which would have focused less on eliminating taxes and promoting smaller government and instead prioritized more Trumpian issues such as the wall on the southern border and MS-13 gang violence.

Across the country, other Republican state officials have gone further, including an Arizona state representative, David Stringer, who said this year that “there aren’t enough white kids to go around” in the state’s public schools.

Daniel Squadron, the former New York state senator who leads Future Now, a national organization to help elect Democrats to state legislatures, said he cautioned people against thinking the wave of overt white identity politics is simply an offshoot of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Squadron pointed out that, in the Pennsylvania race, Mr. Scavo’s controversial social media posts began before Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Other candidates in this mold, such as the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, won support of local Republicans even though Mr. Trump had endorsed Mr. Moore’s opponent.

“It’s not about Trump,” Mr. Squadron said. “It’s about a mind-set, a conspiracy theory, an ethnonationalism that Trump reflects.”

“We should stop thinking of these races as ‘Trump-ized’ because they’re about ‘Pizzagate’ and racial and ethnic division and fear-mongering,” he said. “That’s just how races are run on the Republican side these days.”

Mr. Scavo and his supporters largely agree. Mr. Scavo called himself “pro-wall, not pro-Trump,” and Mr. Bolus said he worried the Republican establishment fails to understand how fiercely Mr. Trump’s supporters are committed to their cultural ideals.

They especially hate Hispanics and Muslims and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are driving them out of their minds. They came up in Herndon's interviews with the local yahoos. A new Gallup poll shows that hard core Republicans-- especially males-- are being driven crazy by Ocasio. Overall, Democrats like her and so do women, millennials and people of color but by a huge 68% margin, Republicans just hate her. Old white conservative males seem to be making her the bane of their existence. Ocasio isn't the first Democratic Socialist who old white conservative males have hated:

Another Putin-Gate Sunday While Trumpanzee Golfs In New Jersey

Republican politicians, Senators Tom Cotton (AR) and Thom Tillis (NC) are very different characters but there is no way to accurately describe either one of them without using the words "right wing" or even "very right wing." Each was on TV yesterday, Tillis with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and Cotton with John Dickerson on CBS news' Face the Nation. Believe it or not, somehow Señor Trumpanzee came up in both conversations. First a little background: On Thursday, Tillis, along with Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware, introduced the Special Counsel Integrity Act, which Tillis' office described as "bipartisan legislation that supports the integrity of independent investigations by allowing judicial review if a special counsel is removed. In the event that a special counsel is removed, the Tillis-Coons legislation allows the special counsel to challenge the removal in court, which would be heard and determined by a panel of 3 federal judges within 14 days of the filing of the action. The panel of judges would determine whether or not there was good cause for the removal of the special counsel. In the event that the panel of judges finds there was no good cause for the removal, the individual would be immediately reinstated as special counsel. Other provisions of the Special Counsel Integrity Act:"

• Codifies existing Department of Justice regulations that a special counsel appointed by the department may only be removed for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause, like a violation of departmental policies. The Department of Justice must inform the special counsel in writing as to the reason for their removal.
• Ensures that a special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of an Attorney General who has been confirmed by the Senate, or, if the Attorney General is recused from the matter, the most senior Department of Justice official who has been confirmed by the Senate and is not recused from the matter.
• Provides that the legislation is retroactively effective as of May 17, 2017, and applies to any special counsel appointed or after that date.

When Chris Wallace asked the obvious, if the bill was directed against the Trump Regime, Tillis responded "Well, there’s no question that it is... That’s why we put the effective date back to the date of the hire of the current special counsel." Like most senators of both parties-- and, by the way, Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a similar bill Thursday as well-- Tillis is worried that Trump will do something that leads to the inappropriate firing of Robert Mueller. Tom Cotton, however, isn't one of the senators too concerned about it and he predicted Tillis' bill won't pass. He doesn't like the Senate safeguarding the country from Trump's deprecations. Cotton showed what he is when Dickerson stated that "First there was the vote on sanctions, which the President did not like with respect to Russia. Also in the Senate you took measures to make sure there were no recess appointments. And finally there are a couple of bipartisan efforts to make sure that the President can’t fire the special counsel." Dickerson observed that "[It] seems to be Congress is trying to constrain the president." He tried having it both ways.

Well, those are all very different kinds of actions. On the sanctions legislation, I supported that legislation because Russia and China are adversaries, and North Korea is racing towards having a nuclear armed missile that can strike the United States. The recess appointment issue is something that goes back to the Obama administration.

I can tell you, as a junior senator, I signed a sign-up roster early this year that was choosing when I was going to be in Washington, D.C., during a recess, to preside over a short session of the Senate, to insure that there wasn't a recess appointment. That's simply Congress taking its responsibilities seriously, to provide advice and consent to all nominations.

We did it under the Obama administration. It's happening under the Trump administration, as well. Finally, on those two pieces of legislation, I don't see them going very far. The Independent Counsel Statute in the 1970s and '80s and '90s was a disaster. We have an executive branch in which the power of all the departments and all the agencies reports to the single elected member of the President.

So those are all very different kinds of actions. But Congress is a co-equal branch of government. And in my opinion, for decades, Congress has ceded too much authority to the executive branch. And we should exercise our constitutional responsibilities seriously and with vigor.

Cotton is a warmonger and anti-Russia hawk and he twists himself into knots trying to defend Trump's romance with Putin and at the same time distancing himself from Trump's obvious lies about witch hunts and Fake News. "Russia," he said to Dickerson, "has a long history of using disinformation, deception, subterfuge, and espionage to influence Western democracies. That happened in our election last year when Russian intelligence services hacked into those emails and released them. It happened in 1983 when Russian intelligence services were behind much of the protest against the deployment of intermediate range nuclear forces to Western Europe. So it should come as no surprise that Russia continues its effort to manipulate Western democracies in a way to sow discord and disagreements between our countries in NATO and within the United States or any other Western European country. And it's something the United States obviously must be on guard against... [I]t shouldn't surprise any American to know that Russia uses its money and its intelligence services to spread disinformation, use subterfuge and deception and manipulation, to try to divide political opinion within the United States, within any Western European country, or among NATO countries. That's one of the techniques that Russia has used for decades, during the Cold War and during the Putin era... Russia remains an adversary to the United States. We have some overlapping interests. It would be better if our relationship was better. But our relationship is not good right now because of Vladimir Putin. There are steps that I think that we should be taking that we should have taken under the Obama administration. For instance, providing defensive weaponry to Ukraine. I encourage the President and the administration to take a look at those steps. I know they are doing so through deliberate, careful National Security Council meetings."

Back to Mueller for a moment, Tillis' co-sponsor, Chris Coons, was on ABC News' This Week and told viewers that he thinks "if the president should fire Robert Mueller abruptly, that would be crossing a big line, and I think you would be seeing strong bipartisan action from the Senate which might include our reinstating him or our hiring him to continue to conduct that investigation on behalf of Congress."

A die-hard Trumpy-the-Clown ally, Britain's Nigel-Farage-the-Clown, was on Fox & Friends yesterday whining that Ryan and McConnell are thwarting the Trumpanzee agenda, just as Theresa May is thwarting, in his mind, the fascist agenda in the U.K. "The political revolution of 2016 with Brexit and with Trump was people voting for change, real, fundamental change. And here we are in the middle of the following year and that change isn't happening." He's probably not aware that 3 million more people voted against Trumpanzee than for him. "What's so frustrating on both sides of the pond is that there are people who masquerade as conservatives in order to get themselves elected and are now damaging the attempt for us to get a clean Brexit, stopping the president from getting his agenda through Congress, and I think there is something very fundamental at stake here, it is people's faith and belief in the whole Democratic process."

Mueller portrait by Nancy Ohanian

How The Republican Party Began Their War Against Women By Defeating The Equal Rights Amendment

It isn't news that George Will is using his skills as a right-wing propagandist to try to undermine the work of the Senate's #1 proponent of individual liberty against the encroachments of the CIA and NSA, Mark Udall. It's no secret which side of that existential battle Will and his ilk are on. In a Washington Post column last week datelined Denver, no less, Will takes on Udall not because he's the Senate's champion of privacy rights, but because he's a champion of women's rights.

"One of the wonders of this political moment," Will asserts, "is feminist contentment about the infantilization of women in the name of progressive politics." And, the whole war on women is completely made up, he insists. "Access to contraception has been a constitutional right for 49 years (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965). The judiciary has controlled abortion policy for 41 years (Roe v. Wade, 1973). Yet the Democratic Party thinks women can be panicked into voting about mythical menaces to these things." Somehow Will forgot to mention that the Republican party has been working hard to overturn both and that his boy Cory has been a leader in that movement-- until he decided to run for statewide office. Now, says Will, Gardner is trying to make "amends for formerly advocating a state constitutional 'personhood' amendment (it is again on the ballot this year and will be decisively rejected for a third time) and for endorsing similar federal legislation that has zero chance of passage. By defining personhood as beginning at conception, these measures might preclude birth control technologies that prevent implantation in the uterus of a fertilized egg. On this slender reed, Udall leans his overheated accusations that Gardner is bent on 'trampling on women’s rights,' is on a 'crusade' for 'eliminating' reproductive freedoms and would 'outlaw birth control'.”

The Republican Party hasn't always been the bastion of fear and loathing for women that Will is trying to claim it isn't-- despite all the evidence that it is, like the GOP unending battle against equal pay for equal work and the pandering to primitive religionists-- like the Southern Baptists-- who insist that women are property. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge, historian Rick Perstein shows how the Republican Party didn't launch its War Against Women until Richard Mellon Scaife's pet project, ALEC, and Phyllis Schlafly figured out how to make money for themselves with it.

[B]attles were raging for and against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex," ran its apparently anodyne text. The majority of the public supported the idea; respectable moderate Republican ladies being its main base of support, the Republicans had endorsed it in every one of their party platforms since 1944 and President Eisenhower had asked a joint session of Congress to approve it in 1958. They did so, finally, in 1972-- at which the movement to achieve the constitutional requirement in two-thirds of state legislatures, thirty-eight to be precise, took off like a rocket, with thirty ratifications by the end of 1973.

Then the progress became as slow as molasses.

Perlstein wrote that "Only four more states voted passage by the spring." The backward, reactionary states from the Old Confederacy had no intention of giving women any kind of equality and Perlstein points out that "a frantic right-wing movement" led by a crazed and militant Republican Party activist Phyllis "I'd like to thank my husband for letting me be here tonight" Schlafly, always brimming with hatred and bile, stop the process. Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri and, of course, Utah and Arizona all refused to ratify it and several increasingly right-wing oriented states, like Tennessee, Idaho, Nebraska and Kentucky, rescinded their ratification votes. Schlafly spent her time screeching about how the Amendment would lead women being drafted and to unisex bathrooms. Schlafly warned her fellow Republicans that giving women legal equality would lead to homosexuality and that it would "remake our laws, revise the marriage contract, restructure society, remold our children to conform to liberal values instead of God's values, and replace the image of a woman as virtue and mother with the image of prostiture, swinger, and lesbian."

One frightened conservative woman in Florida, typical of the kind of people who got taken in by Schlafly and other neo-Nazi activists within the Republican coalition said that "I do not want to share a public restroom with black or white hippie males." Florida never did ratify the ERA. No war on women here, though.

Perhaps next Will will take on the Hagan-Tillis race with his slick dunderheaded propaganda: