The Base Is Coming Around To The Inevitable: Ted Cruz

Almost a year ago I told my political friends that Ted Cruz would be the GOP presidential nominee. They all thought I was joking-- or insane. Oh, look, even Rich Lowry agrees now. Clearly 2016 was not going to be a year the Fox/Hate Talk Radio Republican base was going to accept another establishment candidate-- not after Romney, McCain, the Bushes and Dole-- and it would be a good year for the establishment to let them have their way and get it out of their system since conventional wisdom seemed to be saying Hillary would win anyway, regardless of who they ran. (That's changed a bit since the GOP propaganda project to smear and discredit her-- first with Benghazi and the fake e-mail "scandal" and then by poring millions of dollars in SuperPAC money into manipulating her favorable/unfavorables-- has worked pretty well.) The reason the GOP Elders can't just let a complete psychopath like Dr. Ben or Trumpy get the nomination is because of the immense damage it would do down-ticket as hordes of relatively mainstream Republicans in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada stay away from the polls and destroy GOP prospects in the Senate and even damage them in the House, although Republicans are savvy enough to know that DCCC incompetence will protect them in the House. (And the libertarian threat never materialized and no one takes Rand Paul even remotely seriously.)

But with Walker and Perry out so fast and with Jeb, Christie, and Kasich already in the realm of the walking dead, it started looking like a battle to the death between the two Cubano teabaggers, the Texas neo-fascist and the well-groomed hollow little twerp from Miami-Dade. And speaking of Dole, that fossil didn't help Bush by endorsing him Wednesday-- another failed relic of the hated establishment-- and didn't hurt Cruz by railing against him. There probably aren't many voters who know who he is and of the ones who do, none who care what he says. Except desperate reporters. He told them, speaking of the Jebster, "I think he’s the most qualified, and we need somebody with experience and there are a lot of good candidates-- I like nearly all of them. Except Cruz."

Cruz, representing the Hatred and Bigotry wing of the party, and Rubio, representing the Greed and Selfishness wing-- although both could easily represent either wing-- are already starting to ignore the other candidates to take on each other. Well, Rubio's just keeping his head down and hoping his billionaires put in more money than Cruz's billionaires, which is likely, although Cruz leads the money chase so far. (Cruz Dark Money is $38,634,164, most of it from 4 mentally unbalanced far right billionaires, and Rubio's Dark Money amounts to less than half that, $17,315,782, but with a lot supposedly in the pipeline. Greg Sargent sees the Cruz-Rubio battle as the former trying to solidify far right, anti-establishment backing and the latter as promising to unite establishment and the lunatic fringe.

Cruz is attacking Rubio as being a squish on immigration. Cruz to Jeremy Peters of the NY Times on Wednesday in New Hampshire: "[O]n the seminal fight over amnesty in Congress, the Gang of Eight bill that was the brainchild of Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama, that would have granted amnesty to 12 million people here illegally, that I stood with the American people and led the fight to defeat it in the United States Congress. In my view, if Republicans nominate for president a candidate who supports amnesty, we will have given up one of the major distinctions with Hillary Clinton and we will lose the general election. That is a path to losing. And part of the reason the debate last night was so productive is you started to see clear, meaningful policy distinctions, not just between what people say on the campaign trail. Talk’s cheap. But between their records. When the fight was being fought, where did you stand? That speaks volumes about who you are and where you will stand in the future. And we’re entering the phase now in the presidential race where primary voters are starting to examine the records of the candidates."

Cruz’s broadside contains two key ingredients. The first is the suggestion that Rubio’s support for Obama/Schumer comprehensive reform shows that his current posture on immigration is not to be trusted. Rubio has retreated to the position that the border must be fully secured before we can even discuss legalization. And Rubio has also sought to reassure conservatives with a careful straddle: he doesn’t support Donald Trump’s call for deportation of the 11 million, but neither does he align himself fully with Jeb Bush’s and John Kasich’s forceful moral and practical criticism of Trump’s vow of mass removal. However, conservatives are not convinced: they want him to fully rule out any future “amnesty,” which (by their lights) he has not done yet. Cruz may also press Rubio to say whether he’d immediately end Obama’s executive action protecting the DREAMers from deportation. It’s a point on which Rubio has fudged, and it’s a legitimate question.

The second key ingredient in Cruz’s monologue goes to the heart of competing theories of the 2016 presidential race. Cruz is claiming that only a GOP nominee who is unequivocally opposed to “amnesty” can draw the sharp contrast with the Democratic nominee that is necessary for a Republican to win the White House. (This is of a piece with a broader belief that Republicans must break their addiction to nominating squishy moderates rather than Real Conservatives.)

This theory is diametrically opposed to the prevailing theory among many GOP strategists (including, at one point, the RNC) which holds that to win in future national elections, the GOP must embrace meaningful immigration reform that reorients the party as more culturally welcoming and inclusive, broadening its demographic appeal. It’s hard to say where Rubio now stands on this spectrum-- the hedging in his immigration pronouncements seems designed to keep that vague. But Rubio strategists are reportedly convinced that his ability to maintain mainstream appeal will be key to his success, which suggests he hopes to reserve room to pivot back to a more pro-reform posture later, if he wins the nomination. Cruz may challenge Rubio in ways designed to foreclose that possibility.

I linked to Lowry in the first paragraph; safely ensconced in the right-wing cacoon, he's obviously drooling at the prospect of a Cruz candidacy. Like Bernie, he feels that "Cruz gets no respect" and "tends to be an afterthought in the Sunday show chatter, and on TV generally." He writes that "indications of the strength of Cruz’s operation and the shrewdness of his positioning are mounting" inasmuch as he "had more cash on hand at the end of the third quarter than any other Republican" and big money rolling in from those 4 nuts funding his SuperPAC. What gives Lowry a woody is that Cruz "assessed the anti-establishment mood in the party more accurately than any of the other traditional Republican candidates" and "reacted to the rise of Trump very deftly for his purposes." He's also excited that Cruz has a "discernible ideological and geographic base"-- admirers of fascism and the former slave-holding states-- and that "he lights up pretty much every conservative audience he addresses." So why the disrespect from the media?

The political press corps made up its mind about him-- too divisive-- as soon as he showed up in Washington, and has never entirely gotten over its dismissive treatment of his campaign.

Cruz has never mounted a John McCain-style charm offensive with reporters, most of whom, it is safe to say, find him personally off-putting. And he is hated with a burning passion by his party’s own elite.

The appeal of Cruz’s conservative populism is lost on most reporters and political insiders, who have a natural reflex to roll their eyes at the message and the messenger.

Cruz is not as interesting as Trump and Carson, and he doesn’t feature in any intrapersonal drama like the Bush-Rubio mentor-mentee showdown. (The rise of Trump also happened to roughly coincide with Cruz’s second-quarter fundraising report, dampening the impact of what was a herald of the robust state of his campaign.)

Thursday morning, the entirely irrelevant Rick Santorum, got in a smack at Cruz on Twitter, posting a link to this video and pointing out that "It is clear what candidate is not a real conservative on immigration." Is it? What's the "conservative position" on legal immigration? Trump's against increasing it-- and particularly H-1B visas (which flipped out the US Chamber of Commerce)-- and Cruz is for doing just that:



Trump's insane racism and xenophobia are making Cruz look quasi-mainstream, at least in GOPville. But no matter what Rubio says now, it is Cruz who wants to preclude a path to citizenship in an absolute way and it is Cruz who would round up the Dreamers and deport them. Rubio is a tiny bit less bloodthirsty and fascist in his approach. And, at the heart of all this, is how conservatism is defined in 2015.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Mr. Trump are positioning themselves as the unapologetic champions of a brand of conservatism that is tailored to appeal to party activists: striking a hard line on immigration and trade, promoting sharply lower tax rates and enhancing military might while adding notes of caution about overextending American forces in foreign crises.

Jeb Bush and Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, by contrast, are appealing to more pragmatic if hawkish Republicans: dismissing as unrealistic-- and even un-American-- the prospect of deporting illegal immigrants, promoting tax policies that do not add as much to the deficit and insisting on a central place for the United States in global affairs.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who was able to avoid discussing immigration at the debate, lines up on policy more with Mr. Bush and Mr. Kasich. But he is sensitive to being pegged in the campaign’s “moderate lane”-- as Mr. Cruz likes to call it-- and is more careful with his language.

...Mr. Trump used the immigration issue like rocket fuel in launching his candidacy, and Tuesday’s debate highlighted the subject’s lasting power-- and the deep divides among the candidates and within the party as Republicans struggle to broaden their appeal to Hispanics and other minority voters.

Mr. Rubio must walk a tightrope in explaining his role in forging a 2013 bipartisan bill that included a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already in the country illegally.

The bill ultimately died in the Republican-controlled House, but the party’s grass-roots base remains inflamed over the issue and Mr. Rubio has distanced himself from the legislation, saying he now prefers a step-by-step approach that starts with securing the border.

“The lesson I learned from that is the people of the United States do not trust the federal government on immigration,” he said Wednesday on Fox News.

“If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported,” Mr. Rubio said in explaining his current position. “If you’re not a criminal, and have been here longer than 10 years, you have to learn English. You have to start paying taxes. You’re going to have to pay a fine. And then you’ll get a work permit.” He did not mention the question that enrages so many conservative voters: whether to eventually grant citizenship to illegal immigrants.

...It was not long ago that Republican foreign policy amounted to variations on a theme: Trade agreements bolster big businesses and international alliances. Military budgets should grow even in times of austerity. No matter what, do not let the Russians or the Chinese challenge American pre-eminence.

No longer. Tuesday’s debate underscored the schism among candidates whose rallying cry is “Let someone else fight the wars” and the American exceptionalists.

Mr. Trump and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky were clearly in the first camp. “If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, 100 percent, and I can’t understand how anybody would be against it,” Mr. Trump said of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president.

...The exchange captured the box that Republicans find themselves in when it comes to national security. Nothing fires up the base more than a description of President Obama as “weak,” and by extension Mrs. Clinton, his former secretary of state. But for the more traditional, hawkish candidates, that has usually meant issuing declarations of how they would use military force, with little discussion of other expressions of American power, like building alliances, tailoring economic sanctions or taking covert action.

But at a moment when polls show Americans are exhausted by 14 years of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the candidates seem unsure how to describe alliance-building in a way that could fire up Iowans.

...The Republican candidates nearly all expressed opposition to Wall Street greed and to the Dodd-Frank financial overhauls that were aimed at cleaning up the financial industry after the 2008 crisis.

But there was surprising disagreement about whom to blame for the crisis and how to deal with financial meltdowns in the future, highlighting how the topic will continue to be a thorny one for the Republican Party, which is generally allied with Wall Street at a time when popular sentiment against the industry remains high.

Asked whether they would bail out the banks in another crisis, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kasich, who both worked with Lehman Brothers before the crisis, did not line up with the popular sentiment against bailouts.

...Mr. Kasich said there was “too much greed” on Wall Street, but he alone, drawing boos, argued that bank bailouts were necessary in certain instances to protect depositors. Policy experts noted that depositors are generally protected by federal deposit insurance when banks go under.

Mr. Cruz, whose wife built her career at Goldman Sachs, said he would never support bailing out a bank, no matter how large the institution. Like several other candidates, he put the blame for the financial industry’s problems on Washington, which he said has coddled banks.

Mr. Rubio followed Mr. Cruz in arguing that the Dodd-Frank law has cemented the advantages of the largest banks.

Worth keeping in mind these figures that show how much money each campaign (not counting SuperPAC money) has been given by the Securites and Investment Industry + commercial banks:

• Jeb- $2,049,553
• Cruz- $694,372
• Rubio- $489,691
• Kasich- $100,413
• Trump- $8,565

UPDATE: Cruz Ups The Ante

Late yesterday the fight between our two right-wing Cubanos escalated. While Trump kept sending out tweets calling Rubio "weak, like a baby" on immigration, Cruz was on with the contemptible Hate Talk Radio host Laura Ingraham, blasting Rubio, reiterating that Rubio's immigration plan would have granted a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, something most normal Americans-- but not right-wing Republicans, want.

Rubio had opposed adding provisions to the bill that would have strengthened border security.

“He opposed every single one of them. Every single amendment,” said Cruz, who had introduced some of those amendments. “It’s not like people were quiet in sharing their concerns at the time. It’s not like one had to engage... It’s not like this was rocket science.”

Rubio pushed back on those claims Thursday, saying that the bill had the correct security components but was waylaid by voter mistrust-- and arguing that he and Cruz shared “almost all the same views on immigration.”

“Ted is a supporter of legalizing people that are in this country illegally,” Rubio said after a campaign stop in South Carolina. “In fact, when the Senate bill was proposed, he proposed giving them work permits. He’s also supported a massive expansion of the green cards. He’s supported a massive expansion of the [H-1B visa] program, a 500 percent increase.”

As the campaigns battled Thursday, other candidates jumped into the fray. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Rubio’s tax plan would give money to undocumented immigrants, and called him “the leading proponent for allowing people in the country illegally to be citizens.” Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee called the H1-B program “worse than amnesty.” And Rick Santorum turned his sights on Cruz, with the campaign of the former senator from Pennsylvania saying Cruz was “not a real conservative on immigration.”

What's The Difference Between A Conservative And A Reactionary Or A Fascist?

19th century American poet, essayist and champion of individual freedoms, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had a pretty good definition of what it means to be a conservative in his The Conduct of Life: "All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position of nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive." Sounds about right to me, although the mass media they own sure doesn't paint them so, not in the 21st century.

In fact, reading the Beltway-centric media about politics can only leave the uninitiated utterly confused about what a conservative is. The Beltway media never-- never, never, never-- describes political conservatives as reactionaries, fanatics, fascists or even authoritarians. Conservative Democrats and mainstream conservative Republicans are routinely dubbed "moderates" and virulent racists and certifiably insane right-wing extremists are often contrasted with actual GOP conservatives by implying they are more conservative, whatever that's supposed to mean.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines conservatism as "a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change" and "the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change." They don't even offer a cohesive definition of a reactionary or reactionarism, although they suggest synonyms like "archconservative, brassbound, button-down (or buttoned-down), die-hard, hidebound, mossbacked, old-fashioned, old-line, old-school, orthodox, paleoconservative, conservative, standpat, traditional, traditionalistic, ultraconservative, and unprogressive" and antonyms like "broad-minded, large-minded, liberal, nonconservative, nonconventional, nonorthodox, nontraditional, open-minded, progressive, unconventional, and unorthodox."

Fascism is defined as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."

For now, we'll leave out a different definition implicit in the results of a just released Bloomberg poll that found, by a large margin (55-34%), that Americans believe Republicans are acting “more out of antagonism towards Obama” than out of a "deep belief in their vision for the country." (By contrast, Americans believe by 54-36% that Obama is more driven by his vision than by antagonism towards Republicans.) Because what we're talking about here is the Republican Party civil war and the media's refusal to even recognize a language to explain it coherently.

Monday evening Henry Decker as the National Memo tried distinguishing from the conservative Establishment and the fascist-oriented extremists by referring to the latter as true conservatives.

For years, GOP activists have insisted that their party can only return to the White House by anointing a “true conservative” as the party’s standard bearer.

But a new Bloomberg Politics Poll turns that Republican precept, and a few other pieces of conventional wisdom, on its head.

The poll, released Monday, tested former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chances against five Republicans-- former Florida governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Texas senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky senator Rand Paul, and 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney-- in hypothetical 2016 presidential matchups. It found that Clinton holds solid leads over all five, which is hardly a surprise considering her overwhelming name recogntion advantage (94 percent of voters have formed an opinion of Clinton-- 52 percent view her favorably and 42 percent view her unfavorably-- while less than 80 percent have an opinion on each of the Republicans aside from the well-known Romney).

But the underlying data should give Republicans pause as they consider their options in what is sure to be a contentious presidential primary. Although the right constantly preaches that only one of their own can win the White House, the poll finds the more moderate Republicans running much closer to Clinton than the Tea Party-aligned candidates. Clinton leads Bush, Christie, and Romney by 6 percent each in head-to-head matchups. Meanwhile, she holds an 8 percent lead over Paul, and a 13 percent edge over Cruz.

Cruz and Paul’s right-wing reputations appear to be hurting them with voters. When asked which candidate better shares their values, Clinton leads Bush and Romney by just 6 and 3 percentage points, respectively. By contrast, she leads Paul on that measure by 13 points, and Cruz by 15. Christie lags behind Clinton by 14 points on this measure, perhaps illustrating some residual damage from his George Washington Bridge scandal. In any case, it seems clear that voters are not identifying with the most conservative Republicans in the field.

Over on the right, there is less reluctance to differentiate between the extremists, racists and fanatics and the rest of the conservatives. Yesterday The Federalist was railing against the big GOP donors who are trying to side-line the 2016 far right contenders.

Although the specifics are still hazy, the New York Times reports that a group of deep-pocketed Republican donors and bundlers have hatched a plan to clear the GOP field of all insurgents to make room for a favored “establishment” candidate-- preferably Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Mitt Romney. But there can only be one.

This strikes me as a dubious strategy for a number of reasons. But the main point of the Times piece is to inform everyone that Republican powerbrokers intend to get ahead of the intraparty squabbling that accompanies the long primary season because, in the end, all of that ugliness only helps elect Hillary Clinton.

...[T]here’s scant evidence that bypassing crowded primaries enhances a party’s chances of winning a national election. If you take a look at some of the “wide-open races” (ones without preordained vice presidential successors) over the past decades, you’ll find that plenty of candidates prevailed in the general after winning competitive-- and sometimes acrimonious-- party contests. Ronald Reagan in 1980. Bill Clinton in 1992. George W. Bush in 2000. Barack Obama in 2008. In some cases, it was the establishment that was won over in the process. All of these races determined the course of party politics for years.

These days, there is incessant whining about the slog of the primary and debate season from the media. This might just be a perfunctory complaint. But it’s also wrong. Politics has a ton of problems, but too much debate isn’t one of them.

We’ve all heard that primaries help hone a candidate’s skills or test the candidate’s organization or allow us to see how a candidate reacts to intense scrutiny. True. But sometimes a primary makes the candidate. A lot of people watched Obama beat Hillary-- and inevitability-- in 2008. The Obama mythos was secured before he ever had to repel a real GOP attack. By the general election, it was probably too late to stop his momentum. I bet Hillary wished there had been a compressed primary season that year.

And 2016 might be a bit different in other ways, as well. After seven years of functioning as the opposition, Republicans may actually have to sort out some substantive differences on policy. Coronations do not lend themselves to self-examination.

Jeb Bush recently told the Wall Street Journal that a Republican nominee should be willing to “lose the primary to win the general without violating your principles.” I imagine what he likely meant to say was that a principled candidate should be willing to make his case on Common Core or immigration reform, even if his positions are detested by most rank-and-file conservatives. Those are certainly debates worth having. And with the probable inclusion of Rand Paul in the mix, there will also likely be debates centered on foreign policy, domestic spying, criminal justice reform, and other issues that big donors would rather avoid.

Then again, if you’re interesting in generating recrimination and anger, there is no more effective strategy than having a complete disdain for your party’s democratic process. Attempting to crowd out competition with big dollars isn’t new. But let’s not forget that those designated kingmakers of the GOP in the Times piece have had a tendency to make appallingly bad political choices.

No one can deny which end of the GOP Texas crackpot Louie Gohmert is part of. He was the only co-sponsor of Yoho's forced deportation bill who voted against the bill because he claimed it was a trick not to deport enough people. And he opposed the defense funding bill for similar reasons.

The Hill is the perfect example of a Beltway operation unable to figure out what to call the radical right. Headline from Monday: Conservatives complain House GOP leaders ramming through spending bill. "Conservatives?" Meaning John Boehner and and his team aren't conservatives?

House conservatives are griping that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is putting the squeeze on them by rushing through a $1 trillion spending bill in Congress’s last week in session.

Appropriators are expected to roll out the legislation early next week, giving critics scant time to figure out what’s inside before they cast their votes by the end of the week. The government would shut down on Dec. 12 without a new funding bill.

“Here we are doing the appropriations bill the last couple days” before a government shutdown, conservative Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) said in an interview this week. “That’s not to squeeze Harry Reid. That’s to squeeze us.”

Boehner critics say there’s no reason the Speaker couldn’t have brought the spending package to the floor this past week, giving the House more time to consider it.

But doing so would also give more time for the right to build a case against it.

...Boehner signaled it's unlikely he'll make any significant changes to the package’s framework, ignoring demands by immigration hard-liners to include language to de-fund the implementation of Obama’s immigration actions, which could give legal status to up to five million undocumented workers.

GOP leaders appear to have much of their conference behind them, though many conservatives are expected to vote no.

“I think the fix is in,” Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) told The Hill.

He wanted GOP leaders to bring the spending package to the floor this past week with stronger immigration language. That way, the House would have had time to respond to any changes the Senate made to the legislation.

Boehner instead called a vote Thursday on a messaging bill that rebukes Obama’s immigration move, a measure the Senate will not take up.

“I’ve implored them. I’ve begged them. I’ve spoken in various meetings so that we wouldn’t be up against some crisis… This is not the way it’s supposed to be done,” Salmon said.

Some conservatives acknowledge that they’ll have no chance of blocking the cromnibus if House Democrats decide to get on board. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Republicans Friday not to bog down the package with “destructive” riders, including proposals to roll back environmental regulations or halt a new law that legalizes marijuana in D.C.

But sources in both parties said they expect a good number of Democrats to cross the aisle and vote for the spending plan in the end. Especially since it’s based on months of work from House and Senate appropriators from both parties.

 

Wondering Who The Republican Party's Next Todd Akin Will Be? There Are So Many To Choose From

Get used to seeing pictures of New Jersey teabagger Steve Lonegan yelling

Steve Stockman's deranged "John Cornyn-is-a-liberal" campaign really is something to behold. Stockman, a former vagrant strung out out on and dealing a wide varietis drugs, is making a lot of ambient noise on twitter and producing amusing infographics like these:

In December, when he announced he would be abandoning his House seat to primary Cornyn, he asserted that "Liberal John Cornyn wakes up every morning and works to make the Senate a more liberal place. That’s why I am running for the United States Senate. I have a 100% pro-gun, pro-life, conservative voting record in Congress." One top staffer for a conservative Republican in the House told me that Stockman is widely viewed as "crackpot… He's toxic… No one wants to get anywhere bear him. He's probably the least effective member of our caucus… It must have been a very frustrating year for him. None of our members pay the crazy things he's always saying any attention at all. And attention is what this poor man is craving… I don't think even the most extreme groups like Club for Growth and FreedomWorks will back him. I wouldn't be too worried if I were Big John."

But with polls showing Cornyn crushing the hyperbolic Stockman-- 50-6% according to Republican Party polling outfit Wilson Perkins Allen Research-- Cornyn's strategy is to just pretty much ignore Stockman and hope he burns himself out-- or ODs.

The NRCC wishes they could ignore some of the crackpot fringe characters the Tea Party is putting up to run in important seats aound the country. Over the weekend, The Hill's Cameron Joseph reported on the GOP's primary problem. And some of these races are not the long shots the Texas Senate primary is. He's warning of more than one potential "Todd Akin problem" for the Republicans.

After a rash of recent retirements by entrenched incumbents, Republicans are unexpectedly defending a number of seats in tossup or GOP-leaning districts. And to the national party’s chagrin, many of those controversial candidates are already running or planning to-- and if they emerge as the nominee, it could endanger the GOP’s hold on the critical seats.

Crowded, expensive primaries that produce flawed candidates are nothing new for Republicans. But the epidemic has been most problematic on the Senate side, where gaffe-prone candidates like Akin in Missouri, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware cost them winnable seats the last two cycles. Now, it’s threatening to bleed into congressional races, too.

“The House landscape is littered with land-mine candidates in certain seats and districts,” said Cook Political Report House Editor David Wasserman. “That doesn't mean the nomination of those candidates will doom Republican chances in those district, but it'd force Republicans to spend more money and effort than they'd like to and give Democrats hope in some of the districts they need to win.”

As Democrats have gleefully welcomed newfound opportunities in swing districts due to recent retirements from Reps. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Tom Latham (R-Iowa) and Rep. Bill Young’s (R-Fla.) death, they’ve salivated at some of the candidates who have already announced.

…Here are a few of the pivotal races giving Republicans heartburn:

New Jersey’s 3rd District-- Retiring Rep. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.)

The former NFL lineman’s decision to retire has opened up a seat President Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012. Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan (R), a Tea Party-affiliated former Senate candidate, is running and starts the race with early advantages in organization and name identification.

Lonegan made a number of controversial comments during the special election last year against now-Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed him at a large rally in the state, and he embraced a number of conservative social stances.

Republicans are hopeful another strong candidate can emerge, but fear Lonegan will be hard to beat in a primary and would be all but unelectable in the general election.

“The Lonegan thing is not helpful, for sure,” said one national GOP strategist.

Meanwhile, Democrats are all too happy to welcome Lonegan back into politics, as they hope to regain the seat they lost in 2010.

“In a perfect world, he runs every year for something,” laughed one state operative.

Virginia’s 10th District-- Retiring Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.)

Controversial state Sen. Dick Black (R) announced his bid for Wolf’s slightly GOP-leaning Northern Virginia House seat earlier this week. Black, a staunch social conservative, has compared abortion clinics to Auschwitz and handed out plastic fetuses ahead of a legislative vote on abortion.

In fact, national Republicans say they might not even spend money on the district if Black is the nominee.

“He's like a ticking time bomb,” said one GOP strategist.

Many establishment Republicans are hopeful Virginia Del. Barbara Comstock (R) can unite the GOP field win the nomination, and she’s received early endorsements from both wings of the party-- conservative talk radio host Mark Levin and former presidential nominee Mitt Romney are both backing her.

But the biggest variable will be how the nomination ends up being decided. Local Republicans will meet on January 23 to decide whether to choose an open primary or a closed party convention, which are usually dominated by very conservative activists. A half-dozen other Republicans are seriously weighing bids for the seat, so no matter what type of nominating process the GOP chooses, there is a high level of uncertainty over who will emerge from the crowded field.

Iowa’s 3rd District-- Retiring Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa)

Numerous candidates are lining up to run for Latham’s seat, which Obama won twice.

A crowded field primary field could hurt the GOP, especially since candidates need to win 35 percent of the vote to clinch the nomination. If no candidate reaches that mark, a local convention of typically-conservative delegates will select the nominee. And such a scenario is Republicans heartburn.

“If there end up being five of these guys running, I'm concerned about it going to a convention,” said former Iowa Republican Party Political Director Craig Robinson.

Republicans also worry about Robert Cramer (R), who has close ties with the state’s powerful religious conservative activists and is likely to run. Cramer is a member of the Family Leader, a group of vocal socially conservative activists in the state, and his appointment to a state board was blocked by Democrats because of his views.

Pennsylvania’s 6th District-- Retiring Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.)

The suburban and exurban district outside of Philadelphia's district leans slightly Republican-- Mitt Romney won it by a narrow margin in 2012, though President Obama carried it in 2008-- and is likely to be competitive now that Gerlach is retiring.

No one yet to launch a bid for Gerlach’s seat after his announcement last Monday, but local observers say former gubernatorial and Senate candidate Sam Rohrer (R) is likely to throw his hat in the ring.

Rohrer has deep ties with both the Tea Party and religious conservatives and would be formidable in a primary, but too conservative for the swing district.

“He gives us heartburn,” said GOP strategist.

A number of more establishment Republicans are looking at running, but they could split the more centrist primary vote and give Rohrer a boost if he runs.

“This is a ripe district for an establishment-versus-Tea Party primary,” said Keegan Gibson of the Pennsylvania political website PoliticsPA.

It's a mark of how extreme the GOP has become that they're hoping a sociopath like Barbara Comstock is the solution to someone they deem as too far right! In case you've forgotten her, let me remind you of what then-Republican operative David Brock had to say about her in Blinded By The Right. Page 208-9:

One night in the winter of 1995, as the scandal over the firings of workers in the White house travel office reached a crescendo on the Hill I received a late night telephone call from one of Ted's colleagues on an investigative committee, Barbara Comstock. Around the committee, the two Barbaras [Comstock and Olsen] were known as "the Barbarellas," a reference to the 1968 movie starring Jane Fonda as a space-age vixen whose cosmic adventures take her to bizarre planets via rocket ships. Late night calls from Barbara Comstock were not unusual. She often telephoned with the latest tidbit she had dig up in the thousands of pages of administration records she pored through frantically, as if she were looking for a winning lottery ticket she had somehow mislaid. A plain woman with tousled reddish brown hair, she once dropped by my house to watch the rerun of a dreadfully dull Whitewater hearing she had sat through all day. Comstock sat on the edge of her chair shaking, screaming over and over again, "Liars!" As Comstock's leads failed to pan out and she was unable to catch anyone in a lie, the Republican aide confided that the Clinton scandals were driving her to distraction, to the unfortunate point that she was ignoring the needs of her own family. A very smart lawyer by training and the main breadwinner for her charismatic, happy-go-lucky husband and kids, Comstock remarked that maybe she couldn't get Hillary's sins off her brain "because Hillary reminds me of me. I am Hillary." In this admission a vivid illustration of a much wider "Hillary" phenomenon can be seen. Comstock knew nothing about Hillary Clinton. Comstock's "Hillary" was imaginary, a construction composed entirely of the negative points in her own life.

Comstock invited me to go along on an expedition to the Washington home of senior White House aide David Watkins, the central figure in the travel scandal Olson and Comstock were probing. A short time later, Republican lawyers Comstock, Olson, and other congressional investigators, including David Bossie, and Whitewater investigator Christopher Bartomolucci, pulled up outside my house in an SUV. Though I wasn't sure what the group hoped to accomplish-- they were visibly frustrated with their inability so far to incriminate Watkins-- I went along for the ride. Olson explained that Congressman Sonny Bono had cleared us into the private, gated community where both Bono and Watkins lived, in the northwest section of Georgetown. When we arrived at our destination, Olsen giddily leapt from the truck, trespassed onto Watkins's property, and hopped down a steep cliff that abutted his home. Barbara peered into Watkins's window where she observed him-- watching television. No crime there.

Still, better than "the ticking time-bomb," Dick Black. Jesus! And The Hill completely missed the bloody primary battle already gearing up to replace Buck McKeon as he crosses over to K Street. CA-25-- Antelope Valley, Santa Clarita Valley and Simi Valley-- are seeing the seams of the GOP split apart as McKeon's handpicked successor, carpetbagger Tony Strickland, being challenged by the single most right-wing member of the California state legislature, extremist whack job Steve Knight. Afraid to face Democrat Lee Rogers again, McKeon hopes Strickland can hold the Los Angeles area seat for the GOP, despite demographic shifts away from what Republicans need to hold districts. And Knight has built his political career on hatred against and bigotry towards Hispanic voters who have come into their own right in his own backyard.

California's 25th District-- Retiring Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA)

Steve Israel is blind to this key race but Knight's voting record would be considered ultra-conservative even for a backward district in Alabama or Mississippi. In suburban L.A., it's just bizarre and a throwback to another century. Widely considered a shill for the NRA and an automaton for the most extreme right-wing proposals that ever come up in Sacramento, Knight was one of only 11 senators who voted against increasing the minimum wage and, despite representing a district with a huge Hispanic population, he was one of only 8 senators who voted against drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. When the Governor decided to expand Medicaid in line with the Affordable Care Act, only 7 die-hard right-wingers opposed it, Knight being one of them, of course. He was also one of only 8 senators to fully back unregulated fracking in California earthquake zones. He is vehemently anti-Choice and anti-gay and voted against every piece of legislation promoting equality that has ever come before him. For example, last May he was one of only 9 senators to vote against a bipartisan bill that prohibits tax-exempt status for organizations that discriminate against the LGBT community and he was also one one of only seven sociopaths who opposed an anti-bullying bill that passed the Senate with huge bipartisan support. One legislator told me that Knight isn't a bad guy on a personal level but that he's "an inflexible ideologue… probably the single least effective member of the state legislature… Sure, Strickland is no prize but Knight makes even him look almost good!" Key word: "almost."

"Ted Cruz resembles the Bill Murray of a quarter-century ago, when he played fishy, mock-sincere fakers" (David Denby)

Plus: Worst spam of the day



"When Ted Cruz lies, he appears to be praying. His lips narrow, almost disappearing into his face, and his eyebrows shift abruptly, rising like a drawbridge on his forehead into matching acute angles. He attains an appearance of supplication, an earnest desire that men and women need to listen, as God surely listens."

-- the opening of David Denby's newyorker.com
blogpost today, "Ted Cruz: The Mask of Sincerity"

by Ken

I keep wanting to get to "Big Dick" Cheney's apparently unexplodable heart, but stuff keeps coming up. Yesterday it was breaking news about the Rampant Rabbi vibrator. Today it's a different kind of fake sex toy: Texas Sen. Ted "Jeez, I Suck" Cruz. Specifically, there's New Yorker film critic David Denby's "Daily Comment" blogpost "Ted Cruz: The Mask of Sincerity."

It's hard for me to keep my cool when thinking about Senator Ted. Like there was the news this morning: Cruz lifts hold on FCC nomination. This is supposed to be good news, I guess, but it just reminds me that a useless pile of puke like this so-called senator can actually place a h old on a nommination as if he were, you know, a regular U.S. senator.

You'll recall that Senator Ted's beef with the FCC chair nominee, Tom Wheeler, was that he might take steps toward requiring disclosure of the identity of sponsors of political ads -- thereby violating a bogus right to privacy that not even this institutionally democracy-hating Supreme Court believes exists in the Constitution.

In a statement, Cruz said Wheeler told him that the nominee "heard the unambiguous message" that pursing the political disclosure efforts would "imperil the Commission's vital statutory responsibilities."

"He explicitly stated that doing so was 'not a priority,' " Cruz said about Wheeler, a telecom industry veteran. "Based on those representations, I have lifted my hold on his nomination, and I look forward to working with him on the FCC to expand jobs and economic growth."

From which we may conclude that Senator Ted:

• was (and presumably still is) threatening to interfere with the FCC in exercising its "vital statutory responsibilities," and --

• has no idea what those statutory responsibilities are (hint: they do not include expanding jobs and economic growth").

It's true that there are growing numbers of people on the Right who are anywhere from upset to mortified by the clown-of-doom antics of Senator Ted. Just today bona fide conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, writing about the national threat to GOP prospects posed by office-seeking pond scum like Virginia Attorney General "Cuckoo Ken" Cuccinelli ("Virginia is GOP wake-up call"), pointed to the source of a good part of the blame for the party's current national poll disaster.

Republicans can thank their tea party constituents in the House of Representatives and the singular Ted Cruz in the Senate — the latter’s Texas ovation and Iowa stampede notwithstanding. These were the actors who forced the shutdown and who, should Republicans begin losing gubernatorial and congressional races, would be the major reason. Disgust trickles down, over and out.

Yet the slug continues to command widespread admiration (unlike that pathetic slug Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who is apparently fighting for his political life), not to mention fear. The fear part, at least, is understandable. As David Denby writes:

His strategy is universal aggression, aimed at everyone. Well, not quite everyone -- lately, his popularity with the Tea Party cohort has increased. And at a recent rally at the convention of the Texas Federation of Republican Women, he was greeted with heated adoration. But normally Cruz resembles one of those war chariots with blades flashing from the wheels; he tries to cut up everything in his path. When things go wrong, he only sharpens the blades. From the Senate, he urged House Republicans into a government shutdown and a sustained threat not to extend the debt ceiling. When the President held firm and the Republican leadership backed down, the fallout included collapsing poll numbers for the Republican Party and the possibility, mentioned by nonpartisan political analysts, that the Democrats could pick up a serious number of seats in the House in 2014.

But, rather than acknowledge any responsibility, Cruz told Dana Bash, from CNN, that "the single most damaging thing that has happened to Republicans for 2014 is all of the Senate Republicans coming out attacking the House Republicans, attacking those pushing the effort to defund Obamacare, and lining themselves up opposite the American people." He has repeated this charge -- the betrayal, the stab in the back -- in many forms. He has been wronged, his cohort has been wronged, the American people have been wronged, traduced by weaklings and cowards in the ranks. In Cruz's rhetoric, the American people are always being wronged.

You may well ask why you would want to read a film critic -- and a not-very-good one at that -- on Ted Cruz. Well, you should read David Denby. (It may or may prove relevant that Frank Rich was, after all, a terrible theater critic.)

For one thing, in the matter of faking sincerity, and a pol's "performance" generally, it turns out to be useful to have all those decades of experience describing and actorly evaluating performances. For example, let's continue the thought from David Denby's opening paragraph, picking up just where I left off in the quote at the top of this post.

Cruz has large ears; a straight nose with a fleshy tip, which shines in camera lights when he talks to reporters; straight black hair slicked back from his forehead like flattened licorice; thin lips; a long jaw with another knob of flesh at the base, also shiny in the lights. If, as Orwell said, everyone has the face he deserves at fifty, Cruz, who is only forty-two, has got a serious head start. For months, I sensed vaguely that he reminded me of someone but I couldn't place who it was. Revelation has arrived: Ted Cruz resembles the Bill Murray of a quarter-century ago, when he played fishy, mock-sincere fakers. No one looked more untrustworthy than Bill Murray. The difference between the two men is that the actor was a satirist.

Now is that an image, or what? Bill Murray doing his "fishy, mock-sincere fakers"? No one looked more untrustworthy than Bill Murray. The difference between the two men is that the actor was a satirist.

Again, perhaps only a film critic would find Senator Ted wanting in quite this way -- that he's no Ollie North or Ronald Reagan:

Cruz is not as iconographically satisfying as other American demagogues -- Oliver North, say, whose square-jawed, unblinking evocation of James Stewart, John Wayne, and other Hollywood actors conveyed resolution. Or Ronald Reagan -- Cruz's reedy, unresonant voice lacks the husky timbre of Reagan's emotion-clouded instrument, with its mixture of truculence and maudlin appeal.

And yet, Denby says,

Cruz is amazingly sure-footed verbally. When confronted with a hostile question, he has his answer prepared well before the questioner stops talking. There are no unguarded moments, no slips or inadvertent admissions. He speaks swiftly, in the tones of sweet, sincere reason. How could anyone possibly disagree with him?

Noting Senator Ted's Baptist father, Denby cites the "evangelical cast to his language,"

but he's an evangelical without consciousness of his own sins or vulnerability. He is conscious only of other people's sins, which are boundless, and a threat to the republic; and of other people's vulnerabilities and wounds, which he salts.

And if other people "have a shortage of vulnerabilities, he might make some up," as Denby says he did with Chuck Hagel during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearings to be secretary of defense.

Later Denby returns to Senator Ted's performance during the Hagel confirmation hearings. At the time, says Denby, "some senators suggested that his insinuating manner -- the bullying slurs, the implication of treason -- reminded them of Joseph McCarthy," and "since then, comparing him to McCarthy has become commonplace."

Denby notes the dramatic differences between McCarthy and Senator Ted in physical appearance and vocal delivery, without pointing out the obvious: that McCarthy was a demagogue for the '50s, but today's media world is something else again. Who would pay any attention today to someone who looked and sounded like Joe McCarthy?

Denby has already pointed out Cruz's vocal fluency -- fluency, I would add, that holds as long as no one actually pays attention to the sub-cretinous nonsense he's spewing, which would earn him a one-way ticket to the booby hatch. Really, it's hard to believe than any public figure could be that stupid and globally misinformed, or perhaps just that dishonest.

But when it comes to the tactics Senator Ted uses to inflame and command his public, the ghost of Joe McCarthy rises over Senator Ted's bog.

like McCarthy, he evokes a menace that is destroying the nation: Obamacare, which is killing jobs, obliterating businesses, demoralizing everyone. Obamacare is his Communism, a conspiracy that is the main impediment to economic growth. It is a malaise that is particularly hurting "single moms, Hispanics, African-Americans" -- a brazen touch on Cruz's part, since it is exactly those three groups whose interests Republican policies tend to ignore. It takes a certain ingenuity to suggest that an attempt to insure the powerless is rendering them powerless. One of Cruz's tricks is to turn his enemies' words back on them so that they stand accused in their own language. Meanwhile, he remains, at least rhetorically, invulnerable behind a mask of sincerity.

Cruz voted no on the bipartisan immigration bill, no on the farm bill, no on the continuing resolution; he voted against the confirmations of John Brennan, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and Jack Lew. He makes extreme demands, then accuses the other side of being unwilling to compromise, then calls his own party members cowards, and so on. The refusal to extend the debt limit endangered the American government and economy. What does Cruz want? What is he up to? The naïve may believe that all of these obstructionist moves are part of a principled opposition to Obama, the President who, in the past, inspired greater and greater outrage in Republicans in proportion to how conciliatory and mild he became. But Cruz seeks more than the humbling of the President. There are plenty of other Republicans around eager to accomplish that.

He seeks the Presidency, of course. And he appears to be doing it by sowing as much confusion and disorder as possible -- playing the joker in a seemingly nihilistic charade whose actual intent is a rational grab for power.

About this I'm not so sure. Oh, I'm sure that it's occurred to Senator Ted that, the way events have transpired, he has an honest-to-good shot at the Republican presidential nomination. But I'm not sure that's what got him into his weird political crusade. After all, it wasn't what motivated Joe McCarthy. I think that was more that he wanted to somehow feel, you know, important, like as if he was somebody, despite the abundant evidence that he was born and bred to be one of Nature's Nobodies.

I think Senator Ted actually has some sense of mission. Oh, not the one he prattles on about, because, as Denby points out, he has no compunction whatever about lying his stinking guts out. But you look at his even more demented father, and you get the feeling that there's something go on there. Yes, dementia, but of a kind that they know can be made to resonate with truly clueless people.

I guess by the old Roman Hruska standard, whereby mediocre people were entitled to mediocre representation all the way up to the Supreme Court, clueless people are entitled to clueless representation. And Senator Ted is just the man to provide it.


WORST SPAM OF THE DAY



Aw, c'mon, guys. "Your needs to verify"? Your needs to at least makes an effort.

#

For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Are There Really Purportedly Mainstream Republicans Who Want To Vote For A Clean CR?

Nunes calls teabaggers "lemmings with suicide vests"-- but he votes with them 100% of the time

No one ever accused Devin Nunes of being a "moderate." He's a hardcore conservative whose political career has been financed by the insurance industry, corporate agriculture and Big Pharma. Although his San Joaquin Valley district (CA-22) is increasingly Hispanic, the voters are still Republican enough there for him to not have to worry about Democrats seriously challenging him. The PVI is R+10 and Obama only garnered 43% of the vote against McCain and 42% of the vote against Romney. The Democrats didn't even bother to run anyone against him in 2010 and the candidate last year only drew 38%. Nunes is safe. But he has statewide aspirations and that explains his stand this week with so-called "moderates" or, more appropriately, "mainstream conservatives against the crackpot teabaggers. Keep in mind, Nunes voted to shut the government down every time Boehner and Cantor brought it up.

Unlike many Republicans, Nunes is publicly criticizing some of his colleagues, calling them "lemmings with suicide vests" earlier this week.

When Nunes first started hearing of the strategy to shutdown the government in order to defund Obamacare, he did the math, and thought it couldn't be done. Republicans didn't have the 67 Senate votes needed to override a veto from the White House.

"It's just a matter of math. It was a silly strategy from the beginning," said Nunes.



The resulting government shutdown, said Nunes, is bad for the Republican party.

"It's crazy. I don't understand the whole point, the whole strategy. Most Americans don't understand it," said Nunes.

The California Republican said a small group of lawmakers, what he calls "the lemming caucus," have been blocking GOP House leadership for three years.

"It's guys who meet privately. They're always conspiring. It's mostly just about power. And it's just gotten us nowhere," said Nunes.

If that is the case, then why hasn't Nunes, or the 200 fellow Republicans he said agrees with him, been more aggressive?

More aggressive… like voting against the unpopular shutdown? Even the Chairman of the NRCC, Greg Walden (R-OR), the GOP's version of Steve Israel, admits, at least in "private" that the Tea Party crazies are controlling the Republican Party now. When meeting with high-rolling Wall Street donors in September, Walden was grilled about the then impending shutdown. “Listen,” Walden said, according to several people present. “We have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary.”

Wednesday, Boehner was able to use a complex parliamentary maneuver to prevent a floor vote on the House floor for the Clean CR that Nunes and a couple dozen other self-proclaimed mainstream conservatives claim they favor. Chis Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced it in the form of a Motion to Recommit and the parliamentarian ruled it out of order and he was backed up by the GOP leadership. When Van Hollen appealed the ruling and it went to a floor vote, every single Republican-- including the so-called "mainstream" ones-- voted to uphold the parliamentarian's ruling, meaning that there would be no vote on a clean CR.

I don't think Devin Nunes or most of the other Republicans want to ever vote on a clean CR. All they want to do is posture. That way they don't offend the teabaggers enough to get an annoying (or, in some cases, dangerous) primary... but can still tell independent voters that they stood up against their party's extreme fringe.


UPDATE: Republicans Are Still Keeping The Government Shut Down

This afternoon the Democrats offered another procedural tactics to get a clean vote on the CR. Devin Nunes and the so-called "moderates" all stuck with Boehner and Cantor except for Peter King. The Republicans prevailed 222-183. None of these guys, except King, are even remotely serious about a clean CR. They just want to get on local TV and say things that make their constituents think they're not teabagger crazies, even as they vote in complete lockstep with the teabagger crazies.

Republicans In Swing Districts Posture Against Government Shut Down They Voted For

Far right Republican Congressman Gary Miller (CA) was basically redistricted out of office... except he managed to win a very blue district because of a quirk in California's new election law that found him running against a fellow Republican in the general, all the Democrats having eliminated each other in a crowded open primary. Obama had won what is now CA-31 (Colton Loma Linda, San Bernardino, Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga) with 122,691 votes (57%) against McCain's 89,376 (41%) in 2008. Last year Obama scored another 57-41% victory in the district, taking 118,043. On the same ballot, Gary Miller took 88,964 (55%), beating fellow Republican Bob Dutton (45%). Pure incompetence by the Democratic Party in a district with a PVI of D+5. That's, by far, the strongest Democratic district with a Republican congressman and, with Democrats paying attention this year, Miller is unlikely to win again.

The reddest district in America is TX-13 (the Panhandle, Amarillo, Wichita Falls), Mac Thornberry's district. Democrats don't even bother fielding candidates there. Romney beat Obama 184,104 (80%) to 42,521 (19%), Obama's worst performance in the whole country. The PVI is R+32. There are 51 districts with PVIs of R+17 or more. Every one of them elects very right-wing Republican congressmen. Jim Matheson, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat, keeps winning in the reddest district supporting a Democrat, UT-04. The PVI is R+16 and Obama only took 30% against Romney while Matheson beat his Republican opponent, Mia Love, 119,803 to 119,035. There are 4 other Democrats hanging on in several other overwhelmingly red districts-- Nick Rahall (WV-03 with an R+14 PVI), Mike McIntyre (NC-07 with an R+12), John Barrow (GA-12 with an R+9), and Collin Peterson (MN-07 with an R+6). After that we're looking at Democrats winning in more competitive R+4, R+3 and R+2 districts. Democrats have shots in districts that red if they can capture independent voters. Of the dozen districts with R+1 PVIs, Democrats hold 5 and Republicans hold 7. Among the 9 evenly split districts, Democrats hold 6 and Republicans hold 3.

Aside from Gary Miller's accidental win, the most Democratic district a Republican won in last year was David Valadao's win in CA-21, a D+2 district which Obama won with 55% against Romney's 44%. With only a couple of exceptions, Republicans only win in blue districts when the DCCC screws up recruitment badly or when Steve Israel or Debbie Wasserman Schultz allow GOP friends of theirs to run with no opposition, which happens frequently. There are no Republicans in D+16, D+14 or D+12 districts-- or even in D+3 districts.

In that context, it's easier to understand the dilemma faced by the Republicans who don't have R+32 districts like Mac Thornberry. The Republican base alone won't elect a Republican without significant support from independent voters in almost two dozen GOP-held districts. But, stepping out of line-- crossing the aisle-- for the congressmen who represent these districts could trigger primaries from extremists who might lose general elections but could win primaries. That why we hear Republican congressmen in blue or swing districts like Peter King (R-NY), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Charlie Dent (R-PA) loudly proclaiming against the Tea Party shut-down-the-government strategy while still voting for it. Those three ran to the mics at every opportunity and denounced the stupidity and futility of shutting down the government-- and all three voted to do it twice.

So did Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm of Staten Island (NY-11). His Staten Island district-- with a sliver of south Brooklyn-- has a PVI of R+2. And Obama beat Romney 52-47% last year, the same margin by which Grimm beat unsupported Democrat Mark Murphy. This year the DCCC found themselves a stupid and corrupt enough conservative hack, City Councilman Domenic Recchia, that they will enthusiastically wage a real battle for Grimm's seat. Both times the House voted to shut down the government, Grimm dutifully went along with the GOP and voted AYE. But that isn't what he tells his constituents back home. He didn't join the only two Republicans to actually muster the cajones to vote NO on Saturday, Chris Gibson and Richard Hanna, both, like Grimm, New Yorkers. But he was quoted saying, "The circus created the past few days isn't reflective of mainstream Republicans-- it projects an image of not being reasonable. The vast majority of Republicans are pretty level-headed and are here to govern." Grimm added that the “far-right faction” of the party “represents 15 percent of the country, but they’re trying to control the entire debate.” Michael Grimm-- whose first meeting with Speaker Boehner after he was elected was to request a rule change that would allow Members to pack heat on the floor of Congress-- was a Marine and then a rogue FBI agent who joined the Mafia. But he didn't have the courage to stand up to this "far right faction" representing 15% of the country, what GOP strategist Nicolle Wallace described as "Sarah Palin's burn-the-house down conservatism" on Morning Joe Monday. I wonder if the DCCC had recruited a viable candidate instead of Recchia, Grimm would have done what Hanna and Gibson did when push came to shove.

And when King tried pushing back against the radicals-- claiming he had almost double the 17 "moderates" he needed-- Grimm abandoned him. The "moderates" who backed him were Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Paul Broun (R-GA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Mike Rogers (R-AL), Joe Barton (R-TX), Steve King (R-IA)... oh, not "moderates," bomb-throwing radicals.

One swing state Republican who voted to shut down the government and voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 42 or 43 times is Buck McKeon, the last Republican hold-over left in Los Angeles. Next year-- if he doesn't retire-- he'll be facing off against progressive Democrat Lee Rogers, a nationally renowned surgeon and spokesperson for the American Diabetes Association. After McKeon's vote to shut down the government last night, Rogers told us that "Shutting down the government because you want to kill a healthcare law that you've failed to repeal 41 times, that has had 2 elections since it's been passed, that goes into effect on the same day of the shut down is nothing more than a hostage-taking tactic. And the hostages are us! People in our district care about in creating jobs, having affordable and quality healthcare, and stopping the Cemex mine in Santa Clarita. I don’t think that any of what McKeon does in Washington helps to accomplish these goals. Instead of helping the economy, it’s votes like these and his past support of sequestration that hurt businesses in our district. I believe you send a representative to Washington to make the government work for you, not to shut it down." Please help Rogers replace McKeon in Congress next year. You can do it here.

Only Steve Israel's willful incompetence could save Grimm and King