Not always that easy to tell who's worse, Crist (D) or Rohrabacher (R)Yesterday the House passed (246-176) a cockamamie bill by Tim Wahlberg (R-MI) called the Regulatory Integrity Act, the purpose of which is to prevent the public from finding out what rules are being worked on by federal agencies to protect the public. The only Republican to vote against it was Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), while 15 Democrats joined the rest of the GOP in backing it, primarily the regular suspects from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)... you know the names, all the worst congressional garbage who consistently vote for the Republican agenda. (Oops, I almost left off Charlie Crist, but he voted for it too, of course.)In fact, ole Charlie-- like Tom O'Halleran-- was a Republican who found it politically expedient to switch to an independent and then even more expedient to switch to a Democrat just before an election. Charlie eventually (this past November) won a Pinellas County, Florida congressional seat and O'Halleran won an unlikely open seat in Arizona, having lucked into a race with a somewhat scandal-ridden and crazy gay Republican opponent. Both Crist and O'Halleran have reverted to their Republican instincts and are reliable votes for the Ryan/McCarthy agenda pretty much across the board. As are the other fake Democrats mentioned above. O'Halleran, in fact, is one of the last House Democrats with ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores of... ZERO. (Hey, even Louie Gohmert has a better score-- 16.67!) But O'Halleran is down in the sewer with the worst of the worst-- the zeroes-- like Sinema, Cuellar, Cooper, Collin Peterson, Ami Bera, Dan Lipinski, John Delaney. What do we even need Republicans for with Democrats like these? (And Delaney wants to run against Ben Jealous for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Maryland!)Anyway, back to Rohrabacher for a minute. Like I mentioned, he was the only Republican to vote with the Democrats yesterday against that Regulatory Integrity Act, a total coincidence. Coincidental to what, you may be wondering? When I started writing this post, hours and hours ago, it was going to be about the race to beat Rohrabacher in CA-48, a northwest Orange County district that Trump lost and is, suddenly, being targeted by the DCCC. CA-48 starts up at Seal Beach and runs down through Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel and ends at Three Arch Bay where Darrell Issa's district begins. It's the 31st richest congressional district in the country. It's about 58% white, 21% Hispanic and 18% Asian. Rohrabacher was first elected in 1988 and has never once been challenged by the DCCC, which has given him 14 free passes. You can may recall that in 2008 Blue America backed Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook, who came closer than anyone to ever beating him, but was undercut by the DCCC and lost 53-43%. It's a pretty red district and the national Democrats have abandoned it entirely and done ZERO work to try to turn it blue. In 2008 McCain beat Obama 51-46% and in 2012 Romney won 55-43%. But last year, voters found Trump too offensive to support, so while Rohrabacher, an outspoken Trump and Putin enthusiast, was reelected 165,987 (58.5%) to 117,716 (41.5%%) against completely un-funded Democrat, Sue Savary, Hillary inched by Trump 47.9% to 46.2%.So now the DCCC thinks they can jump in and win the rich, white Republican (11 point registration advantage) district in one cycle with no setup. What a joke! Maybe Trump and Ryan will be toxic enough to lose CA-48 for Rohrabacher... but not because of anything the DCCC does. So far there are 2 candidates who have declared-- Boyd Roberts, a real estate broker who moved to Laguna Beach from the Inland Empire last year, and Harley Rouda, also a real estate guy (a big one) who lives in Emerald Bay. I checked their records of political contributions and neither was active in that area. Roberts donated a couple times to the Tea Party Express in 2011-- although it might have been a different Boyd Roberts-- and Rouda gave just one contribution to a federal candidate ever-- $1,000 on January 31, 2016, not to Hillary Clinton or to Kamala Harris or Sue Savary, but to... John Kasich.I haven't spoken to Roberts yet but the stuff I'm reading hasn't inspired me to find his number and call him. I guess I should. I did speak to Rouda though, a couple of hours after he declared yesterday. Very nice guy-- former Republican who turned independent and more recently, registered as a Democrat. The worst of the let's-turn-Congress-Republican-lite DCCC staffers, Kyle Layman (former chief of staff for conservaDem Raul Ruiz, now DCCC West Coast director), seems to have been involved with recruiting him. If the Republicans were desperate to find a way to prevent the Democrats from winning seats in California in 2018, they couldn't outdo giving Kyle Layman this job. As for Rouda, maybe I'm wrong, but if you want another Charlie Crist or Tom O'Halleran... you have your man. He didn't want to talk about any issues when I brought up Social Security and Medicare, but did tell me that he's "socially progressive and fiscally conservative."
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