Republican civil war

Earlier today we looked at how the repulsive and corrupt Democratic Establishment is getting nervous enough about the traction Bernie Sanders' campaign is gaining to start launching attacks on him.

As we saw last month, Boehner is working, albeit covertly, with the Chamber of Commerce to rid his caucus of "uncooperative" Republicans-- libertarians like Amash and extremists like Cantor-killer Dave Brat. They want to send a message to the members of the Freedom Caucus that their careers are in jeopardy if they don't fall in line behind the GOP Establishment.

Chris Christie had hoped to ride his patented loutish behavior to the Republican nomination. An advocate of violence and threats towards women teachers seemed to think he would come off as charming to the kind of people who found Jackie Gleason's 1950's era Ralph Kramden charming.

NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford through the Delaware Waiter Gap and beyond my old home in Stroudsburg. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi.

To best understand the resolution North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows filed to oust Boehner as Speaker, let's go back to his message to Boehner last June and to Boehner's open secret of plotting against GOP "rebels"-- primarily members of the so-called Freedom Caucus-- with his pals at the

The Tea Party Caucus seems to have disappeared with Michele Bachmann and has been largely replaced by the more serious and policy-centric House Freedom Caucus. But the House Freedom Caucus has been very careful to not publish its membership list. What's left of the Tea Party Caucus is chaired by Kansas crackpot Tim Huelskamp. Huelskamp is also a self-admitted member of the Freedom Caucus (of which Jim Jordan of Ohio is chairman).

Recently there have been several roll calls on various aspects of the controversial TPP. Big Business and Wall Street are demanding passage and both Obama and Boehner/McConnell are eager to acquiesce. Almost all the Democrats voted against all the bills-- with corporate whores Steny Hoyer and Steve Israel leading dissident conservatives across the aisle to vote with the GOP.

We may not be hearing much from Ted Cruz in the mainstream media lately-- not that I want to look a gift horse in the mouth-- but he and his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination are still very active on the fringes of the far right. So, for example, despite the fact that nearly 80% of likely voters support expanding Social Security benefits, he told his inbred core of crackpot true believers that Bush was right to try to privatize Social Security and give it to Wall Street. "I… think you've got to give George W.

We often complain about a coterie of right-wing Democrats who consistently bolster the anti-family Republican agenda by backing Boehner on crucial votes-- not someone who does it once in a while because of his or her district's special circumstances but the New Dems and Blue Dogs who generally agree with Boehner's world view.

So Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign rally wasn't the only big event on Capitol Hill yesterday. Early in the morning, Speaker Boehner steeled himself and told his crackpot caucus that-- deal or no deal-- he would allow a vote on a clean Department of Homeland Security spending bill. No blackmail forcing Obama to deport Mexicans; no blackmail forcing Obama to take away healthcare from working families.