I'm sure by now everyone has seen Trumpanzee's scolding tweet aimed at Paul Ryan yesterday. "I guess we all know who Trump plans to blame for our losses next week," a top Republican House staffer told me minutes after the tweet. "This guy is so fucked up... He's like an albatross around our necks." But it's not just Trump-- well, it's mostly Trump. Yesterday, conservative Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo was on MSNBC saying he would never vote for Steve King, his neo-Nazi colleague from Iowa who is on the verge of losing his seat to a progressive Democrat in an R+11 district Trump won 61-33%.It gets worse-- at least for Virginia Republicans. Senator John Warner, the éminence grise of the Virginia GOP, just endorsed Democrat Leslie Cockburn. After 3 decades of representing Virginia, Warner, a lifelong Republican seems to be fed up with the Trumpist extremism and what it's done to his party.
Warner endorsed Sen. Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, in his race against GOP nominee Corey Stewart in September. Warner appeared with Cockburn and Sen. Mark Warner (D) at a fundraiser at Kinloch Farm in The Plains Saturday.“I’m still a Republican. I’m going to tell this gang, I’m still a Republican,” the elder Warner said in an interview before the event. “You can’t take that away from me. But you’ve got to have the courage to do what’s right for the country and what’s right for your state.”Warner, 91, took out his iPhone to scroll through Cockburn’s platform as he talked about why he’s publicly backing Cockburn over her Republican opponent, Denver Riggleman.Warner called Cockburn “an exceptional candidate” and said he agreed with her positions on health care, education and “commonsense gun laws.”...Warner acknowledged the political tide might be turning in Virginia but called the state “fundamentally conservative.”“The state stands for firm principles and leans a little bit on the progressive side,” he said.Cockburn, who served on the board of the Piedmont Environmental Council for a decade, said her strong support for land conservation and environmental-protection issues has won her support among rural Virginia’s more moderate Republicans.“There are many people who would consider that their very top issue,” Cockburn said of conservation. “And that’s why they would gravitate to me.”
Although the DCCC has finally added Cockburn to their Red to Blue page, neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's House Majority PAC has spent a dime responding to $832,152 worth on vicious smears by Paul Ryan's slimy SuperPAC and its allies. Cockburn is running for an open seat against a far right sociopath, Denver Riggleman, a gin and vodka distillery owner and devotee of Bigfoot erotica. The district has an R+6 PVI and Trump beat Hillary there by 11 points. Today this race is a toss-up and the only recent polling is from the unreliable and gimmicky NY Times/Siena poll, which found Cockburn ahead by one point-- 46-45%. Had the DCCC engaged, the district wouldn't be "toss-up" now by "likely Dem." I have no idea if Warner's endorsement of Cockburn will help on Tuesday but it sure isn't going to help Riggeleman with mainstream conservatives or independents who are already worried that he may be insane because of the BigFoot erotica. (He also wrote a book about Bigfoot.) Yesterday Cockburn was endorsed by John Legend as well!And speaking of the whole "turning on each other" scenario, CNN reports that White House chief lawyer Don McGahn "ended his tumultuous tenure at the White House with one last encounter" during which the illegitimate "president" blamed him for Robert Mueller’s appointment. "In a face-to-face Oval Office meeting" Señor Trumpanzee "groused to McGahn about Mueller’s appointment made on McGahn’s watch as White House counsel, and the cloud the investigation has continued to cast over the presidency." One source said that "Typically you would have the incumbent stay until the successor was ready to take his place." But in this case, McGahn couldn't stand another moment of the asshole he was working for and the asshole was tired of McGahn. His Putin-Gate testimony and eventual tell-all book should be more than a little interesting.Trump's racist new ad seems to have shaken up a lot of people. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) isn't running for reelection but he called it "a new low in campaigning; it's sickening." Reporters should ask Ted Cruz and Dean Heller what they think of it. Al Cardenas is probably best known as the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Others know him as the chairman of the American Conservative Union. A partner at Squire Patton Boggs, he is also one of Washington's top right-wing lobbyists. He seemed upset this morning:
