When Elizabeth Warren rails against what she called "backward-looking ideologues" she meant the 15-20 reactionaries who met to plot strategy with Ted Cruz at the notorious Tortilla Coast meeting Monday night, a meeting that included outright racists and secessionists like Steve King (R-IA), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Steve Southerland (R-FL), Mark Meadows (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and, of course, Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
Although Pelosi said on Tuesday that Boehner apparently needs to humor his troops, she claimed that the chances of a deal to prevent a default tomorrow are good-- even if poor McConnell is being pilloried by DeMint, Cruz and the crackpot suicide caucus for "leading the surrender." In case yours got stuck in the spam folder, his is from the letter DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund sent out to their supporters claiming McConnell "has made winning virtually impossible" for the far right, while McConnell and Reid were trying to hammer out a compromise that both sides could live with and that w
We probably cover Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm more than any other blogs outside of his Staten Island/south Brooklyn district. Usually, we're posting about his Mafia connections and other criminal activities. I don't think his latest scandal rises to "criminal" but it might just be the one that ends his ridiculous congressional career.
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal was celebrating a shady, little know right-wing ideologue and GOP operative for the glory the Republicans have heaped on themselves in recent weeks with the government shut down and impending default debacle.
Last week, MoveOn and PPP polled some of the swing districts where the DCCC protects Republican incumbents. The results were breathtaking, especially for media folks who only get their information from Cook and the DCCC. Blue America candidates are on target to beat long-time Republican incumbents and one of the strongest showings was from first-time candidate, Paul Clements, who's running against Fred Upton in western Michigan. Upton is underwater in terms of his constituents' approval.
No one's afraidFor the Democrats to take back the House and put an end to fanatic Tea Party excesses, the DCCC has to wrest at least 25 seats away from GOP incumbents (or win in open red districts). That's because it's likely that several Blue Dogs and New Dems who have disappointed their constituents-- particularly Mike McIntyre (NC), Jim Matheson (UT), Scott Peters (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and John Barrow (GA)-- will lose reelection efforts.
I've had a lot of feedback-- most of it great-- after Michelangelo Signorile's post last week in HuffPo about how propounding disappointing LGBT freshmen Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ) and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) have been. I've been blogging about these two clowns here at DWT all year. No one in New York seems to have noticed that Maloney has the single worst (i.e., most Republican) voting record of any Democratic freshman.
The battle to break the racist, neo-Confederate dominance of Congress is more likely to be won north of Gettysburg than south of it. Ari Berman, author of Herding Donkeys:
A number of Republican congressmembers have referred to their own colleagues as terrorists, not just privately, but for attribution. Devin Nunes famously called the teabaggers driving the GOP crazy train as "lemmings with suicide vests... They have to be more than just a lemming. Because jumping to your death is not enough," he said.
