Rand Paul and Sharron Angle… what could possibly go wrong?David Frum-- your grandpa's version of a Republican-- is worried that those nutty Libertarians are making inroads into his party again. Last week he took issue with Robert Draper's assertion that Rand Paul is the solution to the GOP's demographic problems. "What he wrote was not true.
On top of the court case he filed last week to vacate the results of the Mississippi Senate election, Tea Party sore loser Chris McDaniel has been trying to pick a new fight-- this time with poor, embattled Miss McConnell, threatening to turn Kentucky's far right fringe-- which he so desperately needs in his neck-and-neck fight against Alison Lundergan Grimes-- into a pack of s
Much to the chagrin of corporate whores who had infected the DEmocratic Party-- think Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- Howard Dean coined and popularized the phrase, "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Here at DWT we often talk about the corollary, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.
With right-wing congressman Bill Cassidy running for Mary Landrieu's Senate seat, his Baton Rouge-based House district looks very attractive to an awful lot of candidates. It's a grotesquely gerrymandered (i.e., ethnically-cleansed) deep red district with a PVI of R+21. Obama won 31% there against McCain and 32% against Romney. In 2012 the Democrats didn't even bother putting up a candidate against Cassidy.
I was in New York Tuesday and could concentrate on the votes that were going down in the House and I'm afraid people may have missed a vote on Eric Swalwell's H.R. 1022, the Securing Energy Critical Elements and American Jobs Act. The Boehner/McCarthy/Ryan clique that's still fighting to control the House Republican Caucus, felt it had the votes to suspend the rules and pass the bill with a 2/3 majority and no amendments.
While I was researching this morning's lesbian piece, I saw how, in 1997, ambitious Buffalo closet case Bill Paxon used the power position Speaker Newt Gingrich had appointed him to, chair of the NRCC, to attempt a coup against Gingrich.
Right-wing populists-- who are sometimes referred to as teabaggers-- have pretty much taken over the Republican social policy agenda. But have been largely unable to beat Chamber of Commerce Republicans in primaries this year, the way they did manage to do in 2010 and 2012 by replacing longtime Senate incumbents like Bob Bennett (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Dick Lugar (R-IN) and beating Establishment candidates in Delaware (Mike Castle), Florida (Charlie Crist), Nevada (Sue Lowden), Colorado (Jane Norton), Texas (David Dewhurst) and Kentucky (Trey Grayson).
Louisiana teabagger Steve Scalise isn't the biggest win for the Ted Cruz wing of the GOPThe reaction from ugly Republican racists to the embarrassing Tea Party losses in Oklahoma and Mississippi Tuesday-- two of the most brainwashed and extreme right-wing states in the U.S.-- was, to put it mildly, ungracious. McDaniel, of course, is refusing to concede.
Wednesday morning the 233 House Republicans will get together and vote for a replacement for Eric Cantor as Majority Leader. Since he already has commitments from way more than the 117 Members needed to ascend the predetermined leadership ladder, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will surely beat the wacko-bird caucus fave, Raúl Labrador.
