Earlier today we poked around a little in the silliness around the House Republicans quest for an Eric Cantor replacement, a very key job in their obstructionist m.o. We thought the absurdity of Idaho libertarian Raúl Labrador would be the best palate cleanser after Cantor… but not one with even the vaguest of chances to beat the Kevin McCarthy wind-up doll.
DWT is for Raul LabradorAngry right-wing populists struck out blindly against Eric Cantor last week-- and scored a knockout. But to the victors do not go the spoils, not Inside-the-Beltway. David Brat will become a largely ignored, probably short-term, backbencher; he will not become Majority Leader. Nor will any teabagger who celebrated Cantor's political demise.
CA-25 is the northeast corner of L.A. county-- Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley-- plus a sliver of Ventura County (Simi Valley). It's a suburban area that has long been held by Republicans but in 2012 Lee Rogers won in the Antelope Valley and came closer to dislodging forever-incumbent Buck McKeon than anyone else ever had. So close, in fact, that McKeon decided to trade his job in Congress for a job on K Street this year.
Democrats regularly win statewide races in Maine and South Dakota, though DSCC executive director Guy Cecil, some kind of a self-loathing Beltway creature, has written off both states to the Republicans in November. He's much more excited about spending DSCC millions down in Mississippi on behalf of homophobic, anti-Choice Blue Dog Travis Childers. Don't forget, the last two times Democrats won Senate seats in Mississippi were when John Stennis was reelected in 1982, having first become a senator in 1947, and when James Eastland was reelected in 1972, having first become a senator in 1942.
Jake Sherman at Politico doesn't exactly describe it as a modern day reenactment of Night Of The Long Knives, but when far right freakshow Chris Chocola was screaming about it on Twitter yesterday, he saw exactly what Boehner and his Chamber of Commerce/Big Business allies were up to in cutting off the legs of the Tea Party extremists who had given the GOP a populist patina in recent years. They would have liked to have gotten to Boehner before he got to them.
Let me save Pennsylvania for the end, since that's the one with Democrats. Georgia and Kentucky are Republican affairs, although who the GOP voters pick in each state may influence the outcome of the November elections-- and the control of the U.S. Senate. We'll start with Georgia's 7 dwarves running for the open red Senate seat that conservative Democrat, Sam Nunn's daughter, thinks she has a chance to win.
Last year Steve Israel and his band of incompetent and corrupt DCCC staffers treated Wayne Powell, the courageous Democrat who ran against Eric Cantor, shabbily that this year-- predictably-- Israel got the result he wanted: no credible Democratic candidate bothering to challenge Cantor. A well-connected Powell backer told me earlier this year that the consensus among Democrats in the district was that it was senseless to run while Pelosi still had Israel as the DCCC chair and he was undercutting Cantor opponents.VA-07 (R+10) would be a tough slog for any Democrat.
The Republican Establishment is trying to make a come back after badly losing two presidential cycles in a row with feeble and extremely unpopular establishment candidates, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Today's primary in North Carolina is their shot to nominate the Speaker of North Carolina's widely hated state House of Representatives.
