Republican civil war

Last year, when Justin Amash first ran for reelection to Congress in a west Michigan district centered on Grand Rapids and Battle Creek (MI-03) the Democratic Party put up a corrupt conservative hack, Steve Pestka, who could never heart him.

That's the ad the Senate Conservatives Fund is spending tens of thousands of dollars running all over Kentucky television a year out from the Republican primary pitting Mitch McConnell against Tea Party activist Matt Bevin. And McConnell is furious-- and flipping out. In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan caught his anger at the Tea Party idiots pretty well.

The race most people were most interested in today was the lesser-of-two evils gubernatorial election in Virginia. As expected, the lesser of two evils, Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, won.

Teabaggers are running wild, encouraged by all the media coverage Ted Cruz's infantile nihilism and extremism is getting.

Aaron Schock's boyfriend is being targeted for political extinction by the teabaggersEarlier today we took a quickie glance at the devastating Republican Party civil war and how an energized DCCC-- one without Steve Israel holding it back-- could take advantage of it to win back the House. But mainstream conservative Republicans have a different perspective.

So what's left after the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government? A slowdown in economic growth, $150 billion in lost GDP, 900,000 lost jobs and a $24 billion bill to American taxpayers first and foremost. But now Ted Cruz has a million of more names and email addresses on his potential donor list (his phony-baloney petition to repeal the Affordable Care Act).

Both Boehner and McConnell have tried reassuring voters-- who have turned massively against the Republican Party in poll after poll-- that the GOP will not shut down the government again in January.

As of June 30, Mississippi senior Senator Thad Cochran had only raised $773,953, not much for a U.S. Senator. It gave rise to some talk that he might be thinking of retirement. He was born in 1937 and by the end of his next term he'd be 82. Elected in 1978, he's the second most senior Republican in the Senate. And, for a mainstream conservative like Cochran, a Cruz-ified Republican caucus can't be much fun. But when you realize that the last time he was up for reelection he only spent $518,625, you have to reconsider his lackadaisical fundraising as proof he might be retiring.

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.

Yesterday the congressional Republicans, having all read and digested the horrifying (for them) polling on their a tattered brand, decided to change tactics and see if people will like them more if they demand the Democrats gut Social Security and Medicare instead of delaying Obamacare.