Republican civil war

Republican civil war comes to Sacramento CountyMonday I went to a public forum with three of L.A.'s most progressive congressmembers, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Janice Hahn and our old friend Judy Chu.

McConnell doesn't get a lot of good news lately. But he did yesterday. The progressive Kentucky Democrat running for his seat dropped out of the Democratic Party primary against centrist Alison Lundergan Grimes and declared his intention to run as an independent.

Karl Rove was on Fox News Sunday this week when Chris Wallace announced that "as soon as we listed Ted Cruz as our featured guest this week, I got unsolicited research and questions, not from Democrats but from top Republicans, to hammer Cruz." Accusations started flying across the wingnut blogosphere. McConnell, panic-striken, immediately denied that it was him or any of this staffers trying to undermine Cruz.

Disasters are good for the media. Disasters drive up ratings and allow increases in ad rates. And in the world of professional fundraisers... there's gold in them thar hills-- lots of it. Yesterday one wag tweeted that a GOP House leadership aide, presumably someone from Cantor's office, accused unhinged Texas Senator Ted Cruz of being the head of a left-wing cabal to destroy the Republican Party from within. Karl Rove may be thinking along the same lines!

Boehner and Cantor and the rest of the sorry GOP congressional conservative mainstream are holding a tiger by the tail-- and the tiger is hungry. They've talked so much about repealing ObamaCare that the drooling imbeciles they helped elect as Republicans last year think its real. So the House leadership tried throwing them a bone... and they threw it back. Boehner and Cantor have to pass a government funding bill this week.

Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant in California politics since the Nixon era, told the NY Times that “Until we solve our Latino problem, we’re not going to be a viable state party, and it’s hard to understand how that’s possible without fixing immigration.” The Times explains what everyone in California is already well-aware of:

You probably heard about how poor old doddering McConnell stumbled right into a right wing trap, tarring all the Kentucky teabaggers as "fringe," which, of course they are. But Republicans aren't supposed to talk that way about what's now their party's base. Local Tea Party leaders immediately blasted McConnell in a very public and very damaging way:

I honestly never understood why the Beltway media-- all of it-- insists on calling far right extremists "conservatives," when they are obviously reactionaries and not conservative at all. John McCain, Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski are mainstream conservatives.

Once upon a time over in GOPWorld, you were a chicken if you weren't willing to vote to shut down the government the way the crackpots and nihilist Hate Talk Radio-inspired zombies who pass for the Republican base were demanding. But that is sooooo the day before yesterday...

I guess if Troy King is still in the closet, he can be on the Alabama GOP steering committee.