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.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-- like Ken and I, a graduate of James Madison High School-- has been trying to explain that “Yesterday, the Republicans were using the Affordable Care Act as the reason why they had to shut down the government and not pay our bills. Today, it’s ‘reforming’ Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
by KenThe above news, in case you missed it, comes courtesy of New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff's weekly blogpost, "Nothing to Say," news that Bob declares he was "particularly gratified about." There is perhaps inspiration to be drawn from Bob's opening:
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.
The other day we looked at how the Republicans Party has-- since Nixon launched the Southern Strategy-- been taken over by southern conservatives. More than a few of the southern racists we wrote about are unaware that their politics (and emotions) are motivated by uncontrollable racism. Don't scoff.
Republicans savvy about self-preservation in swing districts-- districts like the ones in Central Florida-- are starting to back away from the GOP/Ted Cruz strategy of holding the government and the economy hostage for narrow, unpopular Republican agenda items. But not John Mica, the lockstep conservative from Winter Park.
Cuccinelli, struggling to stay in the 30's in recent polls, has already started cutting back on media spending. He knows he lost.
Will Boehner's son-in-law introduce him to Peter Tosh's music?It's not a secret around Washington that Speaker John Boehner is an unstable alcoholic. Anyone who's ever gotten within a couple of feet of him has smelled the booze. Dozens of Members who have been sworn in by him have told me he was somewhere between drunk and staggering drunk when he asked them to put a hand on the Bible and take the oath of office.
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.
Democrats, from President Obama (who has no relation with House Republicans and doesn't know much more about it than any of us do) to Nancy Pelosi, say there are enough Republicans and Democrats-- 217-- to pass a clean CR. Long Island Republican Peter King agrees. Let's say that the 5 right-wing Democrats who refused to sign Pelosi's letter to Boehner calling for a clean CR-- John Barrow (New Dem-GA), Mike McIntyre (New Dem-NC), Jim Cooper (New Dem-TN), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT) and Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)-- can be persuaded to vote for it, a reasonable, though not iron-clad assumption.
