Man this is like a bad case of measles.....everywhere you turn, the GOP seems to be imploding.
Late yesterday, HuffPo runs a lengthy and excoriating profile of Mitch McConnell and the mounting evidence that his long reign of power in Kentucky appears to be in real danger.
Up for reelection again in 2014, McConnell faces dismal polling numbers. In January, a Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll found that only 17 percent of residents said they were planning on voting for him. A recent Public Policy Polling survey showed him tied in a hypothetical race against Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's Democratic secretary of state, weeks before she announced she was running on July 1. Today, McConnell finds himself at both the most powerful and most vulnerable moment of his career. He faces not only a Democratic opposition out to avenge McConnell's attacks on Obama, but an energized tea party unhappy with the GOP establishment and independents disgusted with Washington.
More goodies below the Orange Waring Blender
Then a comment to a Charlie Pierce Profile in Esquire, How Republicans Fail Upwards
Heard a story on NPR yesterday about how the Club For Growth Ratfckers have this website up called "Primary My Congressman." People send in suggestions to these folks on putting up someone to run against their congresscritter.
The focus of the story was Idaho's eight-term congressman Mike Simpson, who the CFG is trying to primary out because he had the temerity to vote for the debt ceiling bill, voted for SCHIP and actually supports the National Endowment for the Arts. Aside from these apparent bouts of heresy, in no way, shape or form could Simpson's voting record be remotely deemed progressive.
This following Charlie's always trenchant analysis of what ails the GOP:
The Republican party -- and the conservative movement that is its only source of political vitality -- is made up now of several different centers of power: the conservative media, including Fox News and the universe of talk-radio; the conservative ideas infrastructure centered around various think-tanks and intellectual chop-shops like Heritage,and, most important, the network of plutocratic sugar-daddies operating on their own agendas, and more than willing to assert that agenda even if it seems to be to the political disadvantage of the party as a whole. Last, and finishing very far up the track, is the Republican party itself. Can anyone make a serious argument that a Republican congressman is better off as a Republican politician listening to Reince Priebus than to Rush Limbaugh, or Jim DeMint, or David Koch? If said politician has the latter three behind him, when John Boehner comes to him and asks him to vote for a immigration reform bill, said politician can tell Boehner to go whistle up a tree.
Next up in the evidence window.....a potential battle between wings of the conservative movement....Ladies and Gentlemen.....
Rand Paul Vs. The Cheyneys:
It seems that Liz Cheney has suddenly decided she is real interested in running for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming where her infamous father first cut his chops as a Congressman, then defense secretary and of course Vice President. Only trouble is, there is already a Republican Senator in Wyoming named Mike Enzi and Mr. Enzi hadn't given any indication he was not planning on running for re-election.
That isn't stopping Liz however, who has been posting cute pictures of her kids riding horses on her blog and criss crossing the state, apparently with her father's support, consuming rubber chicken and schmoozing with party regulars.
But Senator Paul of Kentucky has suddenly announced he thinks his colleague Senator Enzi is just fine thank you. Perhaps it is because Sen. Paul's main claim to fame these days is his call for a non-interventionist foreign policy....the exact opposite of the Cheneys who never saw a foreign country they didn't think could be improved with a little carpet bombing.
So folks....have at it. A little inter-nicene war in Wyoming...? Why not?
How about editorial battles over immigration? In this corner William Kristol and Rich Lowry (Kill the Bill)
There is no case for the bill, and certainly no urgency to pass it. During the debate over immigration in 2006–07, Republican rhetoric at times had a flavor that communicated a hostility to immigrants as such. That was a mistake, and it did political damage. This time has been different. The case against the bill has been as responsible as it has been damning.
It’s become clear that you can be pro-immigrant and pro-immigration, and even favor legalization of the 11 million illegal immigrants who are here and increases in some categories of legal immigration – and vigorously oppose this bill.
and on the other side, Bobo Brooks of the NY Times (
Pass the Bill)
If Republicans reject immigration reform, that will be a giant sign of disrespect, and nothing else Republicans say will even be heard.
Whether this bill passes or not, this country is heading toward a multiethnic future. Republicans can either shape that future in a conservative direction or, as I’ve tried to argue, they can become the receding roar of a white America that is never coming back.
That’s what’s at stake.
And now the ultimate case of irony....PA US Senator Pat Toomey....he of the Club for Growth fame
now finds himself being attacked from the right by the gun lobby for having the temerity to propose a bill requiring background checks to qualify for gun ownership.
Well Pat....live by the sword, die by the sword:
Note the morph at the end of the ad from Toomey (who right winged his way into office) and the man he drove into the Democratic Party, the late Arlen Specter. Schadenfreude! It's what America's having for breakfast.