Congressional Wingnut Caucus unveils post-election agenda and it's exactly what you expect

Jed Lewison

Community

Wednesday October 29, 2014 · 2:30 PM PDT

2014/10/29 · 14:30

no image description available — GOP 2016 game plan?

GOP 2016 game plan?

The election is next Tuesday, but conservative House and Senate Republicans have already established an agenda for the upcoming Congress if their party manages to reclaim control of the Senate and you won't be surprised by the first item on their list:

Though no calendar has been set, members want an early vote on Obamacare. House members have cast more than three dozen votes to replace aspects of the 2010 health care law, but any repeal effort has hit a full stop in the Democratic Senate. Still conservatives are eager to force Obama’s hand by sending an early repeal bill if McConnell assumes the Senate majority leader seat.

By the time next Congress rolls around, it will be 2015—five years after Obamacare became law—and yet even though Obamacare has survived a presidential election, a Supreme Court ruling, and fifty-plus repeal votes in the House, the first thing these guys want to do is to try once again to repeal it.

I mean, c'mon, guys. This is ridiculous. Obamacare is here to stay, it's been here to stay, and yet another repeal vote won't change that one bit. The best thing you can say about it is that it's a pointless exercise that will at least distract them from the other damaging policies that they plan to push, including legislation that would ...

... increase border security without any legislative sweeteners like increases in visas for high-tech workers or allowing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Conservative Republicans also want to create work requirements for welfare recipients and force Obama to veto the Keystone XL pipeline.

House Republicans have already voted multiple times for these policies, so there's literally nothing new on that list, yet in the words of South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, these wingnuts believe it will usher in a new era for the Republican Party:

One of our frustrations is that we’ve never told folks what we stand for. We’ve told them that we’re not Obama, but we’ve never told them what conservatives stand for.

Well, it's true that Republicans have said they're not for Obama, but it's nonsense to say they've been silent on those policy issues, because they've repeatedly taken futile votes on exactly these issues. That's pretty much all they've done, save for the occasional timeout when they've let Democrats deliver the bulk of the votes required for things like ending the government shutdown or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

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If Republicans want to enter the 2016 election cycle still running on a platform of repealing Obamacare, deporting undocumented Americans, closing our borders to high-skilled workers, treating poor mothers like trash, and doubling down on a "drill, baby, drill" energy policy, it will be neither pleasant nor a surprise, but at least there will be one silver lining: Their return to power will be very, very short lived.

McConnell campaign spent $75,000 buying 'volunteer' enthusiasm from late-September to early-October

Jed Lewison

Community

Wednesday October 29, 2014 · 12:38 PM PDT

2014/10/29 · 12:38

Screenshot from Mitch McConnell campaign ad

McConnell is so naturally likable his campaign had to copy and paste a dog to demonstrate his warmth

It turns out buying "volunteer" enthusiasm is nothing new for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign: Even before reports surfaced that McConnell was offering all-expenses-paid travel and lodging for people to pose as enthusiastic locals on his most recent campaign bus tour, new FEC documents posted online by the Alison Lundergan Grimes campaign show his campaign was spending a ton of money to buy Mitch some love.

Specifically, the documents show, on September 19, September 22, and October 9, McConnell's campaign spent nearly $75,000 on airfare, food, and lodging for "volunteers" to show up at McConnell events. We won't know until the campaign is over just how much money McConnell had to spend to make it look like people like him, but this much is clear: It hasn't been cheap.

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McConnell claims he never supported Social Security privatization

Jed Lewison

Community

Wednesday October 29, 2014 · 10:50 AM PDT

2014/10/29 · 10:50

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, June 27, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last Thursday, boasting about having worked with George W. Bush in a failed effort to create private Social Security accounts—and complaining that Democrats refused to help:

“After Bush was re-elected in 2004 he wanted us to try to fix Social Security,” said McConnell. “I spent a year trying to get any Democrat in the Senate — even those most reasonable Democrat of all, Joe Lieberman – to help us.”

When asked if he would try the same thing as Senate Majority Leader, McConnell refused to answer, but he was nonetheless proud of his effort. But now that the election is one week closer and he's faced with attacks about his support for Social Security privatization from his opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes and her Democratic allies, McConnell is denying the whole thing:

"That's just one of the many fictions the Grimes campaign has been spinning. Obviously, preserving and protecting Social Security is the most important thing any of us can do," said McConnell.

In just one week, McConnell has gone from bragging about his past efforts to privatize Social Security to pretending it never happened and claiming that his No. 1 priority is preserving and protecting Social Security.

So, which Mitch McConnell should we believe? The one who tried to privatize Social Security and bragged about it, or the Mitch McConnell who says it's a lie to accuse him of supporting privatization? Well, not even McConnell himself will answer that question because, in his words, if Republicans do win the majority: "I'm not announcing what the agenda would be in advance."

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Moral of the story: The only way Kentucky voters can be sure Mitch McConnell won't try to privatize Social Security is if they send him into an early retirement. Fortunately, on Tuesday they can do exactly that.

McConnell flip-flops on West Africa travel ban days before election

Jed Lewison

Community

Wednesday October 29, 2014 · 9:35 AM PDT

2014/10/29 · 09:35

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington June 18, 2013. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Mitch McConnell: A man of two positions who takes them frequently

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, endorsing a travel ban for people who have been in West African nations experiencing Ebola outbreaks:

During a Tuesday interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, McConnell said he thinks a travel ban "makes a lot of sense." Health experts and the White House routinely say travel bans would be counterproductive and may make the situation worse.
"I would like to see a travel ban," McConnell said. "I think it seems to me to make a lot of sense."

Endorsing travel bans probably make for decent politics, especially in conservative states like McConnell's Kentucky, but they make no sense on policy grounds, and not just because there are no direct flights to the U.S. from stricken countries, but also because a travel ban would create incentives for people to cover up their travel history, making it harder to track the movements of the very small number of infected individuals who might try to travel without actually preventing their entry. As none other than McConnell himself said two weeks ago:

"I think we ought to listen to what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] thinks they need either in terms of financing or certainly they'll decide the procedures for travel and all the rest," McConnell told NBC News in an interview. "I think we need to follow the advice of the experts who know how to fight scourges like this."

So, what changed in the two weeks? Certainly not the risk posed by Ebola, which has yet to spread beyond the two nurses infected in late September—both of whom have recovered. The only explanation is politics: We're that much closer to election day, the polls in Kentucky are tightening, and Mitch sees an issue he can exploit to keep his job, so that's exactly what he's doing, because that's what he always does.

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Social Security emerges as an issue in Kentucky Senate race

Jed Lewison

Community

Wednesday October 29, 2014 · 6:30 AM PDT

2014/10/29 · 06:30

Greg Sargent on relatively quiet, last-minute effort by Alison Lundergan Grimes her campaign allies to make Social Security an issue in the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign:

When reporter Joe Sonka asked whether a GOP Senate majority would pursue privatization, McConnell replied: “I’m not announcing what the agenda would be in advance,” though his spokesman clarified that he wasn’t interested “in reviving the 2005 debate.” Meanwhile, according to one local report, McConnell today “evaded questions” on the topic.
The Grimes campaign, by contrast, is pushing the topic hard. When McConnell brought Bobby Jindal to Kentucky to campaign for him the other day, the Grimes camp quickly pointed out that Jindal had supported the 2005 privatization push, too. And on the stump, Grimes has repeatedly floated variations of the idea that unlike McConnell, she would never gamble away her grandmother’s Social Security on the stock market.

The Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic PAC focused on Senate races, is running a withering ad (embedded above) going after McConnell not just for privatization, but also for having "rearranged" his financial portfolio before the 2008 stock market crash after talking with the Secretary of the Treasury. The message: McConnell not only wants to use his position in the Senate to take a wrecking ball to Social Security, but he also wants to use it to benefit himself. "What good is clout," the ad asks, "if McConnell sells us out?"

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It's hard-hitting ad and McConnell has tried, unsuccessfully, to have it removed from the airwaves, so he's scared of it. It's a powerful message, but it's also a message that perhaps should have been used earlier in the campaign. Still, if it does manage to break through the noise in the final days of the campaign, it could be one of the key things that helps put Grimes over the top.

Reince Priebus dusts off GOP 2012 playbook in new attack on Hillary

Jed Lewison

Community

Tuesday October 28, 2014 · 5:30 PM PDT

2014/10/28 · 17:30

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaks during the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana June 18, 2011. REUTERS/Lee Celano

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says he's totally fired up for 2016 because Hillary Clinton tries too hard and isn't a good politician:

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says Hillary Clinton is “becoming sort of a caricature” and that “she’s not really good at politics.”
“I think she’s trying too hard and she’s not really good at this stuff,” Priebus told NewsmaxTV in a interview posted Monday.

The thing that prompted Priebus's attempted zinger is a comment from Hillary at a rally last week with Elizabeth Warren. Hillary's sin? She said "don’t let anybody tell you that corporations and businesses create jobs" instead of "don’t let anybody tell you that tax breaks for corporations and businesses create jobs."

Yawn, right? But not to Reince:

“I don’t know if she was a little off-script on that particular moment, but it clearly wasn’t natural and it was certainly awkward,” the RNC chairman said. “And if it was serious, then obviously she doesn’t understand capitalism and democracy in a way that business and jobs operate.”

Wow, how scary! Hillary Clinton doesn't understand capitalism and democracy. Remind you of anyone? Oh yeah, Barack Obama, who completely blew his re-election campaign with his infamous "you didn't build that" gaffe, which propelled Mitt Romney to the White House in 2012 because what people really want in a president is someone whose mission in life is to protect and defend the job creators of America and to never say anything that could be interpreted otherwise.

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Naturally, Reince is ecstatic that Hillary is making the same mistake as former President Obama, and is utterly convinced that President Romney will win in 2016 just like he did in 2012:

“There’d be no one you would want more to run against than Hillary Clinton, and on top of it, she’s not really good at politics,” Priebus said, pointing to her recent book tour, which he called a “disaster.”

In all seriousness, let's just file this one away for November 2016. According to Reince Priebus, Hillary Clinton is the GOP's dream opponent because she sucks as a politician. I can't wait to see how that statement measures up after they nominate Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush or Rand Paul or Mike Huckabee or Ben Carson or whichever clown manages to rise the to top of the GOP field. Something tells me he won't be so giddy then.

DSCC returns to airwaves in Kentucky: McConnell 'working for himself, not us'

Jed Lewison

Community

Tuesday October 28, 2014 · 12:21 PM PDT

2014/10/28 · 12:21

Here's the ad that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will run in Kentucky in the wake of their decision last week to commit $650,000 in television ads against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on behalf of Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes:

The ad features Estelle Bayer, a Kentucky school teacher, speaking direct-to-camera. Bayer says she's been a teacher for 35 years and that for the past 30 of those years, McConnell has represented Kentucky in the Senate.

The problem, says Bayer, is that while McConnell has voted for pay raises for himself and has become a millionaire, McConnell has blocked efforts to raise the minimum wage. Moreover, during McConnell's tenure, Kentucky has lagged in job growth, ranking 44th in the nation. So, Bayer concludes, "after 30 years, it just feels like Mitch is making his job work for him, and not us."

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It's hard to make negative ads stick in the final days of the campaign, especially ones that go over the top, explaining why this ad is restrained in tone and style. It's not that it's soft—Bayer's message is clearly an attack—but soothing music plays throughout and Bayer herself has a gentle demeanor. If she proves to be a credible messenger, it should do Grimes some good, because it's exactly the message that she's running on: That after 30 years of being a politician in DC, Mitch McConnell isn't what Kentucky needs in the U.S. Senate.

Mitch McConnell is so dang likable he needed to copy and paste this dog over and over to prove it

Jed Lewison

Community

Tuesday October 28, 2014 · 10:43 AM PDT

2014/10/28 · 10:43

Mitch McConnell wants voters in Kentucky to know something important: That he's likable. Really, really likable. So, to demonstrate just how authentically likable he is, his political team decided to surround him with cute, lovable dogs in his campaign's newest ad:

The only thing is, that's not a bunch of dogs: That's one or two, copy and pasted over and over. Obviously, the goal was to make Mitch seem warm, but it instead produced a weird, unnatural effect—perhaps we could call it the uncanine valley. On the bright side, at least Mitch didn't have to pay anyone to show enthusiasm: A handful of kibble is all it took.

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Walker walks back finger-pointing at Christie, but is still making excuses

Jed Lewison

Community

Tuesday October 28, 2014 · 8:45 AM PDT

2014/10/28 · 08:45

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks at CPAC 2013.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tries to walk back his whiney finger-pointing about lack of financial support from national Republicans, reports Politico:

“Let me be clear: When I complain about the national groups that come in, I by no means am complaining about the RGA,” Walker said. “Gov. Christie’s a good friend. He’s the only person I’m campaigning with this week who’s not from Wisconsin, and that’s because he’s a friend and he asked if he could come to the state and campaign.”
Walker reiterated that he has been “outspent” in the race – an assertion Democrats and some other Republicans dispute – but said he doesn’t blame the RGA for any deficit.

“That’s not a reflection on the RGA. That’s just a reflection of the fact that I’ve been their No. 1 target for the past two years,” said Walker, referring to Democratic and labor groups that have mounted a sustained campaign to defeat him.

In other words, Walker wants everybody to know that if he loses he won't blame Chris Christie—instead, he'll blame it on the fact that Democrats and labor have targeted him because he's a true conservative hero.

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In reality, of course, if he loses the reason will be that he antagonized his state and failed to deliver the economic progress that he promised, but it's clear he's already starting to formulate the kind of spin he'll need to justify making a presidential bid whether or not he wins next week.

Scott Walker starts pointing fingers

Jed Lewison

Community

Monday October 27, 2014 · 1:00 PM PDT

2014/10/27 · 13:00

Wisconisn Governor Scott Walker gestures as he addresses the second session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, August 28, 2012 REUTERS/Mike Segar (UNITED STATES  - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

How bad are things going for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's re-election campaign? So bad that he's already pointing fingers at fellow Republicans for not giving him the money he says he needs to win re-election:

Asked if he was satisfied with the support he’s received from national Republicans, Walker indicated he hopes to get more backup from the Republican Governors Association. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who chairs the RGA, is coming to campaign for Walker this week — but the Wisconsin Republican said he’s “not looking for surrogates.”
“[Christie] is coming because he asked if he could come and we weren’t going to say no,” Walker said. “But we’re not looking for surrogates. The people that have been campaigning with me are by and large from Wisconsin.”

It’s TV spending, Walker emphasized, where national Republicans can make the biggest difference. So far, he said, the out-of-state effort on his behalf “pales in comparison” to what his coalition of foes have spent on the other side.

The thing that's striking about Walker's comments is that even though he's whining about not getting enough national support, he is actually getting a ton of it. For example, Christie's Republican Governors Association is not only planning to spend about 50 percent more on Walker's behalf in 2014 than it did in 2010, but it's also just added $1.1 million to its ad buy for the final week, bringing its total spend to $2 million in the last week alone.

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Perhaps Walker is merely trying to panic his supporters into action, but it also feels like he's laying the groundwork for some finger-pointing if he loses re-election. And with your help, we can make sure he's got plenty of time to do exactly that.

Mitch McConnell finally confirms he wants to repeal health insurance for 500,000 Kentuckians

Jed Lewison

Community

Monday October 27, 2014 · 10:50 AM PDT

2014/10/27 · 10:50

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington June 17, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) - RTR3UAWO

For the past several months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has tried to have it both ways on Kynect, Kentucky's popular implementation of Obamacare that has delivered health insurance to more than 500,000 Kentuckians. On the one hand, McConnell has said he wants to repeal Obamacare, but on the other hand, he also says Kynect should remain in place if Kentucky wants to keep it.

There's no reasonable way to square those two positions—you can't repeal Obamacare without repealing Kynect, and you can't keep Kynect without keeping Obamacare—but that hasn't stopped McConnell from taking them both. His campaign seems to be perfectly aware of the fact that the two positions cannot be reconciled as evidenced by the fact that despite repeated attempts by Sam Stein of The Huffington Post to get them to clarify his position, they refused to respond:

The Huffington Post asked the McConnell campaign that very question the day after the debate. We asked the campaign the same question twice more that day. Then, we posed the question to them seven more times over the subsequent nine days. We also called the campaign twice. The campaign never responded.

But now McConnell's team has finally responded, albeit through his official Senate office:

A spokesman for the minority leader confirmed that he wants to repeal the full health care law, including not just the federal subsidies for people purchasing on exchanges like Kynect, but also the mandates and taxes on high-cost plans and other features of the legislation.

Keeping Kynect without keeping its subsidies would be like keeping Social Security without Social Security checks—it would be keeping it in name only. And with its statement to The Huffington Post, McConnell is now on record conceding that is what his position is.

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It was obvious all along that McConnell was full of it. And now we've got confirmation—from his own office, no less.

Oops: John Boehner appears to have forgotten to file his lawsuit to stop Obama's dictatorship

Jed Lewison

Community

Monday October 27, 2014 · 9:35 AM PDT

2014/10/27 · 09:35

Speaker of the House John Boehner speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC.

More evidence for teapartiers that Boehner is enabling the Obama tyranny

Remember just a few short months ago when House Speaker John Boehner proudly announced his plan to file a lawsuit against President Obama to restore democracy and save America from the tyranny of the president's lawless dictatorship?

Well, that was then. Now, it's nearly the end of October—just two months away from the lawsuit becoming moot (since it seeks to force Obama to implement the employer mandate before January 1, 2015)—but Boehner has yet to file it and his often won't say when or why.

A spokesman for Boehner said the date for filing the litigation remains up in the air. “No decisions on timing at this point,” spokesman Kevin Smith said Friday. He declined to comment on speculation about the reasons for the delay.

Back in June, Boehner said his lawsuit was about nothing less than saving the country from President Obama's refusal to follow the law:

I believe the president is not faithfully executing the laws of our country. [...] This is about his faithfully executing the laws of this country.

He did not initially say what the focus of his lawsuit would be, but when he revealed that it would focus on the president's delay of Obamacare's employer mandate, the architects of his legal theory said that if the courts refused to hear the lawsuit, impeachment would be the only option. But now the issue isn't that the courts are refusing to hear it, it's that Boehner himself is refusing to file it. And apparently he's considering changing the focus of the suit:

While early on Boehner said that the suit would focus on a delay Obama ordered in enforcement of the law’s employer mandate, sources say lawyers are now considering expanding the case beyond the originally announced subject because the mandate is likely to soon start to go into effect and because there might be more effective targets.

That's a polite way of saying that with just two months left before the mandate kicks in, there's no point filing a lawsuit about it since the objective of the lawsuit would be to force the mandate to kick in before New Year's Day. To put it another way: If Boehner doesn't change the focus of the lawsuit, there won't be any lawsuit at all.

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Whatever happens, this much is 100 percent clear: Boehner's lawsuit was about politics all along. If he does file something, it will be because he's too scared to stand up to the lunatic demands of his base, not because he honestly thinks President Obama is a threat to the Republic. If he actually believed anything he said when coming up with the lawsuit in the first place, it would have been filed long ago.

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