Elephant Dung #36: The Bachmann-Pawlenty spat

Tracking the GOP Civil War 

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.) 

Sorry, haven't done one of these in ages...

Not that there haven't been many, many instances of Republicans attacking fellow Republicans...

For example, as you may have heard, Tim Pawlenty, running well back in the GOP presidential race (and seeming more and more desperate), recently used the news of Michele Bachmann's migraine problem to suggest that the Minnesota congresswoman might not be up to the job of president. It was a cheap shot.

Bachmann quickly put concerns about her health to rest -- yes, I'll take her at her (and her doctor's word), and migraines, even serious ones, shouldn't be a disqualifier -- and, to her credit (even if one disagrees with her views), has fought back, slamming Pawlenty's record as governor of their state (criticizing him from the extreme right). She just wasn't going to take his shit lying down.

Now, I'd take Pawlenty over Bachmann any day. As her statement suggests, he's not nearly the right-wing conservative he's been trying to make himself out to be, while she's the real deal, a bona fide nut. And he's fighting back as well, with a spokesman noting that while he was "scoring conservative victories" as governor she was "giving speeches and offering failed amendments, all while struggling mightily to hold onto the most Republican house seat in the state." Ouch.

Pawlenty is so far back at this point that this hardly seems like a meaningful fight. Bachmann has emerged as the clear #2 behind Romney while Pawlenty has failed to generate much support at all. I suppose he still has a shot at emerging as the compromise candidate between Romney and Bachmann, but there may yet be Perry to contend with, and, thus far, he has done nothing to suggest that he could actually pull off a victory.

Still, with most of the Republican candidates falling all over themselves to prove their conservative bona fides and casually trying to outdo one another in their extremism, all while remaining mostly civil and directing their fire at President Obama, this little Bachmann-Pawlenty spat is about as interesting as it gets.

Elephant Dung #35: Palin's chief of staff slams Bachmann advisor Ed Rollins

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

 (For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Ed Rollins struck first, calling Sarah Palin not "serious" and saying that his soon-to-be candidate (?), Michele Bachmann, looks good by comparison.

Needless to say, that didn't go over well with the Palin camp:

"Beltway political strategist Ed Rollins has a long, long track record of taking high profile jobs and promptly sticking his foot in his mouth," said Sarah PAC chief of staff Michael Glassner in an emailed statement. "To no one's surprise he has done it again, while also fueling a contrived narrative about the presidential race by the mainstream media. One would expect that his woodshed moment is coming and that a retraction will be issued soon."

Oooh. Aaah.

Rollins was right about Palin, if not so much about Bachmann, but it seems to me that his intention was not to much to dismiss Palin altogether but to spin his candidate as something other than a Palin clone or, worse, a lesser Palin, an unsatisfactory replacement for the real thing. So he notes that Palin isn't serious while Bachmann is, that Bachmann has extensive experience while Palin doesn't.

Will it work? Maybe. If Palin doesn't run, and she likely won't, there's a huge opening for Bachmann to emerge as the preferred right-wing (i.e., Republican mainstream) alternative to Romney and perhaps Giuliani. Pawlenty is trying hard to be that altnerative by stressing his conservative bona fides (or making them up on the go), but he lacks Bachmann's dynamism, charisma, and Tea Party appeal.

But it will be hard for Bachmann to make her mark with Palin hovering over the race and sucking the energy out of the Republican field by dominating media coverage. The longer she hovers, without formally announcing one way or the other, the better it is for Romney, who remains the frontrunner without a credible right-wing opponent (other than Pawlenty, perhaps), but the worse it is for Bachmann, who at some point needs to jump in and stake out her territory while attracting as much coverage as possible. Rollins knows this, surely, and what he said was intended to drive in the wedge to promote Bachmann at Palin's expense, encourage the media to dismiss Palin (as if that's possible), and add to the various Republican efforts to destroy Palin's credibility.

Ultimately, there will be peace between Palin and Bachmann, and Palin may even endorse her, but until Palin gets out of the way, we can probably expect more of this to come.

Elephant Dung #34: Bachmann advisor Ed Rollins says Palin isn't serious

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Politico's Ben Smith:

Michele Bachmann's new top consultant, Ed Rollins, began his tenure with scathing criticism of potential Bachmann rival Sarah Palin.

"Sarah has not been serious over the last couple of years," Rollins told Brian Kilmeade on his radio show, Kilmeade and Friends. "She got the Vice Presidential thing handed to her, she didn't go to work in the sense of trying to gain more substance, she gave up her governorship."

It is perhaps a sign of Bachmann's seriousness that she hired Rollins, a long-time Republican operative, and she may just jump in the race herself before too long. 

And, of course, Rollins is right about Palin. She's not serious at all.

But is Bachmann the savior of the GOP? And is she really serious herself with all those crazy conspiracy theories?

Elephant Dung #33: Snowe and Collins to vote NO on Ryan budget plan

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

As the recent Gingrich vs. Ryan brouhaha revealed, the Republican wunderkind's budget plan, including its Medicare-slashing component, has become, despite its widespread unpopularity, Republican orthodoxy from which deviation/dissent is not tolerated. (If you do happen to dissent even just a smidge, the party's Bolsheviks will do their utmost to purge you from their ranks.)

And yet it's obvious that many Republicans are having their doubts. The result in NY-26 yesterday, in a way a referendum on Ryan's plan that was a resounding NO, shows that Republicans are vulnerable, and many are distancing themselves from the plan, if not outright opposing it already. Fear of voter revolt, it seems, may just overcome the party whip.

And that appears to be especially true in Maine:

Maine's Republican senators will vote against the House Republican 2012 budget authored by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, with Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe in opposition to the House GOP-proposed Medicare changes.

Snowe confirmed her opposition [yesterday] afternoon during a Capitol Hill interview, while Collins reiterated a position she first made known last month.

Senate Democratic leaders are expected to call up the House GOP budget for a Senate floor vote later this week, probably Thursday. Collins and Snowe join a small but growing group of Republican senators – including Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and possibly Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who have announced they will vote against the proposal to partially privatize Medicare, the federal health care program for seniors, and hand over authority to run Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor, completely to the states in the form of a block grant program. 

To be fair, both Collins and Snowe are on the more moderate, more sane side of the party and aren't exactly the sort of right-wing hardliners who have been falling head-over-heals for Ryan. And Snowe, who is facing a Tea Party challenge in 2012, would seem to have every reason to reach out to the right, but isn't. So maybe, just maybe, this is a matter of principle for them, not political opportunism.

Still, what we're seeing here, and not just in Maine, is what I'll call The Great Republican Exodus of 2012. It isn't really exodus from the party but rather exodus from the new party orthodoxy, from the new right-wing Republican mainstream. As more and more Republicans come to see how unpopular the Ryan plan is, and how vulnerable it makes them, more and more of them will do what Collins and Snowe and Murkowski and Brown are doing (and what it looked like Gingrich was doing), which is rejecting it as way too extreme.

Yes, this too is opportunism. The fear of a voter revolt, of losing moderates and independents and possibly even losing safe Republican seats, apparently outweighs, for them, the fear of a Tea Party challenge and of being attacked by their fellow Republicans and in the conservative media for being un-Republican and anti-American.

Still, it's the sort of opportunism that makes them look respectable, and obviously more appealing to voters in states like Maine and Massachusetts (if not necessarily Alaska). This will be one of the dominant stories over the next year and a half, this divide in the Republican Party between those on Ryan's side and those who, for whatever reason, have had enough, with a large gray area in between for those who want to hedge their bets and have it both ways.

Enjoy.

Elephant Dung #32: After Gingrich slam, Ryan retaliates

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.) 

Earlier today, I blogged about The Newt's criticism of Republican wunderkind Paul Ryan's anti-Medicare plan as "radical," a not-terribly-surprising establishment pushback against an increasingly unpopular right-wing effort.

Well, you knew that wasn't the end of it, and Ryan snarkily pushed back today, retaliating on right-wing talk radio:

With allies like that, who needs the left? 

Ah, so you see, if you're not with him -- Ryan, that is -- you're against him. And if you dare criticize his Medicare-destoying aims, you're really not much of a Republican, and certainly not acceptable to the sort of right-wing Tea Party orthodoxy that Ryan represents. Welcome to the Bolshevism of the Republican Party. If you dissent in any way, you're attacked and purged.

Ryan probably won't run for president, but The Newt is already in the race and, sensing the tide turning against Ryan, is astute enough to distance himself from his plan, a vote-loser in 2012. Or, at least, that's what I think The Newt is up to. He can stress his conservative bona fides on other issues, specifically on the "culture wars," where he can be adequately nativist/jingoist. But as he is trying to have it both ways by appealing both to the more sensible establishment and to the insane Tea Party wing, he isn't about to take up an issue that is backing Republicans into a corner. As risky as it may have been to come out publicly against Ryan, it was something The Newt had to do.

But we certainly haven't heard the last of this, not with Ryan still such a prominent figure (and media darling), and not with the Tea Party holding so much sway at the grassroots level of the GOP. And it certainly should be fun to watch Republicans go after each other like this over an issue that not long ago seemed to be energizing the party and giving them something to fight for in the budget battles with the Democrats. 

That was never going to last, not once people started paying attention to the actual details of the Ryan plan, and now, with Gingrich contra Ryan (and Ryan pushing back, and Santorum attacking Gingrich), we're seeing one of the major splits in the Republican Party begin to deepen. And it's only going to get a whole lot uglier.

Elephant Dung #31: Gingrich slams Ryan's "radical" Medicare plan

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Yes, believe it or not. Appearing yesterday on Meet the Press (watch clip below), The Newt called Republican wunderkind Paul Ryan's Medicare-slashing plan "radical." And he didn't mean it as a compliment:

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," he said when asked about Ryan's plan to transition to a "premium support" model for Medicare. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

As far as an alternative, Gingrich trotted out the same appeal employed by Obama/Reid/Pelosi — for a "national conversation" on how to "improve" Medicare, and promised to eliminate "waste, fraud and abuse," etc.

"I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options," Gingrich said. Ryan's plan was simply "too big a jump."

He even went so far as to compare it the Obama health-care plan. "I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change."

I get that he's against the Affordable Care Act -- all Republicans are, even though it's just the sort of market approach they once favoured, and it's more or less what they offered as an alternative to "Hillarycare" back in the '90s -- but against the sort of massive Tea Party-friendly budget-cutting so popular on the right nowadays, particularly when the targets are entitlement programs that generally benefit those who need help the most? What the hell? Isn't Gingrich a conservative? Isn't he a loyal Republican and dogmatic ideologue?

Well, sort of. When you think through his criticism of Ryan's plan, you start to see that it actually makes a lot of sense. While Republicans, spurred on by the Tea Party, have been talking big about massive budget cuts, the more sensible among them realize that such cuts, including to Medicare, would be massively unpopular. And Republicans have been getting slammed at town halls across the country. Ryan may be a wunderkind, and almost all Republicans in the House may have voted for his plan, but he's essentially backed his party into a vote-losing corner.

And Gingrich, I suspect, gets this. (Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He's not completely delusional.) Because while he's certainly a partisan, he's actually more shameless, unprincipled opportunist than dedicated ideologue. (Consider how he was for the military action in Libya before he was against it. The only consistency to his diametrically-opposed positions was that they were both anti-Obama, just at different times.) This will hurt him with the Tea Party grassroots of the GOP, but he's no doubt betting that it helps him with the more practical as well as somewhat more moderate establishment, which is also opportunistic enough to see that Ryan's plan likely won't help the party at the polls next November -- and that, indeed, could very well hurt it immensely, pushing independents back to the Democrats, perhaps even leading to a wave the other way.

I'm not sure I agree with Andrew Sullivan that the Newt may "surprise this campaign season" with more such unorthodox views. Again, I think this makes a lot of sense of you look at what The Newt may be trying to do. The big names in the race so far are relative moderates like Romney and Pawlenty (perhaps soon to be joined by Daniels and Huntsman). With Huckabee out, no one has yet emerged as a serious candidate on the right (sorry, Santorum), but someone will, perhaps an unelectable crazy person like Michele Bachmann. Given his long, sordid background, Gingrich is perhaps trying to keep a foot in both camps, sufficiently conservative to pick off right-wing votes while also being enough of an establishmentarian to woo moderates and others in the party who, while certainly conservative, actually want to try to win in 2012.

It's hard to see him pulling it off, but it's possible given such a lackluster field. And while he'll have to make sure he stresses his conservative bona fides (as he did on Friday when he basically called for the return of Jim Crow-era poll tests to disenfranchise what to him and the GOP are undesirable voters), taking a stand now against Ryan's deeply unpopular plan might actually benefit him in the long run. It didn't take courage, after all, just a politically astute sense of the prevailing winds.

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Elephant Dung #30: Majority of Republicans, including even more Tea Partiers, support new third party

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

There may be something to be said for a third party in American politics, or even for the American system to become a multi-party system, but the reality is that it's a two-party system (i.e., a system with two dominant parties and some tiny ones that never win anything) and that third parties have generally failed to capture the public's attention.

In the recent past, there has been talk of a third party emerging in the center to capture independent voters -- and, in generally, those who are economically conservative and socially liberal/libertarian. Think back to Ross Perot, for example. It was never clear to me how such a centrist party would survive, but the frustration with the two-party status quo that drive those movements was certainly real.

But what about a third party on the left or right, a third party that could actually challenge the dominance of the two parties while taking a significant chunk of support away from one of them? Given how conservatives tend to unify around the Republican Party, it seemed that a third party of this kind would most likely emerge on the left, a party of progressives and disgruntled ex-Democrats, a party that was fed up with the centrist and even GOP-leaning inclinations of the Democratic Party establishment, a party that would promote both social justice and something other than the barely-regulated capitalism that is embraced by both of the main parties.

But maybe not.

A new Gallup poll shows that support for the establishment of a competitive third party is particularly strong on the right, among Republicans and more significantly with the Tea Party:

A majority of Republicans said for the first time that a third party was needed in American politics, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.

Fifty-two percent of Republicans, and an even stronger number of Tea Party supporters, support the creation of a major, third political party, underscoring the occasional tensions between grassroots conservatives and the GOP establishment.

An overall majority of Americans, 52 percent, said that a third political party was needed; the most profound shift has come among Republicans.

The number of Republicans who said that a third political party was necessary was at an all-time high since Gallup first began tracking opinion on the issue in 2003. And while support for a third party has crept steadily upward in the GOP, for the first time, it represents a majority opinion.

Supporters of the Tea Party are even more likely to back a third party, the poll found. Sixty percent of Tea Party supporters back a third party, while 32 percent say the existing two parties are adequate. By contrast, 47 percent of Tea Party opponents said the bipartisan system is adequate, and 44 percent favored a third party. 

It seems unlikely that a Tea Party-ish third party would ever emerge on the right to challenge the GOP, and to divide conservatives, not least given that the GOP itself has moved steadily to the right in recent years and has come to embrace the Tea Party with open arms. And yet the Tea Party, or rather the multitude of groups that together make up the loosely-linked Tea Party, continues to wage war against insufficiently conservative (that non-Tea Party) Republicans. Targets include John Boehner, Richard Lugar, and Orrin Hatch, long-time solid conservatives and loyal Republicans who, despite their electoral success and political standing, have failed to embrace the new Tea Party GOP agenda with the fervent absolutism the Tea Party (and, more and more, the new GOP establishment) demands. And, indeed, the Tea Party has shown again and again that it is prepared to suffer at the polls for its absolutism, helping to select unelectable Republican nominees (like Sharron Angle) and, where they fail, throwing up their own candidates to divide the conservative vote. It's better to be "right," it would seem, than to win.

And so I wouldn't put it past the Tea Party, or some elements of it, to break from the GOP and create some right-wing party that adopts an extremist agenda, carves off a significant chunk of the conservative vote, and leaves the Republican Party unable to win even relatively safe seats.

Maybe that's more my hope than a prediction, but it's telling that the Tea Party, which helped the GOP take back the House last year, is increasingly prepared to go it alone.

(photo)

Elephant Dung #29: David Koch, of Koch Brothers fame, smacks down Donald Trump

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

This is soft, mushy dung tied up in a bow.

On Saturday, David Koch told the New York Daily News that Trump isn't exactly his choice for the White House -- and doesn't exactly have what it takes to be president:

"Donald Trump is exposing himself to a lot of attacks," said Koch. "As much as I like Donald, he's sort of asking for it." He laughed again, then observed that "Donald's political positions over the last 10 years have been highly variable and unusual. He's a wonderful guy, but I don't think he should run for office."

Noting Trump's love of press, Koch said the "Celebrity Apprentice" host is "getting more publicity than he ever dreamed about right now." But, he added, "at some point I think he's going to drop out of the race when he realizes that he's really not qualified to be President."

Allow me to quibble:

First, "a wonderful guy"? I suppose right-wing billionaires who prop up the Tea Party and seek to turn government into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America have their own ideas of "wonderful."

Second, I'm sure Trump has dreamed of this much publicity before. He probably dreams of even more.

Third, this won't be about Trump himself coming to realize he's not qualified to be president. Assuming that he thinks he's qualified, and that's a fairly safe assumption, he'll never not think he's qualified. It's part of who he is, a megalomaniac who thinks he can do no wrong and that he's better than everyone else. He's not even running yet, but should he, if/when he drops out it won't be because he's come to some sort of awareness of his limitations but because he doesn't want to subject himself to the toil and travail, and spotlight, of a serious national political campaign, because he doesn't want the various skeletons in his closet to be brought to light, and maybe also because he knows/suspects he'd lose, however much that contradicts his overriding sense of superiority.

But who knows? Maybe he'll run and maybe he'll even do well. Would you really put it past the GOP to go with a loudmouth megalomaniacal celebrity businessman who panders to its extremism?

In any event, it may be helpful to remember what Koch said.

Elephant Dung #28: Is NY-26 the new NY-23?

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Earlier today, R.K. Barry posted on the goings on in NY-23, the district that in 2009 saw one of the very first Tea Party uprisings.

As you may recall, Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman emerged to challenge moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava in a special election to replace John McHugh, who resigned to become secretary of the Army. With lackluster backing from the party that nominated her and some high-profile Republicans switching their support to Hoffman, Scozzafava pulled out of the race, endorsing Democrat Bill Owens, who ended up winning the seat narrowly over Hoffman. Owens won again in 2012, even more narrowly over Republican Matthew Doheney. But it was Hoffman who made the difference. He took just enough support away from Doheney to allow Owens to pull it out.

Well, what happened in NY-23 may also be happening in NY-26, where a rich Teabagger, Jack Davis, is dividing Republican/conservative support just the way Hoffman did. The seat is currently vacant, following the resignation of Republican Chris Lee (of Craigslist scandal fame) earlier this year, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo called a special election for May 24.

There's little doubt that it's a Republican seat to lose. Republican Jane Corwin is ahead in the polls, but not by much. Democrat Kathy Hochul is just a few points behind. But Davis is running a strong third, and he's clearly draining support from Corwin. If his support holds up, Hochul could squeak through. Indeed, what should be a slam dunk for the Republicans has been turned into a toss-up by Davis, and the only way the Democrat can win is if the Republican/conservative vote is split, if Davis, like Hoffman, makes just enough of a difference.

What's interesting, though, is that Davis is an ex-Democrat. He even ran for the seat as a Democrat in 2006 and 2008, losing both times. And his views are hardly mainstream (conservative) Republican. He's opposed to the Republicans' budget proposals and is generally isolationist/protectionist. In that latter regard, he's more Buchananite paleo-conservative than business-oriented Republican. He appears to be a right-wing populist, and is certainly trying to appeal to the Tea Party, but he's certainly less of a Teabagger than Hoffman. And, indeed, the Tea Party itself is split between Corwin, something of a Scozzafava-like moderate, and Davis.

It looks to be a brutal campaign, with the right bitterly divided. The district may be Republican enough that Corwin can pull it out, but it's certainly going to be a lot closer than it otherwise should have been. And, once again, we see conservatives turning a safe Republican seat into an opportunity for the Democrats, and all because the Tea Party and its allies on the right are waging a campaign to control the Republican Party by narrowing its ideological scope and purging it of insufficiently conservative (in Tea Party terms) elements. So determined are they, so convinced of their righteousness, that they're apparently willing to commit political suicide in the process.

We'll have to see if NY-26 is indeed the new NY-23. I suspect that Davis has peaked and that Corwin, who has some Tea Party support, will pull it out. But what's going on there is instructive, and what we're seeing is a preview of much more to come in 2012.

Elephant Dung #27: Rand Paul takes aim at Donald Trump's questionable Republican cred

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I'm not exactly a fan of Rand Paul, the Tea Party Republican senator from Kentucky. But I've got to hand it to him, he's a funny guy and he's got a knack for hilarious one-line swipes at fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, he took aim at Newt Gingrich. Yesterday, his target was Donald Trump:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday took a swipe at billionaire businessman Donald Trump, demanding to see his "Republican registration."

While speaking at a breakfast with New Hampshire Republicans one day after "The Donald" visited the Granite State, Paul riffed off the potential GOP presidential candidate's "birther" questions.

"I've come to New Hampshire today because I'm very concerned," said Paul, according to The New York Times. "I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump's Republican registration."

Paul's comments follow up on some GOP-aligned groups' effort to discredit Trump as a conservative. The free-market Club for Growth has accused Trump of being a liberal for his previous support of universal healthcare and his desire to raise tariffs on China.

It's hard to be a successful Republican when you've got both the Tea Party (via Rand Paul) and the Club for Growth aligned against you. Which is no doubt partly why Trump has so enthusiastically embraced the whole Birther thing and is now channelling his racism (what else is it?) into suggesting that Obama is an affirmative action case.

Now, is Trump a Republican? Yes, no doubt. His wealth-based sense of entitlement and megalomania would seem to indicate that he leans to the right, as would his pro-business (or, to be more precise, pro-Trump business) views. But his own political history is mixed. He has espoused various liberal positions over the years, and he was a registered Democrat for years. As he himself has acknowledged, if prior to his current courting of the Republican base, he's an independent, and he has voted for and financially supported both Democrats and Republicans.

None of this should disqualify Trump from being a Republican today, but of course the Republican Party, and in particular its powerful Tea Party wing, is all about party purification. They're the new Bolsheviks. If you're not Republican enough, Republican as they define it, they'll purge you from the party. We're seeing this happen again and again, with the Tea Party and others on the right challenging even established conservatives like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, and John Boehner. The Republican Party is descending into madness, as I've said many times, and all this ongoing purge is accelerating that descent.

Trump has the media platform, not to mention the temperament, to fight back against those who would challenge him, including Paul. But Paul's onto something. Birtherism aside, Trump just isn't the sort of Republican, if truly Republican at all, to win over enough of the grassroots base to win the nomination, even if he manages to lure some of the party establishment (like Ralph Reed). He's got the anti-Obama attack going, and that's sustaining his popularity in the party, but were he to run that popularity would likely fracture once he was actually subjected to any sort of sustained scrutiny of his record. In that sense, he's got a Romney problem, and it's the sort of problem that's virtually insurmountable. Just ask Mitt.

And just ask Rand, who threw a pile of dung at the upstart Trump. If The Donald insists on remaining in the Republican spotlight, there will no doubt be much more to come.

Elephant Dung #26: Glenn Beck calls Huckabee the worst thing possible... a progressive

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By R.K. Barry 

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

In Glenn Beck's vocabulary, there is no dirtier word than "progressive." All the villains in his warped understanding of history can be shown to carry this particular banner: Wilson, FDR, TR, LBJ, WJC, and, of course, the current occupant of the White House. Their shared sin is some variant of the claim that they use government to devise schemes that ultimately oppress the people. Nazis, Communists, New Dealers, Great Society advocates -- progressives each and every one. It's not very clear how it all works, and it usually involves a chalk board and diagrams, but that's the charm that is Mr. Glenn Beck.

Fascinatingly enough, he has recently taken to calling Mike Huckabee a progressive.

Judging from the audio clip you can access here, it seems that Huck started his slide when he supported Michelle's Obama's anti-obesity campaign. Go figure.

Many of us have been saying for some time that the radical right will get tired of simply going after liberals. At some point, which seems to be happening now, they will go after those putatively within their own ranks who they deem not pure enough -- not conservative enough.

Huckabee has a show on the Fox network, as had Beck until recently, so maybe this is a sort of parting shot at his old company. The truth is that for ideological purists like Beck and Tea Partiers no one is truly safe and everyone must be scrutinized, even as their own circle becomes smaller and smaller.

As I have said before, this is what has been called the tyranny of virtue.

Any willingness to believe that one's opponents might just have something to offer, that they might have something reasonable to say, that they might be of value as human beings, is proof of one's own unworthiness to continue on in the ranks of the anointed. You will recall that former Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist was thrown overboard as a potential Senate nominee for having once hugged President Obama. Tough crowd.

We see this with the Tea Party v. the Republican leadership. And now Glenn Beck, the high priest of the conservative revolution, has just banished one who the rest of us thought was among the elect.

The only question now is, who's next?

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Elephant Dung #25: Maine Republicans slam Republican Gov. Paul LePage

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I wrote last year about "Mainesanity," the takeover of Maine's state GOP by Tea Party wackos. And by that I don't mean your run-of-the-mill small-government Teabaggers, the sort who are extreme but not utterly insane, or not necessarily so, but rather... well, wackos. As Maine Politics explained at the time:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth," suggests the adoption of "Austrian Economics," declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that "healthcare is not a right," calls for the abrogation of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty" and declares that we must resist "efforts to create a one world government." 

This was extreme even by Republican standards.

November 2010 witnessed yet more "Mainesanity" with the election of Tea Party Republican Paul LePage as governor. (It was a narrow win. LePage squeaked by an independent candidate and won with just 38 percent of the vote.) He proved to be a pretty nasty character during the campaign and has done nothing since then to indicate that he's anything but a right-wing extremist who rode the Tea Party wave, got lucky with a split vote, and somehow got himself elected in a state where leading state-wide Republicans typically resemble Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, not, well, Paul LePage.

And like certain other Republican governors -- Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio come to mind -- he's made labor unions (and working people generally) one of his primary targets. But that isn't going over all that well in Maine, including among Maine Republicans, some of whom (presumably not the ones who wrote that platform) are pushing back:

Eight Republican state senators have issued a rare public rebuke of Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), writing an op-ed expressing "discomfort and dismay" with some of his recent comments directed at labor backers.

The controversy centers around LePage's recent decision to order a mural depicting the state's workers' history removed from the Department of Labor, arguing that it was biased against businesses and employers. When asked how he would react if protesters carried out their plan to form a human chain around the mural, LePage replied, "I'd laugh at them, the idiots. That's what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"

"But for him to announce that he would 'laugh at the idiots' should they choose to engage in our honored tradition of civil disobedience is another personal attack that only serves to further lower the bar of our public discourse," write the senators in the op-ed, which ran in The Portland Press Herald and the Kennebec Journal. "We may disagree with civil disobedience in this particular instance, but it is a fundamental right each and every one of us might engage in if we found the issue important enough. 

Now...

These are "proud Republicans" who "want Gov. LePage and his administration to succeed." They want to see his right-wing policy agenda (lower taxes, less government, etc.) enacted. And their criticism of LePage isn't directed at his opposition to organized labor but at "the tone and spirit of some of the remarks he has made." What they seek to uphold is civil disobedience, the right to dissent, a political culture of dignity and respect, a spirit of civility. While they claim that they "are not the enemy of labor and labor is certainly not an enemy to [them]," it is clear that the rights of workers, and particularly organized workers who bargain collectively, not only isn't their priority but may actually be antithetical to their pro-business ideology.

So is this really dung at all? These Republicans like LePage. They just want him to tone it down and respect their common opponents.

Fair enough, but this is a case of a prominent Tea Party Republican going too far and members of his own party publicly chastising him. And even if these Republicans aren't necessarily pro-labor, and even if they support much of the Tea Party agenda, their call for greater dignity and respect, including towards labor, is very much a rebuke to the politics of extremism and absolutism that characterizes so much of the right these days. 

It's good to see that at least some Republicans have had enough.

Elephant Dung #24: Rand Paul slams Gingrich and Fox News over Libya

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Via Think Progress, the radical libertarian senator from Kentucky took swipes at both Newt Gingrich and Fox News at Wednesday's Congressional Correspondents Dinner: 

I was happy to see that Newt Gingrich has staked out a position on the war, a position, or two, or maybe three. I don't know. I think he has more war positions than he's had wives.

And:

There's a big debate over there. Fox News can't decide, what do they love more, bombing the Middle East or bashing the president? It's like I was over there and there was an anchor going, they were pleading, can't we do both? Can't we bomb the Middle East and bash the president at the same time? How are we going to make this work?

I rarely (i.e., never) do this, but allow me to put my hands together for Sen. Paul. Those are some truly biting comments. The one about Gingrich is not just on the mark but hilarious. And the one about Fox News gets it exactly right, the tension not just at Fox News but among Republicans generally (with some exceptions).

Was he just trying to be funny? Maybe. (You can see a wry smile after the Gingrich line.) But he knew what he was doing, and he knew just how to twist the knife.

Nicely done.

Elephant Dung #23: The Tea Party threatens John Boehner

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.) 

Jon Chait had a post the other day arguing that John Boehner has no choice, if he knows what's good for him, but to shut down the government.

Basically, Boehner is in a tough spot. (No, don't feel sorry for him. It's what he gets for being where he is.) He has to try to appeal to independents and moderates if he wants to maintain/maximize the GOP's electoral prospects for 2012, which means compromising with Democrats on the budget, but he also has to try to appeal to the Tea Party wing of the GOP, a significant part of its right-wing base, if he wants to avoid a full-scale rebellion against his leadership (which could also harm the party's electoral prospects), which means refusing to compromise and allowing for a government shutdown:

What is the downside to a shutdown? Republicans get less popular, have a lower chance to win the presidency in 2012, and maybe a higher chance of losing the House as well. What is the downside to cutting a deal? GOP backbenchers revolt against Boehner and depose him as Speaker of the House.

If I'm Boehner, I'm more worried about the guns pointed at my back then the guns pointed at my face. A shutdown increases the small chance that he goes from Speaker to Minority Leader in 2013, but a deal increases the chance that he goes from Speaker to (R-OH) in 2011. The right-wingers do not trust Boehner, and he has very little slack. He also lived through a series of purges and attempted purges in the late 1990s, always taking the form of purists complaining that the leadership had gone soft.

Boehner's top priority is probably staving off internal revolt. That means shutting down the government.

In other words, if he puts his own personal/political self-interest first, he'll appease the Tea Party. That may be so, and he may well do that, but the question isn't just what Boehner will do but what the Tea Party will do to him. And it may not matter what he does -- or, at least, what he does just may not be good enough. The Tea Party already has a bull's-eye on his head:

The tea partyers who helped drive GOP gains in the last election are rallying in the city they love to hate Thursday, urging Republican House leaders – Speaker John Boehner above all – to resist the drive toward compromise in the protracted fight over the federal budget. Even, they say, if that means Congress fails to do its most important job: pay for the government.

And if Boehner opts instead to agree to a deal with President Barack Obama?

"You're going to see massive amounts of (GOP) primaries" in next year's election, said Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots. If the Ohio Republican strikes a budget deal that doesn't cut spending enough, Meckler said Wednesday, "he is going to face a primary challenge."

Boehner, like the rest of the party leadership, has been appeasing the Tea Party all along. But he's also, to his credit, something of a realist in terms of what is and is not doable in Congress:

"We control one half of one third of the government here in Washington," Boehner told reporters at his weekly briefing. "We can't impose our will on the Senate. All we can do is to fight for all of the spending cuts that we can get an agreement to."

He's right, but that isn't going to cut it with the Tea Party. The threats may be enough to keep Boehner from compromising too easily, but compromise he must if he is to avoid a repeat of the Gingrich fiasco of the '90s, when Republicans shut down the government, took most of the blame, and paid for it at the polls. All of this proves once again that the purists in the Tea Party have no clue about governance and are holding the GOP, and its leaders, to impossible standards. And, ultimately, the party will pay for it.

What the Teabaggers think they can gain from this isn't clear, but it seems that they'd rather be "right" (in their own minds) than win. So far, since the emergence of the Tea Party as a major force, Republicans have been more than willing to kowtow to its demands. Indeed, the GOP has fully embraced the Tea Party, and the two have more or less merged into one (though, of course, the Tea Party has always been heavily Republican and decidedly right-wing in its ideology). But how long will that last? At what point will Republicans, who, after all, have elections to win if they actually want to accomplish anything significant, shed this albatross that is clearly bringing them down? 

It may not happen soon, not with all the mutual co-opting that has taken place so far and will the enormous enthusiasm the Teabaggers have brought to the GOP, stirring up a party that seemed catatonic after the '08 election. The Tea Party is just too influential a part of the GOP right now, and that isn't about to change. But I'm just not sure the relationship is tenable, not with the Tea Party threatening any Republican who deviates even slightly from its right-wing orthodoxy, even solid conservatives like Orrin Hatch and successful leaders like John Boehner.

It would probably take another massive defeat or two for Republicans to get the message and run the other way, but, with the party purging itself of insufficiently conservative members and the Tea Party leading primary challenges against those who deviate from its extremism, it is likely that the GOP will nominate more and more unelectable candidates, increasing the likelihood of just such a defeat.

Not that I object to the GOP nominating unelectable candidates. I'm all for it! So let's all enjoy this while we can.

Elephant Dung #22: Judd Gregg warns of Palin's road to nomination

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I'm not sure anyone really cares what former New Hampshire Gov. and Sen. Judd Gregg has to say, not least within the right-wing Republican base, but he is a prominent figure in New Hampshire, that key early primary state, and so perhaps he does matter somewhat. And it seems he doesn't much care for Sarah Palin:

Prominent New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg says that Sarah Palin just might have a clearer path to the Republican presidential nomination next year than commonly understood – an event he warns would lead to President Obama's clear reelection.

Gregg, the former senator and governor of the Granite State, says the muddled GOP presidential field means it's more likely than ever there won't be a clear consensus candidate before the party's nominating convention in August of 2012. If that happens, says Gregg, Palin and her army of supporters might have the upper hand when it comes to settling on a presidential candidate.

"A candidate who runs second or third in a great many primaries could go into the convention with a sizable block of delegates," writes Gregg in an Op-Ed in The Hill newspaper Monday. "Who would this favor? Does Sarah Palin come to mind? Although she is not viewed by most as strong enough to win, she is viewed by many as a person worth voting for to make a statement."

*****

"Finishing second and third isn't really a big deal – until you get enough delegates to be the nominee," writes Gregg. "And picking a nominee who it seems would be easily defeated by President Obama might not be the best statement."

Well, it's not clear if he doesn't like her or if he just thinks she isn't electable, but I suspect the former as much as the latter. Add him to growing list of establishment Republicans, including pundits and intellectuals, who are hoping to keep Palin on the sidelines in 2012, and understandably so, and who are taking admittedly mild but increasingly aggressive shots at her.

Then again, the 2012 Republican field looks incredibly weak at the moment, and Palin, for all her faults, is one of the few, if not the only one, who could stir it up a bit and excite the party's rabid base. (Santorum's trying to be the Palin alternative, but he can't exactly match her star power.)

Oh, does Gregg have an agenda of his own? Of course. He's a Romney supporter, and obviously he'd like to keep out anyone with the potential to beat his man. Which is pretty much everyone, given Romney's standing with grassroots conservatives, what with his Mass. health-care reform and moderate past and all.

So maybe, as he pathetically tries to play GOP kingmaker from his perch in New Hampshire, we'll get Gregg op-eds -- you can read his anti-Palin one here -- against every possible Romney rival. Romney unchallenged, after all, is perhaps the only way he can win.

Elephant Dung #21: O'Reilly challenges Palin over entitlements for the poor

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I'm not sure this was really a sign of the deeper Republican crack-up as much as it was about O'Reilly just being fed up with Palin's platitudinous right-wing bullshit:

It's hard to say why it happened, but all of a sudden Bill O'Reilly decided last night to stop tossing Sarah Palin the usual softball questions and Hannity Jobs she's become accustomed to during her tenure at Fox News. He asked her to finally get specific instead of bloviating in vague generalities about where and how she's achieve the budget cuts she's calling for.

Yes, O'Reilly actually looked compassionate and sane next to Palin, who responded to O'Reilly's comment about how there are "a lot of people on the dole" in Alaska by, predictably, blaming the federal government and calling for more irresponsible environmental misuse ("tap into energy resources").

In the meantime, you have to wonder how much longer Palin is going to enjoy her free ride at Fox. If O'Reilly is toughening up on her, that probably means Roger Ailes is getting close to throwing her to the wolves.

Well, I'm not sure we're there quite yet, but it's abundantly clear that many on the right, and within the GOP, have grown tired of Palin's idiocy, however popular she may remain with the base.

Here, watch and enjoy: