Used teabags

By Carl

I wrote a few weeks ago that the Tea Party was a drying wart on the American political landscape, a view cinched last night:

Tactically, the Republican establishment is routing the Tea Party. The insurgency's backslide has been apparent all year, as its handpicked challengers to GOP incumbents failed to gain traction, groups representing it in Washington overreached, and the deficit concerns stoking its base waned. But yesterday, the "backslide" slid right back off a cliff. Tea Party-backed candidates in three key primary races suffered decisive losses in Kentucky, Georgia, and Idaho.

With the handwriting on the wall, deep-pocketed conservative sponsors huddled last Thursday and stewed over how to force the GOP to double down on hard-right policy positions. Those include opposition to a big immigration deal, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights -- issues toxic to the imperative of broadening the party's demographic coalition. But the movement's electoral drubbing suggests its grip on the Republican agenda may finally be breaking.

The question is what will replace it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the big victors in yesterday's contests, was explicit with Fortune earlier this year that Senate Republicans will not unify behind a governing vision before the November midterms. And even if a more moderate brand of Republicanism is ascendant, the term itself remains relative -- and murky.

McConnell himself ducked the Teabaggers, as Fortune points out, but he still has to deal with the herd of cats in the Senate (and the House) that have managed to survive the apocalypse.

The Teabaggers rose as a result of (ginned up) anger at escalating deficits and government debt, both of which President Obama has reined in. Indeed, the 2012 election showed that Teabaggers were desperately looking for good electoral news and find precious little to rally behind, Obama had done such a good job of mastering the economy and re-energizing the debt reduction machinery.

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Jay Rockefeller speaks the truth about Obama and Republican racism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller unloaded on lawmakers Tuesday, accusing some of blocking efforts to solve urgent problems during Barack Obama's presidency "because he's the wrong color."

Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who will retire at the end of the year, made his comments during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on transportation funding, saying he's confounded by the "lack of will to keep ourselves from dropping into rivers and rolling over bridges that are no longer there."

"It's an American characteristic that you don't do anything which displeases the voters, because you always have to get reelected here," he added. "I understand part of it. It has to do with — for some, it's just we don't want anything good to happen under this president, because he's the wrong color."

Yup.

Don't get me wrong, Republicans would still oppose him ferociously were he white. But basically, if Obama were white, he'd be seen as a mostly centrist, establishmentarian Democrat (champion of market-based health-care reform, generally supportive of Wall Street and Big Business, aggressive on national security, etc.) with occasional (and always measured) forays into progressivism (belated support for marriage equality, concerned about race/racism, cautious environmentalism, etc.) As a black man, though, he's basically seen as the Other, the Enemy, a Communist, a Terrorist, anything and everything that is anti-American from a right-wing perspective.

Rockefeller's statement is something of an exaggeration, I admit. Mitch McConnell's obstructionism in the Senate and House Republicans' general opposition to anything and everything associated with Obama would have the Republican approach if Hillary had won in 2008, and one can expect them to deal with any Democratic president in a similar manner. But certainly Obama's race has aroused an ugly strain of conservatism that had previously been somewhat dormant, or at least quieter: racism and nativism. And it certainly seems to be the case that the virulence of Republican opposition to Obama is very much rooted in that strain.

Jon Stewart launches the comedic genius of #mcconnelling

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Last night, as part of one of the best Daily Shows in recent memory, Jon Stewart introduced us to #mcconnelling -- that is, setting a new ad for Republican Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader running for re-election this year (against a formidable Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes), to music.

Pretty much to any music. It all works. Stewart went with Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" and The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes," both of which worked really well, but of course it's all gone viral since then, as Stewart wanted it to, and now YouTube in particular is full of #mcconnellings, many of them very amusing.

Of course it helps that McConnell himself is such a laughable creature, and in this ad he is shown acting like a regular guy / authoritative CEO just takin' care o' bizness -- and he's neither; he's really just a partisan obstructionist and giant fool -- but also smiling like a fucking idiot.

Here are two of the best videos I've come across, set to Lionel Richie's "Hello" and The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)." Sometimes the Internet is just so awesome. Enjoy!



And here, by the way, is the ad itself:

Mitch McConnell's musket

By Richard K. Barry

Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player.

I would say that politics is becoming increasingly strange, but it doesn't do much to state the obvious. Latest proof is that Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is being criticized for not looking particularly comfortable on stage at CPAC as he carried a flint-lock musket to the podium before making his speech. 

The gun was an award for retiring Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., but McConnell must have though it would be a great idea to use it as a prop as he addressed the conservative faithful. 

But, As Courier-Journalist writer Joseph Gerth put it:

Instead or recalling images of Charlton Heston at NRA conventions, where the late actor incited the crowd by raising a similar gun, McConnell looked a bit more like Michael Dukakis riding in a tank or President Barack Obama shooting skeet at Camp David, or Jimmy Carter doing much of anything.

A little digging by the Courier-Journal could find no other picture of McConnell with a gun, and his campaign has refused to say whether he "hunts, shoots targets or even owns a gun."

On the one hand, the thought that one's familiarity with firearms should be considered an important qualification for high office is pretty scary. On the other, it's sad that McConnell tried to fake it in the way he did.

The other part of it is that McConnell is not the sort of politician CPAC types much cotton to. As Gerth writes:

McConnell is what he is. He’s a denizen of the beltway who revels in the type of insider politics that folks who attend CPAC hate. He is someone who has historically — at least until recently — believed in the largess of the federal government to help his state.

One thing for sure is the emergence of the far right has made establishment Republicans bigger frauds and liars than they had previously been, if that's possible. 

When Democrats and Republicans alike prefer protecting the Pentagon to dealing with the plague of sexual assault in the military

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Yes, once again, the Senate has acted shamefully:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand came up short Thursday in her yearlong campaign to overhaul military sexual-assault policies, falling five votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.

The New York Democrat's bill, which would have removed the chain of command from prosecuting sexual assaults and other major military crimes, was derailed in the Senate on a 55-45 vote, closing out one chapter in a debate that divided the Senate but not along typical partisan lines.

Ten Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and 2016 presidential hopefuls Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, backed Gillibrand's controversial chain-of-command bill. But that wasn't enough to overcome 10 Democratic votes against her, including prominent defense hawks like Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan and Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) also opposed the bill.

Things to note here:

1) This was a procedural vote, not an actual vote on the bill. But Gillibrand still got a majority of senators to support her effort, which is admirable. If the Senate were actually a functioning legislative body instead of a stage for partisan and ideological grandstanding, where all it takes is one member to shut things down with a filibuster, that is, if democracy actually mattered, the outcome would have been different.

2) Yes, this is one area where President Obama does need to show a good deal more leadership. His active involvement, as opposed to merely supporting Gillibrand in principle and hoping for the best, could have been the difference.

3) There is indeed an argument to be made for the military to be able to mange its own affairs, but it's a stupid argument that essentially holds that the military is off-limits to civilian oversight beyond the bare minimum and that the whole culture of the military is special and different and so not subject to the normal rules of society in any regard. This was basically the Republican position.

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How the Republican capitulation over the debt ceiling is good for Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican capitulation over the debt ceiling, finally agreeing to a clean increase instead of demanding a ransom and thereby threatening national and possibly global economic apocalypse, is indeed a very big deal. There was a great deal of Republican opposition in the House, where the increase required Democrats to join forces with John Boehner and the Republican leadership, as well as in the Senate, where enough Republicans joined Democrats to overcome a Ted Cruz-led filibuster, but at the end of the day the hostage-taking extremists who generally run the Republican Party were put in their place for the good of the country, and, yes, let's be clear about this, for the good of the Republican Party, whose corporate backers demand debt ceiling increases, which of course are good for business, and which would not have fared well in the eyes of the public, nor likely at the polls come November, in the event of yet another crisis.

Indeed, while I applaud this increase, as anyone who cares about good governance and the health of the economy must, there's no denying that it was a smart move for the Republican leadership to do what it did. Because while there will be some initial backlash from the Tea Party base, as well as from Tea Party Republicans in Congress like Cruz, and while those facing primary challenges like Mitch McConnell may have given the party's far right some ammunition, the party now avoids a protracted fight over the debt ceiling that would only have ended badly for Republicans, that would have deepened the already deep division within the party, and that would have been a significant distraction from the current Republican agenda.

And just what is that agenda? Basically, with the midterms in sight, to throw every possible lie and distortion at President Obama, to highlight the make-believe scandals (Benghazi, IRS) and to try to turn voters against Obamacare by scaring the shit out of them with sensationalistic falsehoods. That is, to assault the president with everything last smear at their disposal and thereby to try to turn the midterms into a referendum on the president and his record, as they define it and according to their own right-wing narrative, hoping with low voter turnout dominated by low-information voters they might just turn the tables on their nemesis.

That's really all this is: politics. It isn't a sign that Congress is in any way more sensible now than it was before, and it certainly isn't a sign that the Republican Party is in any way saner. As Frank Rich writes, Republicans remain "a hard-right party that will be happy to once again hold the government hostage to its demands if it gains a Senate majority to go with its House majority in November's midterms," while "yesterday's vote on the debt-limit will be remembered, if at all, as a fleeting pause in the Republican right's Obama-era surge." That sounds about right.

Mitch McConnell, obstructionist extraordinaire, says no immigration reform in 2014

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The man running for re-election this year -- and that's important to keep in mind here (he's got a Tea Party to appease, after all) -- is once more playing the obstructionist card:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday said immigration reform poses an "irresolvable conflict" between the two chambers and predicted that it won't be completed in 2014.

"I think we have a sort of irresolvable conflict here," he told reporters at his weekly press conference. "The Senate insists on comprehensive [reform], the House says it won't go to conference with the Senate on comprehensive, and wants to look at step-by-step [reform]. I don't see how you get to an outcome this year with the two bodies in such different places."

The Republican leader, who is facing re-election this year, declined to take a position on the House GOP's broad blueprint for reform that was released by leadership last week. It calls for legal status (but not necessarily with the promise of citizenship) for people living in the country illegally.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Tuesday that House Republican leaders are still discussing the issue with members and haven't yet decided on how to proceed when it comes to advancing immigration legislation.

He may well be right. Maybe there won't be immigration reform in 2014. Maybe the differences between the House and Senate, between the White House and Congress, between Democrats and Republicans, are just too great.

But McConnell has pursued an agenda of all-out obstructionism since the very start of the Obama presidency, refusing to give the president anything that might be considered a win for him, and he now seems to be refusing even to try to bridge the differences on immigration reform, even though there do appear to be areas of possible overlap between the two sides.

House Republicans, an impotent leadership barely managing an extremist caucus, are bad enough. There's really no dealing with them at all on most things, and of course they continue to push their crazy agenda and various conspiracy theories. But it's hardly much better in the Senate, where even a somewhat more moderate Republican caucus has basically given up on any effort to help Democrats, including the president, govern the country, so entrenched has their obstructionism become.

McConnell is basically leading a disloyal opposition that puts party well before country. He's as much a face of today's Republican Party as any of the hardcore Tea Party extremists who dominate its far-right ideological agenda.

Republicans threaten economic armageddon. Again. Because they're Republicans.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans are at it again, threatening to refuse to agree to a debt ceiling increase, and therefore threatening economic catastrophe for the country (and globally), if they don't get what they want. They're not sure what they want, or rather what the ransom will be, they just know they're going to take hostages again. Here's how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (in part sucking up to teabagging wingnuts for political self-interest) put it today on Fox News:

CHRIS WALLACE: So are you saying right here, "We are going to attach something to the debt ceiling"? And if so, what?

MCCONNELL: What I'm saying is we ought to attach something significant for the country to [President Obama's] request to increase the debt ceiling. That's been the pattern for 50 years, going back to the Eisenhower administration. I think it's the responsible thing to do for the country.

[...]

We're never going to default — the Speaker and I have made that clear. We've never done that. But, it's irresponsible not to use the discussion — the request of the President to raise the debt ceiling — to try to accomplish something for the country.

Talk about a ridiculous threat. We're not going to default, but we'll threaten to allow the country to go into default if we don't get what we want? Yeah, sure. There's no way the Republican Party's business backers will ever go along with default, so there's no way McConnell and John Boehner and the rest of the business-oriented leadership will let that happen. Which basically makes this an empty threat, and President Obama and the Democrats should treat it as such.

Otherwise, how is it "responsible" to threaten default? Actually, it's the exact opposite. Furthermore, holding the country hostage and trying to extract concessions from the party holding the White House hasn't been the "pattern" since Eisenhower, it's part of the new anti-Obama Republican obstructionism of which McConnell himself has been one of the most vocal champions.

Basically, the Republicans don't want to give Obama (or, presumably, any Democratic president, but it's worse with Obama given the rabid intensity of the anti-Obama right) anything that could be seen as a victory, and so they've basically turned themselves into the disloyal opposition that is apparently willing to do any amount of harm to the country to score political points.

Republicans may wrap themselves in patriotic rhetoric and symbolism, but their actions show their commitment to party and (extremist right-wing) ideology far more than country. This is just more of the same, as pathetic, and yet as dangerous, as ever.

Red light, green light, 1, 2, 3...

By Carl 

So it seems that the historic bipartisan budget deal in the House last week – historic, in that it's been years since we didn't just pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the government – is falling on enough deaf ears in the Senate to be a problem:

The prospect that the budget would clear the cloture hurdle brightened Monday, when three GOP senators -- Orrin Hatch of Utah, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia -- announced that they would vote yes. A fourth, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, expressed his support on Sunday. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona also said they would vote in favor of cloture last week.

But unlike in the House, where Speaker John Boehner aggressively battled conservative groups trying to kill the bill, GOP leaders in the Senate are signaling opposition, or at least resistance, to the package.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not said which way he will vote Tuesday, but he is widely expected to oppose the measure. Similarly, Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas announced his opposition Monday morning on his campaign's website -- a step his Senate office was unwilling to take. It was later deleted after reporters from The Associated Press asked for confirmation of a Cornyn quote that appeared on the Internet site Breitbart.com.

"Senator Cornyn opposes this budget deal because it breaks previously set spending caps and goes in the 'wrong direction' with regards to entitlement spending," according to the post. His Senate spokeswoman, Kate Martin, would only say that Cornyn would take "a close look" at the measure and is "concerned" that it reverses some of the spending cuts won in a hard-fought 2011 budget pact.

Interesting. It appears that hard-line conservatives in the Senate have drawn a line in the sand. The political implications of this are larger than the legislative implications (the bill overcomes any filibuster and becomes law, with minor amendments).

For one thing, the Republican nominee-apparent, Paul Ryan (by dint of running as the Veep candidate with Mitt Romney), was one of the driving forces behind this deal. The thinking on his part had to include a calculation of the national political implications of being out in front of a bipartisan budget bill ahead of an election that will likely feature Chris Christie, who's main attraction is his ability to bring Democrats on board with his agenda.

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The Republican Party is destroying America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's pretty much as simple as that:

With the federal government on the brink of a default, a House Republican effort to end the shutdown and extend the Treasury's borrowing authority collapsed Tuesday night as a major credit agency warned that the United States was on the verge of a costly ratings downgrade.

After the failure of the House Republican leadership to find enough support for its latest proposal to end the fiscal crisis, the Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders immediately restarted negotiations to find a bipartisan path forward. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Mr. Reid was "optimistic that an agreement is within reach" with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

With so little time left, chances rose that a resolution would not be approved by Congress and sent to President Obama before Thursday, when the government is left with only its cash on hand to pay the nation’s bills.

"It's very, very serious," warned Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. "Republicans have to understand we have lost this battle, as I predicted weeks ago, that we would not be able to win because we were demanding something that was not achievable."

A day that was supposed to bring Washington to the edge of resolving the fiscal showdown instead seemed to bring chaos and retrenching.

McCain, pragmatism renewed, is right. But the problem runs deeper than he imagines. His party has embraced an extremist, anti-American right-wing ideology and policy agenda that is simultaneously nihilistic and absolutist. The pragmatists are recoiling, but they've been playing along for years now, and now it's coming back to bite them. (Consider how McConnell is one of the key players trying to get a deal done. This is a guy who made it his mission, and his party's mission, to obstruct Obama at every turn, to paralyze the government with its disloyal opposition.)

And it's so bad that the relatively sensible House leadership can't even control its own caucus, to the point that John Boehner's speakership is simply a joke.

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Senate close to deal ending the shutdown, raising the debt ceiling, and further enabling Republican extremism and obstructionism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Senate leaders are closing in on a deal to reopen the government and extend the U.S. debt ceiling until next year, marking a major breakthrough in an impasse that has paralyzed Washington and struck fears across the globe.

In a furious round of last-ditch negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were discussing a proposal to reopen the government until Jan. 15 and extend the national debt limit until Feb. 7. The plan would also set up bicameral budget negotiations over major deficit issues, that are to conclude by Dec. 13.

Now, there's hardly any guarantee this would get through John Boehner's House. There's some cover here in forcing Democrats to negotiate, which is usually done on mostly Republican terms, but would the extremist Tea Party minority of Republicans in the House, goaded on by the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin, really agree to anything without major concessions like Obamacare defunding and/or, oh, I don't know, the immediate obliteration of Social Security? (There would have to be concessions on both sides in any deal, and the ones reportedly in this one are relatively minor.)

But let's assume this deal were to go through? Is it a good one?

Well, it could be worse. Apparently Democrats have rejected McConnell's proposal to prevent the Treasury Department by law from using "extraordinary measures" to deal with the debt ceiling and prevent the country from going into default. (When you're dealing with Republicans, you just can't agree to this. Given Republicans' dysfunctional extremism and rabid partisan obstructionism, you have to have recourse to such measures.)

My initial reaction, though, is that it's a bad deal. Republicans hold the country hostage, shut down the government, threaten economic catastrophe, and see their approval ratings collapse with most of the country blaming them for the shutdown, and what they get is more time to keep doing what they're doing and the opportunity to shift the focus to bipartisan negotiations where they're more likely to be able to control the narrative and redirect the blame for this whole mess onto Democrats?

Yes, this seems like capitulation on the Democrats' part.

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Kentucky horse racing

By Mustang Bobby 

It's a little early to be making accurate predictions, but it’s something to at least garner a little attention: Mitch McConnell might be in trouble in his re-election bid:

McConnell faces fights on two fronts in his quest for reelection. First, businessman Matt Bevin announced a primary challenge from the right last week. Bevin's an underdog, but he's got the backing of influential conservatives including Erick Erickson, and as we learned in 2010, longstanding GOP senators can't take reelection for granted these days. Rand Paul also upset establishment pick Trey Grayson in the 2010 primary for the other U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky. 

Assuming McConnell knocks off Bevin, however, he'll face a second challenge from Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state. A poll by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, conducted for the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America and out this morning, suggests Grimes will give McConnell a run for his money. Not only is the senator's approval underwater, he also trails Grimes head-to-head...

If you think it's outside the realm of possibility that a powerful Senate leader could end up losing his own election, give Tom Daschle a call. The former Senate Majority Leader can fill you in on what happens when the folks back home decide you're spending too much time on Capitol Hill and not working for them. 

However, Mr. McConnell's biggest challenge isn't the Democrats, it's the move in from the right flank. Making the Kentucky GOP choose between two candidates opens the door a little for Ms. Lundergran Grimes. Or, as they say at Churchill Downs, when the money is split between the favorites, bet on the long shot.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Sabotaging Obamacare: The reductio ad absurdum of Republican extremism and obstructionism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As long-time Congress-watcher Norm Ornstein (a self-defined centrist who actually works at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute) writes:

When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable -- unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better -- not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place.

But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation -- which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil -- is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate -- even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists -- takes one's breath away.

It does, and it may be unprecedented, but it's now par for the course for Republicans, the disloyal opposition.

New York Times publishes Politico-style smear job targeting Hillary Clinton right on its front page

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As far as political reporting goes, the transformation of The New York Times into another Politico -- gossipy, with a right-wing bent, regurgitating Republican talking points and otherwise kowtowing to the right-leaning Beltway establishment -- is almost complete.

Okay, okay, the Times has had problems for some time now. Remember when it was regurgitating the Bush-Cheney lies about Iraq, cheerleading the country into a disastrous war? Well, it may not be The Washington Post, which editorially has fully embraced the center-right, but the Times continues to get worse on the political reporting front.

And the connection to Politico is clearer than you might think. 

One of the Times's newest reporters, holding the lofty position of national political correspondent, is none other than Jonathan Martin, who had been at Politico for almost seven years and who was one of the key figures at that mostly wretched place.

And yesterday the Times published -- on Page A1 -- a piece by Martin that is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find at... Politico.

Entitled "Republicans Paint Clinton as Old News for 2016 Presidential Election" for the web version, the piece acts as a vehicle for the latest Republican line of attack on Hillary: her time is done, she's a thing of the past, she's way too old.

And just to make that clear, Martin hands the first three paragraphs to three leading Republicans, quoting each one: Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The next two paragraphs reiterate this "theme," telling us what "Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls" are going to say about Hillary and stating, citing "Republican leaders," that Hillary is "vulnerable to appearing a has-been." 

Does the article then at least give us the other side? Maybe quote some Democrats leaders? Maybe something about how Hillary was both a senator and secretary state after being first lady for eight years, and before that in Arkansas, and all that after a long and successful career in law? Maybe something about how her age doesn't really have anything to do with it, about how her extensive experience actually means she's qualified to be president, about how there would be nothing odd about her becoming president at her age and with all that experience behind her, about how others have run for president and won at similar ages and also with a lot of experience behind them, like, say, Ronald Reagan?


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Behind the Ad: Mitch and Rand go fishing for votes

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: The Mitch McConnell Senate campaign.

Where: Kentucky / web ad.

What's going on: Tip O'Neill is famous for having said that all politics is local, and this ad proves the point. In it, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and his best buddy Senator Rand Paul appear together to tell local fisherman that the Senators will stand up for their right to fish wherever they gosh darn want to fish.

The Hill:

The video features clips of McConnell and Paul talking at a rally for a "Freedom to Fish" measure that protects fishermen's access to portions of the Cumberland River around dams.

The legislation was spearheaded by the two Kentucky senators and a handful of other Republicans and passed last week.

In the video, McConnell and Paul criticize the initial plans to build barriers around the dams, a plan officials said was informed by safety concerns, as "government overreach."

"The nanny state is on full display. Trying to tell us what we can do, where we can do it, how often we can do it, as if they're smarter than everyone," McConnell says in a portion of the video.

We have been hearing a lot about how vulnerable McConnell is going to be in 2014 as multiple polls have him below the magic 50 percent threshold. But Democrats won't beat him if they can't find a candidate, and so far that's been the problem.

Anyway, the ad is a cute bit of anti-Washington/pro-fishing propaganda. How could Kentucky voters not like that? And the music sure is pretty.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Loan Harry Reid your testicles

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Frank's second open letter to Sen. Boxer is here. -- MJWS)

At The Washington Post, two writers I admire, Greg Sargent and Jonathan Bernstein, are excited about the prospect of filibuster reform. First, Sargent broke the news that Harry Reid plans to go for the "nuclear option" in July if the Republicans filibuster three upcoming nominees: "Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Thomas Perez as secretary of labor; and Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency." And then Bernstein argued that Reid was playing this just right by giving the Republicans a warning and an opportunity to reform themselves.

The problem, of course, is: really?! Are we really supposed to believe that (1) Republicans will respond to what they should rightly assume is an empty threat? And is it at all credible that (2) Reid will in fact do anything this time other than shake hands with Mitch McConnell? However, it is possible that I'm being unfair to the Majority Leader. According to Bernstein, Reid is constrained because (he doesn't put it this way) he is the leader of a bunch of wimps who wouldn't go to the bathroom without asking permission from the Republicans. And there is likely something to that. But if it is the case that Reid doesn't have the support of his caucus, then why is he saying anything at all?

Another problem is that we really don't know what Reid means by his test case of three nominations. The truth is that the Republicans filibuster every nominee. I know that some nominees do get through, but that is only because some Republicans vote for cloture. Let's be really clear here: Senate Republicans require 60 votes for every nominee. Requiring 60 senators before a vote can be cast is a filibuster. If they get the 60 senators, it was an unsuccessful filibuster; but it was still a filibuster.

So the question is, will Harry Reid launch the "nuclear option" if Republicans unsuccessfully filibuster these three nominees? Because they will filibuster them. And even worse, what if only one or two of the nominees are successfully filibustered? We don't know. But I have a hunch: Reid will declare victory and slink away. I would love to be proven wrong.

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Behind the Ad: Pro-McConnell group runs an anti-ObamaCare spot

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series)

Who: Kentucky Opportunity Coalition

Where: Lexington and Louisville

What's going on: In places like Kentucky it would seem that people like the idea of going bankrupt when they get sick. Or maybe they are stupid enough to believe ads like this one that tell them that affordable healthcare is the worst thing that has ever happened to America.

It is true that many provisions of the health care law will go into effect in 2014 and that implementation of such a significant program will no doubt come with some glitches. The Republicans are hoping to make something out of that.

Politics is always about timing and Republicans better attack now before Americans start liking the idea of having health care, which I think they will.

So far, Democrats don't have a candidate to run against McConnell though Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes seems to be their best chance, if she runs.

McConnell is a nasty piece of work and will be hard to beat, though he shouldn't be.

 

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Behind the Ad: Mitch McConnell plays an unconvincing victim

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Mitch McConnell Senate campaign.

Where: Kentucky.

What's going on: I didn't pay much attention to the recent story of Progress Kentucky, a liberal super PAC, secretly taping a Sen. Mitch McConnell campaign strategy session, but I thought it was a pretty damned stupid thing to do. A lot of things are said in private "blue sky"-type strategy discussions, and I'm certainly glad no jackass stood in the hallway taping things that I might have said in one of them back in the day.

Did members of McConnell's team say creepy things? Yeah. Did they have an expectation of privacy? I certainly hope so.

It's not typically the way I swing, but I'm with Senator Mitch on this one. Leave it up to McConnell, however, to squander that goodwill as he did in an ad attempting to tie President Obama to the taping.

In part, the ad says:

Mitch McConnell is Obama's No. 1 target because Mitch protects Kentucky from bad ideas. Liberals will do anything to beat McConnell.

Yes, well, liberals might, but Obama didn't.

I'm also having a hard time seeing McConnell as a victim in this little drama, given his people's discussions (however obtained or serious) of using a potential opponent's mental health history against her.


(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Thoughts on The McConnell Tapes (cont'd)

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Mustang Bobby 

MJWS:

For MB's previous post on this matter, see here.

I would just like to say, in agreement with him, that the real story here, the real scandal, isn't what Progress Kentucky did (which wasn't some elaborate bugging operation) but what McConnell was plotting to do, what he and his staff were preparing to do to destroy Ms. Judd's character, for the sake of his own re-election efforts. Yes, we expect politicians to dig up dirt on their opponents and go negative, but this was far beyond what we generally accept as normal, appropriate (if still sordid) behavior.

As MB wrote: "[T]his crowd seems especially energized about being bullies, and they relish finding things about her that will appeal to the paranoia and the prejudices of the 'low-information' voter." In other words, how characteristically Republican of them.

**********

MB:

A group called Progress Kentucky says they're the ones who made the recordings of Mitch McConnell's re-election team strategizing about how to campaign against Ashley Judd.

A secret recording of a campaign strategy session between U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his advisors was taped by leaders of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, says a longtime local Democratic operative.

Mother Jones Magazine released the tape this week. The meeting itself took place on Feb. 2.

Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting.

Apparently the strategy session was held in a room where people walking by could hear what was being said without being in the room itself, so whether or not that qualifies as "eavesdropping" under Kentucky law isn't really clear.

Read more »

Thoughts on The McConnell Tapes

By Mustang Bobby 

David Corn at Mother Jones has once again tipped up the rock and caught some Republicans being themselves.

Last fall it was Mitt Romney and the 47% at Boca. This time it is Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his staff doing opposition research on Ashley Judd if she decided to run against him in 2014. They discuss everything from her views to her history of dealing with depression:

The aide who led the meeting began his presentation with a touch of glee: "I refer to [Judd] as sort of the oppo research situation where there's a haystack of needles, just because truly, there's such a wealth of material." He ran through the obvious: Judd was a prominent supporter of President Barack Obama, Obamacare, abortion rights, gay marriage, and climate change action. He pointed out that she is "anti-coal."

But the McConnell gang explored going far beyond Judd's politics and policy preferences. This included her mental health. The meeting leader noted:

She's clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it's been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she's suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the '90s.

There's a lot more, including digging into her views on religion, her patriotism, her living overseas, whether or not she's a resident of Kentucky, and so on.

Read more »