Tea Party Crazies Line up to Challenge GOP Senators

Actions have consequences and we are again seeing the consequences of the GOP establishment's cynical opportunism that allowed the Christofascists and their equally insane Tea Party cousins to take over the grass roots and base of the GOP.  What am I talking about?  As Politico reports, primary challengers are lining up to take on sitting senators next year in eight of the 12 races involving incumbent GOP senators.   Make no mistake, I do not like the incumbents, but they look downright sane and rational compared to their knuckle dragging challengers, some of whom ought to be in a mental ward in my view.  The Christofascists and Tea Party will ultimately be the death of the GOP.  Here are additional excerpts from Politico:

GOP senators have aggressively tried to keep their conservative base at bay to ensure there’s virtually no space on their right for a primary foe to emerge.  That didn’t work so well.

Republican primary challengers are lining up to take on sitting senators next year in eight of the 12 races involving sitting GOP senators, gunning for party leaders like Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, veterans like Thad Cochran in Mississippi and Pat Roberts in Kansas and deal-makers like Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Texas Sen. John Cornyn became the latest target this week, when a fiercely conservative congressman, Steve Stockman, suddenly announced plans to challenge the Senate’s second-ranking Republican in next March’s primary.

The intraparty battles are the latest iteration of the tea party-versus-establishment war that has rocked the Republican Party since the 2010 elections and thwarted their efforts to retake the majority. After watching two sitting senators — Dick Lugar of Indiana and Bob Bennett of Utah — lose to insurgent candidates in the last two cycles, tea party-backed candidates are looking to repeat their luck in 2014 and fundamentally reshape the Senate. The threat of a challenge alone has implications for policy-making in Washington — its enough to scare off attempts by many GOP senators to cut deals with Democrats and risk a revolt from the right.

While many of the GOP senators facing primary threats hold safe Republican seats, party veterans fear the endless internecine warfare will distract from the overall goal of returning to the Senate majority for the first time since 2006.

Graham, who has seen his poll numbers sag back home, called the primary battles a “fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” arguing that hardline conservatives are targeting “anyone who has ever worked with a Democrat on anything.”

“It is interesting that most of us are preparing for campaigns from Republicans instead of Democrats,” [Lamar] Alexander said Tuesday.

Tea-party foes are unapologetic about their tactics.  “There is a real hunger here in Kansas for new leadership — for true, conservative leadership,” said 42-year-old Milton Wolf, a physician who is challenging Roberts in a primary and who won the endorsement of the Senate Conservatives Fund on Tuesday. “

Vulnerable Democrats and open Democratic seats in South Dakota, West Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana have given the GOP its best shot at retaking the majority for years to come.

But the party may be forced to divert precious resources to help shore up GOP senators in primaries, whether it’s dispatching senators to help raise cash for their colleagues or even spending money through the National Republican Senatorial Committee to protect incumbents. Even in states that lack a GOP incumbent, Republican primaries loom large . . . Democrats hope that the GOP nominees will emerge damaged by the time of the general election.

The growing number of primary battles reflects the lack of influence GOP leaders have over activists on the ground. GOP senators say it comes down to the fact that the conservative grass roots don’t listen to party leaders in Washington the way the Democratic base defers to the White House and its own leadership.

The GOP base has truly become inhabited by lunatics, religious zealots and extremists.  Now, even the party leadership cannot control the asylum inmates.

The Fiscal Cliff: The GOP Plan to Nowhere

As the date that the country may go over the waterfall and fiscal cliff gets closer, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Congressional Republicans have no real plan to deal with the nation's budget deficit.  Other than saying "Нет!" (pronounced "nyeht") like backward looking Communist Politburo members of old to anything proposed by the White House, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, John Boehner and company have no plan.  As was the case with Mitt Romney's ill-fated campaign proposal, the math for the GOP tax cut extensions for  the wealthy simply doesn't work absent drastic cuts to programs for the poor and middle class.  And the election results on November 6th underscored just how thoroughly the majority of Americans rejected the Romney/Ryan agenda.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the GOP's mindless know nothing agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Sunday, Dec. 2, was Day 26 of the fiscal cliff hostage situation. And the Democrats, who gained an immense advantage in the negotiations over future tax rates by virtue of their victories in the election, seem, finally, to be developing some swagger. Their tone toward the Republicans has become somewhat patronizing. First, there was President Obama’s mid-week invitation of Mitt Romney to lunch at the White House, which was simultaneously magnanimous and a pretty naked power move. Romney couldn’t refuse to come without looking like an extremely sore loser. The single photo released, which quickly went viral, showed Obama giving Romney the kind of good-try handshake that coaches deliver to their opponents after a thorough spanking.

Now, the Republicans are compromising and demoralizing their base. The Obama White House is largely standing back and watching with glee as congressmen line up to abandon Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge. (My personal favorite is Rep. Chris Gibson of New York, who said his pledge doesn’t count anymore because, thanks to redrawing of the map, he now represents a different district.) Republicans have generally conceded that a deal will have to include more revenue, but insist now that new revenue arises solely from closing loopholes and capping deductions.

The Democrats are essentially pocketing the Republicans’ capitulation on revenue and asking for much more—they’ve adopted the old GOP strategy of simply repeating their desires as a method of bargaining.

[T]he Democrats are confident that the Republicans’ cave on revenue is just the beginning. “I don’t think Republicans are willing to shut down the government over 2 percent of the country,” said top economic aide Jason Furman at an on-the-record briefing last week.

The psychological warfare can also be seen in the patronizing tone Democratic officials are now taking toward the Republicans. The Republican leaders, who used to throw terror into Democrats, are now objects of pity. There was Sen. Claire McCaskill, fresh after dispatching Tea Party loon Todd Akin, on Meet the Press. “I feel almost sorry for John Boehner,” McCaskill said. “There is incredible pressure on him from a base of his party that is unreasonable about this. And he’s gotta decide, is his speakership more important, or is the country more important.” 

The reality should be seeping in to viewers of the Sunday shows that the Republicans don’t have a game plan. They don’t have a single, specific proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff. And even if they had one, they don’t have a roadmap to get there. They keep expecting Obama to come back with something more to their liking, which they’d also reject. Many Republicans literally don’t understand what is happening. Sen. Charles Grassley tweeted over the weekend that he was frustrated that President Obama hadn’t embraced the recommendation of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. Apparently, he is one of the many people in Washington who doesn’t understand that Bowles-Simpson recommended letting the Bush tax rates on the wealthy expire, while also proposing to cap or eliminate deductions primarily enjoyed by the wealthy.

Above all, the Republicans have yet to grasp that the field is tilted against them. Republicans have every reason to expect, based on their scouting of past Obama performances, that he will start moving toward them and then, essentially, bargain with himself. But now he doesn’t have to. Right now, the policy choice isn’t between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and a preferred Republican proposal. No, the choice is between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and the fiscal cliff, which Republicans would like even less and the Democrats could live with for a while.

The Republicans are losing, and time is running out. But instead of putting the quarterback on the field and rolling out an aggressive two-minute drill, they seem to be preparing to punt.

It's Not Just Jeb Bush - Good Bye to the GOP

I noted just the other day how Jeb Bush - perhaps the most intelligent and rational member of the Bush family - had some very unkind but wholly true things to say about the Republican Party and its descent into a party of lunacy and irresponsibility.  As David Frum - another rare commodity: a sane conservative - takes up the issue and notes that the Palmetto Queen, Lindsay Graham, has finally grown a spine and come out against the GOP demagoguery on never, ever raising taxes.  In fact, this piece at Yahoo News lays out some of Graham's belated resistance to his party's insanity:

As a conservative Republican, Lindsey Graham has never had a problem promising not to raise taxes. Like almost every other Republican member of Congress, he has signed the anti-tax pledge put forth by Grover Norquist's group Americans for Tax Reform.  But now Graham says the debt crisis is so severe that the tax pledge — which says no tax loopholes can be eliminated unless every dollar raised by closing loopholes goes to tax cuts -- has got to go.

"When you eliminate a deduction, it's okay with me to use some of that money to get us out of debt. That's where I disagree with the pledge," said Graham.

Graham said eliminating some deductions should free up money to lower tax rates — but also to pay down U.S. debt.  "I just think that makes a lot of sense. And if I'm willing to do that as a Republican, I've crossed a rubicon," said Graham.

This puts Graham at odds with his party's leadership. Just last August, when the eight Republican presidential candidates were asked if they would reject a deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue, all eight said they would walk away. But Graham is now raising his hand for increased revenues — he says he could support a plan that included $4 in spending cuts for every $1 in increased tax revenue.

"We're so far in debt, that if you don't give up some ideological ground, the country sinks," said Graham.

Obviously, if he keeps it up, Graham will find himself subject to a primary challenge unless he  decides to leave the GOP like one Delaware GOP official has decided to do.   Here are highlights from David Frum's coverage of this departure that was described as necessary to "maintain personal integrity"  (needless to say, truth and integrity are mutually exclusive with most of the GOP and its Christianist overlords):

Michael Stafford, a former official of the Delaware Republican Party, explains his decision to reaffiliate as an independent:

From the moment the Tea Party emerged on the scene, I had a premonition that I would eventually have to leave the GOP. But my mind conjured innumerable reasons for delay- for putting off the day of reckoning in the desperate hope that some game-changing miracle would occur, such as a victory by Governor Jon Huntsman in the Republican presidential primary.

But no miracle happened. Among all the difficult truths I’ve had to face, perhaps none has been harder than the realization that I, and those dissidents like me, are unrepresentative outliers far removed from, and largely unable to influence, the main currents of opinion within the GOP.

Ultimately, leaving the GOP was necessary in order to maintain my own integrity. Leaving is also a public act of personal protest. I am under no illusions about its broader significance- it will have no impact on the trajectory of the political narrative in this nation. But that does not make it futile. On the contrary, as the shadows lengthen, such minor individual acts of defiance and dissent are more critical now than ever before.

I myself reached a similar decision well over a decade ago.  I knew that I could not stop the insanity and religious extremism that was becoming the hallmark of the GOP.  And I knew I could not be true to myself - not to mention morality and decency - if I remained.  Thus, like Stafford, I left the GOP.  As did almost my entire extended family.

Coming Defense Spending Cuts May Backfire on GOP

The GOP likes to wrap itself in patriotism when its not wrapping itself in the cloak of religion.  And in this area with its large number of military personnel, many in the military and their families seem to have a knee jerk reaction of mindlessly supporting the GOP.  Even when it is not in  their best interest to do so (a similar argument can be made for working class Americans who vote for the GOP which despises them).  That blind allegiance may be about to come home to roost if a budget agreement isn't worked out because automatic spending cuts will soon be triggered and defense spending will get hammered.  For Virginia, this is a huge issue since so much of the state's economy relies on defense related federal spending.  Virginians may be about to get what they asked for by supporting demagogues in the GOP like Eric Cantor.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the results of GOP intransigence that may be about to hit.  Here are excerpts:

Senator Lindsey Graham rode last week like Paul Revere from South Carolina’s wooded upstate to its gracious Low country to its sweltering midsection, offering a bureaucratic rallying cry for his military-heavy state — the defense cuts are coming. 

On Jan. 2, national security is set to receive a heavy blow if Congress fails to intervene. That is when a 10-year, $600 billion, across-the-board spending cut is to hit the Pentagon, equal to roughly 8 percent of its current budget. 

Mr. Graham’s colleagues in the Senate have been strangely quiet about the impending cuts, set in motion last summer when the Budget Control Act ended an impasse over raising the nation’s borrowing limit with a deal designed to hurt both parties if they did not strike an agreement later on. A special select committee was assigned to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. If it failed, the cuts would come automatically, half to national security, half to domestic programs.  It failed, and the reckoning is approaching.

[N]no one knows what “sequestration,” the term for the automatic cuts, will look like, not lawmakers, not the military. But Republicans who helped create it as a bludgeon to force a bipartisan budget accord are now desperate to undo it. Indeed, some of the loudest advocates for blocking the cuts — like Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee — voted to create them;  .   .   .   .  

But the threat they created may be doing its job. Mr. Graham is openly talking about revenue increases to offset the costs. Even South Carolina’s ardently conservative House members, Mick Mulvaney, Joe Wilson and Jeff Duncan, said last week that they were ready to talk. 

On its face, the automatic cuts do not sound that bad. If they are put into effect  .  .  .  .  operations and maintenance, research and development, procurement, fuel, military construction — would face immediate cuts as deep as 13 percent .  .  .  .  

Mr. Graham warned the citizens of Beaufort that the Marines would have to shut either their Parris Island or San Diego training camps, and would face the same choice between their airfields at Beaufort or Cherry Point, N.C. In fact, under the law, all bases face the same cuts because Congress has prohibited base closings.   The dire warnings are not coming from Mr. Graham alone. They are coming at least as loudly from Leon E. Panetta, the secretary of defense. 

“The consistent pattern here is they [the GOP] have chosen to defend special interest tax breaks over defense spending,” Mr. Van Hollen said. “They made that choice.”

For now, Democrats and Republicans are waiting for the other side to blink. And the pressure may be working. Mr. Graham said the sentiment for raising revenues by closing tax loopholes or imposing higher fees on items like federal oil leases is expanding in his party.  Asked about the “no new taxes” pledge almost all Republicans have signed, he [Graham] shrugged: “I’ve crossed the Rubicon on that.”

The GOP has played games with people's lives - all to avoid tax increases for the very rich and large corporations.  Meanwhile, the rest of us have been paying the price.  It's time for this GOP agenda to end.  

Lindsay "Palmetto Queen" Graham - No Viable Republican Candidate in the Field

Senator Lindsay Graham - known as the Palmetto Queen on this blog - is likely to be the focus of the wrath of some of the more untethered attendees of the CPAC coven gathering for speaking the truth. Namely, that out of the dozen plus would be GOP presidential candidate that came to bow and genuflect to the loonies at CPAC, none is viable in terms of attracting independent and moderate voters. I can almost hear the hissy fits beginning as the haters and racists at CPAC turn their attention to Graham for who I hold no love but at least congratulate for calling it like it is. Extremism (both religious and otherwise) and a disregard for objective reality may play well with those who attend CPAC and largely make up the GOP base, but it's still a real negative out amongst those who engage in intelligent intellectual activity. Here are highlights from CNN on Graham's message to the insane and irrational within the GOP:
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Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said President Obama is "beatable" in 2012, but that he doesn't see a viable Republican candidate in the field.
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"I'm looking for the most conservative person who's electable and that person is yet to emerge," Graham said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."
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When asked about the results of the Saturday's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll, Graham didn't throw his support behind any of the top vote-getters.
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Graham said Republicans have a "tall task" in the next election to win over the American electorate. "They're very much looking at the Republican Party anew. We're getting a second chance with the American electorate," he said. "I think President Obama is beatable, but we got to nominate someone that can win over independent voters."

Senator Lindsay Graham Denounces Glenn Beck

South Carolina's closeted princess Senator Lindsay Graham took the unusual move of condemning Faux New's Glenn Beck and the birther movement. Would that more members of the GOP leadership - gay or straight - would wake up to the lunacy of the majority of the current GOP base. Ms. Graham is hardly a favorite of mine, but it is perhaps encouraging that even he is waking up to the fact that the public perception of the GOP is being severely damaged by the mindless and bigoted behavior of the base, including the birthers and the tea party crowd. Here are some highlights from Huffington Post:

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Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) offered unusually blunt assessments of the fringe elements of his party and conservative media on Thursday, calling the popular and bombastic Fox News host Glenn Beck a "cynic" whose show was antithetical to American values.

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Appearing before a crowd of Washington's elite power players and opinion-makers, Graham spoke largely without filter, offering acidic takes on subject well beyond Beck. The Senator called the birther community that questions the president's U.S. citizenship "crazy" and implored them to "knock this crap off" so the country could get on to more important matters. I'm here to tell you that those who think the president was not born in Hawaii are crazy," said Graham, who went on to dispel another myth: that Obama is a closet Muslim.

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Graham also ventured to call "crazy" a recent article on Newsmax, laying out how a military coup could overtake the Obama administration.

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Reflecting comments made earlier in the day by his colleague and close friend, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Graham said he was deeply worried about "the passions of cable TV" whipping up the emotions of the public. "If you get rewarded for being a jerk you are going to keep doing it," he said, before labeling "Talk radio, MoveOn.org, and the 24-hour news cycle" as the main culprits in polarizing the nation.

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Unless and until a majority of the GOP Congressional leadership likewise grows some balls and condemns the lunatics and bigots within the GOP base, I suspect the slide in the Party's image with the general public will continue.