Orange Julius Enjoys His Retirement

So what's former GOP House Speaker John Boehner up to these days? Jeremy Fugelberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer catches up to him and finds out that ol' Orange Julius can't stay away from the game he's played nearly all of his adult life.

West Chester's own John Boehner may be out of the House, but he's certainly staying out of the house (It's a joke, folks!). 

The former House speaker plans to barnstorm across the country in late July and early August, campaigning and raising money for House Republicans, Politico reported this morning. 

He'll travel the country on his bus, Freedom One – an annual practice while he was in office.

That's right, he'll be hitting the Midwest on bus tours to help Republicans.

I wonder if that will include Don Man the Con Man?

He still has a small war chest to power his work. Our USA Today Network reporter Deirdre Shesgreen reported earlier this month that Boehner has more than $1.6 million in his House re-election account and just shy of $1 million in a leadership PAC account at the end of March, according to campaign finance disclosures. 

The bus tour news is the latest showing Boehner has no intention of staying out of the limelight. Boehner made a cameo in a skit video featuring President Barack Obama, aired at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30.

This should be fun.  Considering Boehner was basically the second major casualty of the Trump GOP (the first being GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor, remember him? Even I missed the call that he would get primaried out in 2014, and it's one of the reasons I kept saying Trump was for real back last year!) I can't see how he's going to be of much help to Trump.

But hey, if he wants to wreck his credibility backing The Donald, let his juice get squeezed.

The Cantor Buried Tales: Epilogue

Recently ousted former GOP House Majority leader Eric Cantor certainly landed on his feet after his quasi-shocking primary loss to David Brat in June.  As expected, the welcoming door on Wall Street is wide open to somebody with his "credentials".

Late Monday night it was reported that former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor would take a job at investment bank Moelis. 

The news has already prompted the predictable eye-rolling about the "revolving door." And to the Tea Partiers who ousted Cantor in a primary earlier this year, the news that he is going to Wall Street is vindication that he was never a populist like them. 

But anyway, Moelis has put in a filing with the SEC, detailing his pay package (Via Erik Schatzker). 

Tell him what he's won, Johnny!

Group LP has agreed to pay Mr. Cantor an annual base salary of $400,000. Group LP has also agreed to pay Mr. Cantor an initial cash amount of $400,000 and grant Mr. Cantor $1,000,000 in initial restricted stock units (“RSUs”), based on the average closing price of the Company’s common stock on the five trading days prior to his start date. The initial RSUs will generally vest in equal installments on each of the third, fourth and fifth anniversaries of his start date. For calendar year 2015, Group LP has agreed to pay Mr. Cantor minimum incentive compensation of $1,200,000 in cash and $400,000 in incentive RSUs, payable in equal quarterly installments. The incentive RSUs will generally have the same vesting schedule as incentive RSUs granted to Group LP’s other Managing Directors.

That adds up to a grand prize package worth $3.4 million, kids.  Not bad for somebody who worked 120 days out of the year, huh?  Plenty of scratch to tide him over should he be thinking about breaking back into politics.  And let's face it, Cantor, like 99% of Republicans (and 80% of Democrats for that matter) is already employed by Wall Street, this just makes it official.

You didn't think he wasn't going to get a multi-million dollar lobbying job, did you?  Much more on this from Esquire's Ben Collins:

One month ago, Eric Cantor was the highest ranking member of the House of Representatives. Now, Eric Cantor is one of those senior executives he railed against, who "created this mess" that is our broken economy and corrupt congress. 

The only political entities Moelis & Company founder Ken Moelis has donated to in 2013 or 2014 are the National Republican Congressional Committee, Eric Cantor, or Eric Cantor’s creatively named PAC, ERICPAC. 

Cantor is now out of office, but he was the highest ranking Republican in the House up until one month and one day ago. This is the rule, not the exception. There is nothing stopping it from happening again, as it is surely happening right this second.

And now he's literally working for one of his biggest campaign donors.

Stop and let that sink in for a second.

A Mess Of Your Own Making

Jewish Republicans are suddenly alarmed that with Eric Cantor gone, there won't be any Jewish Republicans in Congress anymore.  Keep in mind there are plenty on the Democratic party side, including DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and NY Sen. Chuck Schumer, but Cantor was it.  And that's got Jewish Republicans kind of upset.

The stinging defeat last month of Eric Cantor, the House majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish politician in American history, has created the possibility of Republicans having no Jewish representation in the House or Senate for the first time in more than a half-century.

“Sometimes, a Jewish person just wants to be able to go to Congress and speak with a Jewish person,” Beverly Goldstein, a Republican donor from Beachwood, Ohio, explained in the hotel lobby after a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

“And Chuck Schumer is not it for us,” she added, referring to the Democratic senator from New York.

Excluding the soon-to-be-retired Mr. Cantor, there are now 31 Jewish members of Congress — 30 of them Democrats and an independent senator from Vermont, Bernard Sanders, who generally votes with Democrats.

And of course, the party of right-wing Christian Dominionist theology is having trouble figuring out why there's no room for non-Christians in it.

Decades after a Reagan era that was relatively rich in Jewish representation on the Republican side of both the House and the Senate, Republican Jews are grappling with what it means for a party that casts itself as the protector of Israel to potentially not have a single one of its children in Congress. Some Democrats, of course, depict Mr. Cantor’s loss as the removal of a final fig leaf from what has become a homogeneously Christian party with little room for religious and ethnic minorities. Others said the loss of Mr. Cantor, a conservative standard-bearer deemed insufficiently conservative by voters who preferred a Tea Party challenger, revealed the Republicans’ exclusion of moderates of any stripe.

There are Jewish candidates running for Congress on the GOP side this year.  Meet Adam Kwasman, proud Tea Party Republican.

Mr. Kwasman, a product of Jewish day school in the Tucson suburbs who says he tries to make Shabbat dinners with his parents whenever possible, is the Jewish candidate most affiliated with the Tea Party, opposing gun control and any form of amnesty on immigration and talking about bringing “Kosher Tea” to Congress. He was endorsed by Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who has been the subject of a Justice Department investigation because of his crackdowns on undocumented workers. House analysts consider Mr. Kwasman the underdog against a more moderate Republican in the August primary.

No room for moderates here, regardless of your religious creed.  Maybe that's the message.

The Old North State (Of Insanity, Con't)

The Department of Justice has finally dropped the hammer of NC Republicans and their odious voter suppression law with a lawsuit announced on Monday by AG Eric Holder.

A North Carolina judge will decide whether portions of the state’s voter ID law, described as “discriminatory” by critics, should be implemented or delayed, following suits filed by the federal government and others. 

The law requires voters to show photo ID at the polls, eliminates same-day registration and pre-registration for students as young as 16, and cuts the early-voting period from 17 to 10 days. Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice, NAACP, and League of Women Voters will argue for a preliminary injunction against portions of the law in a U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem on Monday. A trial will be held in the case in 2015,according to the Associated Press. 

“The state legislature took extremely aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African-Americans,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday. “This is an intentional step to break a system that was working and it defies common sense.” 

The law, 49 pages long, includes a number of other changes to the state’s elections and campaigns, including increasing the amount of money donors can give to candidates by $5,000, eliminating a one-box straight-ticketing voting option on ballots, and repealing the requirement that candidates appear in their own campaign ads and say they “approve this message.”

This isn't a voter ID law, this is a "help Republicans and their donors" law, and the NC GOP knows it.  It's why the Moral Monday movement in NC has been protesting for over a year now, and are moving now to register as many voters as they can for November.

In 2011, Republicans, with the help of free-spending non-profit advocacy groups, seized both chambers of the legislature, also called the General Assembly, from the Democrats. Republican Pat McCrory won the governor’s mansion two years later, giving his party its first lock on North Carolina’s government since 1870. That set the stage for last year’s overhaul of the state’s election laws: In a single bill, lawmakers eliminated same-day registration, youth preregistration and out-of-precinct voting, and reduced the number of days of early voting. They required voters to show government-issued photo identification starting in 2016; student ID cards from state universities won’t be honored. Republicans say the law was aimed at creating consistency and eliminating fraud. State statistics show almost no documented cases of impersonation fraud at the polls. 

Now, the Moral Monday movement, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters have the DoJ backing them up.  Hopefully, my home state of North Carolina will find a way through this mess and vote out the GOP.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Benghazi...

The only even remotely legitimate complaint Republicans had about BENGHAZI!!!11!!one! was put to rest today when the White House announced that the suspect behind the embassy attack was captured over the weekend and will face criminal charges in US federal court.

U.S. forces working with the FBI captured a key suspect in the deadly 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, U.S. officials said Tuesday. 

Libyan militia leader Ahmed abu Khattalah was captured over the weekend, officials said. It is the first arrest and detention by the United States in connection with the Benghazi attack. 

Abu Khattalah will be brought to the United States to face charges "in the coming days," said Edward Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council. 

Abu Khattalah, who faces three federal criminal charges, will be tried in U.S. courts, said Attorney General Eric Holder.

Imagine that.  We didn't have to invade Libya or effect regime change or bomb the bejeezus out of anyone to get the guy, we nailed him with special forces and the FBI.  Detective work and human intelligence.  You know, actual police work.  Conservatives of course are absolutely horrified.

Speaking on Fox News’ Outnumbered just moments after news broke that the United States had captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, Kennedy mused, “you have a former Secretary of State who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing.”

The sentiment — that Obama timed Khattala’s capture for political benefit — was quickly echoed by other conservatives. Rory Cooper, an aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, tweeted, “While it’s great to see they caught the Benghazi suspect, it’s important to remember, he wasn’t really hiding."

How far Kennedy has fallen since her days with Kurt Loder at MTV News, on and Eric, shut it, you got fired.  But seriously, we captured the guy to help Hillary in 2016?  Conducting military operations to help your party's political prospects is something a Republican would do, sure.  Pretty sure President Obama wanted to get the bad guy.  Like he did with Bin Laden.  You know, after Bush failed to do so for seven years.

And speaking of Republicans who have no idea how the universe actually works, Huckleberry Graham walked right into the jet intake again today.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) raised questions about how the administration plans to deal with Khatallah, arguing he should be held as a prisoner of war in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rather than brought into the federal criminal justice system. 

“He should be going to Gitmo and be held as an enemy combatant,” Graham said. “And it would be the biggest mistake for the ages to read this guy his Miranda rights.” 

Graham said he’s concerned Khatallah is being held on a ship, but said that “at the end of the day, I’m glad we captured somebody.” 

“I hope that person can provide us good intelligence,” he said. “We should have some quality time with this guy — weeks and months. Don’t torture him, but have some quality time with him.”

Yeah, let's just illegally detain him without due process for the rest of his natural life.  That's a great idea, which is why Barack Obama is president and Lindsey Graham is a meatball with legs.

They're just mad that Obama beat them again, like they've been for the last six years.

Closer To The Edge Of Crazy

If there's one thing everyone in pundit land can agree on, it's that Eric Cantor's primary loss has pushed the party even further to the right, to the point where GOP members of congress are now openly predicting impeachment articles would pass the House.

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) said Monday he thinks impeachment of President Barack Obama “probably could” pass in the House of Representatives.

“He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws, and ignoring the checks and balances,” Barletta said during an appearance on a local radio show, audio of which was first posted by BuzzFeed. “The problem is, you know, what do you do for those that say impeach him for breaking the laws or bypassing the laws. Could that pass in the House? It probably, it probably could.”

Barletta also mentioned the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to a little known tea party candidate David Brat, calling the upset a “big message” that people in Washington “better pay attention to.”

Although the Republican congressman said impeachment could pass among fellow lawmakers, he was unsure if the public would be in favor of it.

Last year, a similar declaration about impeachment was made by Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), who told constituents in his district "you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it."

You'd better believe that the GOP will soon put this theory to the test, more than likely next year after midterm elections.

Note than Barletta can't name any specific impeachable offenses, but nobody's really got time for that, do they?  The only question is how quickly after the dust settles on the 2014 midterms that this happens, and how quickly the country turns on the GOP as a result.

Last Call For More Cantor Buried Tales

After becoming the first House majority leader to lose a primary, newly minted Republican non-entity Eric Cantor agreed to surrender his House GOP leadership post by the end of next month, with elections to replace him next week on the 19th.

Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) will step down from his leadership post at the end of July, ending a swift rise through the ranks of national politics and upending a leadership team that has run the House since Republicans took control after the 2010 tea party wave election.

Less than 24 hours after losing a primary contest to a tea party-backed economist, Cantor announced Wednesday afternoon that he will resign as leader July 31, but keep his seat until his term ends in January. He said that House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) would make an “outstanding” successor.

“While I may have suffered a personal setback last night, I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of this country,” Cantor told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “I’m honored that I’ve had the privilege of serving the people of Virginia’s 7th District.”

House Republicans plan to hold new leadership elections next Thursday, according to senior aides. In addition to McCarthy, several senior Republicans are mulling bids for top posts, so it wasn’t immediately clear which positions will be open next week.

With rumors that Orange Julius will be giving up his Speaker's gavel at some point and now Cantor toast, the long knives are going to be out this week as the House turns into House of Cards.

Meanwhile, Cantor's replacement, Dave Brat, today showed he's a college professor who knows pretty much nothing about economics in an interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd.

TODD: Where are you on the minimum wage? Do you believe in it, and would you raise it?

BRAT: Minimum wage, no, I'm a free market guy. Our labor markets right now are already distorted from too many regulations. I think CATO estimates there's $2 trillion of regulatory problems and then throw Obamacare on top of that, the work hours is 30 hours a week. You can only hire 50 people. There's just distortion after distortion after distortion and we wonder why our labor markets are broken.

TODD: So should there be a minimum wage in your opinion?

BRAT: Say it again.

TODD: Should there be a minimum wage in your opinion?

BRAT: I don't have a well-crafted response on that one. All I know is if you take the long-run graph over 200 years of the wage rate, it cannot differ from your nation's productivity. Right? So you can't make up wage rates. Right? I would love for everyone in sub-Saharan Africa, for example -- children of God -- to make $100 an hour. I would love to just assert that that would be the case. But you can't assert that unless you raise their productivity, and then the wage follows.

TODD: Sounds like you're making a case against a federally mandated minimum wage.

BRAT: I'm just making the case I just made that you can't artificially make up wage rates, they have to be related to productivity.

So if there's a positive relationship between productivity and wages, we should easily be able to see it.  Let's take a look at America, for example.



Huh.  Go figure.the productivity of American workers has more than doubled since 1970, but real wages have remained flat.  And that's a 40+ year trend.

It's almost like Dave Brat has no idea what he's talking about.  If wage rates are related to productivity, I sure as hell can't find the evidence.

 

Last Call For Eric Cantor

GOP House majority leader and conservative pain in the ass Eric Cantor just lost his primary in Virginia to Tea Party upstart David Brat.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) lost to tea party primary challenger David Brat in the Republican primary on Tuesday.

The race was called at about 8:05 p.m. Cantor lost to primary challenger David Brat.

Who is Brat? He is an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College. Brat was regarded as a long shot candidate but Cantor's campaign still spent over $1 million on advertising to stress that the top House Republican is a "strong conservative."

Cantor's campaign also sent out mailers arguing that he's largely responsible for blocking immigration reform, signs, perhaps, that Brat seemed like more of a threat than he appeared publicly.

Cantor and his advisers gave dual messages going into Tuesday's primary night.

"I'm just not worried," Cantor adviser Ray Allen told The Hill.

Well Eric, you should have been, because you lost 56-44.  The good news?  Cantor is toast.  The bad news?  David Brat is a lunatic.

Mr. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., had support from radio host Laura Ingraham, who hosted a rally with him in a Richmond suburb last week that centered upon Mr. Brat’s opposition to immigration reform.

Mr. Brat appeared more interested in campaigning to make a point than in winning. The Washington Post reported last month that he no-showed meetings with key conservative activists in the capital. His excuse: He had final exams to grade.

There are clues to Mr. Brat’s ideology in his academic CV. His current book project is titled “Ethics as Leading Economic Indicator? What went Wrong? Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition and Human Reason.”

His other published works include the titles “God and Advanced Mammon – Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand.”

The worst news?  Unless Cantor pulls a Lisa Murkowski and runs as an independent, it's over for him and Brat could win big.

If there is a saving grace, Republicans will now get pulled so far to the right that the Dems may end up keeping the Senate.

And how are Democrats taking this?

Guess.

Wake me when movement progs unseat our own leadership. Mock the tea partiers all you want. They get it done. We don't.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) June 11, 2014

Last Call For The Cantor Buried Tales

Remember when Eric Cantor was the obvious Tea Party successor to Orange Julius's post as Speaker of the House?  Not so much anymore.

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican.

They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, pushed out of last year’s governor’s race by a similar party schism, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the results of the vote, in which longtime Cantor loyalist and incumbent Linwood Cobb was unseated by tea party favorite Fred Gruber.

“Clearly, there is a battle taking place for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Bolling said in a statement. “While the voice of every Republican should be heard, our challenge is to figure out how to be a conservative party, without allowing the most extreme voices of the day to control our party and determine its future direction.”

The tea party faction trumpeted the election results as a victory for core conservative principles of limited government, low taxes and a free-market economy.

“There’s been an ongoing battle for years between conservatives and establishment, and it’s a sweet victory when you win but you also win on the front porch of Eric Cantor,” said Jamie Radtke, a leader in the state tea party movement and former U.S. Senate candidate.

Cantor has become a "Washington insider" now, someone who is standing as an impediment to the unleashing the full crazy of the Tea Party.  Someone who has failed to repeal Obamacare, who has failed to impeach the President, who has failed to take the country back to 1860.  Eric Cantor is now the enemy.

Of course, Cantor will win his primary and re-election easily.  And he'll still be part of the GOP "leadership" because the notion that the Tea Party is somehow separate from the Republican mainstream is idiotic.  They're all the same.  In the end, Republicans will come around, united by their desire to lynch President Obama.

The rest is merely semantics.

The Brutus To Orange Julius

The National Journal's Tim Alberta reports there's now a serious push by the hard right lunatics in the House to oust John Boehner as Speaker and put the House in full crazy mode for the last two years of President Obama's term.  Apparently backing Cantor as a replacement is no longer an option:

But there's a more audacious option on the table, according to conservatives involved in the deliberations. They say between 40 and 50 members have already committed verbally to electing a new speaker. If those numbers hold, organizers say, they could force Boehner to step aside as speaker in late November, when the incoming GOP conference meets for the first time, by showing him that he won't have the votes to be reelected in January.

The masterminds of this mutiny are trying to stay in the shadows for as long as possible to avoid putting a target on their backs. But one Republican said the "nucleus"of the rebellion can be found inside the House Liberty Caucus, of which he and his comrades are members. This is not surprising, considering that some of the key players in that group—Justin Amash of Michigan, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky—were among the 12 Republicans who refused to back Boehner's reelection in January 2013.

Amash, chairman of the Liberty Caucus, warned at the time that there would be a "larger rebellion" down the road if Boehner's leadership team did not bring conservatives into the fold. Such an insurrection never materialized, however, as Boehner deftly navigated a series of challenges last year and wound up winning over some of the malcontents.

But conservatives, increasingly irritated with what they see as a cautious approach taken by their leadership, are now adamant that Boehner's tenure should expire with this Congress.

"There are no big ideas coming out of the conference. Our leadership expects to coast through this election by banking on everyone's hatred for Obamacare," said one Republican lawmaker who is organizing the rebellion. "There's nothing big being done. We're reshuffling chairs on the Titanic."

It's clear these nutjobs not only expect to have full control of Congress, but full control of the agenda as well.  A lurch to the insane right from the hard right now would be a political gift to President Obama for sure, but a disaster for the country.

And yeah, if Boehner is replaced with someone even crazier than Eric Cantor, you can bet it'll be 1999 all over again, impeachment proceedings and all.

Ryan Cooper over at The Week says the Tea Party folks have no chance to unseat Boehner, because who would want his job?

This, of course, is Boehner's ace in the hole. Anyone credible and ambitious enough to become speaker also realizes that taking the job would be a horrible mistake. Why? Because House ultraconservatives are constantly making completely unreasonable demands, then blaming the leadership when they don't get the impossible.

We'll see, but I'm learning towards Cooper rather than Alberta on this.

Formula For Disaster

When the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act as antiquated and worthless in 2013, they put the burden on Congress to come up with a new formula for determining which states would be subject to pre-clearance.  The problem is, the formula Congress is looking at means Eric Cantor and the GOP House would have to admit that voting discrimination still exists, and in Republican-led states.  He's not about to do that.

The House majority leader has been a rare Republican voice urging assurances that last year's Supreme Court decision to nullify core provisions of the landmark voter protection bill won't foster discrimination at the polls. 

Yet he's given no indication how Congress should proceed or what he would support – a vague position that will be tested now that specific legislation has been introduced with the backing of several prominent Republicans. 

Cantor's office said he's still examining the proposal, would require states with five violations of federal voting laws over the last 15 years to get pre-clearance from Washington before altering their election procedures. All eyes will be on the majority leader's response, which could be the make-or-break moment for the proposal's chances this year. 

There are compelling reasons for Cantor to get on board. As the majority leader, Cantor is on the front lines of the fight to increase the GOP’s control over the lower chamber in November. Republican leaders won't want to be seen blocking a bill designed to protect voters – particularly one with bipartisan support – especially at a time where they’re trying to expand their party’s minority outreach.

The bill also includes a sweetener for Virginians. Under the old provisions shot down by the Supreme Court, the Old Dominion was one of nine states with histories of voter discrimination required to get federal approval before they changed their election procedures. Under the new proposal – which aims to update the formula dictating which states are subject to the extra scrutiny – only four states would be forced to seek such approval. Virginia is not among them.

The states that would remain are Texas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, all states that have actively tried to suppress the minority vote and have been called out as doing so.  There's zero way Republicans in those states will go along, so Cantor will have a revolt on his hands.  On the other hand, if he doesn't bring this up for a vote, Democrats will be able to say "Well, which party really cares about voting rights?  It's not the GOP."

The GOP rebranding continues.

The GOP Knows They're Screwed, But They Don't Know How To Fix It

It's so obvious even Chris Cillizza can figure that out.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke Saturday -- a speech in which he tried to offer a vision for how the party can start winning again. Here's the crux of the Cantor argument: 

Winning elections is about convincing the voters that the we have their back, that we’re on their side. If we want to win, we must offer solutions to problems that people face every day. We have not done this recently and it has allowed Democrats to take power, it has allowed them to push their partisan politics, and even worse to enact their leftist agenda. 

Cantor is right. Republicans have lost recent elections -- both in Virginia and nationally -- because they have been unable to a) prove to voters they have a positive vision for the country and b) effectively push back on the picture that Democrats have painted of them as cold, unfeeling plutocrats. In the 2012 presidential election, for instance,Barack Obama won 81 percent of those voters who said a candidates who "cares about people like me" was the most important attribute in deciding their vote. 

But, simply diagnosing the problem is not terribly new -- or all that effective. The problem for Republicans at the moment -- particularly those in Congress -- is that the party is most animated not by its positive vision, to the extent one currently exists, but rather by its opposition to President Obama's vision. (Cantor described Obamacare as "one of the greatest attacks on hardworking taxpayers this country has ever seen.") And, attempts to re-imagine party positions on issues like immigration -- by the likes of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio -- have been met with passionate disapproval by the party base.

The reality of course is that the GOP doesn't want to fix their problems with women, LGBTQ, Latinos, African-Americans, young people, and anyone with a working conscience.  They want to punish them until those groups stop voting, and then win from there.  Nobody believes the GOP has the backs of anyone but themselves.  They'll never win on that nonsense.  But convincing voters that armies of leftist brownshirt thugs will harm them and their loved ones, and that the people supporting Democrats no longer should qualify as Americans?  Well, they'll still get at least 40% of the vote that way, every single time.

The only reason Republicans haven't won on the fear vote nationally yet is because the last guy from their side is currently painting cats and dogs, and from 2001 to 2008 they had that fear vote locked up tight.  It can happen again, and at the state level it already has.  Outside of Delmarva, New England and the West Coast, and a couple of Rust Belt states, the Democrats are fighting for their lives.

Better vote while you still can.

Last Call For Messing With The Man

President Obama's analysis of the GOP is not wrong here.

With one vote on Friday, the Republican-led House launched the latest spending battle in Congress -- one that could bring a government shutdown in less than two weeks.

By a 230-189 tally almost strictly on party lines, the House passed a short-term government spending plan that would eliminate all funding for Obamacare.

The measure now goes to the Democratic-led Senate, which is certain to reject the provision that defunds President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement of his first term.

The best part is that Republicans think they are perfectly reasonable burning the country's economy down.

"The American people don't want the government shut down, and they don't want Obamacare," the Ohio Republican said to applause and cheers. "The House has listened to the American people. Now it's time for the United States Senate to listen to them as well."

In a display of the raw politics of the battle, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia called out Senate Democrats facing re-election next year by name, asking how Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Kay Hagan of North Carolina will vote on the House proposal. 

"It's up to Senate Democrats to follow House Republicans and show some responsibility," Cantor said.

The President laughed that nonsense off.

Later Friday, Obama accused conservative Republicans of holding the nation hostage by trying to make passing a federal budget and increasing the debt ceiling contingent on defunding health care reforms. 

"You don't have to threaten to blow the whole thing up if you don't get your way," Obama said in a campaign-style speech at a Ford plant in the Kansas City, Missouri area, adding that legislators in Washington were focused on politics and "trying to mess with me," rather than helping the middle class.

Ding ding ding!  It does have to be said, folks:  this is about attacking the President.  That's all that the GOP cares about.  If they can't get rid of the President, they will make America so awful that they think we'll do it for them.  It's better to get rid of the Republicans, of course.  And even Republicans are starting to think this is a really bad idea.

But please proceed, gentlemen.

Orange Julius Squeezed Out?

We've heard stories about John Boehner stepping down as House Speaker before, so I'll believe it when I see it.  Like it or not, he's too interested in self preservation to go without a fight.  The difference is this time, Boehner's former aides and compatriots are saying he no longer thinks the fight may be worth it.

All summer, rumors have been swirling around the Hill and K Street that the speaker has had enough and that 2014 would be his last year with the gavel. Then the message went out in July: Boehner (R-Ohio) is not leaving.

Boehner told his inner circle at dinner that there was no truth to the talk, and authorized his people to spread the word around town. A story appeared in Politico the next day, reaffirming Boehner's stated commitment to stay past 2014.

"These inside-the-Beltway parlor games take place every two years. The speaker has made clear publicly he intends to remain in his position in the next Congress," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told HuffPost.

But not everyone close to the 63-year-old speaker is so sure. "He has to say that. He can't not say that. The minute you say [you're leaving], you're done," said one former GOP leadership aide who is part of Boehner's circle. "Everybody around him thinks this is his last term."

Despite the effort by Boehner to tamp down speculation that he will depart the House after the 2014 midterms, multiple cooks in Boehner's kitchen cabinet think the Republican is still strongly considering making his exit just over a year from now.

"I'd be surprised if he did [stay]," said one former senior aide to Boehner, who, like many consulted for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their relationships. (HuffPost spoke to four top former Boehner aides, two current aides, five former leadership aides close to Boehner's inner circle, and a GOP operative on familiar terms with his circle.)

Again, Boehner may be forced out more than anything.  Yes, he helped get the House back for the GOP in 2010, but it's been disastrous for them since.  2012 was not a good year for them.  It it wasn't for the state gerrymandering, the GOP would have been in as much trouble as they were in 2006 and 2008.

Besides, it's gotten to the point where neither faction of the GOP can stand the guy anymore.  The McCain wing ignores him, and the Tea Party wing openly hates the guy.  But who would step in, Cantor?  He's blown it too.

Who would want the job, anyway?

Last Call For The High Risk Pool Fools

House Republicans really do seem to be completely incapable of any sort of competent governance, because even when they try it, they fail miserably.  For example, House Republicans have gotten a lot of 100% deserved criticism that their plan to repeal Obamacare does nothing to help the tens of millions of Americans who would still be without affordable health insurance.  So what's Eric Cantor's answer?

Why, giving them crappy, unaffordable health insurance, or course!

The original bill, championed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), transferred $3.6 billion from Obamacare’s $10 billion prevention and public health fund to the law’s temporary high-risk pool aimed at covering sick people for the remainder of this year.

The altered version wipes out Obamacare’s prevention fund entirely and uses the money to fund state-based high-risk pools which have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.

“To address the concerns raised several weeks ago, an amended version of the bill has been drafted,” Cantor wrote Friday afternoon in a memo to House Republicans, which was provided to TPM. “The amendment does not utilize or fund the existing [Obamacare high-risk pool] program, which will expire at the end of the year. Instead, the amendment provides funding for state based high risk pools, the framework that represents the conservative policy answer to helping Americans with preexisting conditions.”

Now keep in mind that these high-risk state pools were temporary measures to provide some insurance to people who had none.  It didn't work out too well, but that's why it was a temporary measure.  The cogitators in the House GOP want to make this permanent and call it a solution.

State-based high risk pools, which already exist in many states, are a favorite GOP alternative to Obamacare. While they make some strides in covering people with pre-existing conditions, they are very expensive without younger and healthier people in the system as a counter-balance. (The temporary high-risk pool created under Obamacare quickly ran out of money, too.) States tend not to be able to afford — or want to spend the money — to adequately cover their residents under high risk pools.

So once again these clowns choose pretty much the worst way to govern.  Surprise!

Last Call

It looks like the House GOP has figured out that actively legislating discrimination about which women deserve protections under the Violence Against Women Act is not only unrelentingly awful, but political hemlock as well.

House Republican leaders signaled Tuesday night that they are ready to let their VAWA bill die and clear the way for a broader, bipartisan Senate bill. The Senate legislation includes new protections missing from the House bill for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), Native American and immigrant victims of domestic violence.

Here’s the House GOP plan procedurally, based on House Rules Committee actions Tuesday night: The House is expected to hold two VAWA votes on Thursday. The first will be to strip out the language of the Senate VAWA bill and replace it with the House GOP language. Since that isn’t expected to pass, lawmakers will then vote on the Senate VAWA bill itself. A GOP source involved in negotiations conceded that there is greater support for the Senate bill, and that the Senate version is likely the one to pass. That means VAWA could land on President Barack Obama’s desk by the end of this week — the version sought by the White House and Democrats.

Pretty much total surrender here on the issue as House Republicans have the approval ratings of somewhere between ebola in a nursery school and National Chewing On Tinfoil Month.

That House Republican leaders are allowing the Senate bill to get a floor vote is significant because they refused to let that happen in the last Congress, even though lawmakers in both parties believed it would pass. The move also signals that GOP leaders are ready to stop fighting over an issue that has damaged them politically. Congress failed to reauthorize VAWA in 2011 due in large part to House Republican resistance to the new protections in the Senate bill, and Democrats clobbered them over it throughout the 2012 election season.

People forget in what was supposed to be a big year for the GOP in 2012, not only did they lose Senate seats, but House seats as well.   Letting VAWA die for a year now looks like a fatal mistake for the GOP, one they’re now scrambling to correct after badmouthing the Senate version as recently as last week.  What’s behind the change in heart?  Perhaps correctly assuming he would personally shoulder the blame should the bill die, Eric Cantor has now relented.

It’s not a victory yet for the good guys, but things look a lot better than just last Friday, when the house version was passed.  Suddenly, this same House version doesn’t have the votes to survive the reconciliation process with the Senate bill. 

Funny how that works.

No, He Cantor

Ryan Lizza's piece in the New Yorker on GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor is thick with disappointment and hubris, and the goal appears to be absolving him of the guilt of 2012 to allow him to take credit in 2014 and 2016.

Cantor is the House Majority Leader, which means that he is responsible for the mundane business of managing the schedule, the House floor, and committees, where legislation is generally written. He has used his position to transform himself into the Party’s chief political strategist. Cantor is frequently talked about as a future Speaker; he could even be a future President, some of his aides say. Since the election, as Republicans have confronted Obama in a series of budgetary battles—another will unfold this week—few have tried as hard as Cantor to reposition and redefine the defeated party.

“He’s a fantastic Majority Leader,” Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a close friend, said. “Eric keeps the trains running on time very efficiently.” As Mitt Romney’s former running mate and the architect of the budget policies that some Republicans blame for their loss in 2012, Ryan is well aware of his party’s problems. “What Eric is really focussed on is that we need to do a better job of broadening our appeal and showing that we have real ideas and solutions that make people’s lives better,” Ryan said. “Eric is the guy who studies the big vision and is doing the step-by-step, daily management of the process to get us there. That is a huge job.”

To recap, the losing VP candidate thinks Cantor is "fantastic".  That's all you need to know about the House GOP over the next 2 years, more likely 4, as they will continue doing what they are doing now, only worse and more of it.

Cantor was one of the most influential political forces in Obama’s first term. In June of 2011, the President and the Speaker began working toward a Grand Bargain of major tax increases and spending cuts to address the government’s long-term budget deficits. Until late June, Boehner had managed to keep these talks secret from Cantor. On July 21st, Boehner paused in his discussions with Obama to talk to Cantor and outline the proposed deal. As Obama waited by the phone for a response from the Speaker, Cantor struck. Cantor told me that it was a “fair assessment” that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama’s deal. He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and “have it out” with the Democrats in the election. Why give Obama an enormous political victory, and potentially help him win reëlection, when they might be able to negotiate a more favorable deal with a new Republican President? Boehner told Obama there was no deal. Instead of a Grand Bargain, Cantor and the House Republicans made a grand bet.

The bet failed spectacularly. Just as Cantor had urged, Obama and Romney spent much of the campaign debating tax and spending policies that the House Republicans had foisted on the Romney-Ryan ticket. What’s more, by scuttling the 2011 Grand Bargain negotiations, Cantor, more than any other politician, helped create the series of fiscal crises that have gripped Washington since Election Day. The failure of the Grand Bargain led to a byzantine deal: if the two parties could not agree on a new deficit plan, then a combination of tax increases and spending cuts—cuts known, in budget jargon, as a “sequester”—would automatically kick in on New Year’s Day. (The sequester was postponed until March 1st.) Looming beyond this “fiscal cliff” was an even more perilous fight, over the expiration of the debt ceiling, which is the limit on how much money the government can borrow, and which Congress must regularly raise if the Treasury is to pay its bills.

Lizza is correct here.  The mess we're in now is a direct result of Cantor's politically terminal case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.  Four years of manufactured crises designed to destroy the Democratic president backfired, so now those who voted for him must be punished by another four years of crises.

It really is negotiation with terrorists, and always has been.  And the man behind this tactic has been Cantor, not Boehner, from the beginning.

The Kroog Versus Humble Pie

Given the complete surrender on the debt ceiling by the House GOP this weekend (via Greg Sargent)...

Big news. Eric Cantor has just made it official: The GOP leadership is prepared to agree to a three month debt ceiling hike. This is a major de-escalation of the crazy and effectively means Republicans have all but taken the threat of default off the table completely.

First, the key bit from Cantor’s statement:

We must pay our bills and responsibly budget for our future. Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget. Furthermore, if the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that time, Members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job. No budget, no pay.

Here’s why this matters: This increases the debt ceiling to authorize borrowing to pay the country’s bills well into April. That punts the debt limit deadline until after the deadline for funding for the government to run out, which is on March 27th. In other words, Republicans will now use the threat of a government shutdown along with the coming expiration of the sequester to extract the spending cuts it wants. Presuming this all gets resolved by then, or soon after, it means the threat of default is no longer a factor. This will all but certainly get resolved in advance of this three month deadline, and a long term debt limit hike will get attached to that agreement.

It's good to know that Paul Krugman will admit when he was wrong about the President.

When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. I thought that by ruling out any way to bypass the debt limit, the White House was setting itself up, at least potentially, for an ignominious cave-in. But it appears that the strategy has worked, and it’s the Republicans giving up. I’m happy to concede that the president and team called this one right.

Yeah, well, us amateur pundits kinda knew this was going to happen.

The key point to remember here is that Obama achieves his main goals simply by surviving. Above all, health reform gets implemented, and probably becomes irreversible.

That's been the case for two years now, Kroog.  Pay attention.

Last Call

And Podcast Versus The Stupid is back from holiday break with Episode 20, Fiscal Cliffmess, Happy New Year!

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

Bon and I tackle the Fiscal Cliff, the epic fail of the House's unfinished business, the Newtown shooting tragedy, why being near Justin Beiber is bad for your heath, Hillary Clinton being awesome, and more!

Download the episode here, or subscribe in iTunes!

Will Orange Julius Leave By The Door Or The Window?

As I predicted yesterday, the GOP has indeed left House Speaker John Boehner out to dry as his last shreds of political clout have been stripped from him in the embarrassing collapse of his own Plan B fiscal cliff slope bill last night in the House.

In a stunning defeat, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) called off a vote Thursday night on his Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff, citing a lack of support from his own party. Boehner issued the following statement as an emergency meeting of the House Republican Conference was ending:

The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass.  Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.  The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation's crippling debt.  The Senate must now act.

Eric Cantor then adjourned the House for Christmas break.   As BooMan points out, Boehner's days as Speaker are now most likely numbered as a result:

The president has no incentive to bargain with Boehner anymore. Why make concessions to someone who can't deliver on his promises? The administration has now been through this process twice with Boehner. If they are going to cut a deal now, it is going to have to be on Nancy Pelosi's terms and designed to win with only a sliver of Republican votes. That would cost Boehner his speakership. 

I agree.  Boehner has shown that his own party will never sign off on a large bipartisan deal that will get 350 or 400 votes in the House.  I could have told you that on November 7th.

So now, President Obama looks like a genius.  He's broken John Boehner's back on this, and most likely Republicans will have a new Speaker in January.  It also means that the Democrats will put a deal that heavily favors them on the table, and it will most likely squeak through the Senate and House sometime late next week, and the President will sign it on the 31st.

The Republicans will eat their crap sandwich, and then they will take John Boehner out back and ask him if he wants to leave the Speaker's chair by the door or the window...unless you think the GOP can keep more than a handful of defectors from taking the deal.  That kind of leadership power is gone now, broken.  Cantor, most likely, will replace him.  But maybe Cantor will like being the majority leader too much and let the rabble appoint a winger nutjob as Speaker.  That'll be the person who takes the fall in 2014.

But if somehow that doesn't happen and the Republicans decide they'll go over the cliff, they'll get an even worse deal and then they'll take it anyway.  Another door or window choice, again only a handful of defectors needed.  Again, no unity.

And if they somehow don't take that deal, then they'll get every ounce of scorn and blame from the American people, and the GOP will get the door or window choice from the voters.  The choice will be taken from them by that point, it will be the window.

No matter what happens now, President Obama wins.  Republicans have the opportunity to limit further damage here.  They've not been intelligent enough to take it so far.

The door or the window, boys?  Your choice.  But you're leaving.