The Gaetz Of Heck, Con't

A not-so-gentle reminder that many Republicans really hate GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, and that at this point they are more than willing to air his dirty laundry.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-O.K.) claimed on national television Wednesday night that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-F.L.) bragged about chasing down erectile dysfunction medication with an energy drink to prolong his sexual endeavors.

Gaetz brought a motion to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives on Monday, and a day later, he and a posse of like-minded Republicans voted to axe the California congressman a day later.

The ousting of McCarthy has left the GOP party in chaos and plenty of ire was directed at Gaetz, as even fellow MAGA loyalists were furious over the ensuing infighting after the GOP left itself with no leader and no clear path forward.

Frustrated with Gaetz’s actions on Wednesday, Mullin unleashed wild allegations against the congressman when speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju outside the Capitol.

Mullin began by saying that after Gaetz was accused of sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl, “the media didn’t give [him] the time of day.” Gaetz has consistently denied any wrongdoing, arguing that bad actors in the Justice Department were trying to ruin his life. That allegation prompted an investigation by the Department of Justice, which decided not to file charges in February.

“And there’s a reason why no one in the Congress came and defended him: Because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with,” Mullin added. “He would brag about how he would crush E.D. medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night. This was obviously before he got married.”

He continued, “And so, when that accusation came out, no one defended him. And then no one in the media would give him the time of the day. All of a sudden he found fame because he opposed the speaker of the House back in November. And he’s always stayed there. And he was never gonna leave until he got this last moment of fame by going after a motion to vacate.”

In a statement to CNN read by anchor Anderson Cooper on air, Gaetz denied his colleague’s claim.

“I don’t think Markwayne Mullin and I have said 20 words to each other on the House floor. This is a lie from someone who doesn’t know me and who is coping with the death of the political career of his friend Kevin,” Gaetz’s statement read. “Thoughts and prayers.”

 

And while the DoJ investigation into Gaetz has been dropped, the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz has been going for over two years now, and there's a growing movement (powered by Newt Gingrich of all people) to expel Gaetz based on the results of the probe. 

Whether that happens, well, all bets are off here.

Retribution Execution, Con't

 Remeber that the entire GOP is now dedicated to furthering Donald Trump's petty vengeance, and the incoming Republican administration of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia is no exception.

The top staff investigator on the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been fired by the state’s new Republican attorney general from his position as the top lawyer for the University of Virginia, from which he was on leave while working on the congressional inquiry.

The office of the Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, said the firing of the investigator, Timothy J. Heaphy, was not related to the Jan. 6 investigation, but the move prompted an outcry from Democrats in the state, who accused him of taking the highly unusual action as a partisan move to further former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to undermine the committee’s work.

“This is purely payback for Jan. 6 — there is no other reason that makes any sense,” said Scott Surovell, a top Democrat in the Virginia State Senate, who said that he knew of no other similar example in recent history where a new attorney general had immediately removed a school’s top lawyer. “In our state, we normally leave those decisions to the school’s board of visitors and president.”

Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for Mr. Miyares, said: “The decision had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 committee or their investigations.”

In Virginia, the attorney general oversees a range of lawyers across the state, including the top lawyers at the colleges and universities that make up the vast public higher education system. The posts are typically held by career lawyers who are rarely replaced when new attorneys general take over.

In addition to dismissing Mr. Heaphy, Mr. Miyares also had the top lawyer at George Mason University removed.

Mr. Heaphy, a Democrat who has made political donations to Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr., had been the top lawyer at the University of Virginia since 2018. He served as a United States attorney in Virginia during the Obama administration and is married to the daughter of Eric K. Shinseki, the retired chief of staff of the Army who served as President Barack Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs. In 2017, on behalf of the City of Charlottesville, he completed a highly critical report of how the police handled the white nationalist rally that turned violent and led to the death of one woman and injured dozens.

In a written statement, the University of Virginia sidestepped the issue of whether his dismissal had been motivated by politics, but made clear that it had no role in it.

“University leaders are grateful to Tim for his outstanding service to our community and disappointed to see it come to an end,” said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the university. “If you have further questions about this matter, I would check with the attorney general’s office, as this was their decision to make.”

Mr. Heaphy — who attended undergraduate and law school at the University of Virginia, who has long lived in Charlottesville and whose son attends the school — declined to address why he was dismissed, saying that he was “disappointed” that his time at the university had come to an end and that he was confident that the school would continue “to thrive in the days to come.”

In two statements released on Sunday, the attorney general’s office said the firing was unrelated to the Jan. 6 inquiry. In the first, to The Associated Press, Ms. LaCivita said that Mr. Heaphy had been a “controversial” hire and that the “decision was made after reviewing the legal decisions made over the last couple of years.”

“The attorney general wants the university counsel to return to giving legal advice based on law, and not the philosophy of a university,” she added.

In a subsequent statement, Ms. LaCivita said: “It is common practice for an incoming administration to appoint new staff that share the philosophical and legal approach of the attorney general. Every counsel serves at the pleasure of the attorney general.”

Of course it was retribution. Let's also remember that Miyares fired nearly the state's entire Civil Rights division when he took office this month too, all over the Charlottesville white supremacist riots and Trump's "very fine" people.

They're not pretending anymore. When Newt Gingrich says things like the January 6th Committee is "risking jail" once Republicans get back into power, he's not joking.

Retribution in the name of Dear Leader Trump is all that matters to them now.

The Democrats' Complete Power Outage

Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman is right: Republicans use every ounce of power given them to destroy Democrats and their voting coalition. Democrats meanwhile twiddle the goddamn thumbs and apologize to Republican voters.

Democrats look like they’re the ones with the greater share of political power in America today, holding both the White House and Congress. So why do they so often seem weak and ineffectual, while Republicans ruthlessly employ every shred of power they have?

You could hardly have asked for a more vivid illustration than what’s happening right now. In Congress, a couple of key Democrats, especially Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), proclaimed their intention to sabotage the party’s agenda if it isn’t drastically pared back, lest anyone think it’s too “partisan.” They could unshackle themselves from the filibuster and actually do what they were elected to do, but they choose not to.

Meanwhile, Republican-run states are rushing to create a far-right dystopia where every customer at your local supermarket is packing heat, school boards and election boards are run by QAnon lunatics, mob rule is valorized and institutionalized, voting rights are dramatically restricted, and abortion is outlawed.

And they’re doing it with the help of a conservative Supreme Court majority that barely bothers to pretend that it cares about precedent, the Constitution, the law or anything other than remaking America to conform to its ideological agenda.

We’re seeing what a profound difference there is in how Democrats and Republicans view power. When Democrats have it, they’re often apologetic, uncertain and hesitant to use it any way that anyone might object to. Republicans, on the other hand, will squeeze it and stretch it as far as they can. They aren’t reluctant, and they aren’t afraid of a backlash. Whatever they can do, they will do.

Think of how the two parties react when presented with an obstacle to getting what they want. Democrats often issue statements of regret: We’d like to move forward, but what can we do? This is how democracy works.

Republicans, on the other hand, react to obstacles by getting creative. They search for loopholes, they engineer procedural workarounds, they devise innovative ways to seize and wield control. When they come up with an idea and someone says, “That’s madness — no one has ever dared try something like that before,” they know they’re on the right track.

There’s a line of jurisprudence establishing the right to abortion? What if we outlaw the procedure, but pull a switcheroo by putting enforcement in the hands of millions of potential vigilantes so you can’t sue the government to overturn the law? Does that sound cynical and crazy? Don’t worry, we’ve got five votes on the Supreme Court who’ll give it the rubber stamp.

That’s the kind of creative use of power Democrats don’t even contemplate. Think back to the decision that led directly to this latest stage in the assault on abortion, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to allow President Barack Obama’s nominee to be considered for a Supreme Court vacancy, holding it open for nearly a year so it could be filled by a Republican president.

McConnell didn’t worry about how many stern editorials condemned his action. He didn’t care about whether polls showed that if you asked them the right way, the public would disagree with what he was doing, because he knew that they were barely paying attention.

Critically, nearly all of his Republican Senate colleagues got on board with the strategy. They didn’t care that what they were doing wouldn’t be seen as sufficiently “bipartisan.” They wanted that seat, and they were going to get it. Now they have it — and two more, thanks to the fact that Donald Trump was elected in 2016 winning a minority of the vote — and they’re damn sure going to use it.

You can trace the roots of these differing conceptions of power very far back, but the most critical moment was the 2000 election controversy in Florida, not only for the tactical chasm that separated the parties throughout that battle, but for the way it ended. Five conservatives on the Supreme Court simply handed George W. Bush the presidency, not because it was what the Constitution demanded or even because there was a remotely persuasive legal argument for it, but because the outcome itself was what they wanted.

They could do it, so they did. Republicans learned a vital lesson: If you have the power to get what you want, use it. Don’t worry that you’ll pay some karmic price down the road, because you probably won’t.

 

Republicans tell Democratic voters how they will be harmed, persecuted, even killed if they don't join the "winning" side, warnings of retribution and destruction are daily occurrences for the GOP.  Democrats meanwhile apologize for governing the country as a whole and constantly ask how they can make things easier for the voters who increasingly want to see them swinging from the gallows or shot dead, tied to a firing squad post.

One side will do anything it takes to win, up to and including disinformation to kill its own supporters just to drum up constant, inchoate rage.

Our side vows to bring cookies.

 

It's been like this for the entire run of Zandar Versus the Stupid, and indeed for my entire adult lifetime, going back to Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America when I was a college freshman.

 

When we tried to use power in 2010, for the Affordable Care Act, it cost us 80 House seats and a dozen Senate seats over two midterm elections, not to mention half the state legislatures.  The backlash of white supremacy against a party that gave us a Black president continues to this day and will do so for the rest of my life, and right now, that backlash is winning.

If Trump was even slightly more competent, the GOP would still have total control of America. We got extraordinarily lucky, and we're acting like it's business as usual with filibuster footsie and squealing about national debt, while Republicans are openly talking about putting Democrats in cages and graves.

It's war. Open war. And if the Democrats don't win, we're all doomed.

It's long past time we started fighting like it.

Doing "Something" About Trump

Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty suggests that while the impeachment debate rages on, the Trump/Ukraine perfidy is worth an unprecedented and historic House censure resolution by Democrats.

This argument will continue, with new fuel being added by the administration’s refusal to turn over a whistleblower’s complaint regarding the Trump-Zelensky conversation. It is hard to see how it could possibly be resolved before we are well into the 2020 campaign season. But there is something the House could do right now, an idea that I have raised before: censure the president. 

The procedure for doing so is pretty straightforward, as spelled out in a recent report by the Congressional Research Service: 

Should a House committee report a non-Member censure resolution, the full House may consider it by unanimous consent, under the Suspension of the Rules procedure, or under the terms of a special rule reported by the Committee on Rules and adopted by the House. 17 If widespread support exists for the censure resolution, unanimous consent or the Suspension of the Rules procedure may be used. Otherwise, the resolution could be brought to the floor under a special rule reported by the Committee on Rules. All three of these parliamentary mechanisms require, at a minimum, the support of the majority party leadership in order to be entertained. 

In other words, a censure resolution could be brought to the House floor with support from Democrats alone, and it would not require any action on the part of the Senate. 

This would not sate the appetite of the pro-impeachment forces, or end the debate over whether that step is warranted. But it could be done quickly, with the evidence at hand, and would have the benefit of forcing Republican members to go on record stating whether they do or do not find this behavior on the part of the president acceptable. While many would argue that censure is a symbolic gesture, it is a disgrace that Trump would share with only one other president in American history — his purported idol, Andrew Jackson. Jackson was censured by the Senate in 1834 as the result of a little-remembered dispute over the Second Bank of the United States; it was expunged a few years later when his pro-Jackson Democrats gained a majority in the chamber, which showed that they regarded a censure as more than a slap on the wrist. 

None of this would end the argument over impeachment, but it would prove to the American people that at least part of their government sets a higher standard of behavior than our current president does. It also, finally, would force Republicans to answer a question that they have been dodging: Is there anything this president does that you will not tolerate?

 Censure of Trump and five bucks will get you a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks.

Look, at this point Pelosi doesn't have the votes for censure, let alone impeachment. Tumulty admits it won't accomplish anything even if it did happen.  And Trump will simply say -- correctly for once because no Republican would risk getting Amashed over voting for it -- that there's a purely political Democratic "witch hunt" going on against him.

Not even Paul Ryan and John Boehner censured Barack Obama.  Censure resolutions were introduced against Nixon but he resigned, and the censure resolution against Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky failed because Newt Gingrich didn't have the votes for it.

House Democrats did vote to condemn Trump over his racist remarks against Reps. Omar, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley earlier this year, but it fell short of official censure.

And like the condemnation vote, censure is not going to fix a damn thing, and Tumulty should know better.  If censure was a real option, it would have been used already for precisely the reasons Tumulty laid out.

But that of course leaves us in the same position we've been in since January: Democrats control the House, and Nancy Pelosi controls House Democrats, but so far the votes aren't anywhere close to being there in order to be able to impeach Trump.

The Ukraine situation may change all that in the near future, however.

With Pelosi unwilling to impeach Trump, Democratic rank-and-file members are frantically looking for something to fortify their investigations. On Friday, Judiciary members pressed Nadler to invoke Congress’s long-dormant inherent contempt authority that would allow Congress to jail or fine people for defying subpoenas.
The power hasn’t been used in more than 100 years. Pelosi, leadership and other House lawyers were dismissive of the idea when investigators first floated it last spring. But Judiciary members are once again trying to force the issue.

“Our side says it's ‘legally questionable,’ ‘it hasn't been used in forever,’ and ‘blah, blah, blah,’ ” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the panel, who argues Trump’s legal team frequently has used last-ditch efforts and bogus explanations to block testimony — and the House should do the same. 

“I say do it,” he continued. “Let them argue in court that they take the position that it's legally questionable. We back off of everything! We’ve been very weak.” 

The frustration with the Democratic approach extends to members of Pelosi’s leadership team. 

“We need to develop other tools because our tools are not working,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a Judiciary panel member who is co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “We cannot allow the administration to simply continuously stonewall Congress with no consequences.” 

Lieu is pushing for the use of inherent contempt. 

Even Schiff, who came to Congress in part by defeating a Republican who voted for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, said on Sunday that relying on the courts may not work for Trump, Ukraine and the undisclosed whistleblower complaint.

“We cannot afford to play rope-a-dope in the court for weeks or months on end,” Schiff said. “We need an answer if there’s a fire burning it needs to be put out, and that's why we're going to have to look at every remedy . . . we're going to have to consider impeachment, as well, as a remedy here.”

Ostensibly the next step in this drama is Thursday, when Acting DNI Joseph Maguire goes before the House Intelligence Committee. This whole mess started because Maguire refused to turn over the transcript of Trump's call and the whistleblower complaint as required by law. Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff then issued a subpoena for Maguire to do so, and that showdown comes later this week.

If Maguire doesn't comply, Pelosi has hinted that the resulting "grave new chapter of lawlessness" would lead to a "whole new stage of investigation" into the Trump regime.  That gives me some small measure of hope at least, but there's not a reason to believe that Trump won't try to call that bluff between now and Thursday.

And if it is a bluff by Pelosi, well, like I've been saying, if Democrats keep walking down the middle of the road on impeachment, they're going to get hit by the bus in the 2020 elections and it won't be a question any longer, because Trump will be re-elected.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report talks to the NY Times about the massive difference between the Democratic party's prospects this year in the House, and the dismal defense they have to play in the Senate.

This fall, Democrats are defending 26 Senate seats, with Bernie Sanders and Angus King (more than half of their caucus), including five seats that voted for President Trump by 19 points or more. Republicans are defending only nine seats (fewer than a fifth of their caucus); all but one are states Mr. Trump carried.

But in the House, where all 435 seats are up for election, Republicans are much more exposed: They must defend 25 districts Hillary Clinton carried, whereas Democrats must defend only 13 seats Mr. Trump won.

In my time covering races professionally, I’ve never observed this little overlap between the battlegrounds of high-stakes Senate and House races. Of the 64 most competitive House races, only 15 are in states with highly competitive Senate races.

These are two truly different universes: The median competitive Senate seat gave Mr. Trump 56 percent in 2016, has a population density of 88 people per square mile and falls below the national average in educational attainment and income. But the median competitive House district gave Mr. Trump 49 percent of the vote, has a population density of 375 people per square mile and ranks above the national average in college graduates and income.

Even if Democrats have a stellar year nationally, Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Donnelly of Indiana could still fall short of re-election in states where the president is still popular.

But the Republicans’ tenuous grip on the House is exposing the limits of gerrymandering. Several seats Republican mapmakers drew to be “safe” at the beginning of the decade, including districts outside Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and Washington, are suddenly under stress from the combination of college-educated whites fleeing the new, Trump-led G.O.P. and the potential for a Democratic wave.

Much as 2016 produced an anomalous split between the popular vote and the Electoral College, 2018 could produce a split decision between the House and Senate. That would allow both parties to claim a midterm mandate — and reinforce their stubbornness.

The good news: if the Dems can hold on this year, it's the GOP who has to play defense in 2020.  With Trump on the ticket, the Dems could take the Senate and White House in two years, and the country would go through a stunning turn-around.  After yesterday, this calculus could definitely change in the Democrats' favor.

The Republican plan is a full court press to ignore the Cohen and Manafort stories though and attack the Democrats as corrupt.

It’s Tuesday afternoon. Imagine, for a moment, that President Trump logs on to Twitter. News is breaking that could prove existential for his presidency. But his social media feed hardly records the magnitude of the developments.

Instead, a link from Sean Hannity of Fox News appears, announcing the intention of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, to enter a guilty plea but omitting the fact that Cohen’s admission implicates the president. A minute later, another link from Hannity comes through, this one about a former congressional IT staffer targeted by conspiracy theories cooked up by right-wing media and advanced by the president.

Trump’s carefully curated feed is a reflection of the ideological chasm that’s dividing the media and splintering society. Tuesday offered vivid evidence of the way in which right-wing media insulates Trump, and his most devoted supporters, from blunt assessments of his administration.

What did you expect from the world of alternative facts?

Also on offer to the president was an announcement from his own White House about business confidence and a supportive message from Donald Trump Jr. If he went online shortly before 4 p.m., the only “BREAKING NEWS” alert he would have seen was the one from Fox about the 24-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico who law enforcement officials say killed Mollie Tibbetts, the 20-year-old college student who disappeared last month in Iowa. The story led Fox’s homepage much of the day.

Alarm over the student’s death dominated the president’s feed, which has been replicated by the account @trumps_feed, created by The Washington Post’s Philip Bump. “OUTRAGE!” steamed Laura Ingraham. The only message the Fox News host posted about Tuesday’s legal outcomes was an opinion column criticizing CNN for seeking the names of the jurors in the Manafort trial.

The Mollie Tibbets story is definitely the rage on the right this morning.  It's a tragic murder, and she of course didn't deserve to be brutally murdered by anyone, but it has all the ingredients they need for OUTRAGE™ and her death is being exploited as such to help Donald Trump.

Authorities in Iowa have filed charges against an undocumented immigrant on Tuesday in connection to a recovered body believed to be that of 20-year-old University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared from her home a month ago.

The details: The suspect, identified as Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, is facing a first degree murder charge and life without parole, Rick Rahn, special agent at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, explained in a briefing Tuesday. He's believed to have been living in Poweshiek County area for four to seven years.

A pretty young white co-ed apparently killed by an undocumented immigrant who had been in the US for several years?  Newt Gingrich wants to make her a household name.

Only one problem with that.

Update: Farm owned by family of Craig Lang, prominent Iowa farmer and GOP official, confirms that it has employed suspect in Mollie Tibbetts' death for the last four years

— Ryan J. Foley (@rjfoley) August 22, 2018

This is how Republicans are going to protect Trump? It won't work if we vote.

Pardon Me, Newt?

Whoever thought Republicans ever cared about rule of law once they came to power is in for quite the shock when it comes to "crony capitalism" Trump-style.  And Newt Gingrich is right there cheering them along, saying the GOP should simply change the laws to allow Trump and his kids to do whatever they want. 

Newt Gingrich said Monday that President-elect Donald Trump could simply pardon members of his administration who may break anti-nepotism laws, adding that Trump's business ties require "a whole new approach" to addressing potential conflicts of interest in the presidency.

“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich told WAMU’s Diane Rehm on Monday morning. “It is a totally open power, and he could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.' Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

Gingrich was referring to a federal anti-nepotism law that could prevent Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, respectively, from serving in his administration. Previously, Gingrich suggested Trump may need a waiver from Congress to have Kushner work in his administration.

On Monday, however, Gingrich said the law was the result of “Lyndon Johnson’s reaction to Bobby Kennedy, and the fact that Johnson hated Kennedy.”

“It was a very narrowly focused bill really in reaction to a particular personality thing,” he said. “I think that we have to look at it in the context of what they were trying to accomplish.”

Although Gingrich acknowledged that Trump’s potential conflicts of interest were “a very real problem,” he argued that the President-elect's massive wealth was “virtually impossible to isolate” and that “traditional rules don’t work."

"We’re going to have to think up a whole new approach,” he said.

We have to change to rules for Trump, because Trump doesn't follow the rules.

Republicans have spent more than two decades screaming about "lawless Democrat thugs" and as soon as they get into power, they simply say "If we change the laws so we can do what we want, we're not lawless, are we?"

Trump just pardons anyone who might break the law ahead of time.  Problem solved, citizen!

Of course the administration that can change the laws to do what they want can also change the laws to make anything their opponents do illegal.  History tells us that part is coming pretty soon as well.

It's Payback Time!

Understand that the regular order of business in the Trump administration is going to be revenge against slights both real and imagined, no matter how petty.  This is a man that has a long history of holding personal grudges and using the levers of power to satisfy those grudges, and now he's going to be President of the United States of America.

But first things first: the Orangenacht for the Never Trump movement.  He cannot wait to get out the long knives on that action and his team is letting everyone know that if you backed the wrong side, there's going to be a price.

Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich is being considered for Secretary of State or Health and Human Services secretary, Politico reports. And he wants to make it absolutely clear that a Trump administration will not be bowing to the forces of reason. 

On Fox News Wednesday, the former speaker of the House told Sean Hannity, “Their technique will be to say ‘Oh, be reasonable. Don’t push too hard. Don’t force the issue. Find a compromise with Democrats,” Gingrich said. “Maybe he shouldn’t name one of the justices who are conservative who’s on his list. Maybe he should find a nice moderate acceptable to the Democrats. Down that road is a disaster. And so we have to be aware that the danger is not that they’re going to actively fight. The danger is that they’re going to opt for honeyed words of subversion that undermines the entire movement to make America great again.” 

Perhaps Democrats are going to have a few problems working with a Trump administration, just saying.

Speaking of honeyed words, Gingrich also had a message for #NeverTrump Republicans who opposed the President-elect (and who, to be fair, have been pretty quiet post election). 

“The little, whiny, sniveling negative cowards who were ‘Never Trumpers’ are beneath our paying attention to them. Let them drift off into the ashbin of history while we go ahead and work with Donald Trump and with the House and Senate Republicans to create a dramatically new future.”

Yep.  Democrats are definitely going to be punished.  Never doubt for a moment that the Trump administration will gleefully work to dismantle the civil rights era in every aspect.

But the Never Trump GOP is getting tossed in the trash first.  And the message is going to be pretty clear that Trump plans to assemble his Legion of Doom cabinet without interference from Republicans who suddenly might want to "keep him in check".

So if you're counting on Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, etc to move to block Trump, that's not going to happen.  They'll fold just like they have done in the past, and with Trump calling the shots, they'll fall in line in short order.

Here We Go Again

Here's a truly depressing thought from Politico's Mike Allen: what if Republicans, already showing a complete propensity to fail miserably at learning from their mistakes in 2008 and 2012, nominate Trump again in 2020?

Newt Gingrich, one of Donald Trump’s closest confidants and most visible boosters, on Friday raised the novel possibility of a Trump-Clinton rematch in 2020 — a spooky Halloween-weekend notion for the many voters who just want the ugly race to stop.

“The challenge for everybody’s going to be, 'What if he gets 48 or 49 percent?’” Gingrich said in a video interview for POLITICO’s “Open Mike” series. “And what if he says: ‘You know, I like this campaign and stuff. I ain’t leaving’? There will then be a Trump Party.”

Speaking a few hours before the FBI’s email review became public, Gingrich declared that “odds are better than even” that Trump will win.

But the former House speaker added that if not, Trump might form “a Trump Party inside the Republican Party, just the way William Jennings Bryan brought populism into the Democratic Party.”

Gingrich floated the notion when he was asked if Trump TV — a new media empire that might emerge from the campaign’s aftermath — would be a good idea.

“It’d be silly,” Gingrich said at his office in Arlington, Va. “He’s bigger than that. … It’s an irrelevancy. I mean, I know what it takes to run CNN or Fox. These are big operations, and he could do that if he wants to get out of politics, but he doesn’t need it.”

And so you think he might run again in 2020?

"I think that’s very possible,” Gingrich responded. "I think he likes being part of a movement — he likes thinking of it as a movement. … I was thinking about this, [and] he said to me the other morning, … ‘I sent out one tweet and 15,000 people showed up.’”

POLITICO asked: So you’re predicting a Trump-Clinton rematch?

Gingrich: “Could be, assuming she survives.”

What do you mean “survives”?

“That she’s not impeached and convicted,” Gingrich replied. “Look … when people have time to actually digest WikiLeaks and some brave person puts together a book and goes, 'This, this, this, this, this,' it’s very hard to imagine how there’s not going to be some serious effort in the first year of her presidency.”

Newt is usually full of crap, but at this point you can't discount the notion that the GOP will be so broken that they'll just nominate Trump again in four years.

Having said that, I think it's much more likely we see Rubio, Kasich, or Cruz than Trump again.

But I would have said the same thing if you had asked me who the GOP was going to nominate back in 2015, too.

Our Dark Orange Future Nightmare

Evan Osnos at The New Yorker honestly considers what a Trump presidency would look like, and it's pretty awful across the board if you're one of those folks who thinks that they can grin and bear it through four years of Trump to reach the promised land of liberal utopia.

When Trump talks about what he will create and what he will eliminate, he doesn’t depart from three core principles: in his view, America is doing too much to try to solve the world’s problems; trade agreements are damaging the country; and immigrants are detrimental to it. He wanders and hedges and doubles back, but he is governed by a strong instinct for self-preservation, and never strays too far from his essential positions. Roger Stone, a long-serving Trump adviser, told me it is a mistake to imagine that Trump does not mean to fulfill his most radical ideas. “Maybe, in the end, the courts don’t allow him to temporarily ban Muslims,” Stone said. “That’s fine—he can ban anybody from Egypt, from Syria, from Libya, from Saudi Arabia. He’s a Reagan-type pragmatist.” 

William Antholis, a political scientist who directs the Miller Center, at the University of Virginia, pointed out that President Trump would have, at his disposal, “the world’s largest company, staffed with 2.8 million civilians and 1.5 million military employees.” Trump would have the opportunity to alter the Supreme Court, with one vacancy to fill immediately and others likely to follow. Three sitting Justices are in their late seventies or early eighties. 

As for the Trump Organization, by law Trump could retain as much control or ownership as he wants, because Presidents are not bound by the same conflict-of-interest statute that restricts Cabinet officers and White House staff. Presidential decisions, especially on foreign policy, could strengthen or weaken his family’s business, which includes controversial deals in Turkey, South Korea, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. Trump would likely face pressure to adopt an arrangement akin to that of Michael Bloomberg, who, when he became mayor of New York City, withdrew from most management decisions for his company. Trump has said only that he plans to turn over the Trump Organization’s day-to-day control to three of his adult children: Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. 

As President, Trump would have the power to name some four thousand appointees, but he would face a unique problem: more than a hundred veteran Republican officials have vowed never to support him, and that has forced younger officials to decide whether they, too, will stay away or, instead, enter his Administration and try to moderate him. By September, the campaign was vetting four hundred people, and some had been invited to join the transition team. An analogy was making the rounds: Was Trump a manageable petty tyrant, in the mold of Silvio Berlusconi? Or was he something closer to Mussolini? And, if so, was he Mussolini in 1933 or in 1941? 

Michael Chertoff served both Bush Presidents—as a U.S. Attorney in Bush, Sr.,’s Administration, and then as Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. He was one of fifty senior Republican national-security officials who recently signed a letter declaring that Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history.” Chertoff told me that he has been approached for advice by younger Republicans who ask if joining Trump, after he has already been elected, would be regarded as patriotic, rather than political. “I think anybody contemplating going in will have to have a very serious look in their own conscience, and make sure they’re not kidding themselves,” Chertoff said. 

Trump’s Presidential plans are not shaped by ideology. He changed parties five times between 1999 and 2012, and, early on the campaign trail, he praised parts of Planned Parenthood (while opposing abortion), vowed to protect Social Security, and supported gay rights (while opposing same-sex marriage). He is governed, above all, by his faith in the ultimate power of transaction—an encompassing perversion of realism that is less a preference for putting interests ahead of values than a belief that interests have no place for values. 

Trump has relied heavily on the ideas of seasoned combatants. Newt Gingrich, who, as House Speaker in the nineties, pioneered many of the tactics that have come to define partisan warfare, is now a Trump adviser. Gingrich told me that he is urging Trump to give priority to an obscure but contentious conservative issue—ending lifetime tenure for federal employees. This would also galvanize Republicans and help mend rifts in the Party after a bitter election.

“Getting permission to fire corrupt, incompetent, and dishonest workers—that’s the absolute showdown,” Gingrich said. He assumes that federal employees’ unions would resist, thus producing, in his words, an “ongoing war” similar to the conflict that engulfed Madison, Wisconsin, in 2011, when Governor Scott Walker moved to limit public-sector employees’ collective-bargaining rights. After five months of protests, and a failed effort to recall the Governor and members of the state senate, Walker largely prevailed. Gingrich predicts that that chaotic dynamic can be brought to Washington. “You have to end the civil-service permanent employment,” he said. “You start changing that and the public-employee unions will just come unglued.”

That was always the goal: to dismantle the US civil service for good. The damage would be catastrophic in the courts and in the executive branch, as well as in foreign policy.

If you can't see that you should be doing everything you can to stop Trump, and that means voting for Hillary, then I don't know what else to tell you at this point.  There is nothing that Hillary Clinton could do that would be worse than this man at the helm of the United States Armed Forces, making Supreme Court nominations, and making and breaking foreign treaties.

Put your pride and ego aside and realize there are exactly two choices in this election, and make the right choice.  Period.

Deadbeat Newt

I guess if your political career is already over, and has been for years, it's okay if you decide to welsh on you campaign debt (if you're a Republican, that is.)

Newt Gingrich apparently has no plans to pay back dozens of small businesses that made yard signs and TV ads for his 2012 presidential campaign.

Gingrich filed a document with the Federal Election Commission this week detailing a debt settlement plan to finally terminate his 2012 presidential campaign committee. The document shows that “Newt 2012” plans to stiff 114 businesses and consultants that are altogether owed $4.6 million.

The former House speaker, failed presidential candidate and Donald Trump vice president runner-up was forced to file the debt settlement plan with the FEC as part of its alternative dispute resolution process. Gingrich was the subject of a complaint alleging that his campaign had illegally commingled campaign funds with corporate funds from a company controlled by Gingrich and his wife Callista.

While the FEC general counsel found reason to believe the allegations in the complaint, the six commissioners split along ideological lines in a 3-3 vote, it did not penalize Gingrich. Instead, the campaign agreed to file a debt settlement plan and terminate in 2016. The plan was originally due on May 23, but Gingrich was granted an extension until August 1.

The debt settlement plan document indicates the “total amount to be paid to creditors” is zero dollars.

Gingrich did not respond to a request for comment made through two spokespeople.

So that's how Republicans really feel about America's small businesses. Hoocoodanode, right?

Newt Makes His Awful Case

With the news that Trump has selected Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Pence as his veep (although Trump said last night he hasn't made a "final, final decision" yet) Newt Gingrich made his play on FOX last night to secure the job by going after America's Muslim population as enemies of the state.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I don't want to really tie this into politics, but every issue America is now dealing with, every issue that we have discussed in recent months and years about the Islamization of Europe, about refugees, about immigration, about open borders -- it seems to come together, and also political correctness and not recognizing radical Islamic terrorism as the enemy and evil in our time. From your perspective, what does this tragedy, this evil attack tonight, mean for that conflict and debate?

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, first of all, Sean, as you know, I was in Paris just last weekend talking with people who are deeply involved in trying to deal with the Iranian government and other sources of terrorism. And let me also say Daniel Silva has a remarkable new novel called Black Widow, and the entire opening section is on the systematic Islamic attack on Jews in France, which is the worst it's been since the Nazis. So let me start with where I'm coming from, and let me be as blunt and as direct as I can be.

Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about defining who our enemies are. Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately.

Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet-based source. And frankly if we can't destroy them through the internet, we should destroy them with kinetic power, using various weapons starting with Predators, and frankly just killing them. I am sick and tired of being told that the wealthiest, most powerful civilization in history, all of Western civilization, is helpless in the face of a group of medieval barbarians who, for example, recently burned 20 young women to death -- burned them to death because they wouldn't have sex with them. A group which beheaded recently in the Philippines two Canadian businessmen.

And we're told to be reasonable, to be passive, to not judge. Well I just want to tell you tonight, everybody who watches this video, this is the fault of Western elites who lack the guts to do what is right, to do what is necessary, and to tell us the truth, and that starts with Barack Obama.

And in the 15 years since 9/11, this is the way we continue to treat Muslims in America: a potential vice-presidential pick openly calling for loyalty tests, mass deportations, and endless war up to and including genocide.

I know I've criticized Barack Obama's foreign policy, hell I did it just last night.  I've gone after Clinton's foreign policy as well.  But the Republican alternative is insanity. We cannot allow these monsters to rule our country with fear and hatred any longer. Our international allies must think we're lunatics, a standing danger to the entire planet with rhetoric like this.

We've got to start fixing this in November, and that means doing everything possible to get Republicans out of office.  That means President Hillary Clinton, and Democrats on down the ticket in 50 states. I endorse that without hesitation at this point.  I'm done wishing for a sane Republican party, I'm done trying to appeal to their supporters' humanity. They're adults, they can make their choices.

My choice is the Democratic party, period.

Judging The Donald

Donald Trump's racist comments about a federal judges of Hispanic origin not being impartial enough to be involved in cases pending against him are bad enough, but now he's publicly saying anyone of Muslim faith isn't impartial or qualified either.

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump said that it was possible that a Muslim judge would be biased against him when asked in an interview aired Sunday for his views after proposing a ban an all Muslims.

Trump reiterated on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that he thought U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the federal fraud case against Trump University, was biased toward him because he was "very strongly pro-Mexican."

CBS host John Dickerson asked Trump if he thought he wouldn't be able to be treated fairly by a Muslim judge.

"It's possible, yes. Yeah," Trump replied. "That would be possible, absolutely."

"He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine. but I say he's got bias. I want to build a wall," Trump said, referring to the wall he wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico.

This is amazing.  Open bigotry and this guy became the nominee of a major political party for President? Gosh, is anyone still surprised that the Republicans are the party of hate?  Only now are other Republican scrambling to try to distance themselves.

"I couldn't disagree more" with Trump's central argument, McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." McConnell distanced himself from Trump's comments, but dodged three times when asked if they were racist.

"I don't condone the comments," added Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on ABC's "This Week."

And Newt Gingrich, who became speaker of the House promising to open the GOP more to minorities, delivered the harshest warning of all.

"This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made. I think it's inexcusable," Gingrich, a former presidential contender, said on "Fox News Sunday."

But of course, not all Republicans are.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Sunday argued that Donald Trump deserved a fair trial just like any pedophile or rapist.

Speaking to Fox News, Gonzales doubled down on his Washington Post op-ed that defended Trump’s right as a U.S. citizen to question the partiality of U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is hearing a case against Trump University.

Trump has the right to question if you're all racist against white people, I guess.  I know that what I want to see in a President, right?

With An Iron Fist In A Velvet Minority Outreach Program

Keep up the good work chasing the votes of African-Americans like myself, Republicans like Newt Gingrich!

OH. BOY. @GingrichIdeas RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: @CNN pic.twitter.com/qqLyNaQjVl /
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) May 23, 2014

For the life of me, I just can't imagine why Republicans don't get 90% of the black vote.

Another One For The (Future) Fire

Newt Gingrich is weighing in with his 2012 election predictions, and they're about as plausible as the rest of his 2012 statements.

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich predicts that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney will receive “more than 300 electoral votes” to defeat President Barack Obama on Nov. 6.

Speaking to Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Thursday, the former House Speaker offered to “end the anxiety” for Fox News viewers.

“I believe the minimum result will be 53-47 Romney, over 300 electoral votes, and the Republicans will pick up the Senate,” Gingrich said. “I base that on just years and years of experience.”

Let's keep in mind that in order to win 300 electoral votes, Romney would have to win every toss-up state (OH, NC, VA, FL, CO, NV, and NH) but he'd have to win at least one or two states well into Obama's hands right now, like Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico or Pennsylvania.

On top of that, he's predicting that the GOP will win all 7 Senate close races, too.

There's no evidence of either other than Newt saying it's so.

Into the Future Files you go, Newtie.

The Big GOP Primary Thread: Nor'easter

There was no surprise in Mitt Romney winning all five primaries in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic yesterday, but it was somewhat surprising to see him not do any better than he did.  Even though he was basically the only viable candidate left, anywhere from 33% to nearly 43% of GOP primary voters voted against him yesterday.   Newt got 27% of the vote in Delaware, and Ron Paul 25% of the vote in Rhode Island.

I'm not convinced that 100% of those non-Romney GOP voters are going to pick Romney over Obama.  A great many of them are, but some will stay home too.  A very small percentage may even vote for Obama, although I can't imagine it being more than a couple percent max.  Certainly there will be disillusioned Obama voters who will stay home or cast their vote for Romney too.  I'm not sure how many of each will be out there, but Romney certainly doesn't have an advantage over the President in that respect if he can't break 67% in a one man race.

On the other hand, last night was the end of Newt Gingrich's run whether or not he wants to admit it.  He's done.  On the gripping hand, Gingrich did as good or better than Ron Paul and nobody's expecting Paul to get out the race either, so why should Newt quit?  The latest PPP poll in Texas shows that state's primary is still in play, with Romney having a 45%-35% lead over Gingrich in the state (Yeah, Mitt Romney may not even get 50% in Texas.  Think about THAT for a while.)

Combine that with news that Ron Paul has managed to secure delegates in Iowa and Minnesota and this coronation isn't going quite as smoothly as Mitt would like.

Meanwhile, on the Dem side of things, two Blue Dogs went down in flames in Pennsylvania, primaried out due to redistricting.  Rep. Tim Holden voted against the PPACA and got shown the door as his district went far more blue, losing by 16 points to Matt Cartwright, who ran, shockingly, as a liberal and won.  Holden was expected to be redistricted out but the margin of victory was pretty telling.

But the real story was Rep. Jason Altmire's 2 point loss to Rep. Mark Critz, and the difference?  Organized labor came out big for Critz and gave him the win.  There's an important lesson there for Democrats if they're willing to listen.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 18

And faced with his own political demise yet again, Newt Gingrich returns to form.

During a meeting with 18 Delaware Tea Party leaders here on Wednesday, Newt Gingrich lambasted The Fox News Channel, accusing the cable news network that employed him as recently as last year of having been in the tank for Mitt Romney from the beginning of the Republican presidential fight and singling out former colleagues for attacking him out of what he characterized as personal jealousy.

“I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said during the private meeting at Wesley College to which RealClearPolitics was granted access. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact.”

Gingrich’s contract as a Fox News contributor was terminated last spring, as he was gearing up for his White House run.

The former House Speaker’s blunt remarks about Fox came in response to a question from one of the Delaware Tea Party leaders about the manner in which his campaign has been treated by conservative media outlets.

Gingrich did not pull his punches in accusing Rupert Murdoch -- the chairman and CEO of the News Corporation, Fox News’ parent company -- of pushing for Romney behind the scenes.

“I assume it’s because Murdoch at some point said, ‘I want Romney,’ and so ‘fair and balanced’ became ‘Romney,’” Gingrich said. “And there’s no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox.”

Done, folks.  Done.  Newt won't even be able to get Wingnut Welfare now.  And he's going to do as much damage to the Mitt/FOX News base as he can before he's shut up.  I love it.

Definite EPIC FAIL.

The Big GOP Primary Thread: The Big Sleazy

Rick Santorum easily won the Louisiana GOP primary Saturday, with exit polls showing such a clear win that the race was called by all the major networks as soon as polls closed at 9 PM EDT.  By 11 PM he had about 50% of the vote and Romney was in danger of not even getting the 25% he needed to capture any delegates.

But it was the exit polls that showed the most interesting parts of the story.  75% of primary voters were 45 and older, 94% white.

The troubling news for Romney in the state:  Santorum won self-described conservatives as well as moderates and liberals.  Santorum won voters who said the economy was the most important issue by 13 points (and deficit voters by one point).  Romney did win by 23 points among those who said that a candidate who could defeat President Obama was the most important, but overall that was just 38% of the voters.  Santorum won overwhelmingly among those who were looking for moral or conservative candidates.  Romney didn't even get 10% of either category, and Santorum got 70% of them.  Combined, they made up 46% of the voters.

Here's the real shocker:  44% said Mitt Romney was the most likely candidate who could win.  27% of those folks voted for Santorum anyway, whereas of the third of the voters who said Santorum was the most likely candidate who could win in November, 94% of them indeed put their vote where their opinion was.

More people thought Newt Gingrich understood their problems better than Romney, 26-21%.  42% thought Santorum did.  Most important question, if only Romney and Santorum were on the ballot, Santorum would have won 59-37%.

Now, does any of this matter?  Will Gingrich finally get the hint?  Who knows?  Anyhow, a week from Tuesday brings us to Maryland and Wisconsin.  Will anything have changed by then?  Probably not.

We'll see.

Last Call

On a day where President Obama spoke about Trayvon Martin's murder and said the following:

"All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen," President Obama said Friday morning following a White House Rose Garden ceremony when asked about the 17-year-old's death.
The president called the shooting a "tragedy" and says "every aspect" of the case should be investigated. Obama gave his condolences to the slain teenager's parents and said if he had a son, "he'd look like Trayvon."

We have this going on at a Rick Santorum event...

At a shooting range in Louisiana on Friday, an onlooker encouraged Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum to pretend the target he was firing at was President Barack Obama.
“Santorum is shooting a 1911 Colt,” Politico’s Juana Summers tweeted from the sheriff’s office shooting range in West Monroe. “Range master says ‘Well, it’s not your first rodeo.’ Someone here says ‘pretend its Obama.’”

...and this out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich....

In a radio interview on Thursday, Newt Gingrich returned to one of his favorite recent themes, what he calls the “elite media” and their conspiracy to aid and abet the Obama administration.

In an article at Huffington Post, the former Speaker of the House is quoted as saying to Sandy Rios of the American Family Association that the “elite media” are “in the tank for Obama” and will do everything they can to see him re-elected.

“It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama they are,” he said, “Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama’s Muslim friends? Or two pages on the degree to which Obama is consistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic church?”

...and I just shake my head.  I'm a black male who has survived to the ripe old age of 36 and is not incarcerated.  I'm an exception in this country, it seems.  I live in one of the 24 states that has a law that solely exists to justify the use of deadly force as the ultimate sanction against someone who is merely perceived to be a threat, without evidence, due process, or the right to face your accuser (because hey, you're effing dead.)  The legislative need to create laws like this is a symptom of a much more awful syndrome, and in every case these laws were passed by "pro-life" Republicans led by the gun lobbyists.

These laws are designed to allow vigilantism, period.  It's the worst impulse of the whole Glibertarian/Paulite/Somali Pirate anarcho-justice codified into "I get to decide who lives and who dies, and I reserve the right to exercise that impulse at any point."  We're all castles stomping around killing each other, and may the best, most heavily armed castle win.  And as far as Republicans are concerned, well that impulse extends to "We've decided that having a black President violates our right not to have one, so we're going to do something about it from the ground up."

Trayvon Martin's awful, pointless murder is just a symptom of a much uglier sickness.

[UPDATE]  Newt doubles down.

“What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful,” Gingrich said on the Hannity Radio show. “It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.

“Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him. That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot. It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

Effing. Perfect.

I've Set 'Em Correct With The Effect Of The Gas Face

The Associated Press crunches the numbers on Drill Baby Drill over the last 36 years and finds there's no correlation whatsoever between increased domestic oil production and reductions in gas prices.

A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.

If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you'd now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you're paying the highest prices ever for March.

Shocking, I know.  Instead, the opposite almost appears to be true.

Sometimes prices increase as American drilling ramps up. That's what has happened in the past three years. Since February 2009, U.S. oil production has increased 15 percent when seasonally adjusted. Prices in those three years went from $2.07 per gallon to $3.58. It was a case of drilling more and paying much more.

What about when US oil production decreases?

Seasonally adjusted U.S. oil production dropped steadily from February 1986 until three years ago. But starting in March 1986, inflation-adjusted gas prices fell below the $2-a-gallon mark and stayed there for most of the rest of the 1980s and 1990s. Production between 1986 and 1999 dropped by nearly one-third. If the drill-now theory were correct, prices should have soared. Instead they went down by nearly a dollar.

So what's the cause?

Unlike natural gas or electricity, the United States alone does not have the power to change the supply-and-demand equation in the world oil market, said Christopher Knittel, a professor of energy economics at MIT. American oil production is about 11 percent of the world's output, so even if the U.S. were to increase its oil production by 50 percent — that is more than drilling in the Arctic, increased public-lands and offshore drilling, and the Canadian pipeline would provide — it would at most cut gas prices by 10 percent.

"There are not many markets where the United States can't impose its will on market outcomes," Knittel said. "This is one we can't, and it's hard for the average American to understand that and it's easy for politicians to feed off that."

So yes, Newt is lying.  Sarah Palin is lying.  Drilling won't matter a damn bit.  Now, another financial crisis, well...

The Big GOP Primary Thread: Southbound And Down

The South is covered in a thin, nauseating layer of Santorum this morning as Slick Rick took Alabama by 6 points, 35% to 29% for both Gingrich and Romney, and Mississippi by 2 points, 33% to Newt's 31% and Mitt's 30%.

And yes, this means Romney came in third in both contests.  He did make up some ground by winning Hawaii with 45% of the vote to Santorum's 25%.  But the fact is, Romney can't close the deal with the most strident members of the base and he now has a serious problem on his hands.

That means, of course, that the GOP has a major problem on its hands. Yes, when Romney is finally nominated, Republicans will get behind him...but not all of them.  He got 30% or less in Alabama and Mississippi, and you can't tell me that there won't be Republican voters there will stay home and do nothing rather than vote for Romney.

The battle now moves on to open primaries in Puerto Rico this weekend and Illinois on Tuesday, Puerto Rico's contest is winner-take-all and Illinois's 69 delegates are a bigger haul than even Ohio, and a week from Saturday is Louisiana's contest and Missouri's convention caucus.   After that, we head into April, including New York and Pennsylvania on April 24.

It's looking more and more like Romney may not be able to wrap up the 1,144 delegates he'll need by the convention.  If that starts becoming clear, expect the pressure on Gingrich to really heat up.