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

Meet Greg Brannon!

If the Tea Party has their way in NC, Greg Brannon will replace Kay Hagan as Senator in November, so here are a few things that Brannon has said that BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski put together, just so the folks back home know what they're getting into.

Greg Brannon is a doctor and former tea party activist running for Senate in North Carolina. Brannon, who is most likely headed for a Republican Senate primary run with North Carolina state House Speaker Thom Tillis, led incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan 42-40 in an April Public Policy Polling poll.

Brannon, who previously led an organization called Founder’s Truth, has a history of making controversial statements on the radio.

He previously called U.S. property taxes “American central planning” and cited the Holocaust and Soviet Union as other examples of central planning.

Brannon has said that the United Nations is a scam to control life and thinks that democratic debate over issues is a form of socialism.

Founder’s Truth’s now-shuttered website often posted conspiracy theories with blog posts that made claims like the Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag, the TSA might use electric shock bracelets, and that there is fluoridate in the water supply.

After BuzzFeed reported on Brannon’s website, it was removed from the Web Archive under mysterious conditions. The Web Archive would not comment if Brannon’s campaign asked for the site to be taken it down.

Reviewing hours of The Bill LuMaye Show, a radio program Brannon went on weekly as a guest since 2010, BuzzFeed has found other controversial audio statements from his tenure as a tea party activist.

Brannon would also get rid of public schools, believes President Obama is a dictator, thinks the Second Amendment gives ordinary citizens the right to own a nuclear weapon, thinks abortion is worse than slavery or the Holocaust, believes the Supreme Court has no power and no place in America, that property taxes are proof America is a socialist country, and that Upton Sinclair's "the Jungle" was government propaganda fiction.

And in a PPP poll earlier this year, Brannon was ahead of Kay Hagan 42-40.  The guy is bonkers, and yet it's entirely possible he'll be in the Senate in January.

But both parties are the same, right?  And Kay Hagan is a bad Democrat, so we should probably let Brannon win.

Right?

Last Call For The Party's Over

The Tea Party's over, that is.  Tea Party support among Republicans has plummeted from where it was in Gallup's numbers in November 2010.

The poll suggests that the partnership between the Tea Party and the Republican Party may be waning. Although some of the Tea Party's most visible representatives in politics today are associated with the Republican Party, and while rank-and-file Republicans are more likely to call themselves supporters than opponents of the Tea Party movement -- a far greater number identify as neither.

To be sure, this is much more positive than Democrats' views of the Tea Party, with a majority describing themselves as opponents of the political movement. However, it is also far less supportive than three years ago, when two-thirds of Republicans identified as Tea Party supporters.

Similarly, just as Republicans are mixed in their views of the Tea Party, Tea Party supporters themselves have mixed views about the Republican Party: 55% hold a favorable view of it and 43% an unfavorable view. This contrasts with the highly positive views toward the GOP expressed by Republicans, with 79% rating it favorably, and 19% unfavorably. Tea Party supporters and Republicans are aligned however, in their broadly unfavorable reaction to the Democratic Party.

The signs of a crack-up in the GOP are all there, and the outcome of the shutdown nonsense is shaping up to be a total disaster for the Republican brand.  The opportunity for the Democrats is huge if they play their cards right.

Mooseiah Complex

Always Wrong Bill Kristol seems to think that in 2014 if Sarah Palin runs for and wins the Senate seat currently held by Alaska Democrat Mark Begich, all will be forgiven in his eyes.

“I was for taking the gamble of putting her on the ticket, I don’t think it hurt the ticket in 2008,” Kristol explained. “I think her stepping down as governor of Alaska was a big problem. People don’t like to see a candidate, a governor, an executive — absent some medical reason or whatever — just leave office early. And she had been a good governor — incidentally — of Alaska until then. So, I think that is something, I think, she has to recover from in terms of being a serious leader in the party. Still has a lot of loyalty, still can shape the debate, she still has a great political touch.”

“I think the way Palin would possibly resurrect herself — if that’s the right word or rehabilitate herself, I think is a better way of putting it — run for Senate in Alaska in 2014,” he continued. “I’m not urging that. I’m just saying, if I were her adviser, I would say, ‘Take on the incumbent, you have to win a primary, then you have to beat an incumbent Democrat, it’s not easy.’”

“But if she did that, suddenly — if you can imagine that,” Kristol added, smiling. “Sarah Palin, freshman senator, January 2015 in Washington having beaten an incumbent. That would be pretty interesting.”

Sure, in the same way bubonic plague, nuclear waste sites, and telemarketer conventions are "interesting".  Kristol's not completely moronic, he wants the GOP to win back the Senate and Begich's seat is a big part of getting to 51.  He also knows that Sarah Palin has a better chance of winning -- or at least drawing national attention and fundraising millions -- than our old friend Human Disaster Area Joe Miller:  terrible at math, even worse at campaigning, quick on the trigger to assault journalists and bloggers who ask too many questions, and a sore-ass loser.  Miller's 2010 campaign against Lisa Murkowski was legendarily bad, and he's somehow running against Begich in 2014.

Despite Palin's approval rating in Alaska somewhere around the level of Milwaukee's Best beer, and the fact she'd lose to Begich by double digits, Miller would find a way to lose by triple digits.  So yeah, Moose Lady is the GOP's best shot in Honey Caribou Boo land.

That's the hook Bill Kristol is hanging his hat on.  It'll fall off halfway through, of course.

Welcome To Your GOP, Rookie

Freshman GOP Congressman Robert Pittenger of North Carolina is finding out the hard way just what level of absolute lunacy he's signed up to join with today's Republican party.  His town hall meeting in NC-9's blood red Charlotte suburbs devolved into a verbal beatdown when Pittenger mentioned that he wasn't going to vote to shut down the government over Obamacare.

The exchange was captured and posted by the tea party website ConstitutionalWar.org. A man off camera can be heard asking Pittenger about the defunding effort spearheaded by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

"Do you want the thoughtful answer?" Pittenger asked.

"I want yes or no," the man said.

Pittenger then said "no," a clip that the tea party website re-played in slow-motion.

The lawmaker then had a back-and-forth with the man and a woman, who was also off camera.

"Do you think Harry Reid is going to pass that in the Senate?" Pittenger asked.

"It doesn't matter," the man fired back.

"We need to show the American people we stand for conservative values," the woman shouted, drawing a smattering of applause.

Because FREEDOM.   Hey, guess who most likely earned himself a primary challenger in a district that's been red for over 50 years?  This is where we are, folks.  Republicans don't want the "thoughtful answer".  They want rage, they want hatred, they want their way or it's game over.

The Most Honest A Cheney's Ever Been

So in the great state of Wyoming, Liz Cheney has upset the apple cart, set it on fire, crushed the apples into flaming, dirty paste and then declared a scorched earth campaign versus all apple orchards with her decision to primary Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for no particular reason other than she really wants to be in the Senate.

If you were wondering why Liz Cheney feels the need to take out Sen. Mike Enzi (who is a remarkable senator inasmuch he's pretty much famous for just kind of being there) there's two reasons. First, Enzi is the ranking Republican on the Senate Health committee and didn't stop Obamacare or something, so that makes him MAXIMUM RINO. Second, and more importantly:  

What should GOP do in face of radical Obama agenda? Everything possible to resist/block. That's not obstructionism. That's patriotism.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) February 23, 2013

To recap, Liz Cheney is trying to take Mike Enzi out because there's not enough GOP obstruction of President Obama among Senate Republicans. She's not running to represent the interests of the people of the Cowboy State in the United States Senate, she's not running to be an agent of change in what amounts to an ossified gentlemen's club, she's not running because the GOP needs more women in the Senate (and that's actually true) and she's certainly not running to see if Wyoming can earn its other long-forgotten state moniker, Equality State (and if she does because of her sister Mary, that won't last long the second President Obama agrees with her.)

She's running to stop the last two years of Barack Obama's second term. That's really the whole thing. That is her big reason for putting Enzi out to Wyoming's green pastures, because total obstruction is all that matters. You want to talk about sense of entitlement? Cheney decides the seat should be hers because of the purity of her rancor towards the President the GOP has been unable to stop, time and time again. Look, this is a person whose sole qualification for anything is "her dad was Vice-President". Based on that, she thinks Enzi should step aside so that she can scream at the President. Where does she even get off doing this in the first place?

But this is Liz Cheney we're talking about here, who burst onto the scene in 2009 playing footsie with the Birther movement, who has a serious problem telling the truth, and of course she has her backers among the "progressive left" who see her as a strong enough woman to end up in the White House someday. You know, like Sarah Palin.

Me, I'm going to enjoy the Republicans taking sides on Cheney versus Enzi and hoping Enzi decides to pull an Angus King just big enough to open the door for a Democratic opponent to squeak through. It's a lot to hope for, but it would be awesome if it happened. After all, Cheney has already dismissed Enzi as a factor in her race and is going straight for the Oval Office (in more ways than one.) That kind of hubris tends to get attention even from the most absent of fate-directing powers.

Meanwhile, I bet President Obama is having a pretty good laugh at the news that Republicans are still willing to eat their own in order to try to stop him.

Let the battle commence.

Tancredo Junction

Back in 2010, Tea Party nutjob and anti-immigrant racist Tom Tancredo ran for Colorado Governor as an independent, got some 35% of the vote, and handed a 20 point victory to Democrat John Hickenlooper.  Apparently for an encore, Tancredo's going to try again in 2014.

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, known for his strong stances on immigration, said late Wednesday night he plans to formally announce a run for governor on a conservative talk radio show Thursday.

“This Dunlap thing is the last straw,” said Tancredo in a message.

Tancredo, a Republican, referred to Gov. John Hickenlooper’s decision on Wednesday to grant a temporary reprieve on the execution of death row inmate Nathan Dunlap. Dunlap was convicted of killing four people at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese in 1993.

Several Republicans castigated Hickenlooper on Wednesday for the move that halts Dunlap’s date with death that was scheduled for August. 

Now granted, we knew Hickenlooper was going to take a lot of flak for passing gun control laws after the Aurora theater shooting.  But Tancredo is a loser of a candidate and if his plan to win is to run to the right of where he was in 2010, all of a sudden Hickenlooper's re-election seems rather assured.

We'll see if Tancredo will go for a GOP primary bid or another independent run, but either way I fully expect him to alienate the hell out of most of Colorado.  This is a guy who tested the waters for a 2008 White House run by putting up an ad in Iowa depicting a fictional terrorist attack as assured if we didn't immediately militarize the borders.

Given Colorado's growing Latino population, Tancredo's virulently anti-immigration stance (not to mention his outright anti-Latino racism) will make it even harder for him to win in 2014.   Hickenlooper must be cheering this announcement on and for good reason...

Last Call: The Inmates Burning Down The Asylum

Ohio's tea party nut jobs have had it with John Kasich's calls for moderation, like wanting to expand Medicare and raise taxes on energy companies that are making a literal killing on fracking.  They are now engaged in a full-scale revolt to either turn the state from purple to red or burn the Ohio Republican party down trying.

Feeling betrayed by the Republican Party and its leaders, tea party groups in Ohio appear to be uniting and moving toward either a split from the GOP or action to punish Republican candidates who fail ideological purity tests.

A series of events, culminating with the April 26 election of Matt Borges as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, spurred a flurry of meetings and conference calls among tea party leaders last week to plot a course of action heading into the 2014 statewide election.

Options being discussed, according to Seth Morgan, policy director for Americans for Prosperity, range from breaking off into “a third party, to an insurrection (within the Republican Party) and everything in between.”

One has to wonder how many times the teabaggers are going to be able to get away with this.  The simple answer is they're going to split from the GOP eventually, and when they do, the Dems will be right there to win back a number of states.  The Ohio teabaggers seem to be rather serious about this.

Tom Zawistowski, executive director of the Portage County Tea Party who lost his bid for the Ohio GOP chairmanship by a 48-7 vote of the party’s state central committee, met on Saturday with Don Shrader, chairman of the Constitution Party of Ohio, to explore uniting in a party committed more to principles than winning elections.

After the chairmanship vote, Zawistowski said he made it clear that if the state GOP did not focus on enacting conservative policies, “we would either find a political party to join or we would start one of our own,” saying his meeting with Shrader “is the first step in that process.”

Let me get the popcorn.  This is going to be fun.

Last Call

As Greg Sargent points out, last night Missouri Republicans chose the nuttiest of the wingers in their primary to go up against Dem Sen. Claire McCaskill in November, the one with the least chance of winning, and the one with the most insane voting record:  current Tea Party Congressman Todd Akin.  And Akin's voting record speaks for itself:

* In 2012, Akin was one of 24 to vote against the Training and Research for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act; 147 Republicans voted for it. A GOP press release described this as an effort to “advance training and education for autism service providers” so that “autistic children and adults can lead fuller, happier and healthier lives.”

* In 2010, Akin was one of only 13 to vote No on a motion “expressing the support of the House of Representatives for the goals and ideals of the National School Lunch Program.” 155 Republicans voted for it.

* In 2009, Akin was one of 11 to vote against a measure “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that providing breakfast in schools through the National School Breakfast Program has a positive impact on classroom performance.” 152 Republicans voted for it (fixed).

* In 2004, Aiken was one of only five to vote against the Child Nutrition Improvement and Integrity Act; 217 Republicans voted for it. A GOP press release said the measure would “ensure more effective and efficient use of federal resources targeted to providing nutritional services for vulnerable children.”

* Also in 2004, Akin was one of 19 to vote No on revisions and extensions to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, a measure that authorized increased federal spending to expand the number of such clubs. 185 Republicans voted for it.

As a rep, Akin's been a nobody lunatic backbencher.  As a Senator, he'd be a disaster.  I was extremely concerned that the GOP would have nominated Moose Lady's pick, Sarah Steelman, who probably would have an easy time of beating Claire.  But as with GOP Tea Party nutjob Richard Mourdock's race versus Democrat Joe Donnelly, it's the return of the Hoffman Effect:  the GOP candidate is so far to the right that even in a red state the race is effectively dead even.

We'll see how it turns out, but these are two winnable races for the Democrats and they very well could be the surprise wins that allow them to keep the Senate in 2012.

Last Call

There was some state primary news made yesterday in my old home state of Nebraska, where Tea Party candidate State Sen. Deb Fischer literally came out of nowhere to blindside AG Jon Bruning to take the GOP Senate primary race against Democrat Bob Kerrey.

Her late surge, perhaps unprecedented in modern-day Nebraska political history, upended a Senate race that appeared to be settled as recently as 10 days ago with the GOP prize within the grasp of Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning.

Fischer suddenly gained momentum with late endorsements from 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Lincoln, then rode the momentum of a weekend TV ad blitz mounted by Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his political action committee.

The super PAC ads purchased by Ending Spending supported Fischer and roughed up Bruning with attacks on his character and ethical behavior as attorney general. Within days, his support collapsed and the race was scrambled.

In other words, Joe Ricketts just bought himself a senator on the cheap in the last week of the campaign.  Fischer raised less than 15% of Bruning's war chest, but she had Moose Lady on her side.  Thanks, Citizens United!  Bob Kerrey is already crying foul.

As for Kerrey, the former senator took his own jab at Fischer, noting that a super PAC funded by former Omaha businessman Joe Ricketts funneled money into her race, helping her over the finish line.

Kerrey decried the large amount of money pouring into campaigns and asked what Ricketts expected in return.

“When he calls on her, what's he going to get?" Kerrey asked. "Does he want lower taxes? Probably. Does he want less regulation? Probably. And when you put that kind of money up, the question's going to occur."

The main attack on Bob Kerrey is that he's been outside Nebraska too long.  But now, Fischer's neatly purchased primary bought with money and influence from outside the state goes a long way towards blunting that criticism completely.  We'll see how the race polls now, and if Kerrey has a chance.  I'll say he has more of one than against Bruning, but not by much.

Would be nice to keep the seat blue, however.

Pyrrhic Vic--Erm, Defeat

Republicans are fighting the battle for primary votes and losing the general election even as we speak.

As another round of voting takes place this week in the Republican presidential race – with 11 states holding Super Tuesday contests – a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that the combative and heavily scrutinized primary season so far has damaged the party and its candidates.

Four in 10 of all adults say the GOP nominating process has given them a less favorable impression of the Republican Party, versus just slightly more than one in 10 with a more favorable opinion.

Additionally, when asked to describe the GOP nominating battle in a word or phrase, nearly 70 percent of respondents – including six in 10 independents and even more than half of Republicans – answered with a negative comment.

Some examples of these negative comments from Republicans: "Unenthusiastic," "discouraged," "lesser of two evils," "painful," "disappointed," "poor choices," "concerned," "underwhelmed,” “uninspiring” and “depressed.”

And perhaps most significantly, the GOP primary process has taken a toll on the Republican presidential candidates, including front-runner Mitt Romney, who is seen more unfavorably and whose standing with independents remains underwater.

And yes, I'm aware that a complete Romney Super Tuesday victory in Ohio and the other states that forces Santorum and Gingrich out of the race would give him an eternity to polish his turd of an image ahead of November.  Hell, even a brokered convention in August would still leave Romney 90 days or so to go full Sensible Centrist.  He will have to.

But that's also operating in a vacuum and assuming that Team Obama won't do anything with their war chest either.  Mitt Romney has already pulled the pin on several gaffe grenades and you can bet his tone-deaf stupidity will be served up on a daily basis once we get to this fall.

The longer the primary season goes, the deeper the hole Romney will be in (and yes, this means I think he eventually prevails as the nominee for now.)  Let the chaos continue.

GOP Gets That Poll-Asked Look Again

The latest NBC/Marist poll in Florida this weekend finds Mitt Romney up big over Newt Gingrich now, 42%-27%.  That's not the big news.  This is, buried at the ass end of the article:

Romney and rest of the candidates, however, continue to trail President Obama in Florida among all voters. Romney does best, but loses 49-41 percent, a point worse than a month ago.

As in the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, Gingrich fares the worst of the entire GOP field against Obama, worse even than Santorum or Paul. Obama beats Gingrich, 52-35 percent, a five-point wider advantage for Obama from December.

Obama, whose approval rating in Florida is 46 percent, has a lead over Romney, in large part, because of independents. Independents sided overwhelmingly with the president -- 50-36 percent over Romney, and by 20 points or more over Gingrich, Santorum and Paul.

And everyone on Earth should have seen this coming.  The longer and uglier the GOP primary becomes, and the further Mitt Romney has to pivot to the right during the primary season, the more independent voters he'll lose in the general. 

Another reason that POTUS is leading in Florida is Gov. Rick Scott.  Independents are utterly furious with him and that's reflected in that general independent disgust with all four GOP candidates.  The same scenario is playing out in the other two big traditional swing states, Ohio with John Kasich, and to a lesser extent, Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania.

And yes, ten months is a universe in political time, but the seeds for the GOP defeat in November are being planted now by Romney trying to out-wingnut the wingnuts.

The Lessons Of NY-26

Kathy Hochul, the Democrat, won last night in this special election over Republican Jane Corwin and Tea Party spoiler Jack Davis.

On Tuesday, she captured 47 percent of the vote to Ms. Corwin’s 43 percent, according to unofficial results. A Tea Party candidate, Jack Davis, had 9 percent.

Voters, who turned out in strikingly large numbers for a special election, said they trusted Ms. Hochul, the county clerk of Erie County, to protect Medicare.

“I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.”

Pat Gillick, a Republican from East Amherst, who also cast a ballot for Ms. Hochul, said, “The privatization of Medicare scares me.”

For the Democrat to get 47% in a district like NY-26 is amazing.  Without Davis around, I think this would have been a recount-worthy vote, because someone would have won 50-49.  Hochul pounded the Medicare message and won, despite being outspent 2-1 by the Republicans.  The Republicans spent a lot of money trashing Davis, but it wasn't enough...not with the GOP plan to privatize Medicare.

The lesson?  Hey Democrats:  defend Medicare and you'll win.

TBogg notes that Jonah Goldberg yesterday morning called on Paul Ryan to run for President on the "strength" of being the author of the GOP's Medicare plan.  Yep, the plan is so wonderful it cost the Republicans a district they had held for 43 years.  By all means, let Paul Ryan run for President.

On the other hand Steve M. sees Republicans changing the subject to Israel, as I predicted they would earlier this week.

Meanwhile, I think Republicans' equivalent to the Ryan budget is the Obama-Netanyahu dust-up, and I worry that, while we may not still be able to get an electoral benefit from the Ryan vote in the House eighteen months from now, Republicans will have the skills to use their distortion of Obama's "1967 borders" remark to peel off a few normally Democratic pro-Israel Jewish voters in key states, along with swing voters who can be terrified on foreign policy and "security." (I'm linking the two because last night, when I was waiting for results from NY-26, I switched over from MSNBC to Fox News and there, on Hannity, was Netanyahu himself. At least this week, he's their hero, their Paul Ryan.)

Count on this.  Anything to get the news cycle off Medicare, Paul Ryan, and the loss in NY-26.  Expect this and the debt ceiling to continue to play a huge role in the Republican message of "we must do what we want or die."  Doug J at Balloon Juice argues that...gasp...the GOP might have learned something.

Republicans are lucky they lost the NY-26 special election tonight, because now they’ll back up off of it and sit their cup down. Make no mistake, though, the decision to vote the Ryan plan through the House was the stupidest political decision of our generation. Stupid because it was pointless—it would never become law—and stupid because it probably costs Republicans 10+ seats in the House. You don’t give up ten seats to accomplish nothing.

I disagree.  If the GOP response to the Joplin tornado is any indication, they'll exponentially keep upping the bet, doubling down again and again, until any American who takes government help for anything -- Social Security, Medicare, disaster relief, schools, libraries, anything at all, mind you -- becomes the new Enemy of the People.  We have to destroy the social safety net in order to save it for those who really need it...but you and your family wouldn't be one of "them" would they?  They will declare taxation is theft, government services are slavery, and you're not one of "those" people, are you?

Return Of The Hoffman Effect

Nate Silver has a preview of today's special election in NY-26 to replace disgraced Republican Chris "Craigslist" Lee, where the GOP and Tea Party candidates are splitting the vote enough to give Democrat Kathy Hochul a shot at winning one of the reddest districts in upstate New York.

If I were asked to set odds on the race, I would probably make Ms. Hochul something like a 2-to-1 or perhaps 5-to-2 favorite. A relatively wide range of outcomes are possible, from a double-digit win for Ms. Hochul to a win for Ms. Corwin by several points.

As to the interpretation of the results, one thing I’d remind the readers of is that the margins matter as much as the victor: if Ms. Hochul wins by a single vote, that tells us almost exactly the same thing as if she loses by a single vote. Also, Ms. Hochul’s share of the vote matters: the lower Mr. Davis’s vote goes, the more we can read into the results. As I noted two weeks ago, if Ms. Hochul finishes with a vote share in the mid-to-high 40s, that would be consistent with how Democrats performed in the district in the strong Democratic years of 2006 and 2008 and is a result that Democrats could be pleased with.

There is also some evidence that Republican plans to significantly alter Medicare, which has been the focal point of Ms. Hochul’s campaign, may indeed have made some difference in the race. In the Siena poll, voters were asked to identify their most important issue. Of the 21 percent who picked Medicare, some 80 percent said they planned to vote for Ms. Hochul (excluding undecided voters).

What’s tricky about this is that it isn’t straightforward to determine whether voters are prepared to vote for Ms. Hochul because of the Medicare issue — or rather, whether they were going to vote for her for some other reason, but emphasize Medicare to pollsters because she has also. Correlation may not equal causation.

Nevertheless, of those voters who identified Medicare as their top issue, just 50 percent are Democrats, and an additional 24 percent are independents. Since Ms. Hochul is winning 80 percent of those votes instead, that implies that she is in fact picking up some support from independents and moderate Republicans (of which there are many in this district) on the issue. 

And in a blood-red rural district like this, that's nothing short of amazing.  Combined, the Republican and Tea Party candidate still would win.  But split like this, Kathy Hochul has a real chance to win.  Even worse for Republicans, it puts the GOP plan to kill Medicare right back in the spotlight as the reason why Hochul has been gaining support here.

If Hochul is the victor here, House Republican support for the plan will evaporate and the Dems have a clear road map to victories all across the country next year.

The Ultimate Hoffman Effect

If there's one bright spot in the GOP taking control of the House, it's that the conserva-schism between the country club Wall Street types and the Tea Party wingnuts has gotten bad enough now that for the first time a majority of Republicans now say a major third political party is needed in order to reflect their views.

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

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

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

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

It's painfully clear that the Tea Party right finds the current GOP wholly inadequate in implementing their fundamentalist theocracy, and this is literally only after three and a half months of actual GOP control of the House.  It will be interesting to see how bad this split gets.  Many believe that no matter how mediocre the GOP candidate is in 2012, you won't see the Tea Party sit out the election like Democrats did in 2010.

On the other hand, if some sort of third party candidate shows up and pulls a Ross Perot, things could get very, very interesting.  Either way, expect the GOP to continue to lurch to the right on a daily basis.

She Moves In Moose-terious Ways

Moves downward in the polls, that is.  CBS's latest numbers on Sarah Palin find that she has about the same popularity as Bush did at the end of his second term:  22% favorability.

 

Palin is viewed favorably by just 22 percent of Americans, according to the poll - including less than half (44 percent) of Republicans. Twenty-one percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats view her favorably.

Forty-eight percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Palin. That includes 73 percent of Democrats, 44 percent of independents and 22 percent of Republicans.

Twenty-nine percent said they are undecided or not sure how they feel about Palin, including about one in three Republicans and independents.

Palin's numbers are far better among Americans who have a favorable view of the Tea Party movement. Sixty-one percent of that group views her favorably, while just 14 percent view her unfavorably. One in four aren't sure.

Best part? That same 22% number is the percentage of Americans who have a favorable view of the Tea Party overall.  She's about as popular outside the Tea Party as moose scat in the punchbowl.  So please, by all means, run in 2012, Sarah.

She Turned Him Into A Newt Once (Or Was That Turned Newt Into A Human?)

Christine O'Donnell would like you to know that she is not a witch.




And really, the only thing better than this truly bizarre ad are the Wingers lining up to explain in all seriousness why this is the BEST POLITICAL AD EVER and now of course she'll win easily and the GOP leadership will totally embrace her because she's such a bowl of starbursty awesome flakes.

And if she loses, somebody gets turned into some sort of reptile. Maybe an amphibian, like a frog or Ben Roethlisberger. I don't know. You should vote for her because she'll totally put silly bands in the vending machines outside the library, and there will be more pep rallies so people can ditch 7th period.

Besides, real witches would kick her narrow ass on general principle.

Paladino's Charge

Me, warning last week about the NY Governor's race:

And so a multi-millionaire real estate tycoon bought his way onto the ticket and won votes for being a racist jagoff.  Don't think he can win the general?  Keep telling yourself that.  Millions of pissed off Tea Party folks are going to make their votes count in November.  For those of you who think the Tea Party is harmless or as one friend told me last night "It's just the pendulum swinging back the other way" then you're badly underestimating what's going on here.

Taegan Goddard, this morning:

A new Quinnipiac poll in New York finds Andrew Cuomo (D) leading Carl Paladino (R) by just six points among likely voters in the race for governor, 49% to 43%.

Said pollster Maurice Carroll: "The question was whether Carl Paladino would get a bounce from his big Republican primary victory. The answer is yes. He's within shouting distance and -- you can count on it -- he will be shouting. Andrew Cuomo might be a victim of his own excess. Politicians and polls have depicted him so relentlessly as a sure thing that he might be a victim of the 'throw the bums out' attitude that hits incumbents in this angry year." 

Still think the Tea Party is a harmless bunch of loons with no chance of winning, folks?

The enthusiasm gap is killing the Democrats.  Paladino should be down sixty in a state like New York, not six.  But Democrats don't want to vote, and Republicans do.  The result is that the most insane wing of the Republican Party will make huge gains in six weeks.  This is a guy who sent out racist e-mails about the President on multiple occasions and thinks New York's poor should be put in camps away from the general population to be "re-educated".

He's within six points of being the governor of New York.

Get it in gear, folks.  There's a clear choice this fall.

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Arctic Cold, Part 2

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is indeed kicking off her write-in candidacy tonight in Alaska.  Hotline On-Call:

Murkowski's decision will set up a 3-way battle between the incumbent, Miller and Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams (D), potentially turning the race on its head. Private 3-way polling has shown Miller leading, but by a narrow margin.

Murkowski will make the formal announcement tonight in Anchorage. She has been mulling her options after losing to attorney Joe Miller (R) by 1.8% -- or about 2K votes out of 110K cast.

Miller won with the backing of the Tea Party Express and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R). The Tea Party Express spent hundreds of thousands of dollars criticizing Murkowski's legislative accomplishments, and Palin campaigned against her rival in the race's closing days.

She has not formally said she will run, but her campaign is inviting reporters to call in. Murkowski spokespeople were not immediately available for comment Friday afternoon.

All I gotta say is "called this back in August".  Let the party begin.

More Primary Impetus, The Morning After

The primary votes for GOP NH-Sen are still being counted this morning, but the big news is that in Delaware, Christine "Masturbation is bad" O'Donnell has taken a six point win over 9-term Congressman Mike Castle for the GOP Senate nomination, and in NY's Governor's race, the GOP candidate will not be Rick Lazio, as everyone expected, but Carl "Debtor's Prisons" Paladino, who won by over 20 points.

Castle would have won the general easily, but in the dark blue state of Delaware, suddenly Democrat Chris Coons is the favorite.  The NRSC?  Now ignoring the race.

A National Republican Senatorial Committee source told TPM tonight that the party will be sending money and support elsewhere since O'Donnell, not moderate Rep. Mike Castle (R), is the nominee. O'Donnell, a perennial candidate who has never held political office, trails Democratic nominee Chris Coons.

NRSC officials say that if O'Donnell proves she is viable as a candidate in what is considered to be a blue state, "we would hope Sen. Jim DeMint and the Tea Party Express would invest in her race." If that happens, the NRSC would consider spending for O'Donnell.

The Tea Party Express hit back, calling it a "rash" decision and reminding supporters the NRSC attempted to help Sen. Lisa Murkowski during a close vote in the Alaska Senate primary she lost last month.

"It is because of inexcusable conduct in Delaware and Alaska that so many conservatives have turned to the Tea Party Express, offering their support and their donations," Tea Party Express officials told reporters. "These people have lost faith in the NRSC as just another big-government, Washington, D.C.-based organization that has contributed to the problems this country currently faces."

Meanwhile in New York state, Carl Paladino has the privilege of getting crushed by state AG Andrew Cuomo in the general despite Paladino's...extra curricular activities.

Paladino has generated some controversy since announcing his candidacy. He sent out a series of racist emails, suggested welfare recipients should be housed in prisons, and became quite outspoken in his opposition to the Park51 Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Lazio also focused much of his resources on opposing Park51, but it was not enough to overcome Paladino's personal fortune and appeal to populist anger.

We'll see if Paladino's "I'm mad as hell" slogan and personal wealth can put a dent in Cuomo's rather overwhelming lead. The TPM Poll Average shows Cuomo ahead in the general election matchup, 58.3%-25.9%.

We'll see how it shakes out, but frankly Delaware Senate is going to be a pickup for the Dems, and NY Gov will be a bright spot for them.  Seven weeks to go.  We'll see who's left standing.