Last Call

John Kerry is officially President Obama's choice for SecState, but the real fight would be on for Kerry's seat, and whether or not Scott Brown could take another swing at it.  Nate Silver runs the numbers:

If voters saw something extraordinary in Ms. Warren, then Mr. Brown might be expected to prevail against a mediocre opponent, as he did in 2010 against the Democratic state attorney general, Martha Coakley. If instead it was something intrinsic to the problem that any Republican faces in Massachusetts, then even a lesser-known Democrat could win. 

Ms. Warren’s favorability rating — 56 percent among Election Day voters — was perfectly adequate but not extraordinary. And 37 percent of voters said they thought Ms. Warren was too liberal, even in Massachusetts. 

But such is the intrinsic advantage that Democrats hold in Massachusetts that Ms. Warren won the election anyway. A “generic” Democrat who avoided the mistakes that Ms. Coakley made (like insulting the former Boston Red Sox star pitcher Curt Schilling) would thus seem to stand a reasonably good chance. 

And I agree with Nate:  Martha Coakley was an unusually terrible candidate.  But Brown still has a shot:

There are other circumstances, however, that could work in Mr. Brown’s favor. Most important is the abbreviated schedule for a special election. 

In a special election campaign that lasts only a few months, the Democratic candidate would not have the luxury of overcoming early errors, as Ms. Warren did. That is especially true because the Democrat would probably face a competitive primary, while Mr. Brown would probably not. 

The overall political environment is not likely to be as favorable to Democrats in a special election as it was in November (although it also will probably not be as unfavorable to them as in 2010). And there could be an element of sympathy for Mr. Brown among some swing voters. 

So what's the bottom line, Nate?

Despite all that, it is difficult to view Mr. Brown as much better than even money: he is a Republican in Massachusetts who lost an election by a reasonably clear margin just last month. And if Mr. Brown won, he could well face another competitive election in November 2014, when Democrats will have more of a chance to gear up — and when Deval Patrick will have finished his second term as governor and might be more likely to run for the Senate.

A lot depends on who Democrats decide to run against Brown, too.  Ben Affleck has been mentioned as an unlikely choice, while better political money has Barney Frank in the seat (he's not saying no, should he be appointed by Gov. Patrick.)  We'll see who runs, after all, Scott Brown hasn't announced much of anything, and running for Senate is expensive, folks.

Bunker Mentaility

A full week after the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, the Nantional Rifle Association finally got around to a response.  And by "response", I mean NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre's spectacular self-immolation on national television at a "press conference" where the NRA refused to take any questions.  LaPierre's partial statement:

Now, I can imagine the headlines, the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow. “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything.” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools.

But since when did “gun” automatically become a bad word? A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting our president isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States of America isn’t a bad word. And when you hear your glass breaking at three a.m. and you call 9/11, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So, why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect the president of our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in our schools? They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them, it’s our right to protect them.

You know, five years ago after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if -- what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security? Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 little kids, that 26 innocent lives might have been spared that day? Is it so important to you (inaudible) would rather continue to risk the alternative? Is the press and the political class here in Washington D.C. so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and American gun owners, that you’re willing to accept the world, where real resistance to evil monsters is alone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life, her life, to shield those children in her care.

No one. No one, regardless of personal, political prejudice has the right to impose that sacrifice. 

And for a good 25 minutes or so (when he wasn't being protested by Code Pink in the middle of his gobsmackingly stupid tirade) LaPierre went on to blame video games, the media, the President, movies, television, liberals, parents, teachers, and everyone who wasn't a card-carrying member of the NRA for the deaths of 26 people last Friday.

On top of advocating for an armed militia of American volunteers to indoctrinate guard America's schools, LaPierre called for a national database registry of "the mentally ill", and demanded that students and teachers in schools be taught in firearm safety along with other educational courses.

Now, the National Rifle Association knows there are millions of qualified and active retired police, active, Reserve, and retired military, security professionals, certified firefighters, security professionals, rescue personnel, an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every single school.

We could deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer, relying on the brave men and women in America’s police forces. The budgets -- and you all know this, everyone in the country knows this -- of our local police departments are strained, and the resources are severely limited, but their dedication and courage is second to none. And, they can be deployed right now.

I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. And, to do it now to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in January.

In other words, the guy wants us to put an army of cops in schools in the next two weeks.   All carrying guns, of course.  I'm sure Xe or Triple Canopy would love to get that contract.

Your freedom, of course, means turning America into a series of armed camps with a bunch of people ready to do violence at a moment's notice.  Don't you want that for your kids in your school?

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with this plan, right?

Will Orange Julius Leave By The Door Or The Window?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

StupidiNews!

• Disgraced former SC GOP Gov. Mark Sanford is reportedly beginning his political comeback by running for the Congressional seat vacated by now Sen. Tim Scott.
• The federal Appeals Court in DC will not revisit the court's decision allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as manufacturers now look to the Supreme Court to block the ruling.
• Additional State Department officials have resigned in the wake of the death of a US Ambassador in Libya as hearings on Capitol Hill blame "systemic failure".
• Vice President Joe Biden is vowing to move quickly on the new task force designed to come up with new gun control regulations in the wake of the Newtown shooting.
• New Zealand has delayed the extradition of internet mogul Kim Dotcom to the US again, moving the copyright fraud trial until August of next year.

Last Call

Cory Booker is running for Senate in 2014, probably eliciting a sigh of relief from Gov. Chris Christie.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker will not challenge New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in next year's gubernatorial race and will instead run for U.S. Senate in 2014, political sources familiar with his decision tell NBC 4 New York.

 

Booker will seek the seat held by fellow Democrat Frank Lautenberg when his term is up in 2014, those sources tell NBC 4 New York. Lautenberg, 88, is the oldest current senator. He first served in the U.S. Senate from 1982 to 2001 and has served since his re-election in 2003.

Booker's decision not to challenge Christie comes as the Republican incumbent enjoys record-high approval ratings in polls taken since Sandy hit the Garden State.

Considering Lautenberg will be 90 in 2014, I think it's a pretty safe bet he'll be retiring.   Can Booker win the primary?

Well...I guess.  But nothing in New Jersey politics is a safe bet.  We'll see.

Asked And Answered On Gun Control

Having slept on it and looking again at yesterday's POTUS presser on gun control, Jake Tapper's question (as Emily Hauser says) was a fair one when the subject is announced to be gun control legislation:  Where's the President been on gun control up until now?  President Obama's answer, as James Joyner correctly assesses, is a worthy one:

The tone of the question borders on the smug but the substance is absolutely fair. And White House reporters, in particular, have tended to shy away from such pointed questions in recent years. But Obama’s answer struck me as pretty powerful, too:

“Well, here’s where I’ve been, Jake,” Obama replied. “I’ve been president of the United States dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars. I don’t think I’ve been on vacation. And so, you know, I think all of us have to do some reflection on how we prioritize what we do here in Washington.”

Obama added that there was more involved in keeping children safe beyond dealing only with guns and reiterated his confidence in Biden and his task force.

“And as I said on Sunday, you know, this should be a wake-up call for all of us to say that if we are not getting right the need to keep our children safe, then nothing else matters,” he continued. “It’s my commitment to make sure we do everything we can to keep our children safe. A lot of things are involved in that, Jake. So making sure they have decent health care, making sure they got a good education, making sure that their parents have jobs — those are all relevant as well. Those aren’t just sort of side issues. But there’s no doubt that this has to be a central issue. And that’s exactly why I’m confident that Joe [Biden] is going to take this so seriously over the next couple months.”

Presumably, the president was expecting the question and was well prepared; otherwise, this is some world class thinking on his feet on display.

Once again I'm glad the guy in the White House is not Mitt Romney, because his answer would have been completely self-serving gobbledegook.    But the current President got this one right.

The B Stands For "Blown Up In His Face"

House Speaker John Boehner has boxed himself into a corner on the fiscal slope, trying to checkmate the President with a "plan B" bill that his own party will most likely walk away from.

In response to President Obama’s extensive comments about the fiscal cliff at the White House Wednesday afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner left himself little if any room to continue negotiations.

Here’s the key piece of Boehner’s brief comments from his appearance before reporters in the Capitol:

“Tomorrow the House will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every American — 99.81 percent of the American people,” he said, referring to his own so-called Plan B. “Then the President will have a decision to make. He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill, or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

That sounds like he’s giving Obama a choice between Plan B or the fiscal cliff. No more negotiations over a broader deficit reduction plan. 

I agree.  It very much sounds like Boehner is telling the President to accept his Plan B or else.   The stock market certainly thought that's what Boehner's message was as stocks dropped 75 points directly after Orange Julius opened his yap.

The problem for Boehner is that even if he can get enough votes to pass his scheme, President Obama has already promised to veto it, because he knows he wins in January.

He can then make the Republicans an offer they can't and won't refuse.  And Obama wins again.

StupidiNews!

• A new snag in the fiscal cliff slope talks:  without a deal to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, some 100 million Americans could see their tax returns delayed for months.
• House Republicans are vowing that despite the President's call for a new assault weapons ban that new gun control legislation will not pass the House.
• The US Army is seeking the death penalty for the soldier charged with the deaths of 16 Afghan civilians, including 9 children.
• The Justice Department wants UBS trader Tom Hayes extradited, calling him the "kingpin" of the Swiss bank's three year campaign to manipulate the key global Libor interest rate.
• Scientists say a habitable planet may be only 12 light years away in the Tau Ceti system.

Low Prices, High Body Count, Every Day

As if you needed yet another reason to despise Wal-Mart, it turns out they're the country's largest semi-automatic rifle and ammunition dealer too, capitalizing on the NRA's anti-Obama paranoia and riding it to big profits.

In April 2011, Walmart began stocking guns in more and more stores, expanding the sales to 1,750 outlets nationwide. By the end of that year, the FBI received 16.4 million background check requests; the number is 16.8 million this year. Overall Walmart sales figures are back on track after the 2011 slump, and executive vice president Duncan Mac Naughton told shareholders at a meeting in October 2012 that gun sales in particular are a staple of the chain’s strategy to continue boosting its numbers. He said that over the past twenty-six months, gun sales at Walmart stores open for a year or more were up an astonishing 76 percent, while ammunition sales were up 30 percent. Walmart is now the biggest seller of firearms and ammunition in America.

“This gun thing, it’s really just a nightmare,” says Bertha Lewis, president of the Black Institute, which has been organizing Walmart workers this year to protest wages and working conditions. Given its aggressive gun sales, Walmart’s logo “shouldn’t be a smiley face; it should be an automatic weapon,” she adds.

Nearly 400 guns are available in Walmart’s catalog. And even if your local store doesn’t sell a particular model, you can special-order it (assuming you pay half the cost ahead of time). With the exception of its stores in Alaska, Walmart doesn’t sell handguns, though it does sell ammunition for them, along with a wide variety of semiautomatic long-barrel weapons. For example, at half the Walmarts in America, you can buy a semiautomatic Colt M4 OPS .22 rifle; it carries a thirty-round magazine, which you can also purchase in the store. Or perhaps a Sig Sauer M400 semiautomatic assault rifle, advertised on Walmart’s website as “designed for use in law enforcement, military operations…as well as competitive shooting,” which is just one of several AR-15 assault rifles for sale.

In keeping with the store’s pitch as a one-stop destination for shoppers, with everything from gas to groceries, gun enthusiasts can also obtain a wide range of gun accessories—including the 360 types of ammunition listed on Walmart’s website. You can buy a 555-pack of Winchester hollow-point bullets, which the website advertises as “great for plinking and varmints,” but which would cause extensive damage should they enter a human body and expand, as they are designed to do. There are full clips of ammunition for assault rifles, including “quiet ammo” that makes only a quarter of the noise of regular bullets. Laser-pointing sights for handguns are also available, as are belts for holding shotgun shells (only $4.97 at select stores).

So, you can't get a handgun in Wal-Mart (except in Alaska, natch.)  But you can get a semi-automatic rifle "for hunting" and all the ammo you can buy.  In a Wal-Mart.  Need to methodically plot out your mass murder suicide rampage?  Head to Wallyworld!

Or you could choose not to buy anything from there ever again, which seems like a really, really good idea right now.

Not Everybody's Doing The Michi-Gun Rag

The country's reaction to the horrific killings of 20 first-graders among others in Newtown, Connecticut is different this time.  There's action involved.  And normally staunch advocates of the expansion of guns and concealed carry are backing off in the wake of the massacre.  Michigan Republicans are in enough trouble as it is after passing a right-to-work bill to crush unions and a raft of massive and intrusive abortion regulations designed to close clinics in the state:

The approval rating of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is in the gutter, according to a poll released Tuesday, the strongest evidence yet of the political perils associated with the right-to-work legislation he signed into law last week.

According to the latest automated survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, only 38 percent of Michigan voters approve of the job Snyder is doing, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. In PPP's previous survey of Michigan in November, Snyder's approval rating was 10 points above water: 47 percent of voters approved of his performance as governor, while 37 percent disapproved.

Gov. Snyder's popularity has cratered.  So when the third leg of the wingnut trifecta arrived on his desk yesterday, a law expanding concealed carry in places like schools, Snyder quickly vetoed it.

In his veto letter to the state legislature Snyder said the legislation included a key loophole. The buildings in question, Snyder wrote, should be allowed to opt out of allowing concealed weapons.

"I believe that it is important that these public institutions have clear legal authority to ban weapons from their premises," Snyder wrote according to The Detroit Free Press. "Each is entrusted with the care of a vulnerable population and should have the authority to determine whether its mission would be enhanced by the addition of concealed weapons."

Snyder was mulling the bill over before and almost certainly would have been pressured into it, but seeing a nearly 30 point drop in his approval ratings (from plus 10 to minus 18) in the course of one month tends to change a guy's mind, especially since he's up for re-election in 2014.   Even he has his limits, it seems.

Of course, I fully expect the bill to be revised and put back on Snyder's desk in the future with the loophole he wants, and signed into law.  We'll see.

More on this, as always with Michigan politics, at Eclectablog.

StupidiNews!

• An independent review board cited the State Department's "systemic failures" and security lapses in Benghazi and made a number of recommendations the White House will adopt.
• Mexico's new President Enrique Nieto is promising a drastically different approach to Mexico's ongoing drug war than the military crackdown of predecessor Felipe Calderon.
• The new year will cost 2 million Americans their federal extended jobless benefits unless Congress can find a way to make a deal.
• Both Yum Brands and McDonald's are moving quickly to deal with Chinese chicken suppliers after a China state report showing indiscriminate use of unapproved antibiotics and growth hormones.
• Google's new cloud-based music service is taking on Amazon and Apple, with the big advantage of being free.

Off The Chain(ed CPI)

Even the Kroog thinks the President's latest deal sucks.  I'm going to have to say that like Paul Krugman, I'm not sure if going over the cliff is going to yield a better deal or not, so maybe we should wait and see what the final deal actually is before ordering the pitchforks and torches.

It sounds as if Ezra Klein is hearing more or less the same things I’m hearing: Republicans willing to give up a lot more on tax rates, although not fully undoing the Bush tax cuts in the 250-400 range; additional tax hikes via deduction limits in a form that hits the wealthy, not the upper middle class (28 percent and all that); unemployment extension and infrastructure spending; but “chained CPI” for Social Security, which is a benefit cut.

Unlike what we’d heard from Republicans before, this contains stuff that Obama can’t get just by letting us go over the cliff: more revenue than he could get just from tax-cut expiration, unemployment and infrastructure too. But it has a cost, those benefit cuts.

Those cuts are a very bad thing, although there will supposedly be some protection for low-income seniors. But the cuts are not nearly as bad as raising the Medicare age, for two reasons: the structure of the program remains intact, and unlike the Medicare age thing, they wouldn’t be totally devastating for hundreds of thousands of people, just somewhat painful for a much larger group. Oh, and raising the Medicare age would kill people; this benefit cut, not so much.

By recalculating benefits through chained CPI, it's lower income seniors who are going to get hurt here, they're looking at a 5% cut or more in SS benefits.  It would also constitute a tax increase of a couple hundred bucks a year on most American households. I'm sure the President thinks it's a partial giveback on the payroll tax cuts, and it is, and it does sound reasonable...but reasonable gets punished later.

In other words this doesn't look like an awesome way to start a second term.  We'll see what the final deal is.  If this is the final deal, I'm thinking it's not a good one.

At all.  I'm trusting the President to get a better one, and that better part I'm suspecting is in the details that we don't know about yet.

Catch And Release

NBC News's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, on assignment in Syria, has been released unharmed after five days of captivity by an "unknown" group operating in the war-torn country.

Engel, 39, has been reporting on the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.

"After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed," NBC said in a statement. "We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country."

The Syrian government has made it difficult for foreign journalists and citizens to report on what is happening in Syria.

Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Other foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers.

Engel is lucky, too.  Syria has been one of the deadliest assignments for journalists in the world in the last 18 months or so.

Several journalists have been killed covering the conflict. Among them are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain's Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after a severe asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

I'm glad Engel is safe, and I'm sure there's a hell of a story there that we'll here in due time.

StupidiNews!

• Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management is selling Freedom Group, the parent of gun manufacturer Bushmaster, whose AR-15 was used in last Friday's Newtown massacre.
• Iraqi President Jalal Talibani is in a Baghdad hospital after supposedly suffering from a stroke.
• 50-year Senate veteran and WWII hero Daniel Inouye of Hawaii died yesterday at Walter Reed Medical Center, after being hospitalized for several weeks due to respiratory illness.
• A new counter-offer with taxes only going up on those making over $400,000 in exchange for a two-year debt ceiling deal is the latest fiscal deal from the President.
• A federal judge has sided with Samsung that while the phone maker did copy Apple's design elements, that Samsung's phones have not violated patent laws enough to warrant an injunction.

Last Call

If 2008 was all about the GOP ending gay marriage at the state level, and 2012 was all about Voter ID laws designed to disenfranchise Democrats, 2016 is about the electoral college, and splitting electoral college votes in order to disenfranchise even more Democrats, permanently. The push to turn Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (and possible Ohio) into split electoral states to screw the Democrats is on.

All three states have given the Democratic nominee their electoral votes in each of the last six presidential elections. Now, senior Republicans in Washington are overseeing legislation in all three states to end the winner-take-all system.

Obama won all three states in 2008, handing him 46 electoral votes because of the winner-take-all system. Had electoral votes been awarded by district, Republican nominee Mitt Romney would have cut into that lead. Final election results show that Romney won nine of Michigan's 14 districts, five of eight in Wisconsin, and at least 12 of 18 in Pennsylvania. Allocate the two statewide votes in each state to Obama and that means Romney would have emerged from those three Democratic states with 26 electoral votes, compared with just 19 for Obama (and one district where votes are still being counted).

In other words, the electoral vote would have been much closer under this scheme, but the popular vote would have been the same.  Throw Ohio into that mix, and Romney would have picked up 38 electoral votes, enough to have narrowed the President's win to 295 to 244.  If Virginia and Florida tried the same scheme, it could very well have made Romney President...or worse, Florida remains winner take all, and that winner in 2016 is someone like Jeb Bush. 

That's the GOP goal by 2016.   Another Bush in the White House.

Republicans are able to contemplate such a bold plan because of their electoral success in 2010, when the party won control of state legislative chambers and the governorships in all three states, giving them total control over the levers of state government.

"If you did the calculation, you'd see a massive shift of electoral votes in states that are blue and fully [in] red control," said one senior Republican taking an active role in pushing the proposal. "There's no kind of autopsy and outreach that can grab us those electoral votes that quickly."

The proposals, the senior GOP official said, are likely to come up in each state's legislative session in 2013. Bills have been drafted, and legislators are talking to party bosses to craft strategy. Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, has briefed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Chief of Staff Jeff Larson on his state's proposal. The proposal "is not being met with the 'We can't do that' answer. It's being met with 'I've already got a bill started,' " the official said.

Republican state legislators are motivated to act after Romney's loss. And the party lost legislative seats in all three states, adding urgency to pass the measures before voters head to the polls in 2014.

So yeah, Democrats are going to have to put up a fight.  If they don't, the plan to steal the 2016 election could put a Republican in the White House despite a Democrat winning by 4 or 5% in the popular vote.

That's where the GOP is now.  If you can't win it, steal it.

Spread the word.