“When Conservative Isn’t Conservative Enough”: A Signal To The GOP Base That Even The Radicals Aren’t Radical Enough
With Sen. Tom Coburn (R) retiring at the end of the year, well ahead of the scheduled end of his term, there will be a Senate special election in Oklahoma in 2014. Given the fact that the Sooner State is one of the “reddest” in the nation, it’s very likely the seat will remain in Republican hands. The question is which Republican.
Rep. Tom Cole (R) and state Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) quickly withdrew from consideration, but Rep. James Lankford (R) launched his campaign yesterday, vowing in his announcement speech to “continue Dr. Coburn’s conservative legacy.”
In theory, the right-wing congressman, elected in the 2010 GOP wave, would appear to be exactly the kind of candidate far-right activists would hope for. Conservative groups don’t quite see it that way.
[T]he Senate Conservatives Fund, a key pressure group, took the stark step Monday morning of saying – even before Mr. Lankford’s official announcement – that he will not be getting their support.
“We won’t support Congressman Lankford’s bid for the Senate because of his past votes to increase the debt limit, raise taxes and fund Obamacare,” said Matt Hoskins, the group’s executive director. […]
The Madison Project, another group that directs attention and money to the campaigns of anti-Washington candidates, said Mr. Lankford is the wrong candidate for the party. In a blog post, the group said Mr. Lankford isn’t a “purely liberal Republican,” but said he is “a quintessential status quo Republican.”
This isn’t an intra-party dynamic in which the Republican base rejects an electable, mainstream candidate, boosting Democratic chances of picking up a competitive seat.
Rather, this is the latest evidence that for GOP-affiliated organizations hoping to influence elections, being conservative is no longer conservative enough.
To hear the Senate Conservatives Fund and its allies tell it, Lankford is some kind of RINO. I poked around the ThinkProgress archive this morning to get a sense of some of the congressman’s greatest hits and found a few gems:
* Lankford believes sexual orientation is a “choice,” so employment discrimination against gay Americans should be legal.
* He believes climate change is a “myth,” pushed by those seeking to “control” people.
* He blamed “welfare moms” for gun violence.
* He wants the United States to defund and abandon the United Nations.
The Senate Conservatives Fund and its allies think this guy just isn’t conservative enough. Perhaps some folks are just tough to please.
In the larger context, though, the organizations’ dissatisfaction with James Lankford does help explain the growing tensions between the Republican Party and these extremist outside groups. When this congressman can’t meet the activist groups’ standards for conservatism, it signals to GOP leaders that there’s simply no point in trying to cater to their demands – even radicals won’t be seen as radical enough.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 21, 2014
“You Don’t Need To Be A Scientist”: West Virginia Can’t Get Its Story Straight On The Chemical Spill
Over the weekend, West Virginia authorities lifted the last remaining tap-water ban in effect since a January 9 chemical spill at the Freedom Industries plant in Charleston contaminated the water supply of 300,000 people. But in a press conference Monday, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin hardly inspired confidence that the water was safe to drink, saying, “It’s your decision” to choose to drink the water and “I’m not going to say absolutely, 100 percent that everything is safe.” Tomblin, a Democrat, later added, “It’s a very complicated issue. I’m not a scientist, you know.”
There’s the problem. Scientists don’t know much, either, about the leaked chemical, “crude MCHM,” and on Tuesday a Tomblin spokeswoman confirmed that a second chemical, a modified form of PPH, also leaked into the water during the spill. The Center for Disease Control insists that 1-part-per-millon or less of crude MCHM isn’t harmful, but adds, “Due to limited availability of data, and out of an abundance of caution, pregnant women may wish to consider an alternative drinking water source until the chemical is at non-detectable levels in the water distribution system…. Few studies on this specialized chemical exist and most have been conducted on animals.” The CDC reported that toxicologic information on PPH is also limited but does “not suggest any new health concerns.”
This is little comfort to #aquapocalypse victims whose tap water still smells like licorice, despite following a U.S. Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Register (ATSDR) recommendation that they flush their plumbing systems until the odor goes away. Dr. Paul F. Ziemkiewicz of the West Virginia Water Research Institute explained to me that crude MCHM is a surfactant that lowers the surface tension between a liquid and a solid—in this case, water and coal. It’s a detergent of sorts, cleaning coal by separating it from non-burnable (and thus non-usable) mined substances such as shale. Because crude MCHM is only slightly soluble in—and lighter than—water, it is possible that traces of the chemical could settle at the top of water tanks in homes, continuing to contaminate its contents even after households have flushed their plumbing system. Little is known, too, about PPH, which made up five percent of the leaked tank’s total capacity. According to the Charleston Gazette, “A Freedom Industries data sheet on the chemical says it can irritate the eyes and skin and is harmful if swallowed. The sheet lists the material as less lethal than Crude MCHM but also says no data are available on its long-term health effects.”
With the state sending mixed messages, West Virginians affected by the spill are hoping scientists can provide more clarity on the chemicals. “The governor has closed the book on this disaster,” said Rob Goodwin, an activist in Charleston, “and it’s unfortunate because the disaster relief aid as it was, especially in rural areas, is going to stop because the state is no longer seeing this as an emergency anymore.” Goodwin thinks that in the absence of a regulatory standard, the least the state and the water supplier, West Virginia American Water, could do is clarify and expand the flushing instructions. (Goodwin advises draining hot water heaters completely and minimizing exposure by leaving the home during the process.) But the state has confused even this relatively simple matter. West Virginia authorities rejected ATSDR’s flushing advice, and when asked about it Monday, Tomblin said, “I’m not aware that we did. I have not seen that.”
No wonder there’s still “a big demand” for the bottled water being trucked in by FEMA—a supply that, according to the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security, is only expected to last through the weekend.
By: Claire Carusillo, The New Republic, January 22, 2014
“Chris Christie Versus The Lying Liars”: Somewhere Along The Line, Christie Missed The Lessons Of Glass Houses And Black Kettles
It’s been a rough turn in the spotlight of late for two New Jersey women: Bridget Kelly, Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, and Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken. Both have found themselves accused of lying. In Kelly’s case, Christie used his January 9 “Bridge-gate” press conference to announce that he had fired her “because she lied to me.” In Zimmer’s case, Christie’s lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, has declared false Zimmer’s account of how Hoboken was denied post-Sandy aid for political reasons.
But Kelly and Zimmer can take some solace in this: when it comes to being called liars by Christie, they have plenty of company. The word rolls easily off the tongue for Christie—in that January 9 press conference, he used it six different times. Guadagno never used the “l” word specifically, but the accusation of dishonesty against Zimmer was clear all the same—and awfully familiar to people who’ve watched Christie over the years. Here is just a small sampling of the other people in the accused-liars club:
1. While running for the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1994 Christie accused one of the Republican incumbents, Cecilia Laureys, of lying about the existence of minutes for a meeting on the purchase of new police computer systems. “I don’t know why she did it, but she lied and it’s not the first time she lied about the whole thing,” Christie said. Laureys and another Republican on the board would later sue Christie for defamation over an ad he ran that wrongly asserted that they were under investigation.
2. Shortly after his election as governor in 2009, Christie branded as “political lying” a proposal by Assemblyman John McKeon to change the ways that governors appoint senators during vacancies.
3. In 2010, Christie accused his education commissioner, Bret Schundler, of having lied to him over the state’s bungled application for federal education funding. After firing Schundler, Christie told reporters that the upshot of the episode was “Don’t lie to the governor.” Furious, Schundler produced e-mails showing that he had been forthright with the governor about what had happened with the grant failure.
4. Also in 2010, Christie called “a lie” the claim by General Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver that she had asked to meet with him about a proposed compromise on public employee arbitration reforms. Again, e-mails subsequently undermined his charge.
5. In 2012, Christie had this to say to voters about Assembly Democrats’ proposal for a 20 percent tax credit: “They’re lying to you.”
6. Also in 2012 (just before their rapprochement over Hurricane Sandy) Christie accused Barack Obama of lying in saying that Mitt Romney wanted further tax cuts for the wealthy. “Stop lying, Mr. President,” he said.
There are two ways of looking at this tendency by Christie. One is that he has had the great misfortune in life of having found himself surrounded by an uncommonly mendacious lot of people. The other is that, with his own credibility and veracity now seriously on the line, he somewhere along the line missed the lessons about glass houses and black kettles.
By: Alex MacGillis, The New Republic, January 22, 2014
“Mitch Has Got Some ‘Splainin’ To Do”: McConnell Recycles His Own Ad, Ignores 188,130 Kentuckians Whose Insurance He’d Repeal
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) failed in his goal to make President Obama a one-term president, but he’s still one of the most crafty and ruthless campaigners in politics, as his latest ad proves.
McConnell’s new ad recycles a message the senator knows works because it helped him win in 2008. The new ad is far more affecting. It focuses entirely on Robert Pierce, a worker from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, where exposure to radiation left several employees with cancer. Pierce says throat cancer has weakened his own whispery voice, but he praises the senator for using his voice to help him.
McConnell is boldly trumpeting his help to the plant with the testimony of a man few will want to question. The record is much more complex, according to The Huffington Post‘s Jason Cherkis and Zach Carter.
The senator didn’t “spring into action” on Paducah until 1999, 14 years after the first workers became sick, when a Washington Post article uncovered that radioactive exposure was still occurring at the plant. But once the story was in the limelight, McConnell pushed for a practical solution: “He worked to pass what amounted to a new entitlement that allowed plant workers over age 50 access to free body scans and free health care.” Recently McConnell’s absence from the debate about the plant’s potential closing has led a union leader to say the senator has “given up on Paducah.”
An ad touting the ability to get people government-run health care is an unlikely way to open the campaign of a man who has vowed to repeal Obamacare “root and branch.”
Thanks to the president’s health reforms, 188,130 residents of McConnell’s state now have health coverage; of those, 100,359 have completely subsidized health insurance through Medicaid or SCHIP.
McConnell needs to explain what will happen to the more than 100,000 people who would lose coverage if his goal of repealing Obamacare is accomplished, says The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent.
“McConnell’s new ad tells us he should be re-elected because his efforts to bring health coverage to people who lack it shows his willingness to ‘knock down walls’ for Kentucky’s ‘working families,’ helping ‘save people’s lives,’” Sargent writes. “So what about all the working people who would lose coverage if McConnell got his way?”
Unfortunately for McConnell, 2014 isn’t 2008.
Six years ago the senator could brag about providing some deserving workers with government health care without having to go into his actual policies on health care. In 2014, Obamacare is no longer theoretical; millions of Americans have gained coverage through Obamacare exchanges or by remaining on their parents’ coverage until age 26, thanks to the law.
If McConnell is arguing he did the right thing by helping those in need, he must also explain what would happen to these people if he gets his way and they lose their coverage.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, January 22, 2014
“A Nasty Piece Of Work”: There’s No Getting Rid Of David Vitter, America’s Most Contemptible Senator
I was once shooting the breeze with a Democratic senator I knew fairly well. This was a few years ago, back when the toxic atmosphere wasn’t quite as hideous as it would become. Just on a personal level, I asked: Who on the other side is surprisingly nice, and who’s just a real prick? I don’t remember the surprisingly nice answers, but on the S.O.B. factor the senator’s response was immediate: David Vitter.
He’s a nasty piece of work, the junior senator from Louisiana. He doesn’t seem to like anybody. He loathes senior senator Mary Landrieu, he detests Governor Bobby Jindal, he despises the media. They all pretty much hate him back. And yet, by merely announcing, he immediately became the odds-on favorite to win the governor’s race in 2015. Why?
The announcement may seem surprising to those of us outside the state, but “this was the worst-kept secret in Louisiana,” a political operative with knowledge of the state told me Monday. Vitter has been holding a series of town-hall meetings and tele-town-hall meetings, signaling the obvious intention.
I’ll get to race handicapping in a few paragraphs, but first let’s deal with the only thing most people know about David Vitter (who has not, by the way, distinguished himself in the Senate in any way). I’ve always wondered: How in the world did he survive that hooker business? Not only did he admit he was a client of Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s escort service. She then went and hanged herself. Not over him personally. Over the whole mess, and staring at serious jail time. But still. Extramarital relations are one thing, with a staffer or a woman of accomplishment; politicians almost always slog their way through that. But here we had the guy calling on hookers, and the dead body of the madam. And Vitter skated through it and sailed to reelection two years later. How?
“He hid for a year and a half,” says my operative. At first, when his name was revealed by Hustler in connection to the case, Vitter acknowledged it. He said he’d asked for and received his wife’s and (somewhat presumptuously) God’s forgiveness. After that he would say no more—“out of respect for my family.” Nice touch.
By the time 2010 came around, Palfrey was less important to the state’s voters than the fact that Charlie Melancon, the Democrat who challenged Vitter, had “voted with Barack Obama 98 percent of the time” in Congress. That’s all Vitter said. That, and the forgiveness thing, and the “fact” that illegal immigrants were cutting holes through chain-link fences and being welcomed by bleeding-heart Melanconistas with a brass band and a waiting limousine, as this really vile and racist TV ad of his had it. Vile and racist works down there, so what had seemed at first like a close-ish race became a 19-point whupping.
Ever since, Vitter has been fine, with his approval rating up in the high 50s. I guess all it takes to do that is to be right wing and anti-Obama. And so, he’s the favorite to be the state’s next governor.
But that could change. The declared field so far is no great shakes—the Republican lieutenant governor and a Democratic state representative. Not even any members of Congress yet. But here are a couple of developments to keep an eye on. First, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a Democrat, faces reelection on Feb. 1. He’s expected to roll to an easy win. “If it’s a landslide, he’ll have to consider the governor’s race,” says the operative. Second, there’s Mary Landrieu’s (they’re brother and sister) reelection this fall. That’s expected to be very close. If she loses and is out of a job, might she give it a shot? She and Vitter have the reputation of disliking each other more, maybe a lot more, than any other state’s two U.S. senators. Landrieu v. Vitter for governor would be awesome.
But even if the field doesn’t get a lot stronger, Louisiana politics blogger Robert Mann still thinks Vitter might have a harder time than he did in 2010. It’s not always great to be the front-runner this far out, because everyone below you is attacking you. And, Mann notes, Vitter’s not going to be able to make this race about Obama, who’ll be on the way out in 2015.
There’s an interesting Vitter-Jindal subplot going on here, which is nicely detailed by Marin Cogan at The New Republic, and the issue of whom Jindal might endorse is an interesting one. Though he’s unpopular overall in the state, he’s still in decent shape among the state’s Republicans, so his word might carry some weight. But he’ll be off running for president in 2015 (yes, he still apparently thinks he can do this!).
So Vitter is all in. And even if he somehow loses the governor’s race, it’s no real skin off his nose—he’d remain a senator, because that seat isn’t up until 2016. And running for reelection then, he can just run ads with Hillary Clinton welcoming swarthy illegals with open arms. Easy peasy. One way or another, we’re stuck with this guy for a while.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, January 22, 2014
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