Commonsense solutions for the problems that face this nation:
Jim Jordan’s open defiance of Speaker John Boehner’s efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe House seat in next year’s election. Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch today that Jordan’s disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.
“Jim Jordan’s boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody’s thinking,” said one of the sources, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. “The easiest option for everybody has presented itself.”Jordan’s rural 11-county district, which has a 60 percent Republican voter index, “is easy to cannibalize because it stretches so far,” the other source said. The undermining of Boehner was the last straw for Statehouse Republicans controlling the redistricting process in Ohio, saying Jordan’s refusal to be a team player should cost him his job.
“He doesn’t know it, but he solved a problem for Republican line-drawers by (figuratively) standing up and saying, ‘I’m a jerk and I deserve to be punished,’ ” said one of the sources.
GOP-friendly Politico has that Boehner “denied” it, but an ordinary reading of Boehner’s statement makes me think the Columbus Dispatch got it right. Boehner distanced himself rather than denying it was happening:
In a statement, Boehner distanced himself from any move to punish Jordan. “Jim Jordan and I may not always agree on strategy, but we are friends and allies, and the word retribution is not in my vocabulary,” Boehner said. “I look forward to continuing to serve with him in the U.S. House after the redistricting process in Ohio is complete.”
One of the Republican sources said Jordan, a former state legislator, became inoculated against compromising by his comfort in a district he has represented since 2007 and which he typically wins with more than 60 percent of the vote.”The downside of being in an uber-safe district is you often don’t develop the strategic skills you need to survive in the arena and in this case that is going to be painfully evident to Jim Jordan.”
Napoleon
When I read this earlier this morning it put me in a cheerful move.
What is going to be interesting to see is if Chamber of Commerce types are run in primaries against some of the wackjobs.
Eric U.
it’s funny that the Republicans had their caucus so well controlled for so many years, and now they’ve gone rogue. Give the apparent terror the old guard showed when they were caught out after having strayed from the chosen message, I’m guessing that this episode will be temporary.
kay
I think ordinary people hate redistricting, they hate gerrymandering, and they hate hearing about the inner machinations of political parties.
They must be pretty desperate if they’re “sending him a message” this way. It just makes them look cynical and shifty. More so. If that were possible, at this point.
Country First!
ant
wait…. so what did this guy do?
Han's Solo
Ah, the “New Whig Party” is going to have to eat its own hairpiece.
I think we should start our own pledge. If we see any reporter say “both sides do it” we will automatically junk punch them.
GVG
I’d really prefer that the whole countries redistricting was logical and fair not gerrymandered with weird shapes and desired outcomes.
Something that could be programed, follows geography and is mixed demographically. I really do think these “fixed” results end up picking pols more extreme than the population.
Obviously with all the other crisis’s this issue isn’t even going to get much media play for awhile though.
El Cid
Just watched awesome super-mature Lawrence O’Donnell on last night’s Rachel Maddow characterizing NAFTA as merely Bill Clinton ‘continuing the prior President’s trade policies’ (you know, because that’s just how it’s done) and what an annoyance it was that all those irascible Democrats in the House and Senate didn’t pass it like they were supposed to, so “we” just had to go around them and pass it with Republicans and a tiny minority of Democrats. Because, you know, that’s “in the middle”, because he said so, so, you know, fuck you.
Yay. What a true Democratic leader.
kay
Sorry. He openly defied Mr. Boehner:
He made the worst accusation of all, to conservatives. He said that Boehner would have to depend on Democrats.
That goes to their personal issues with manliness, and can’t be tolerated :)
Violet
Ha. That’s a lot of words that mean nothing. The redistricting process in Ohio will be complete well before the actual election. Boehner and Jordan will “continue to serve” in the House until the next election. So no matter the outcome of the redistricting, this will happen. Boehner served up a dish of platitudes.
Violet
OT – Did anyone see that the economy didn’t grow as much in the second quarter as expected. 1.3% vs. 1.8%. Market’s going to be fun to watch today. Yikes.
MattF
Ummm. A Republican US Representative from a hard-core Republican rural Ohio district is being knifed by a Republican Speaker. What’s wrong with this picture?
kay
I think everyone (normal) hates it. It’s obnoxious, and heavy-handed, particularly if you’re personally districted-out of a representative. There are Democrats in a county adjacent to mine who are still fuming that they “lost” Marcy Kaptur. She was taken from them, is how they see it, and I think that’s understandable.
Frankensteinbeck
You know, it would be hilarious if the GOP ends up ungerymmandering themselves. They’ve relied on these ‘safe seat’ House districts, and those districts are exactly what gave the Tea Party this much power. The idea that they even might redistrict to try and create competitive seats to neuter the Tea Party drives me to mirth.
SRW1
So the revolution is starting to eat its own children?
kay
I thought the important word there was “I”. He’s not doing anything. He phrased it personally.
Linda Featheringill
@SRW1: #14
Interesting thought. And entirely possible.
Boudica
A naive question:
Why can’t Boehner pull 218 votes from Dems and non-TEA Party Repubs for some other more mutually agreeable plan? Shut out the TEA part and show them they ain’t running the show.
(I realize that I’m coming at this from the “get something passed and signed” perspective which Boehner may not share.)
shortstop
I’m enjoying it over a cup of good strong coffee.
MattF
The winger revolution is well past the ‘eat your own children’ stage (see, e.g., ‘suicide primary’)– We are now into the ‘Do you prefer roasted, poached, or fricasseed?’ endgame.
MikeJ
@Boudica:
Because they’ll get primaried.
J.D. Rhoades
Yep. The Florida Tea Party is “targeting” Allen West for saying he’d vote for Boehner’s plan. They’re falling on each other’s necks now. It’s the Reign of Terror all over again.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/174289-tea-party-groups-targeting-four-defectors
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Aren’t those quoted as saying Jordan’s seat is not safe assuming that they have control of the people who vote in the primaries? If that were the case, then Jordan probably wouldn’t have been in Congress in the first place.
Omnes Omnibus
@ Boudica:
In the end, I think that they will do a clean bill (or something close to it) that way. Boehner needs to try to get something, anything, through his own caucus first. If he can’t do that, he will be exposed a completely impotent Speaker. He wants to avoid that at all costs. Unfortunately for him, it is already too late; anyone watching this knows that he has no control over his caucus.
dr. bloor
Could give rise to an interesting variation on that old parlor game. “If you were stuck on a desert island, which Palin kid would you eat first?”
Linda Featheringill
@dr. bloor:
Over the line, dude.
Nemesis
Aha!
Now thats some serious vote whipping.
Omnes Omnibus
@ dr. bloor:
Wouldn’t it be best to build a smokehouse and preserve all the meat? After all, you don’t know how long you will be on the island.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@shortstop:
He can — and a few people theorize he’ll have to, eventually. I count myself among that number.
The trouble is that doing so means he looks like he’s betraying the hardcore GOPs; not just the Tea Party, but the folks in the RSC who are the majority. Doing so means a strong risk for losing his Speakership, in short. He’s hoping he can pressure the Senate and President into doing what the hardcore Conservatives want, and doing so before the economy clearly goes under.
I think a lot of GOPs, esp. the newer TP-affiliated ones, don’t care (at best) about our current economic status (they honestly believe low taxes and regulation fix everything), so yeah, they are a lost cause. However, Boehner is likely aware that a crashed economy is not an automatic win for the GOP — and certainly won’t help the deep pocket folks he depends on.
In short, he’s pretty much trapped between a crew he helped make into the no-compromise team they are, and the people he demonized to get where he’s at.
kay
It’s punditry, so take it however you wish, but I think it’s much more than getting primaried for Republicans. The Tea Party is the only energy they have. Their ideas are unpopular and politically toxic, see: Ryan Plan. They’ve so demonized Obama they can’t possibly work with him, so any kind of move to the middle or practical legislative agenda is out. The “Tea Party” is all they have.
Jewish Steel
I think the only thing holding the Tea Party back is insufficient purity. Once apostates are purged from the party, lockstep orthodoxy can be enforced.
After that, the sky’s the limit!
Linda Featheringill
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not funny.
Nemesis
Note to Orange Foolius:
Craft a bill the baggers will support. It will be ludicrous and unpassable in the Senate, but thats not the point.
This point is this: boners baggers need to pass something, anything, so the onus can be placed on the Senate.
boners speaker position is hanging by a thread, thanks to the WH and to eric canker.
jibeaux
It’s not out of sympathy for Jim Jordan and I don’t know how to do it, but we have got to get out of the business of letting elected politicians draw the districts of elected politicians. We’re supposed to be picking them, not them picking us. I don’t know if the solution is independent appointed commissions or computer programs or just using the damn counties as they’re already drawn as a baseline (the R’s are busy carving up NC into easier territory for them as we speak through delightful machinations of minority-super-packing. The state capitol will be in like four separate districts. This makes no goddam sense), but somehow we have to try to wring the politics out of it. It’s medieval.
MikeJ
@Jewish Steel: What’s particularly funny is how often dems, myself occasionally included, look at how easy it usually is to get Republicans to vote together and sigh wistfully about how nice that must be.
Bob L
So the Republicans are denouncing each other as “Obamaists” and carting them off to the guillotine. Time to take up knitting I think.
Scott
I think the only thing holding the Tea Party back is insufficient purity. Once apostates are purged from the party, lockstep orthodoxy can be enforced.
In a way, I think that’s the only thing that’s going to save the country. Let ’em go nuts banning the moderates from the GOP until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub.
What worries me is if they never end up shrinking themselves that far. Having 27% of the populace lets them do too much — and I don’t know if they’ll ever manage to get the 27%ers to turn on each other, as opposed to the moderates…
Omnes Omnibus
@ Scott:
Oh, you can get the 27%ers to turn on one another. They seem wired to weed out insufficient purity, so you will get ones that prioritize anti-evolution excommunicating those who prioritize goldbuggery and vice versa. Revolutions eat their own; it always happens.
Dexter
Dow down by 1% at the opening. This is going to be fun.
Frankensteinbeck
Boudica:
The general consensus seems to be ‘Passing a bill that way makes it Nancy Pelosi’s victory and spits in the face of the Tea Party. Boener knows his job would be toast. He’s struggling desperately against the noose.’
Scott:
Ease your mind. 27% of the population believes any one crazy thing. They don’t believe ALL THE SAME crazy things. Tea Party organizations on a small scale fragment beautifully as they end up bickering over whether blacks or Jews are the real enemy.
NamelessGenXer
OT President Obama scheduled to deliver debt ceiling statement at 10:20 ET.
Ash Can
@J.D. Rhoades: So Frankenstein’s monster really is loose and terrorizing the village indiscriminately. Whoodathunkit.
This is the inevitable denouement of the right-wing strategy for years. Form alliances with bigots and religious wackos by making them all kinds of promises you don’t intend to keep. Drive the moderates from the party so that they can’t hinder your agenda. Then go about bringing back the Gilded Age.
And the whole reason the bigots and wackos were co-opted in the first place was because the RW political leaders had such little regard for them that they assumed that the bigots and wackos would stay in line as long as they had a bone thrown to them now and then. The whole right-wing credo boils down to “everyone else is scum.” You can see it in their foreign and domestic policies, you can hear it in what their preachers preach, you can see it in action in the way they treat other people, even their own family members, over the course of an ordinary day. And as time went on, the sociopaths being co-opted got creepier and crazier and more vicious, until we reached the point where Dick Armey, Fox, Limbaugh et al. thought it would be a jim-dandy idea to try to harness the absolutely foaming-at-the-mouth batshit rage people felt at seeing a non-pasty-white non-Republican get elected to the highest office in the land.
And whaddya know, they couldn’t control it. Imagine that.
I doubt that it would actually happen — I believe that even now there’s enough sanity buried deep in the GOP as a whole to eventually salvage the party and keep it going — but I’d love to see the fucking Tea Party end up primarying the GOP right out of existence. It would truly be a fitting end.
MikeJ
@Frankensteinbeck: The 27% is fractal. 27% of the US population is batshit crazy. 27% of *those* people are considered batshit crazy by the bigger 27%.
jwb
Ash Can: The beast will have to be killed. The GOP itself can’t do it right now, because the beast is too strong among the ranks. The overlords are going to have to step in and do it themselves by turning off the money spigot and redeploying the Wurlitzer against the beast. But the overlords are still too much in denial believing that if they do just a little bit more they will be able to break the beast. It’s not going to happen.
cat48
Bizzaro! Jim Demint is telling the SC Reps how to vote & they voted NO. They do what he says.
Dennis SGMM
@jibeaux:
California finally took, via the initiative process, redistricting out of the hands of elected pols and handed it over to a citizens’ commission. For years, the only area of complete cooperation between state-level Republicans and Democrats has been in the gerrymandering of safe seats for themselves. The commission just released the final version of its maps and the howls from the Republicans can be heard far out to sea.
Southern Beale
What a Tennessee conservative told me yesterday about this whole mess.
I’d say the Republican Party has lost the message war. If they think this will be w winner during the presidential campaign, they are sorely mistaken.
shortstop
Omnes:
Agree with this (except that I doubt the bill will be at all clean).
Boehner has lost the caucus — we know that. Does he now know that or is he in denial and getting ready to try and fail one more time to shove a bill through? It occurs to me that if he does understand all that, he also knows that his speakership is effectively finished whether or not he staggers on in it, zombielike, for a bit longer.
Since he’s vanilla evil as opposed to criminally insane (as his teabagging contingent is), he also knows the consequences of default for the GOP’s largest supporters. If he knows all that and is emotionally capable of facing it, then his best bet for future employment is to get a bill passed with Democratic votes and take the job and board seats and stock options and other assorted treats big bidness will throw his way if he helps prevent a default on his way out of politics. Yes?
NonyNony
@kay
I think this is mostly right, but there’s more to it than that.
Boehner spent his political cred when he negotiated the budget back in the fall. Remember that, when it was all said and done, the final bill made it look like Boehner got ‘pwned’ (and the kids say) by Obama and Reid. The Tea Party was furious, but Boehner’s ace in the hole with them was “hey don’t worry – we’ve got the debt ceiling coming up and we’ll get concessions then”.
And at the time the fools on Wall Street and in the Chamber of Commerce were right there with him “oh yes yes, debt ceiling – hold it hostage then”. So he was able to punt down the road a bit and the baggers went with it. Now they want their payback – they supported Boehner in the end with the budget compromise and they’ll take no less than their pound of flesh here.
Honestly this is the battle for the budget all over again – Boehner just delayed it. The Tea Party guys are furious because THIS was supposed to be where he was holding the line and he isn’t (in their eyes). It doesn’t matter to us that we see the Democrats compromising left and right (mostly right) – to the Tea Party guys if they don’t get EVERYTHING that they wanted during the budget battle and more then Boehner has failed.
And even more fun – if we don’t have a complete economic collapse they’re going to start on the NEXT budget in September! The fun times just keep rolling….
Linda Featheringill
@Bob L:
I suspect somebody is knitting, with knots etc. included. :-)
cleek
@Nemesis:
to be fair, they (including some Dems) already did pass something : Cut, Cap & Balance. but it was pretty much laughed out of the discussion. this is Boehner’s attempt to pass something approaching serious.
NonyNony
@Southern Beale
That’s awesome. Sounds like a small-c conservative. The GOP has been steadily pushing the small-c conservative folks out of their tent for a decade, and these last three years they’ve been accelerating that push.
I mean using the standard dictionary definition of “conservative” there ain’t nothing conservative about today’s GOP – they’re radical reactionaries. People who think of themselves as “conservative” based on a dictionary-type definition and not some allegiance to gold-standard economics or anti-abortion fervor are seeing the GOP as a less viable destination for their votes. I wonder if Republicans understand how much of their brand they’ve been trashing by their alliance with the Teabagger nuts.
Julia Grey
Those “jokes” about cannibalizing the Palin children were disgusting.
It makes Palin look like she’s right about us being nothing but crazed attack dogs.
Besides, this isn’t Sadly, No. Time and Place, folks. Time and Place.
shortstop
From Southern Beale’s blog:
Love it.
Dennis SGMM
@Ash Can:
The GOP has come up with exactly one idea during the past fifty years: co-opt the goobers via the time honored bait-and-switch tactic. It worked on the fundies and it worked on the bigots so there was no reason for the Gopers to suspect that it wouldn’t work on the Tea Party.
Imagine their surprise and consternation at the challenge of having to come up with a second idea within a hundred years.
wonkie
This what I don’t get:? how Rethugs can expect to remai a viable party eve i safe districts once the voters figure out that it was the Rethugs that did Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Granted your typical R voter is a brain dead zombie and grated your average R politicia is a sociopathic liar, so it will take a while for the message to get out–but it will. Just after the Rethugs i the HOuse which would have tured Medicare inot an uderfunded voucher program the R politicas got lots of flack in thier home districts. So i the long ru by attacking the Big Three, the Rethugs are attackig their own base. Do they R politicias really thik they have a mandate to do that? Or are they so blinded by ideology that they don’t care?
Culture of Truth
Rep. Flake recalled the days of former Tom DeLay, nicknamed “the Hammer” for his heavy-handed lobbying efforts.
“I was here with DeLay,” Flake said. By comparison, he told reporters, “Boehner has a soft touch.”
Omnes Omnibus
@ shortstop:
I agree with most of what you are saying except I think the the timing is such that a cleanish bill will be the only option. I could see Pelosi being the designated hard case on the D. side and saying, in effect, if you want our votes, it must be a straight raise with only a few fig leaves. Of course, I am an irredeemable optimist.
shortstop
wonkie, blow a little compressed air under that N key, baby. ;)
Omnes, needless to say, I hope you’re right. Since I’m feeling more pessimistic, I don’t think Boehner has faced the music yet; he’s still struggling against the noose, as someone said above. But jeebus, it’s July 29. I wish people could have their crises of self on their own time, not the country’s. The world’s.
wonkie
My dog whacked the N key off my keyboard. I have to really hammer on it to get it to register.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Southern Beale: That’s an impressive loss, when a guy like that can figure it out. Not that he isn’t astute (obviously he is), but it sounds like he was a true believer before all this nonsense. Thanks for sharing that story.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Culture of Truth: Yeah, but Delay had Abramoff and K-Street money as his hammer. Boehner, not so much.
grandpajohn
If i remember correctly, NC is one of the states that the Justice dept has to approve the redistricting which will probably result in this going to court for the districts to be drawn.
in other words “Let them eat cake”
Evidently Republican rewrites of history books left out the chapter about the French Revolution
Brian S
Who’s gonna tell them that so they’ll believe it? Fox News?
pk
Before we rejoice at the future demise of the republican party, I’m thinking unintended consequences. Where will the slightly less insane republicans go? Anyone voting republican at this stage is partly crazy. It will be a tragedy if they join the democratic party. The progressives will be well and truly screwed.
Juicetard (FKA Liberty60)
This is interesting-
“The Tea Party’s Terrorist Tactics” in, of all places, Politico.
When you’ve lost Politico…
Culture of Truth
Joe Walsh (R-Deadbeat Dad) has also been moved out of his own district, by the Democratic Illinois legislature. He only won by 291 votes the first time.
Culture of Truth
They’ve lost Politico? The amoral in-house organ for the gossipy moneyed class of batshit wingnuts?
Cassidy
Yeah, you can’t eat the Palin children. Unless you add a little salt, some pepper, maybe a tomatillo or two, a nice braising dish….
Even then, it’s pretty obvious the family has no taste.
Ash Can
@Dennis SGMM: Furthermore, the Tea Party is made up of those same fundies and bigots, giving the GOP even less reason to think the co-opting wouldn’t still work. The difference this time is that the batshit and hatred is distilled to a much higher degree in the Tea Party. The GOP is using the same tactics it’s always used, but now they’re working with much more highly flammable material, and those same tactics are proving to be insufficiently careful.
When Obama was elected, I heard numerous people of color observe that this would drive White America clear ’round the bend. In deplorably large measure, they were absolutely right. And the GOP is treating the round-the-bend faction just like it treated the folks they could just pat on the head and throw a bone to once in a while. Lions and wolves aren’t going to act the same as tabbies and lapdogs. If you hold a bone out to them they’ll be happy to take your whole fucking arm with it.
rickstersherpa
The reason neither McConnell or Boehner want to depend on Democratic votes is that will likely mean the end of their political careers, as Kthugh pointed out in one of his posts yesterday, and echoed by Tim Duy today. http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/2011/07/from-outside-the-beltway.html
And with the reports that regulars are putting the knife to a guy like Jordan may mean that Republican Party may be heading to a point where it chests explode and the Alien (also known as the Tea Pary) pops out of the body, its face looking quite abit like Michelle Bachman. Tom Friedman will get his third party, just not the Hedge Fund funded third party of his dreams.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
From Southern Beale’s link above:
If they’ve lost these guys, they’re real close to toast.
But one can only hope that the enlightenment will last another 16 months.
Ash Can
@pk: Too late.
grandpajohn
I look forward to 2012 for republicans as being a 21st century version of the French Revolution, the battle cry being “ Off With Their Heads”
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
For heaver’s sake– this isn’t as difficult as some of you are making it.
1. Ohio is losing two congressional seats.
2. Due to where Democrats are placed (clustered around Toledo, Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown), it’s not possible to eliminate two Democratic seats without everyone noticing (you’d have draw districts that fanned out in straight lines from the cities).
Plus, there are only 5 Dems of 18 and only seven districts where they might have a shot.So a 1-1 split is reasonable.
3. The D seat won’t be Marcy Kaptur or Marcia Fudge, and eliminating Tim Ryan would be risky (he’d just run against Steve Latourette or Bill Johnson or maybe statewide).
Given a choice between Betty Sutton or Dennis Kucinich (who are in adjacent districts), both parties would just as soon lose Dennis.
4. The districts that are easiest to combine (adjacent, wide area that’s sparsely populated and wouldn’t disrupt anyone much) are either the 4, 5 and 8 cluster, the 2,3 and 7 cluster or 6 and 18.
5. Combining 2/3/7 (east of Cincinnati) into two would force Mike Turner (a friend of Boner’s) into a primary with Jean Schmidt or Steve Austria, so that’s not ideal. Plus it’s close to Cincinnati and no way to take Mean Jean out.
4/5/8 (Northwestern corner) makes sense (lots of sparse counties, wouldn’t inconvenience anyone), but Boner is in 8, and it’s considered crass for the Speaker to redistrict one of his fellow reps out.
The thinking had been 6/18 (southeastern Ohio). It’s two freshmen reps, in sprawling districts that were both Democratic until 2010. You could carve out a pretty red district in the southeast corner and hand off the rest.
6. But if Jordan, who’s in 5, is causing trouble, it’s pretty easy to kneecap him:
(a) Take the top of his district and split it between Rob Latta and Boner.
(b) Give the eastern part (Marion/Mt. Gilead) to Pat Tiberi and the Mansfield section to Jim Renacci.
(c) Bundle the small area left (where Jordan lives) in with Steve Austria or Steve Stivers.
None of this is desirable, and it would be much better if districts were drawn by computer/non-partisan committees with clear direction (don’t split counties, try to create rectangles, not snakes).
But as an old boy who knows the rules and gets p.o.ed when newly-elected guys who don’t understand them try to pull stunts, I’m not opposed to seeing unruly children spanked. It isn’t like any of these folks are great statesmen or legislators, so might as well have the object lesson.
Jewish Steel
@MikeJ: Yes, exactly. You can have ideological purity or a broad constituency.
But there is a third option: residency in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
patrick II
@Dennis SGMM:
How long before the “citizens committee” gets politicized itself? Where there is power there will be an attempt to control it.
Paul in KY
Re Jordan’s redistricting, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Cassidy
Redistricting should involve a drunk homeless guy, a map and a sharpie. It doesn’t get more random than that.
shortstop
Ash Can:
I’ve got a soft spot for the lovely, uncomplicated purity of wolves, having gotten up in the predawn to watch them (and, for this audience, their ADORABLE PUPPEHS!) on too many mornings to count during our trips west. Totally agree with your premise, but can they be weasels (vicious but sneaky) instead of lupines?
arguingwithsignposts
@Cassidy:
I thought that’s what we had in most places now.
John PM
@ Culture of Truth #66
This is the thing that pisses me off the most. This guy wins an election 50.05% to 49.95% and thinks that gives him a mandate to fuck over the world economy. Not to mention the fact that he has no fucking idea what he is talking about. Even if he stayed in the same district as 2010 I think that Melissa Bean could take him out big time in 2012.
JohnR
It’s all nice and schdenfreudy to watch the Politburo homicidal infighting, but, you know, the larger picture is that we’re governed by the Politburo.
Ben Cisco
@Violet:
Probably tastes like gagh.
A Farmer
@ Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
I think the problem with that for the GOP leadership is that they probably can’t guarantee that Jordan would lose, were he to run against the incumbent in a combined district. I personally think Jordan could beat Austria or Stivers, especially with the added bonus of being anti-establishment. So I don’t think the threat holds.
Scott P.
That’s why simply declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional doesn’t really get us anywhere. It just brings on the next crisis a little sooner.
priscianusjr
@Nemesis
“The point is this: boners baggers need to pass something, anything, so the onus can be placed on the Senate.”
Isn’t that what they already did with the Cut Cap and Bag or whatever the hell they call that thing? That was a pure TP bill, it went to the Senate and was DOA.
Now that the Boner joke is out of the way, it’s basically up to the Senate. But the House will have to sign on to it or it’s not law. That’s where Pelosi comes into play.
Southern Beale
The reason my conservative friend liked Sarah Palin was because his son is autistic and he thought with her Down’s Syndrome baby she’d somehow be … sympathetic to the disabled or something. Which is so not the case. She could give a shit. So my Conservative Friend is just your typical clueless American low-information voter.
I just think if it’s this obvious to one of the typical low-information “real americans” out here in Tennessee then this is a huge fail for the GOP and they’ve got to be shitting bricks right now.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
jordan can save his own ass, by being the most anti boehner of the bunch. if he takes the lead, the gop will almost surely go for enemy of my enemy, if it means they don’t have to do the work on boehner themselves. let someone else’s hand come out of the fight looking like they were jerking off a can of beefaroni.
eemom
not for the weak of stomach, but today’s dead tree WaPo features an excruciating closeup profile pic of the floundering Orange One that can be seen here.
From what appears in the image, his face is literally the texture of a withered old orange peel. Eeeyeeew.
scav
A possibly entirely minor point, but just what insane small-potatoes bat-wit pokes his head up over the parapet, waves a freaking flag and shouts “Look at the Cah-RAyy-ZZEEE! stuff we got going on over here!!” when that cretin in standing neck-deep in a traditionally politically touchy but well-understood cesspool with near-inevitable bad-press and possibly legal implications to follow?
The Moar You Know
Eat the fat ones while they are still fat. Most caloric bang for the buck.
Omnes Omnibus
@ The Moar You Know:
I have been informed that this kind of thing is not funny.
shortstop
Liberals are the real haters. Children of Republican politicians are the last group it’s acceptable to talk about eating.
A Farmer
Anyway, Republicans were talking about sacrificing Jordan’s district previously, because its parts would make other districts more R-heavy. There had been talk of him running for Senate, but he’s much more electable running in a western Ohio congressional district than running statewide for anything.
Ruckus
Omnes Omnibus
I have been informed that this kind of thing is not funny.
Neither is what conservative assholes are trying to do to everyone else’s children. Minimal to bad education with at least for now nothing above 12th grade(Pell Grants). Lack of safety regulations, for anything, food, toys, etc. Ruin the environment by not only doing nothing but by actively ending the EPA and clean water act. They want to leave the only place for your children to have a possibility is for them to join the military, which is OK because they will need them for the wars they want to fight against everyone they don’t agree with/approve of.
I get that the children are innocent victims. But let’s not forget that their parents are perpetrators.
HyperIon
Scott @36 (damn you absent reply thingy) wrote:
The problem with that approach: Grover Norquist is too fat to fit in the tub. No matter how small the GOP gets.
MixMash
Ohio has been so hard hit by the recession, and ebay has lots of homes for sale for those who lost house in that state.
They folk left in that state would be mostly the retired, who are dependent on SS.
What does Jim Jordan have to fear more than his elderly voters? Do the elderly conservative want this Bill? I don’t think so. Perhaps those paperless e-voting machine will do Jim in, but I wouldn’t think it would be his voters. Since conservative elderly and military are mainstay GOP voters, I’m expect a major fall out after this bill. 85% of Americans don’t want this bill, and you bet most of that 85% are indeed the elderly.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@ A Farmer (84)
I work in Cleveland, and I know from experience that my understanding of downstate can be flawed, so I try not to argue about the turf very often. But I will run through my reasoning.
Austria was elected once as a state rep, twice as a state senator and twice as a Congressman. He’s on Appropriations and he is the only Filipino in the House.
He’s rated 100% by Right to Life, American Security Council, NRA and American Conservatives Union, 93% by the Family Research Council and 87% by National Taxpayers Union, Chamber of Commerce and American Family Association.
Plus, AFSCME and NARAL and the ACLU hate him and Keith Olbermann once named him “Worst Person in the World”.
I know he isn’t perfect (National Journal only has him at 81% conservative), but I’m not sure the Columbus burbs are that barking mad.
Stivers isn’t as impressive (one term in State Senate, freshman congressman), but he’s a Bronze Star vet from the Iraq war.
If you pulled off everything but Logan, Shelby and Champaign counties from Jordan’s district and grafted him onto one of those two districts, he wouldn’t have much of his base left. Not saying he couldn’t win, but it’d be pretty tough and he’d probably just opt for the Senate against Sherrod Brown.
If I were Boner, I’d do it. If he doesn’t, he might as well just hand the gavel to Cantor.