Bad Night in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac

Both Virginia Foxx (R-5th District) and Brad Miller (D-13th District) voted against the Senate's "fiscal cliff" legislation last night. I agree with Foxx and Miller: that "fix" should not have passed.

House Republicans fractured, badly, and John Boehner's speakership appears to be on the line. Foxx didn't vote with Boehner and with her recent kissy-face partner, Paul Ryan, who amazingly supported the Senate deal. She voted against, following the path of that super ambitious snake Eric Cantor, and that other ambitious snake Kevin McCarthy, both of whom are clearly angling to push Boehner off his mountain. "Foxx and Cantor, sitting in a tree..."

Boehner reportedly told Sen. Harry Reid to "Go fuck yourself!" ... twice. No report yet on how many of Boehner's own Republican conference suggested he do something similar, after he informed them that the fiscal cliff legislation included no spending cuts. If Foxx didn't say it, she was certainly thinking it.

As for the Negotiator-in-Chief, we see no reason to retract our earlier estimation of his poker-playing abilities. President Obama gave away the farm, or at least a large portion of it, and the "victory" the White House is celebrating today is rotten at the core, setting up another confrontation with the Republican House in a couple of months where, once again, the president will negotiate.

Oy.

Losses to the Body Politic

These interviews with retiring Congressmen give me new respect for Republican Steven LaTourette of Ohio and Democrat Brad Miller of North Carolina. LaTourette speaks frankly about the Tea Party Republicans who've strong-armed the Republican Conference, and Miller speaks frankly about the cluelessness of the Obama White House.

The loss of such men from our deliberative bodies is a blow to our democracy. As we prepare to cascade over that famous cliff, we wonder if this country has simply become irrevocably ungovernable. That's as dark a thought as one can have approaching a New Year.

How They Voted in the NC Delegation

On the Billionaire Coup Act of 2011, a.k.a., Debt Ceiling and Deficit Reduction Surrender:

Democrat Heath Shuler voted yes
Republican Howard Coble voted yes
Republican Renee Ellmers voted yes
Republican Virginia Foxx voted yes
Republican Patrick McHenry voted yes
Republican Sue Myrick voted yes

Republican Walter Jones voted no
Democrat G.K. Butterfield voted no
Democrat Larry Kissell voted no
"Democrat" Mike McIntyre voted no
Democrat Brad Miller voted no
Democrat David Price voted no
Democrat Mel Watt voted no

Completely Deranged Meets Merely Crazy

The newly drawn 13th Congressional Dist., its seat currently held by Democrat Brad Miller, is attracting a veritable smorgasbord of contemporary extremism, featuring (at the moment) both Vernon Robinson and Nathan Tabor, who have both announced their intentions to run for the seat.

Nathan Tabor's only issue is controlling what women do with their bodies.

Vernon's Robinson's extremism scares the bejesus out of many otherwise rational Republicans.

Both Tabor and Robinson ran against Virginia Foxx in the Republican primary of 2004. Robinson actually finished first, Foxx, second, forcing a run-off. Robinson consistently accused Foxx of being a crypto-lesbo-pinko feminist.

Tabor finished fifth in that primary.

Perhaps Tabor and Robinson can have a "stare-off" instead of a debate, seeing how long each could go without blinking.

The Latest in Gerrymandering

Republican U.S. Congressional map is now out.

Shuler's 11th gets redder (natch). He's lost big chunk of Buncombe (city of Asheville, mainly, which has been moved into Patrick McHenry's 10th), and gains four Republican counties (Avery, Mitchell, Caldwell, and Burke). That athletic director job at the University of Tennessee is perhaps looking better all the time.

Brad Miller's 13th adds Surry and Stokes, formerly in the 5th. He loses some of Raleigh, loses Greensboro, but also gets northern Durham and Orange.

David Price's 4th loses Raleigh and Wake County except for a small chunk. He's left with southern Durham and Orange, a piece of Chatham, and Lee, Harnett, and Cumberland counties.

Wake County (Raleigh) is now split up between four different districts: Miller's, Price's, Ellmers', and (amazingly) Butterfield's. Butterfield's 1st District now does the loop-de-loo from the coast into Wake County.

Larry Kissell's 8th gets redder with Rowan, Davidson, and part of Randolph.

Renee Ellmer's 2nd moves south, out of Franklin, Nash, Chatham, and Lee, loses most of Harnett but gets Sampson, most of Cumberland, and west Wayne.

Virginia Foxx's 5th adds more of Forsyth (but not downtown Winston-Salem) and gains parts of northern Davidson and Rowan counties in exchange for losing Surry and Stokes to Brad Miller. They managed to keep all those black voters in W-S out of Foxx's district by wrapping her around downtown.

Overreach

Somewhat dubious analysis of the Republican redistricting maps for NC in this morning's Politico ("dubious" because any article that quotes "Democrat" Brad Crone didn't dig very far). But the conclusion offers something that Republicans aren't thinking about (in their lust to shove the shiv in Miller, Kissell, and Shuler):

...Thomas Mills, a Democratic consultant in the state, said it’s possible Republicans might overreach and endanger their own incumbents by drawing Democratic-oriented areas into their districts. One possibility: that in weakening Shuler, Republicans would place the Democratic stronghold of Asheville within McHenry’s new boundaries.

“The days of Democrats being in the majority are over, but the seats that Republicans hold may be competitive by the end of the decade,” said Mills. “Things change.” But, he said, “They’re going to make this as ugly as they possibly can.”

Republicans "overreach"? How out of character that would be!

They mention Republican pudge Patrick McHenry as ironically not prospering necessarily by a map drawn to hurt Shuler. They don't mention Foxx and how she may be weakened. Her 5th District seat was already under-populated, according to the Census, and the map-drawers were already going to have to add tens of thousands of new voters to the 5th. From where will they snatch them, and will they be as dependably Foxx-addled as, say, the pudding-heads in Stokes County?

2nd Primary

Cal Cunningham lost to Elaine Marshall. No surprise.

Machine Gun Tim D'Annunzio lost to Harold Johnson. No surprise.

But Bernie Reeves lost to Bill Randall in the NC-13 Republican run-off, which was something of a surprise to those of us who read Carter Wrenn. Wrenn, who was a major synapse in Jesse Helms's brain trust, had been railing against Randall as a fake, a man who plagiarized and fluffed his resume. We knew Randall as the dude who suggested that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was planned by Barack Obama and BP. Randall was the darling of religious conservatives and tea partiers.

If Carter Wrenn represents in any way the old Republican establishment in NC, then the Tea Party defeated the Republican establishment yesterday in giving Bill Randall the nod to go up against incumbent Congressman Brad Miller in November.

Thank You, Brad Miller

Congressman Miller, from the NC-13, disciplined Rep. Virginia Foxx (NC-5) on the floor of the House last week (Mark Binker's account here) after Foxx proposed an amendment which would have zeroed out additional funding for Community Colleges under President Obama's American Graduation Initiative, "an effort to generate 5 million more community college degrees and certificates by 2020."

The Foxx amendment was defeated, soundly, by a vote of 301 - 126, which means that several dozen members of The Party of No voted against Foxx.

Dunno why. Isn't she an expert on community colleges, having been fired by one?

Profiles in Courage

Hugh Webster, the Republican congressional candidate who ran against Congressman Brad Miller in the NC-13 (and was soundly defeated 65% to 35% on Nov. 4), has been accused of stealing over $12,000 from his elderly aunt. Webster was also a member of the NC Senate, infamous for passing out stickers that read "Can't Feed 'Em, Don't Breed 'Em" a decade ago, a not-so-oblique reference to people on welfare.

He's accused of inducing his elderly aunt to withdraw $12,115 from a retirement account and giving it to him, after he told her he could get a higher interest at his Raleigh credit union. According to an affidavit written by a State Bureau of Investigation agent, "She never received any interest or bank statements."

Webster says the money was a gift. The aunt says not so.

Then Webster said the indictment stemmed from a financial dispute with the aunt. "It will be very easy to discredit her," he said. Nice guy, this!

Then he said the charges were politically motivated: "I was the only one who had the guts and the integrity to stand up and tell the truth in the legislature."

Yes, guts and integrity never looked so fetching!