16 Ways of Looking at a Mugwump

Mugwump, noun: 1. a Republican who refused to support the party nominee, James G. Blaine, in the presidential campaign of 1884. 2. a person who is unable to make up his or her mind on an issue, especially in politics; a person who is neutral on a controversial issue.
 

Kushner

1. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, has conducted a "purge" of certain members of Trump's transition team, starting with Gov. Chris Christie who was fired as head of the transition last Friday. Former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Matthew Freedman, a lobbyist who consults with corporations and foreign governments, were also fired. Both had ties to Christie.

2. The President-elect sent a tweet very late last night insisting that everything was going smoothly. “Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!”

3. Rebekah Mercer, a major donor to Trump’s presidential campaign and member of his executive transition team, told Republican operatives that she was having difficulty finding people interested in rank-and-file administration posts.

4. Trump took his first conversations with foreign leaders without reviewing official State Department briefing materials, and he broke from diplomatic practice by delaying conversations with close U.S. allies. Trump’s first call was with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, followed by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. British Prime Minister Theresa May didn’t get through to Trump until almost a day later.

5. As of yesterday, officials at both the Pentagon and State Department said they have heard nothing from Trump’s transition team.

Bannon

6. Trump’s newly-named chief strategist, Steve Bannon, helped turn Breitbart News into a platform for the white nationalist alt-right. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a possible choice for attorney general, was once turned down for a federal judgeship after several U.S. attorneys testified that he made racist comments in court. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s extensive business ties to Qatar and Venezuela complicate reports that he could be chosen as secretary of state.

7. Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official who had criticized Trump during the campaign but said after his election that he would keep an open mind about advising him, said yesterday on Twitter that he had changed his opinion. After speaking to the transition team, he wrote, "stay away!” adding, “They’re angry, arrogant, screaming ‘you LOST!’ Will be ugly.”

8. Donald Trump and some of his family went to dinner last night at the super-expensive 21 Club in Manhattan (where you can get a ribeye for $68) and said to the well-heeled diners, "We'll get your taxes down -- don't worry about it."

9. Vice President-elect Mike Pence -- who now heads the transition after the firing of Christie -- did his own purge, reportedly dismissing the several registered lobbyists who had moved in, leaving the transition "short-staffed" but closer to Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

Mnuchin

10. Former Goldman Sachs partner and Trump loyalist Steven Mnuchin is the frontrunner for treasury secretary. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is now favored to serve as attorney general. Seen arriving at Trump Tower yesterday was one-time campaign rival Ted Cruz. Joining the national security transition team is Frank Gaffney Jr. -- labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes,” and who last year defended Trump’s proposed Muslim ban as “common sense.”

11. Rudy Giuliani let his freak flag fly and admitted in public that he's pretty sure he'll be picked as Secretary of State. John Bolton’s name also surfaced for that job. Republican Sen. Rand Paul immediately objected, calling Bolton “unfit” for the job. “You want to have a diplomat in charge of diplomacy. You don’t want a bomb thrower,” Paul told CNN. Then Paul lumped the former mayor of New York City in with Bolton: “I think Giuliani and Bolton are very similar. Bolton just has a more extensive cheerleading background with regard to war in the Middle East.”

12. Republicans will have a one-seat majority in the Senate, meaning any defection -- by a senator like Rand Paul -- could pose a serious roadblock to confirming Trump’s top Cabinet picks. 

13. One source with knowledge of the Trump transition described it as a "knife fight."

14. A particular challenge for the Trump transition is lack of clarity about the division of power among Reince Priebus, named Chief of Staff of the Trump White House; Steve Bannon, the Harvard-educated white supremacist and campaign Svengali; and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has Trump's ear like no one else. Another source tied to the transition described the resulting confusion as "buffoonery."

Flynn

15. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has emerged as a leading candidate for national security adviser. Flynn was a vocal and sometimes inflamatory advocate for Trump during the campaign. At the Republican National Convention he delivered a fiery speech attacking Clinton (as being in the enemy camp, along with Barack Hussein Obama) and waving the bloody flag of "American exceptionalism." He echoed Trump's rhetoric of crushing terrorism, cozying up to Russia, and dissing NATO.

16. Trump on the campaign trail promised repeatedly not to change Medicare. Now his official website says: “modernize Medicare, so that it will be ready for the challenges with the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation – and beyond.” "Modernize"? House Speaker Paul Ryan has a different term: "Medicare is going to have price controls.”

A nation and its Constitution are one. A nation and its Constitution and Donald Trump are one. (Apologies, Wallace Stevens!)

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: The 4th Republican Presidential Debate

9:10 p.m.

Trump, Carson, and Rubio are hitting the first question outta the Republican ballpark: Should we raise the minimum wage? No, they say, but in this ballpark, it's a display of pure charity. Trump actually allowed as how wages are "too high" now and that "people have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum." I'm doing you a favor to keep you at $7.25 an hour. (Or you could borrow a million dollars from your daddy!)

Carson, always ready with a line that can be demonstrably disproven: "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases." Fact checkers, go! (And, indeed, that statement isn't true.)

Rubio danced. My parents made minimum wage, and look at me. Ain't I purty?

9:20 p.m.

Bush would repeal every law that Obama even breathed on during the last seven years. Internet. Clean Power. Water. Repeal 'em all. Bush is Mr. Strong Man this evening!

9:23 p.m.

Someone pushed "play" on the Fiorina machine! When she starts, she doesn't stop. Most rehearsed candidate by far, except for Cruz, who has his zingers queued up and ready to go.

9:26 p.m.

Rand Paul: "I think that we ought to look where income inequality seems to be the worst. It seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats, governors of... [APPLAUSE]. States run by Democrats and countries currently run by Democrats." Well, now. North Carolina is completely run by Republicans, and how do we stack up? Higher unemployment, a new tax system that favors the rich.... How about Kansas, that model of Republican management?

9:38 p.m.

Scuffle has broken out over immigration. Kasich starts a fight with Trump after Trump reaffirms that he's going to ship 5 million people out of the country. Kasich says, "Come on, people. It's a silly argument." Trump disses Ohio. Kasich defends Ohio's honor. Trump: I'm rich. I don't have to talk to Kasich. Boos.

9:42 p.m.

Cruz is ready with one of his rehearsed lines: "If Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose." Then, because attacking the media got him the biggest applause in the last debate, Cruz goes after the press in a clever way: "I will say the politics of immigration will be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande. Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press." Best line of the night.

9:45 p.m.

Fiorina: "We need free-market health care!" The mind develops an instant absess.

10:00 p.m.

The Cruz polish gets a scuff mark: He sez he would cut five agencies: IRS, Commerce, Energy, Commerce, and HUD. Paging Rick Perry!

10:05 p.m.

Paul and Rubio in a fight over Rubio's child tax credit proposal, which Paul calls an entitlement and which therefore means Rubio is not a conservative. Rubio: Family values, family, fam'bly! Rubio fights back, implying Paul is a big wimp because he doesn't want to pour more money into the military. Everybody else begins to pipe up like hungry sea gulls that they want a big military too, goddamn it! Fiorina is positively gonna stomp all over this globe with her armed forces!

10:11 p.m.

Trump says the TPP trade deal is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals because it advantages China, which is burying us. Paul calmly zings back: China isn't a part of the TPP deal. Trump falls silent.

10:18 p.m.

Carson's plan for ISIS: We have to make them "look like losers." We do that by taking their oil fields and then destroying them. "We could do this, I believe, fairly easily." Carson says he learned that from "several generals." Come on, folks! ISIS is just like 8th grade nerds. Take their lunch money, pants them, and shove 'em in a locker!

10:28 p.m.

Fiorina says she's met Putin not in a green room, like Trump, but in a private meeting. Fiorina is like the president of the most exclusive sorority on campus, putting a rival sorority in its place. "There's that Vladimir Putin. Let's not talk to him!"

10:31 p.m.

Trump comes mighty close to saying STFU to Fiorina. "Why do you keep interrupting everyone? Terrible!"

10:37 p.m.

Kasich, who's barged into other candidates' statements several times and is the real interrupter, is now whining about not getting enough time in this debate.

10:57 p.m.

Fiorina sez for at least the third time: "We have got to take our country back." But did anybody keep the receipt?

Donald Trump said that no debate should go more than two hours, so we break away now to watch Trevor Noah.

Well, This Explains Why Dr. Ben Carson Shot Up in the Polls

The Rand Paul Shrug About Gay Marriage

From The Hill: 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) gave a noncommittal shrug when asked if he might ever rethink his position on gay marriage.

"I believe in old-fashioned traditional marriage, but I don't really think the government needs to be too involved in this and I think the Republican Party can have people on both sides of the issue," Paul told CNN when asked in South Carolina if the GOP could win going forward considering most younger voters support gay marriage.

He then threw his hands up in a half-shrug, half-grimace when asked if he could rethink his own position at some point.

Rand Paul: "I want more people to vote, not less”

Rand Paul, who's clearly running for president in 2016, was in Raleigh yesterday to campaign for Thom Tillis for U.S. Senate. He endorsed Tillis's main Tea Party rival Greg Brannon in last May's primary.

Paul is seriously out of step with Tillis on the issue of voter suppression. Tillis engineered the passage of the new voter suppression laws in North Carolina (parts of which were overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday). A major portion of that new law shortened Early Voting by a full week.

This is what Rand Paul told the Associated Press earlier this week:

“I think it’s a dumb idea to spend a lot of time on Republicans trying to change early voting. My position is I want more people to vote, not less.” ...

He is critical of the GOP’s push to require voters to present photo identification at the polls and reduce early voting in some states, moves criticized as efforts to suppress participation by minority voters who typically support Democrats....

“I’ve cautioned Republicans, ‘You need to be aware of peoples’ perceptions,'” he said. “If the perception [of voter suppression] is out there, why don’t you start talking about something good, like restoring peoples’ right to vote?”

It's not just a "perception," Mr. Paul, especially in Watauga County but also across North Carolina, that Republicans in power are doing everything they can to discourage the votes of people that they perceive as opposing their policies. One of those groups singled out for suppression are young people, the demographic that Rand Paul will be seriously courting in 2016.

How out of step is Rand Paul with the mainstream of the contemporary GOP? How many North Carolina Republicans would actually say the words, "I want more people to vote, not less," and if by accident or by design that line should actually fall from Republican lips, do you actually believe they would mean it?

Thom Tillis and Rand Paul, together? Naw. We ain't buying it. It's pure self-interested politics, a shadow cast on the wall, a game, and a fraud.

Ole Dragon Breath

I'm loving me some Rand Paul, from yesterday in Charlotte, talking about Republican senatorial contender Greg Brannon:

North Carolina needs “a dragon slayer, and that dragon slayer is Dr. Greg Brannon,” Paul told 250 people downtown near the NASCAR Hall of Fame, suggesting Brannon’s strong conservative beliefs would shake up the status quo in Washington. “I’m here today because Greg Brannon is a true believer and we need true believers in Congress,” Paul added.

Meanwhile, turnout in this primary suggests that people who truly believe in dragons (and fairies and the Lollipop Guild) are perhaps not as numerous as one might hope.

What the Dumb Do

Greg Brannon, the OB/GYN Cary doctor who's running in the 2014 Republican primary for U.S. Senate (for the privilege of challenging Kay Hagan in next year's General Election), has been outed for plagiarizing another plagiarizer. No kidding. He copied off Rand Paul, mainly from Paul's website and particularly his views on several Tea Party issues. Rand Paul, meanwhile, has always copied off others and shows no sign of tapering off.

Who goes looking to see if there are copied parts on candidate web pages? The News&Observer item cites no source. Who tipped the press about plagiarism on candidate Greg Brannon's website?

I betcha a dollar it was someone with Thom Tillis's campaign.

Rand Paul Endorsed ... Who?

Greg Brannon

Kentucky Senator and self-certified eye doctor Rand Paul has entered North Carolina politics and endorsed Republican Senate candidate and self-described savior of lady-parts, Dr. Greg Brannon.

Brannon is an OBY-Gemnologist, or an ORYX-Gynocopterist, or ... well, he eats scrap metal for breakfast and he'll destroy government faster than the The Preacher can find Revelations 6:2 in his King James Version and certainly faster than that slickster Thom Tillis. It's the law now: all Republicans everywhere stand for destroying government at all levels. The candidate that can promise to do it faster is the candidate they want. Or at least that's what eye doctor Rand Paul wants.

So now, O my brethren, North Carolina Republicans will be dancing to Paul Rand's tootling right through next May's Senate primary. And can I get an "Amen!"?

Dick Burr Mistakes His Thumb for a Magic Wand

How did Sen. Dick Burr vote yesterday on the Paul Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a Republican coupon worth approximately 13 aspirin? He voted for it, natch! He's one of only 40 Republican senators who've decided to make what Jennifer Steinhauer at the NYTimes calls a "chin-out" defense of a scheme that would effectively end Medicare.

All righty then! The Ryan "end Medicare" budget is now about as popular as prickly heat in August. So deciding to lead with one's chin when one's biceps have gone soft like pudding might seem a strange sparring technique, but Burr perhaps figgers he has almost six years for people to forget where he stood on this issue before he has to stand on his record.

The Republican senators who said "no thank you very much" to the Ryan scheme and who voted with the Democrats to defeat it?

Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts
Susan Collins of Maine
Olympia J. Snowe of Maine
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska

Lisa Murkowski, ever since the Palin tea partiers ran a candidate against her in last year's Republican primary, and after she won reelection anyway as a write-in candidate, has been saying "up yours" right regularly to the mullahs of conservatism ever since.

A fifth Republican senator also voted "no" on the Ryan budget, and he's a bit of a surprise: Rand Paul of Kentucky, who bears no resemblance to the other four except that he breathes air. According to Steinhauer of the Times, Paul thought the Ryan scheme was just too weak.

Remind me to send a sympathy card to the voters of Kentucky.

Spouting

This morning on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, this exchange occurred between Amanpour and Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul:

AMANPOUR: One of the emergencies is going to be voting to lift the debt ceiling.

PAUL: Right.

AMANPOUR: Would you do that?

PAUL: I don't believe I will vote to raise the debt ceiling.

AMANPOUR: You won't?

PAUL: No. I think that we need to send a message -- we need to send a strong message that...

AMANPOUR: The government would default, then.

PAUL: Well, only if we won the vote, would they default.

Ain't it a gas to have principles when there's no chance your principles will carry the vote and trigger a default?

I think I'm beginning to understand the Tea Party.

Rand Paul on Mountaintop Removal: 'No Biggie'

The "purity" of Rand Paul's libertarianism leads him into the blind alley of letting industry and other "property owners" do whatever they damn well please for a profit. The "permit process" for mountaintop coal mining should be made easier. Government shouldn't be taxing the profits from coal extraction. And this tone-deaf gem: "I don't think anybody's going to be missing a hill or two here and there."

The thought process that came up with that summation on the devastation wrought by Big Coal is basically amoral. "I don't care what is destroyed as long as someone's making a profit."

Full Ahead, Backwards!

So Ross Douthat sez that Rand Paul is not so much a tea party insurgent as a "paleoRepublican."

The "paleo" part of that term comes from a Greek word meaning "ancient" or "prehistoric."

Like, backward to a time when a white Southerner didn't have to worry about verbally supporting the God-given rights of businesses to discriminate based on race.

Rand Paul Scares Dick Cheney

That was the headline this a.m. in the NYDailyNews, as people everywhere try to figger out what the Kentucky tea party hath wrought in its brand new Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Rand Paul is maybe even scarier than his dad, his eye in a fine frenzy rolling.

The Republican establishment in Kentucky was behind a website -- now completely disappeared -- RandPaulStrangeIdeas.com, though the echoes remain. The website has been scrubbed out of existence, and Mitch McConnell is now pretending that he really supported Rand Paul all along. "Some of my best friends want to put terrorists back on American streets!"

People got a pretty good peek at what Paul's libertarianism actually means last night on the Rachel Maddow show. Let the education begin!

The White House Could Learn, But Will It?

Kentucky Attorney General and winner of yesterday's Democratic Senate primary Jack Conway, with daughter Eva. He'll be facing in November the black frost that is Rand Paul, who routed the state's Republican establishment yesterday.

We know the Tea Partiers will be crowing about the Kentucky results. So would we, if we had led that successful insurgency against Pooh Bah Mitch McConnell and the other sticks-in-the-mud that make up the Republican Establishment.

But the Paul victory sets up a dynamic that could end up giving the victory to Democrat Jack Conway (he of the photogenic baby) in November. The Republican Party in Kentucky is torn, and Rand Paul doesn't have the temperament for sewing it back together. He kinda likes ripping fabric.

All in all, the three key senatorial primaries in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas were bad news for party orthodoxy on both sides of the aisle, but worse news for the Republicans, since in Pennsylvania a rising Democratic star beat ole Arlen and in Arkansas, another progressive Democrat could well pick off another blue dog in the run-off.

We like the odds of having new faces for the Democrats in all three states, and actual Democrats at that, rather than warmed over former Republicans or whatever it is that Blanche Lincoln has become.

The tea party may well prove to be the death of the Republican Party, while the hyper-cautious, compromising proclivities of President Obama is doing wonders for rejuvenating some Democratic cojones everywhere but in the White House.