Year: 2015

For years, the 18th Representative District was represented by the Republican Speaker of the House of Representative, Terry Spence. Spence was first elected in 1980, and he was reelected over Democrat Ronald Queen with 62.5% of the vote in 1982. Spence won two other easy reelections in 1984 and 1986, and then ran unopposed in seven of his thirteen reelection campaigns. Even though his district was becoming increasingly Democratic. Until 2006. The district, by then, was 49% registered Democratic, with only 26% registered Republican. So the Democrats finally decided to actually run a credible candidate, and they found Mike Barbieri, a behavioral health professional Mike Barbieri to run against Spence. Barbieri came close, but he lost by 12 points. In 2008, Barbieri defeated Spence 52% to 48%. In a rematch in 2010, Barbieri won 53% to 47%. And he has been unopposed ever since, save for a quixotic primary by Christopher Piecuch. Piecuch is a young man, the owner of Owner of PQ's Landscaping LLC. He garnered 18% of the vote against Barbieri's 82%. In real votes, due to a low turnout primary, the votes were actually 577 to 123. Christopher Piecuch is running again, having already announced on Twitter...

I was trying to think of what the wingnut headlines will be for this historic agreement with Iran. VIENNA (AP) — After 18 days of intense and often fractious negotiation,…

State Rep. Mike Barbieri has resigned from the General Assembly effective at the end of the month to take a job as the Director of the Department of Health and Social Services' Division of Substance Abuse. I normally balk at a situation where a State Representative takes a state job, because it normally looks just too damn convenient. Like the situation with Rebecca Walker and others before her. But this is a situation where it seems like Barbieri is the most qualified and experienced guy for a job.

Robert Reich views Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as the most dangerous of all GOP hopefuls. Why? Because he's relatively young and charismatic. He’s David and Charles Koch’s favorite (which means…

The Washington Post's Robert Costa had a bizzare interview with renowned bankruptcy and divorce expert Donald Trump on his private plane following his seventy-minute rant of a speech in Phoenix during which he used the Nixonian phrase "the Silent Majority." Costa was wondering if Trump was concerned that he had borrowed the phrase from a disgraced President. Trump replied:

Nah. Nobody remembers that. Oh, is that why people stopped using [the phrase]? Maybe. Nobody thinks of Nixon. I don’t think of Nixon when I think of the silent majority. The silent majority today, they’re going to vote for Trump. Remember, many Republicans didn’t vote for Mitt Romney. He didn’t inspire people. They’re going to vote for me.

Actually, Mr. Trump, Republicans and conservatives did come out to vote for Mr. Romney. The reason why you lost is because Democrats and Independent also showed up. And the reason you Republicans were so surprised on election night that year is because you thought the turnout would be closer to 2010 percentages, and not 2008 percentages. Yes, the turnout would be higher, but the percentage breakdown between Democrats and Republicans and Independents would be the same. You were wrong. And then you cried. And we smiled. Some of us laughed and pointed.

According to this email, which is otherwise utterly devoid of content, for a measly $9.00 a month you can wear a pin that proves you hate Hillary Clinton as much as Charlie Copeland hates her.

Here it is in a nutshell. Going into reelection in November 2013, Chris Christie was riding high in the polls, and a virtual shoe-in to be the GOP nominee to…

Dana Milbank says that when you want to know who's responsible for the Republican follies over that ugly red flag, look to the man permanently wearing orange.

The Confederates launched a surprise attack, under cover of darkness. It was 8:30 Wednesday night, and the House was plodding toward its 20th hour of debate on a little-watched appropriations bill, when Rep. Ken Calvert (Calif.), who had been leading the Republican side of the debate, rose. “I have an amendment at the desk,” he said. Yes he did: A proposal to protect the sale and display of the Confederate battle flag at national parks and cemeteries. ... In the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor, Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland (R-Ga.) ... told reporters, including Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times, that the Confederate battle flag isn’t racist and that he didn’t think Confederate soldiers had “any thoughts about slavery.” ... Republican leaders, trying to end the humiliation they brought on themselves, pulled the appropriations bill from the floor. But how could such a fiasco occur in the first place? It’s not as if there’s a huge groundswell within Republican ranks to fly the Confederate flag — particularly after its association with the alleged killer in last month’s South Carolina black-church massacre.

Damon Linker at The Week says the GOP should be less worried about Donald Trump himself and more worried about why he appeals so much to the Republician base:

The GOP's Trump problem goes all the way down to the roots of the party — the grassroots.[...] that faction's roots go back much further than 2012 — all the way back to the origins of the modern conservative movement in the right-wing populism of the postwar John Birch Society and similar groups. They were a ragtag conglomeration of ideological radicals animated by rage against various actors, forces, trends, and policies in mid-20th-century American life: the New Deal, Big Government, communists, negroes, elites, decadent city folk, Catholics, Jews, immigrants, feminists, homosexuals, and secularists. Some feared them all, others focused on one or a few. All of them saw the world through a fog of paranoia and conspiracy. The populists are the now base of the party — its most loyal and devoted members, surpassed only by super-rich donors for influence among the party's leading politicians and strategists. Candidates for president have no choice but to woo this base, to legitimize its obsessions and flatter its prejudices. And the underdog candidates, meanwhile, pin their entire campaigns on these voters, hoping that the flattery will pay off in a surge of support, catapulting them to prominence. That's how we've ended up with a vulgar blowhard like Donald Trump riding high (almost certainly for a brief time) in the polls. Trump's policy positions (to the extent that he's bothered to articulate them) place him on the far-right flank of American political culture.