Tuesday Open Thread [6.18.13]

Filed in Open Thread by on June 18, 2013

The GOP Civil War continues apace. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told World Net Daily radio that Speaker John Boehner should be ousted if he rams through an immigration bill without majority Republican support. LOL, well, that is the only way an immigration of any kind can get passed through the House of Representatives, and that is if Boehner allows another violation of the Hastert Rule, which provides that the only bills that will be voted on on the floor of the House of Representatives while under Republican control are bills that are supported by a majority of the Republican caucus. But Boehner has allowed several bills to be passed this year and last with minimal support from Republicans and majority support from the Democrats, including the Fiscal Cliff deal and Hurricane Sandy relief. I guess the GOP is so racist that they will not allow Boehner and the Dems to save their asses again, and instead want to go down in a hail of bigoted flames.

Said Rohrabacher: “If Speaker Boehner moves forward and permits this to come to a vote even though the majority of the Republicans in the House-and that’s if they do-oppose whatever it is that’s coming to a vote, he should be removed as Speaker.”

[…] “I would consider that a betrayal of the Republican members of the House and a betrayal of the Republicans throughout the country.”

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sound positively sane recently, at least when talking about immigration reform and its prospects in the House and Senate and the GOP’s prospects without it. Here he is on the supreme flipfloppery of one Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), one of the architects of the Senate Bill:

“How do we put together a bill and then the guy who put it together says that he may not vote for it? “I just don’t get what we’re doing here.”

I don’t understand either, Lindsey. Sounds like Rubio is a little scared of his base conservatives. And then here is Lindsey on the GOP’s electoral future if those base conservatives scuttle immigration reform:

“[C]onservatives who are trying to block the measure will doom the party and all but guarantee a Democrat will remain in the White House after 2016’s election.”

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016. We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community in my view is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run in my view.”

Polling Goodness…

FLORIDA–GOVERNOR–Quinnipiac” Former Governor Charlie Crist (D) 47, Gov. Rick Scott (R) 37.

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  1. cassandra_m says:
    June 18, 2013 at 1:48 pm

    You cannot make this BS up: GOP Congressman says he is for an abortion ban because fetuses masturbate.

  2. Geezer says:
    June 18, 2013 at 2:01 pm

    The particular stupidity of the comment — by yet another conservative OB/GYN — is that he applied it only to male fetuses.

  3. cassandra_m says:
    June 18, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    If there was any justice, his State Licencing Board would revoke his licence to practice over this bit of stupidity. Or maybe the market’s invisible hand will send his patients elsewhere.

  4. cassandra_m says:
    June 18, 2013 at 3:29 pm

    This is fun! Nate Silver and Politico are bickering again.

    “I admire how he has built a franchise,” Harris said. “I roll my eyes at how he gets up on his high horse quite a lot on different topics.”

    Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor who helped found the publication with Harris, also participated in the interview, saying that some of Silver’s “stuff goes on and on” and that he uses “numbers to prove stuff that I don’t think can be proved by numbers alone.”

    It goes on and on to show you his homework. And Silver doesn’t indulge in the horserace BS that is the bulk of Politico’s reporting. So it looks to me like they are upset that there is someone with an audience who doesn’t need the he say she say stuff.

    But Nate responds:

    “It’s striking how preoccupied Harris and VandeHei are with the perception that Politico is too ‘insidery,'” Silver wrote. “My personal critique of their work cuts a little deeper than that, however. It’s not that they are too ‘insidery’ per se, but that the perceptions of Beltway insiders, which Politico echoes and embraces, are not always very insightful or accurate. In other words, the conventional wisdom is often wrong, especially in Washington.”

    He added later in the email: “Furthermore, Harris and VandeHei seem to lack very much curiosity for the world outside of the bubble.”

    Right. The Politico guys see themselves as Big Fish in the company town and make the mistake of thinking that makes them the News Venue of Record. If there is anything that the past decade or so of political reporting should tell you, is that the conventional wisdom model is quite failed.

  5. John Manifold says:
    June 18, 2013 at 3:45 pm

    The good Republicans, like WW2 veterans, are dying:

    http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/18/2970402/former-gop-gov-jim-holshouser.html

  6. Jason330 says:
    June 18, 2013 at 8:49 pm

    This post makes me happy.

  7. auntie dem says:
    June 19, 2013 at 9:29 am

    Graham is having to deal with people who create their own reality. Only it’s not reality.

  8. geezer says:
    June 19, 2013 at 10:30 am

    “Or maybe the market’s invisible hand will send his patients elsewhere.”

    Maybe the market’s invisible hand is between the good congresscritter’s legs.

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