Democrats Donating to GOP Incumbents?

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

16 April 14

od bless the beasts, and the children at Tiger Beat On The Potomac. Their faith is so innocent, so pure. Starting with the presumption that the Republicans will take back the Senate this fall -- A truism that is starting to look like it may be less than completely true, -- they have decided that the hope for Getting Things Done will lie with "pragmatists" like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins.

If Republicans win the Senate, McConnell (R-Ky.) - the prospective majority leader if he wins reelection - would be in a bind: stuck between demands of the tea party and moderates in both parties who are willing to strike a deal. Enter Manchin, who exemplifies the type of Democrat that McConnell would have to work with. "I am who I am. I don't fit anywhere," Manchin said of his politics, too conservative for most Democrats but too liberal for most Republicans. Even so, he's considering donating to GOP incumbents who share his centrist tendencies.

Codswallop. Joe Manchin is in it for Joe Manchin. (Later in the piece, he hints that, if he doesn't get his way, he'll go back and be governor of West Virginia, a state that has been absolutely pillaged and poisoned by the various industries that have financed Joe Manchin's career in the first place.) If the Republicans take over the Senate and retain control of the House, the only thing they will seek to accomplish is to crank the level of obstructionism and vandalism up to 11, and there won't be fk-all Joe Manchin can do about it. (Collins is just as hopeless.) By the time the new Senate takes office, the presidential campaign of 2016 will be starting to rev itself up, and the 2016 midterms will be grinding away in its wake. It will be time for so many people who run for office to run for office again that nothing much would get done even if the Republican majority were inclined to do anything except wave its dick in both chambers of the national legislature this time around -- which it won't be.

The West Virginia Democrat is a key voice among pragmatic lawmakers who can control whether the next majority's agenda will sink or swim in the final two years of Obama's presidency - no matter who is in charge. In this Congress, these centrist Democrats and Republicans up for reelection in 2016 from blue and purple states have already exerted themselves on jobless benefits, gun control and employment discrimination and are bound to play an even more central role in 2015. Moderate Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mark Kirk of Illinois, helped pass the recent extension of jobless benefits against their party's will. They will likely hold trump cards in the next Congress, too, and all but Collins face voters in two years in purple and blue states.

Trump cards? You may have noticed that the recent extension of jobless benefits died in the House, just as all of those Republicans knew that it would. This was a free vote for these people, and if you give the Republican party in its current form the Senate, things like extending benefits to the longterm unemployed will die there, too. How do I know this? Because, were the Republicans to take over the Senate this time around, the crop of candidates running against Democrats -- who, therefore, would be the incoming class of 2014 -- are far to the right of wherever it is Kelly Ayotte finds herself ideologically over the next 20 minutes. Tom Cotton in Arkansas is a Tea Party darling. In the newly insane state of North Carolina, Kay Hagan likely will face Thom Tillis, who is an entirely conventional pol of the wingnut variety but, within the margin of error, is Greg Brannon, yet another crazy conservative physician who makes Tillis look like Bernie Sanders. That is not even to mention the chock full o'nuts Republican primary fields in places like Georgia, which may in fact flip that state's seat to the Democratic party. If all of these candidates lose, then the Democrats keep the Senate, and the whole premise of this piece fails. If they win, and the Republicans take control, where does TBOTP think the real power will reside? With a beat-up Mitch McConnell, assuming he's even still there, or with the Ted Cruz fantasts?

They will be joined in the Senate's centrist core by Democrats who won red states in 2012, like Manchin, McCaskill and Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, as well as members of the class of 2014 who survive tough races in Arkansas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Alaska.

The idea that, in a triumphal Republican Senate, the real power will be wielded by a narrow coalition defined on the left by Heidi Heitkamp and on the right Rob Portman is downright laughable. The idea that a Senate so composed would get anything done to address the country's real problem is more hilarious still.

Bartender, a double Prestone, and see what the pundits in the back room will have.