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I think Josh Green has this about right. Yesterday, I noted that after a flurry of non- and aborted candidacies, the House GOP caucus was about to replace Eric Cantor with someone the Tea Party views as either equivalent to Cantor or if anything slightly less conservative or stalwart in his politics. This requires some explanation. The Tea Party, even if most of the national groups were out of the loop, just effectively decapitated the GOP leadership in the House, arguably in the whole Congress. And they didn’t mobilize quickly to put one of their own in his place?
That’s weird.
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Pete Sessions (R-TX) drops his bid to replace Eric Cantor (R-VA), making Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) elevation a near certainty.
As the national Tea Party exalts over not-conservative-enough carcass of Eric Cantor’s political career, the House GOP prepares to replace him with new Majority Leader who is either identical to Cantor in his politics or slightly less conservative. “Guardians of tea party purity rank McCarthy as about as conservative, or slightly less, than Cantor.”
Even after a federal Court nixed Wisconsin’s ban on same sex marriages, the state’s Attorney General is warning that county clerks who allow same sex marriages could face prosecution.
You never know whether an Army is an Army until it’s under fire. We’re learning – not terribly surprisingly – that the Iraqi Army was not an army. Its soldiers appear to have ditched their uniforms and fled almost the moment they came under fire from an organized paramilitary. As one of my colleagues just noted, the commentary on what’s unfolding is remarkably shallow, even from some of the most knowledgable and insightful journalists in the field. The simple and fundamental fact is that this is the fallout of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Any analysis that doesn’t grapple with and accept that basic fact is just wrong and possibly dishonest to boot. It’s not about how President Obama organized the exit from Iraq, whether he did it well or poorly. And yet, President Bush isn’t president anymore. It’s not his problem. It’s President Obama’s problem. And he has to figure out – decide on – the least worst way to deal with what’s happening.
On the one hand, pretty frustrating to hear Speaker Boehner try to blame his caucus’s flat refusal to pass immigration reform or even bring it to a vote on President Obama’s purported unwillingness to “implement a law as it’s been passed.” On the other hand, heartening to remember that none of the constituencies who care about passing reform – liberals, Latinos, business, Democrats – are fooled by this for a moment.
Leaving the DC press corps, which is probably half fooled. But even them not much.