Anti-establishment means running against Washington while taking K Street’s cash. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
The idea that the modern day Democratic Party is the political party that really has blood on its hands from opposing integration is being advanced more frequently these days among some conservatives, but mostly at the fringes of the Republican Party. Until now. No longer is it just fringe revisionism. Read More
Our Brian Beutler has been pinning down senators since last night on whether they will take up Rep. Barney Frank’s challenge to televise the conference committee negotiations of the financial reform bill. Surprisingly, some key senators have said yes.
One of the Republican candidates for governor of California wants to banish all the state’s pedophiles to an island in the Pacific.
Justin Elliott reports on Rand Paul campaigning in Montana back in 2008 against the mythical “NAFTA Superhighway” and the “Amero”, the mythical NAFTA currency.
I admit I wasn’t fully up on the ‘NAFTA Superhighway’ conspiracy theory. But here’s how Rand’s dad described in back in 2006 …
“Proponents envision a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside. … The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union – complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union.”
I’ll admit I’m no civil engineer. But maybe some of the folks who specialize in that line of work can chime in here. Because apart from destroying American sovereignty, this strikes me as a little ill-conceived from a critical infrastructure point of view, no? The oil and gas pipelines co-located under the highway? Along with a bunch of train and freight traffic powering through and throw in the broadband for good measure? I’m not sure that’s a good plan.
Just tweeted by David Gregory …
Rand Paul is trying to cancel his appearance on MTP Sun. We are attempting to get him to reconsider.
Gregory’s producer tweeted about Paul bagging first and Christina Bellantoni got the details on just what Paul’s campaign said.
Hard to figure when the first two appearances have gone so well.
I certainly don’t want to buoy this idea that Meet the Press is somehow sacrosanct and canceling on an appearance on the show is like violating a monastery or something. And frankly, I don’t know what Rand and his media handlers were thinking having him kick off his general election campaign with an hourlong appearance on the Rachel Maddow show (who, frankly, was eminently fair to him). But this canceling on his Meet the Press appearance just casts in really high relief how totally not ready for prime time Rand Paul is. Read More
Josh Green has a theory about the Rand Paul implosion: the in-state Kentucky press has been so decimated by the newspaper crisis that there was no one to give him the kind of scrutiny Paul got on day one when he went national and had a head on collision with Rachel Maddow.
I usually find these sorts of explanations deeply unpersuasive, though one hears them more and more. Josh apparently does too, usually; but he spent some time down in Kentucky covering the Paul campaign and in this case he’s thinking there may be something to it. And because it’s Josh and because he’s actually spent some time down there, which I obviously haven’t, I’m inclined to believe him.
I’ve had another theory, though. And I think it actually dovetails nicely with the media crisis one. It’s basically this — all the stuff Paul is getting in trouble for now are things that would just be really tough to use against a candidate in a GOP primary in Kentucky, or frankly most red states, especially in 2010. Read More
The Republican Party has picked up a normally safe Democratic House seat in Hawaii — the district that is the birthplace of Barack Obama, no less — thanks to a split Democratic vote.