Aww, look at that. See how pensive and deep and somber Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is in the video? He gets that way around graves of undocumented immigrants marked with bouquets of pretty flowers. What a guy. He sure cares. So-o-o much. So very much.
Why, he feels so sad and compassionate that he’s blocking immigration reform! As Think Progress notes, that would be the same reform that would “effectively prevent more senseless border deaths from occurring. Migrants often have to rely on smugglers who leave them to die in the desert.”
If you think that video is bad, wait until you hear this, as reported by Think Progress. Cornyn actually compared U.S. border security to– wait for it– Disney World:
CORNYN: My conversations with Senator Rubio, he happened to share with me that Disney World uses a biometric system to ensure people do not commit ticket fraud. If they are that easy, affordable and good enough for the Magic Kingdom, they ought to be good enough for the United States. Senator Sessions’ amendment would guarantee they would not be eligible for lawful citizenship until there is a biometric entry/exit system.
We’ve already seen that Mark Sanford– cheater, hypocrite, trespasser– has no wisdom to impart. And yet he won an election, mainly because Republicans in South Carolina have the kind of wisdom and judgment skills that are surpassed only by Sanford’s credibility and sense of ethics.
Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) is heading back to Congress — and that may not be good news for House GOP leadership.
Sanford owes party leaders nothing, as they refused to spend money on his campaign in the closing weeks and held him at arm’s length for much of the race.
He’s also a vocal — and stubborn — fiscal conservative, and will be sworn into the House at a time when GOP leaders are battling to control an unruly conference.
The first potentially awkward moment will come when Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) swears Sanford in, likely in the next few days.
The Boehner couldn’t even bring himself to mention Sanford by name when he was asked if he’d be welcomed back. To make matters worse, Sanford is due in court on Thursday to face his ex-wife’s accusations of trespassing. That could push his swearing-in ceremony back until next week.
While it’s likely Sanford and House GOP leaders won’t have a warm and fuzzy relationship, it’s unclear whether he’ll be accepted by House conservatives either.
Uh-oh, Marco! The anti-immigrant right is on your case! But keep trying to appeal to those non-existent Republican Latino voters, and keep smiling for the camera as you engage in more GOP infighting.
So yes, now Rubio’s in the all too familiar conservative dog house. Here he is trying to reinvent his apparently non-reinventable party by pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, and what does he get for it? A kvetchy National Review magazine cover and claims that he supports “amnesty.” Isn’t that just like the reachy-outy right?
That’ll teach him for hanging out with occasionally reasonable politicians and trying to occasionally fake-be reasonable himself.
Bad press, schmad press, you know what they say: All publicity is good publicity.
(CNN) – When the cover was posted online, commentators noted the publication had edited out the people standing behind the three senators at the press conference, including conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist.
National Review isn’t the first magazine to use Rubio on its cover with a provocative headline. TIME labeled the junior senator from Florida the “Republican savior” on its cover in February.
House Republican leaders couldn’t muster up enough votes to revamp part of the Affordable Care Act this week, a proposal Democrats opposed. Republicans had to pull the bill.
One veteran Republican lawmaker said this about putting it to a vote in the first place:
“They’ve lost their minds.”
Took him this long to figure that out?
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) were at odds over the bill, and yes, they lost their minds years ago.
A number of high-ranking Republican lawmakers close to the whip operation told The Hill, on the condition of anonymity, that there has been a “disconnect” with leadership lately.
Unless rectified, that disconnect could hamper Republican efforts to go toe-to-toe with President Obama on raising the debt ceiling. [...]
When House GOP leaders schedule floor votes on legislation and then are forced to retreat, the party loses political leverage. That happened when Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) couldn’t pass his “Plan B” bill during the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations late last year.
Boehner’s fingerprints aren’t on the GOP ObamaCare measure, which some critics on the right have dubbed “CantorCare.”
CantorCare. Now that’s funny.
Cantor has been thinking nationally, but many conservatives in gerrymandered districts are thinking locally. They don’t want to get primaried, so they do everything they can to please voters back home.
But back to that pesky “disconnect”:
“[Cantor and Boehner] didn’t listen to the whip who [has] said they didn’t have the votes for this. They brought it up, then they whipped it, then they lost. This is like the fourth time they’ve done this where they underestimate when the whip’s said, ‘We don’t have the votes for this,’ ” a senior GOP lawmaker told The Hill.
Gee, Republicans failed to listen? Who’da thunk it?
Here’s something you’d never see at CPAC (h/t: @IndpndntThnkn):
“WhackJobPalooza!” aka CPAC 2013 laid bare the rifts in the GOP as well as their hypocrisy and the vile “rock stars” they groom, pamper, and strut out like well-trained dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. I personally couldn’t bring myself to watch much of it, but occasionally a standout moment would come to our attention:
Do those sound like people who are evolving and who want to reinvent themselves, broaden their appeal, and open their hearts to more Americans?
This is not a party that is making any real effort to see the errors of their ways and go out of their way to rectify them. Instead, they continue to insist on spewing infantile nastiness while still residing in an earlier century and trying to convince America that saying they’re changing is tantamount to actually changing. Some even inexplicably expressed no desire to evolve, maintaining that everything is hunky dory except the way their message is framed.
National Harbor, Maryland (CNN) — Under a large banner that proclaimed “America’s Future: The Next Generation of Conservatives,” the Oak Ridge Boys and Lee Greenwood belted out tunes such as “The Wind Beneath My Wings” and “Elvira” over back-to-back nights at the just-wrapped Conservative Political Action Conference.
Hardly Justin Bieber or Carrie Underwood.
As Republicans struggle with an intra-party feud over the direction of the party, the bold blue sign that hung over the stage here at National Harbor and the choice of artists at the evening dinners headlined by former Sen. Jim DeMint and former Gov. Jeb Bush seemed to send a mixed message. [...]
But Republicans lost the 18-29-year-old vote by a 23-point margin in the 2012 presidential race. … [T]hey agree on this point: Recruiting younger voters to the GOP is a priority. “Elvira” doesn’t seem to be the appropriate rallying cry.
Note to conservatives: It’s not just about the music, which would be yet another cosmetic patch to slap on that might appear updated, more attractive and exciting, but in reality would be too insignificant to cover deeper problems.
When young voters are more mature than the so-called party of “adults,” it’s about time for Republicans to grow up, or just grow, if that’s even possible.
“All too often, we’re associated with being anti-everything. Way too many people believe that Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on.”
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