I thought you might like a cool drink here at the end of summer.
"Democratic strategy promotes Tea Party rivals; Almost anything goes in the fight for Senate control" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, August 25, 2013
BUFORD, Ga. — Representative Paul C. Broun earned national notoriety by invoking Hitler and Marxism to critique President Obama. He dismissed global warming as “one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community.” Evolution, the physician has warned, is a lie “straight from the pit of hell.”
You gotta have faith!
Sounds like a candidate the Democratic Party could never get behind, right?
Not so fast.
To some Democrats, Broun’s extreme and colorful comments sound like sweet music, the makings of a perfect Republican candidate for Georgia’s open Senate seat — perfect, that is, if you want the Republican to lose.
“He’s so far out on the extreme, even for the people of Georgia, that he could be a key player in helping the Democrats win,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Senate majority leader Harry Reid. “There would be pages of comments that Democrats could use against him in a general election.”
As party leaders look ahead to the 2014 mid-term elections, some are looking for a replay of 2012, when Democrats honed a strategy that some credit for the surprising defeat of Republicans in Senate races in Indiana and Missouri.
Democrats, for example, ran ads that praised the credentials of a Republican candidate known for extreme right-wing views, hoping that would dim the chances of the more mainstream GOP contenders, those with the best chance of beating the Democratic nominee.
Are you tired of the shit-show fooley known as AmeriKan politics?
When the tactic worked and the fringe candidate won the primary, the Democrats then opened fire on his or her record of extreme views and combustible comments.
And this interparty “meddling,” as some labeled it, worked — at least it did in Indiana and Missouri.
There is, however, an ironic byproduct of this approach. While Democrats routinely denounce the intransigence of dogmatic Tea Party conservatives, they are in effect supporting their ascendance, both in numbers and clout, and helping to knock off the few remaining Republican moderates who might be open to compromise on major issues such as the budget, pollution regulation, gun control, and immigration.
A by-any-means approach to preserving the fragile Democratic majority in the Senate is, thus, helping increase the political polarization that afflicts the nation.
Republicans fault if you are a reader of the Globe, not that I am one.
Yet the possibility of finding the next Todd Akin of Missouri or Sharron Angle of Nevada — to name two far-right conservatives whose primary victories paved the way for Democratic victories in tough elections — can be too tempting to resist.
Be careful what you wish for, Democraps. Remember this when you lose the Senate next year.
Related: Did Harry Reid Steal Nevada Senate Seat?
Sure looks that way!
Democrats and their allies — with tens of millions of dollars in superPAC cash and other streams of outside money — are actively researching the backgrounds and positions of insurgent candidates in Kentucky, Iowa, and North Carolina among other states with contested Senate primaries.
Insurgent candidates, huh? Tells you how the agenda-pu$hing paper feels about them. I didn't know the politicians were physically killing our troops, even though their decisions are just as responsible.
They are poring over video footage, records, and polling data in hopes of finding candidates they can boost in the primaries and then paint as extreme in the general election.
And what if it doesn't work?
Georgia represents one of the most striking opportunities. The state’s Republican primary field is crowded and chaotic, with three members of the US House, a former Georgia secretary of state, and two wealthy businessmen among the field of seven vying to replace Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, who is retiring.
In addition to Broun, Representative Phil Gingrey has also made statements that could be used against him in a general election.
“If I’m the Democrats, I’m trying to promote Paul Broun. I’m trying to promote Phil Gingrey,” said Joel McElhannon, a Georgia Republican consultant not involved in the race. “They’re the most likely candidates to really say something that would undermine the Republican Party’s chances to win next November.”
The Democratic establishment has coalesced around a first-time candidate, Michelle Nunn, the daughter of the popular moderate Democrat, Sam Nunn.
AmeriKan aristocracy.
Party leaders hope Michelle Nunn can appeal to the middle and win in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since Zell Miller left office at the beginning of 2005.
Didn't the Democrat Miller support George W. Bush against the current Secretary of State?
Georgia's Joe Lieberman!
But those hopes hinge, in large measure, on Nunn drawing a beatable opponent....
The political calculus in Senate elections shifted sharply in 2010 when Democrats received a surprising gift — three of them actually. Insurgent Tea Party candidates won upset primary victories in Nevada, Delaware, and Colorado, then stumbled in general elections against Democrats who had been perceived as vulnerable, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid in Nevada. The blunt language and antiestablishment fervor that made the candidates popular with the GOP base proved polarizing in general elections, sapping whatever advantage Republicans held.
By 2012, Democrats realized they could harness the Tea Party’s power to disrupt Republican primaries — “to make our own luck,” in the words of Adrianne Marsh, who served as campaign manager for Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat whose victorious campaign over Akin benefitted from the strategy.
Conservative groups such as Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and the National Rifle Association got involved in a public way. But behind the scenes, Democrats and their allies also quietly worked to boost conservatives, even as their party railed publicly against Tea Party obstruction in Congress.
I'm $ick of the game.
McCaskill was one of the GOP’s top Democratic targets in 2012, having won only a narrow victory in 2006 and running for reelection in a state where Mitt Romney was ahead of Obama in the polls (Romney went on to win Missouri by more than 9 percentage points).
“They were going to put Senator McCaskill’s head on a pike,” said Rodell J. Mollineau, president of American Bridge, a Democratic superPAC that collects opposition research used by a constellation of liberal political groups, including labor unions, Emily’s List, and the League of Conservation Votes.
But Democratic groups including American Bridge and the McCaskill campaign calculated that Akin, a conservative known for making off the cuff intemperate remarks, was the most likely among three Republican primary candidates to stumble in a general election.
“Our fate wasn’t certain either way, no matter who won that primary,” Marsh said in an e-mail. “But we always figured that our chances would be best with Akin.”
“He was a cowboy,” Mollineau said. “He just kind of shot off at the mouth.”
American Bridge had ample material that it could use against Akin, but it withheld all of that research firepower during the primary. Instead, it waged a campaign against Akin’s two primary opponents, the type of attacks meant to instill suspicion among conservatives. The group released research showing former state treasurer Sarah Steelman had voted for a tax increase when she was a state senator and a video highlighting government subsidies to John Brunner’s business.
Majority PAC, a group led by former aides to Reid, ran television ads criticizing Brunner’s jobs record. The McCaskill campaign followed up with three separate television ads — two that slammed Steelman and Brunner. The third, ostensibly aimed to hurt Akin, had the trappings of a negative ad but actually helped him with Republican voters, calling him “the most conservative congressman in Missouri” and “Missouri’s true conservative.”
**********************
Akin began to notice Democrats were on his side, but was too eager to win his primary to worry about it....
Akin celebrated his primary victory in August in a suburban hotel ballroom, as campaign aides congratulated each for the underdog’s 6-point victory. Democrats also were celebrating. The next morning, they unleashed a flood of opposition research portraying Akin as an extremist and a political hypocrite who had attacked Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs while requesting budget earmarks for his own favored programs.
He seems like all the rest.
The Democrats’ strategy yielded its biggest payoff 10 days later, when a local television interview made Akin a national name....
He got raped.
A few hundred miles away in Indiana, Democratic groups employed a similar strategy, withholding opposition research against Tea Party challenger Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer, while relentlessly attacking Richard Lugar, an elder statesman of the Senate known for bold agreements with Democrats on significant issues — including nuclear nonproliferation.
They stabbed Lugar in the back, huh?
When antiestablishment conservatives began attacking Lugar for lacking a home in Indiana, Democratic groups joined in. American Bridge fed research to reporters and created a website, “Virginia is for Lugars,” full of videos and stories mocking the Indiana senator’s home in McLean, Va.
“The third party groups played a huge role. They kept issues on the front burner,” said Brian Howey, publisher of an Indiana political newsletter since 1994. “The whole residency thing, when it first surfaced, I thought it might be a weeklong issue, or several news cycles. It lasted almost two months.”
American Bridge even attacked Lugar on conservative issues, knocking him for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, a stance with which most Democrats agree, believing that to do otherwise would risk putting the nation into default.
Mourdock won the primary. Like Akin, he imploded in the general election....
Though they could not have predicted the self-destructive gaffes, Democrats gloated over their victories. Hoping to spread knowledge about the strategy, Mollineau assessed his group’s success in recent article “Anatomy of a Tea Party Takedown,” that he wrote for the trade publication Campaigns and Elections....
Mainstream Republicans have begun fighting back.
“What we learned in Indiana in 2012 is that even in a deep red state, when the Democrats put up their best candidate against a flawed candidate, we have the potential to lose,” said a top Republican strategist, who requested anonymity to discuss the Indiana race.
The Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads super-PAC initiated an effort in February to take a more aggressive role in Republican primaries, to bolster mainstream candidates and keep insurgent Republican groups at bay, while also preparing to counter Democratic meddling....
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Rove's Recalibration
He's a Democrat's best friend?
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Tastes sour.
Globe really makes you think, doesn't it?
"Health law coverage can be tough sell in some states; Group’s experience in Texas underscores resistance, uncertainty" by Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, August 26, 2013
DALLAS — The young organizers fanned out through a neighborhood of ranch houses on a scorching midsummer morning, eager to educate Texans on the benefits coming their way under President Obama’s health insurance law. Idealistic and motivated, these health care foot soldiers were armed with glossy brochures emblazoned with the slogan: “Get Covered.’’
This should be good!
But a few hours spent with the team, from a nonprofit organization called Enroll America, illustrated the enormous challenges facing the White House and supporters of the health care overhaul in states like Texas.
In this large Republican-leaning state, one in four residents lacks insurance — the highest rate in the country — yet ignorance of the law and its potential benefits is rampant. State political leaders from the governor on down are actively opposing the law’s provisions and want it to fail.
Texas, in other words, remains hostile country before a key element of the law takes effect.
“I’m not interested,” a 37-year-old woman declared, waving an arm at the two college students standing on her porch before shutting her door in their faces.
Later, when the organizers found more people to speak with, they encountered deep confusion and skepticism.
Many Texans erroneously believed elected officials had repealed the law....
“Texas is like the worst with health care, so a lot of people, especially people of color, don’t believe that’s going to change,” said Esteria Miller, Enroll America’s regional organizing lead for North Texas.
From the ground level, with time running out, it was difficult to see how these efforts will help Texas meet upcoming deadlines. On Oct. 1, residents are supposed to begin purchasing health insurance on a new government-sponsored website listing options for coverage.
By Jan. 1, they will be required to have obtained insurance or face a tax penalty under one of the most controversial elements of the 2010 law, modeled on Massachusetts’ groundbreaking universal health care requirement.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Waiving Goodbye to Obamacare
Also see: A wide divide across New England on health overhaul
What a frikkin' mess of a disaster!
Governor Rick Perry and the Republican-led Legislature refused to take any part in implementing the online insurance marketplace. That task falls to the federal government, which is also responsible for setting up insurance marketplaces in 26 other states.
Texas has turned down federal Medicaid money included in the law to insure more low-income residents, joining roughly two dozen states that have rejected that provision, as well.
“It would be a challenge in the best of circumstances to get out big change like this, but here it’s much harder because we don't have a uniform team of people statewide working to get as many folks insured as possible,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat who serves as the county executive and supports the law. Despite the confusion, he added, “We’re committed to making this work.”
And on getting that square peg into a round hole.
Enroll America, a group closely aligned with the president’s former campaign organization, is scrambling to fill some of the information gaps in Texas and other states before the mandate takes effect.
Related(?): Slow Saturday Special: Obama's Nonprofit PAC
The group has enlisted a cadre of Obama campaign veterans and newcomers — more than 130 paid staff and 3,000 volunteers — to organize communities in nine other states where opposition to the law is high, as are the numbers of uninsured: Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Illinois, and Michigan.
Despite playing a central role in education efforts, Enroll America officials would not divulge how much the effort will cost, other than saying “tens of millions” of dollars are being raised from private foundations, corporations, hospital systems, and individuals.
That ground-level campaign will be reinforced by $41 million worth of national advertising contracts through the federal government.
So what well-connected friend and concern is going to get those contracts?
The Obama administration will also spend $67 million on contracts with nonprofits around the country to actually sign people up for insurance — with nearly $11 million going to Texas, more than any other state.
That's over $100 million dollars NOT going to patient care.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Obamacare Creating Jobs
They are temporary and part-time, but you know.....
“The state may not be helpful, but it doesn’t matter as much when you’ve got folks on the ground,” said David Simas, a White House advisor overseeing the government’s national marketing of the health law and who directed opinion research for Obama’s reelection.
Texas has 6.1 million residents lacking health insurance; organizers have their sights set on 3.5 million who would be eligible to receive federal subsidies to buy insurance through the marketplace website. Kathleen Sebelius, US secretary of health and human services, has visited Texas twice this summer to promote the law.
On the other side of the public relations battle are Tea Party movement groups determined to hold Republican congressmen to their promise to chip away at the law. At August town halls in Texas and around the country, conservative activists are even pressing the lawmakers to threaten a government shutdown to block funding for the law.
Related: The Boston Globe's August Town Hall Meeting
Did they tell you that in addition to Obama exempting big business, and thus the eliminating the information they were going to use to calculate your subsidy, he also eliminated the cap on your out-of-pocket costs?
Senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party Republican from Texas who has introduced a bill to defund the law, is taking his crusade to business leaders throughout his home state during the congressional recess.
And Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, is sounding an alarm to Americans about the government-run insurance marketplaces, telling the public that their health and financial information could be compromised because the federal government has missed security testing deadlines.
NSA already has it all anyway, so....
Opposition by Republicans is having an effect. Nationally, more than half of Americans do not approve of the law, compared with just under 40 percent who do, according to an average compiled by Real Clear Politics, an independent news website....
That is not just because of Republicans; as Americans learn more about Obamacare they like it even less. We wanted a good, decent, single-payer system without all the confu$ion.
But local Enroll America organizers were striking out in their efforts to reach these uninsured people on a recent Saturday. Frustrated by the lack of interest as door after door remained closed, they decided to toss their neighborhood maps pinpointing households that were likely to be uninsured. Instead, they drove 6 miles to the north Dallas neighborhood of Hamilton Park, a working-class, predominantly African-American community they hoped would be more receptive to their message.
OMG! What cowards! They went and hid out with their friends! I hope they weren't being paid for that.
One of the team members, Rachel Perry, had been trained to resist using the word “Obamacare,” to avoid offending anyone with the mere mention of the president’s name.
But people love Obamacare!
But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as the national health reform law is formally known, is a mouthful that often draws quizzical stares. Here, in Hamilton Park, organizers found the use of the shorthand “Obamacare’’ kept doors open.
“Is it F-R-E-E?” asked a man exiting his garage.
Perry, a 20-year-old college senior and field organizer with Enroll America, handed the man a “Get Covered” brochure and told him that signing up for private health insurance starting in October would be as easy as buying a plane ticket online.
I hope it is better than signing up for unemployment in Massachusetts, although I'm told it's only a few complainers.
Also see: Slow Saturday Special: Unemployment Check
Still hasn't come.
It would be affordable, too, she promised — but not free. He may even qualify for a federal subsidy, she said, showing him a chart color-coded by income brackets.
“What’s the price? What’s the catch?” asked Mark Booker, 44, an engineer, as he fanned himself with the brochure.
“No catch,” Perry said.
But she acknowledged that she could not answer his bottom-line question: exactly how much the insurance will cost. With little more than one month left before the insurance marketplaces are set to open, the federal government has yet to release the premium rates in Texas.
Perry suggested that Booker sign up for text-message updates about the law....
You can read the text while in the waiting room for your hernia operation.
How much consumers will ultimately pay depends on a variety of factors....
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"Conservative group targeting health care law; In radio ads, seek to block funding" by Donna Cassata | Associated Press, August 27, 2013
WASHINGTON — A conservative group is launching a radio ad challenging Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to oppose any money for President Obama’s health care law even if it means triggering a government shutdown.
I wonder if Democrats put any money into it.
The Senate Conservatives Fund is spending nearly $50,000 on the 60-second commercial that will begin airing on Tuesday in Kentucky, where McConnell is locked in a tough race for a sixth term. The GOP leader faces both a primary rival, businessman Matt Bevin, and a Democratic foe, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
‘‘Republicans in Congress can stop Obamacare by refusing to fund it, but Senator Mitch McConnell refuses to lead the fight,’’ says the ad, which also makes a reference to a recent campaign embarrassment for McConnell.
‘‘The Obamacare bill stinks, and holding your nose won’t make it any better,’’ the commercial says.
Earlier this month, audio of a Jan. 9 telephone conversation revealed that Jesse Benton, McConnell’s campaign manager, described himself as ‘‘holding my nose’’ while working for the candidate. Benton later said in a prepared statement that he believes in McConnell and is 100 percent committed to his reelection.
Related: The Mole in Ron Paul's Campaign
The Senate Conservatives Fund, which was founded by former South Carolina Republican senator Jim DeMint, is spending close to $200,000 on radio ads in six other states calling on GOP senators to refuse to fund the health care law.
The group’s targets are North Carolina’s Richard Burr, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Mississippi’s Thad Cochran, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake.
Related:
"Senator Lamar Alexander’s efforts to ward off a primary challenge from the right fell short Tuesday with Tennessee state Representative Joe Carr’s announcement that he will mount a Tea Party challenge for the Republican nomination for the US Senate. Carr, a Murfreesboro business consultant, told WTN-FM host Ralph Bristol that he decided to abandon his challenge to embattled US Representative Scott DesJarlais to instead take on Alexander because he considers the senator ‘‘the most liberal member of the delegation from Tennessee.’’ DesJarlais, a Jasper physician, is considered vulnerable because of revelations of past infidelities with patients and once having encouraged his wife and a lover to seek abortions. Meanwhile, Alexander is one of Tennessee’s most seasoned politicians. He is a former two-term governor who twice ran for president, and served as US secretary of education and as president of the University of Tennessee. He also had $3.1 million in the bank for his reelection effort through the first half of the year."
The issue has divided Republicans, with House and Senate GOP leaders wary of the political impact of any government shutdown but Tea Party conservatives determined to undermine the health care law.
You sure about that?
The federal 2013 fiscal year ends Sept. 30. New money must be appropriated by then to avoid a shutdown of numerous government offices and agencies.
The radio ad comes as another conservative group, the Madison Project, launched a radio spot on Monday critical of McConnell, labeling him a ‘‘career Washington politician’’ who claims to be a conservative. The Madison Project is supporting Bevin’s candidacy.
The Senate Conservatives Fund has not endorsed anyone in the Kentucky GOP primary, but in a statement in July, executive director Matt Hoskins said the group was open to backing Bevin. Hoskins said McConnell could lose the Senate race and cost the GOP its shot at the Senate majority.
The group said it was ‘‘waiting to see if the grass roots in Kentucky unite’’ behind Bevin.
Many congressional Republicans want to use upcoming federal budget deadlines to mount an assault on the health care law.
It truly is a war paper, right down to the choice of terminology.
Top House Republicans could use a borrowing limit measure as a way to derail Obama’s health plan, though the White House and top Senate Democrats say that’s unlikely to happen.
Why is it unlikely? The Democrats and Obama already miscalculated on sequestration.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Congress in a letter released Monday that the government will run out of money to pay its bills in mid-October unless lawmakers raise the country’s borrowing limit, which is capped at $16.7 trillion.
Lew said in the letter to House Speaker John Boehner that the government is running out of accounting maneuvers it has used to avoid hitting the borrowing limit.
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No refill, thanks.
UPDATE:
"Groups receive $67m to help in enrollment under health care law" by Carla K. Johnson | Associated Press, August 16, 2013
CHICAGO — With the new health law’s enrollment period set to open in a little more than six weeks, President Obama’s administration revealed $67 million in awards Thursday to organizations that will help people understand their new insurance opportunities and get signed up.
It's a jobs program!
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the Navigator grant awards to 105 groups in states where the federal government will run online insurance marketplaces.
‘‘These navigators will help consumers apply for coverage, answer questions about coverage options, and help them make informed decisions about which option is best for them,’’ Sebelius said from Tampa, Fla., during on a conference call with reporters.
Ideally, navigators will use a variety of math and logic skills to walk people through the somewhat confusing process of buying insurance. For example, navigators will help people estimate their family income for 2014, important in determining eligibility for federal tax credits to help pay the cost of coverage.
Which is going to be difficult seeing as business is exempt from having to report the costs of its plans. That is how your subsidy or tax credit was to be determined.
Navigators may need to answer questions about family size, such as: Do you count the kids if they are claimed on an ex-spouse’s income tax? And they will need to be able to explain the differences between the bronze, silver, gold, and platinum insurance policies offered on the marketplaces....
Why does thi$ all have to be so damn difficult?
Enrollment for the health law’s new coverage options starts Oct. 1, and benefits kick in Jan. 1....
Enrollment will continue through the end of March 2014.
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