Is The Tea Party Making A Comeback?

An outspoken Tea Party-backed Republican lawmaker on Friday opened his campaign for the No. 2 leadership post in the U.S. House of Representatives against a top deputy of Speaker John Boehner in a bid to boost conservatives' influence in the party.

Raul Labrador of Idaho said he would run for the House Majority Leader job in a special leadership election scheduled for June 19 after Eric Cantor of Virginia announced he was stepping down following his shock primary election defeat on Tuesday to a Tea Party movement activist.

Labrador, 46, will vie against Representative Kevin McCarthy, the third-ranking House Republican, who had emerged as a strong candidate this week after two more-conservative challengers dropped out of the race.

Many of the House's younger, more conservative members have vented frustration with decisions by the current Republican leadership. Labrador's move gives them one of their own to support. The Idaho Republican, a former immigration attorney, was first elected in 2010 on a wave of support from the Tea Party, which advocates for reductions in government spending and taxes and takes establishment Republicans to task for not being conservative enough.

Labrador said he was "stunned" by Cantor's loss to political novice and economics professor David Brat, but said it showed that Americans want change in Washington.

"I want a House Leadership team that reflects the best of our conference. A leadership team that can bring the Republican conference together," Labrador said in a statement. "Americans don’t believe their leaders in Washington are listening and now is the time to change that."

You make the mistake of thinking that Hispanics want amnesty.

Not in the least, but delusions of that level take a lot of time and energy to properly retort to, two things I'm a bit short on right now.

Wait Jet. Do you mean that our "leaders" have no corporate masters? Or do you mean they don't put the interests of the 0.001% above all the rest of our interests?

Tea Partier Chris McDaniel has taken $800 in donations from Carl Ford, a former lawyer for Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who died in prison after being convicted of the murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. Ford also is active in the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and was active in the Klan in Laurel, Mississippi, in the early 1960s.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Ford, who still practices in Laurel, McDaniel’s hometown, said he was supporting the Tea Party challenger facing six-term Republican incumbent Thad Cochran in a June 24 runoff because of McDaniel’s opposition to what Ford called “immigration reform, so-called.” In contrast, Ford said Cochran was siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and supporting “knocking the wall down on the borders and advocating bringing more illegals in.” The septuagenarian lawyer also condemned Michael Bloomberg’s donations to Mississippi Conservative PAC, a super PAC backing Cochran, because of the former New York mayor’s support for gun control. “Don’t think we want a nanny state,” Ford added. “I’m too old and too fat to drink too much sody pop and still don’t want nobody telling me how much to drink.”

It’s not the first time McDaniel, whose campaign declined to comment on the record to The Daily Beast, has been linked to figures with neo-Confederate ties. The Mississippi state senator has spoken to gatherings of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in the past and made racially charged comments on a talk radio show that he hosted from 2004 to 2007.

President Barack Obama has seen support for his foreign policy plummet to an all-time low, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NBC poll released Wednesday.

According to the poll, just 37% of respondents said they approved of Obama's handling of foreign-policy issues, an all-time low. Meanwhile, 57% said they disapproved, an all-time high.

And the foreign-policy approval rating for Obama might be artificially high. The poll was conducted before the crisis in Iraq — a situation for which Obama has been roundly criticized — bubbled up and grabbed international attention.

Obama's handling of international events have earned him criticism over the past few months — from the crisis in Ukraine to his administration's decision to execute a prisoner swap to free U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban-affiliated prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

According to the poll, 44% of respondents said the administration should not have made the exchange, compared with 30% who supported it.

Some other highlights from the poll:

Obama's overall approval rating sits at just 41%, tying an all-time low.
His approval rating on handling the economy also sits at 41%, down 1 percentage point from last month. It's the same number from March.
Obama's favorability rating is underwater — 41% said they view him positively, while 45% see him in a negative light.
When asked their predictions on the rest of Obama's term in office, 54% said they thought he "cannot lead and get the job done," compared with only 42% who said the opposite.
Over the last 12 months, 41% of respondents said their views of the Obama administration have "gotten worse." Only 15% said they have "gotten better."

Obama's declining popularity threatens to drag down Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections. By a 10-point margin, more people said their vote this November will be to "send a signal of opposition to Obama." (41% said their vote will not be a signal to Obama either way.) On the generic congressional ballot, 35% said they would vote for a Democratic candidate in their district, compared with 30% who chose a theoretical Republican candidate.

As long as he makes the right decision on Iraq, I really don't care what the polls say.

President Barack Obama came under pressure from U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday to persuade Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to step down over what they see as failed leadership in the face of an insurgency threatening his country.

As Obama held an hour-long meeting with congressional leaders on U.S. options in Iraq, administration officials joined a chorus of criticism of Maliki, faulting him for failing to heal sectarian rifts that militants have exploited.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional hearing that Maliki's Shi'ite-led government had asked for U.S. air power to help counter Sunni militants who have overrun northern Iraq.

The general did not say whether Washington would meet the request. But Dempsey signaled that the U.S. military - apparently much like Obama - was in no rush to launch airstrikes in Iraq, citing the need to clarify a chaotic situation on the ground so any targets could be selected "responsibly."

In Oval Office talks, Obama briefed the lawmakers on efforts to get Iraqi leaders to "set aside sectarian agendas," reviewed options for "increased security assistance" and sought their views, the White House said.

A senior administration official said afterward that Obama did not lay out a course of action at the meeting and had yet to make a final decision.

At the same time, the Obama administration has quietly started consulting Congress about a plan for redirecting some current intelligence funding to help finance expanded U.S. operations in Iraq, a U.S. national security source said.

The United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple President Saddam Hussein and withdrew its troops in 2011, has said Iraq's government must take steps toward sectarian reconciliation before Obama will decide on any military action against the insurgency led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, an al Qaeda splinter group.

Maliki has so far shown little willingness to create a more inclusive administration.

"The Maliki government, candidly, has got to go if you want any reconciliation," said U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I wish Iran would do something, so we can finally see how treating them like a threat has been a waste of time.

A former CIA operative described Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, as the “most powerful operative in the Middle East today.”

Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Qods Force, the foreign arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, is leading the Iraqi reaction to a radical Islamist group's takeover of much of the country, according to a senior Iraqi official quoted by The Guardian.

"Who do you think is running the war? Those three senior generals who ran away?" the unnamed official asked The Guardian's Martin Chulov. "Qassem Suleimani is in charge. And reporting directly to him are the militias, led by Asa'ib ahl al-Haq."

Asaib ahl al-Haq (AAH) organization is one of several Iraqi groups that serve as instruments of Iranian policy through the region, as University of Maryland researcher Philip Smyth explained in a policy brief for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy earlier this week.

Specifically, it is a Shiite militia and Iranian proxy in Iraq that deployed fighters to the Syrian theater to support the regime of Bashar Assad. But Smyth writes that AAH fighters have now been recalled to Iraq to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the al-Qaeda castoff that took over vast stretches of the country's oil-producing north last week.

What do breasts, "mamacitas" and indecent acts with animals have in common? They’re all mudballs the campaigns of Sen. Thad Cochran and challenger Chris McDaniel are throwing at each other in hopes of gaining the edge ahead of next Tuesday’s runoff election in Mississippi.

It’s impossible to know who has the advantage at this point in the Republican primary contest. A new poll from Democratic pollster Chism Strategies shows Cochran leading 48-47 percent. Chism was one of the more accurate polls leading up to the primary on June 3. A recent poll conducted for Citizens United shows the opposite. It has McDaniel clobbering Cochran 52-40 percent.

After sleepwalking through the primary, the Cochran campaign suddenly has come alive. Cochran has been barnstorming the state with an intensity he hasn’t needed since he won what had been a solidly Democratic seat in 1978. After House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning primary defeat last week in Virginia, the Cochran campaign is, understandably, running scared.

“Well, it happens. Members of Congress – some win, some lose,” Cochran told Fox News. “It’s not an automatic proposition that you get re-elected just because you’ve done a good job.”

That is the true unknown for Cochran. How many people who think he has done a good job for the state will vote for his opponent?

Pam Ard is one of those people. A longtime supporter of Cochran, she voted for McDaniel in the primary. “I think Thad Cochran has been great for this state,” Ard told Fox News. “He has done wonderful things here, but it is time to have some new blood.”

It’s people like Ard that McDaniel is counting on to carry him to victory.

“The people of our state, they want new leadership. They want courage. They want a bold fighter,” McDaniel told Fox News. He is trying to make the case that after six terms in the Senate, Cochran has given up the fight.

“Senator Cochran has not fought the conservative fight,” McDaniel said. “He’s been silent for far too long.” McDaniel points out that the American Conservative Union rates Cochran with a D- grade during the Obama administration. Mostly, according to ACU Executive Director Dan Schneider, for his “penchant for big government.”

Mississippi has benefited tremendously from federal transfer payments. By some counts, 46 percent of the state’s revenue comes from the federal government. For every dollar Mississippi taxpayers send to Washington, the state gets three back. Cochran is campaigning on a ‘re-elect me, and the money will continue to flow' message. And he says McDaniel’s promise to reduce spending is dangerous for Mississippi.

“I think he’s an extremist,” Cochran told Fox News. “National defense, national relief to highways and roads and bridges. I served in Congress on those committees that helped direct the money to the states and he wants to zero them out.”

McDaniel acknowledges that if he has his way, Mississippians will have to make do with less largesse from the federal government. But he dismisses Cochran’s accusation of extremism.

“There is nothing extreme about wanting to balance a budget,” McDaniel told Fox News. “There is nothing radical about adherence to our Constitution. There is nothing wrong with traditional values.”

Both candidates are going flat-out to lock up every vote they can ahead of Tuesday’s showdown. McDaniel is hoping to peel off soft Cochran supporters, while the senator is reaching out to both moderate Republicans who stayed home on June 3, and Democrats who Cochran warns won’t like the outcome if McDaniel takes the seat.

So – what about the breasts, mamacitas and animals? It’s just more nastiness in what has been one of the ugliest campaigns in recent memory. The Cochran campaign is hitting McDaniel on things he said as a conservative talk radio host a decade ago, where he ridiculed a woman running for governor for using her “boobies” to get elected, and made reference to beautiful Mexican women, calling them "mamacitas."

A PAC supporting McDaniel is using Cochran’s own words against him – a rather bizarre utterance at a recent campaign appearance where he said that as a child it was fun to do “all sorts of indecent things with animals.” The radio ad from Now Or Never PAC includes a bleating sheep as the narrator says: “Tell Thad Cochran you’re no farm animal.”

All this mudslinging might seem a little beneath an intra-party contest for a seat in the venerated halls of the Senate. But a lot is at stake here. Tea Party and conservative groups who missed the boat on the Dave Brat surprise victory over Cantor are heavily invested in McDaniel. Should he pick off a heavyweight establishment incumbent, it will be their crowning achievement this primary season.

Bring Iran and Turkey to the table with the Kurds and carve out a large chunk of Iraq and recognize the newly formed country of a Kurdistan....

As long as he makes the right decision on Iraq, I really don't care what the polls say.

Lets hope enough people are awake in MS so that we can throw out more establishment GOPs!

Time to do some soul searching in the Bible Belt Beltway Loop.

The Internal Revenue Service has lost more emails connected to the tea party investigation, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

The IRS said last Friday it had lost an untold number of emails when Lois Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011. Lerner used to head the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status.

On Tuesday, two key lawmakers said the IRS has also lost emails from six additional IRS workers whose computers crashed. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller.

Miller later became acting IRS commissioner, but was forced to resign last year after the agency acknowledged that agents had improperly scrutinized tea party and other conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status. Documents have shown some liberal groups were also flagged.

Investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee interviewed IRS technicians Monday. The technicians said they first realized that Lerner’s emails were lost in February or March — months before they informed congressional investigators, said a statement by two top Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, chairman Dave Camp of Michigan and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany of Louisiana.

The two lawmakers called on the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS, something Attorney General Eric Holder has declined to do in the past.

“It looks like the American people were lied to and the IRS tried to cover up the fact it conveniently lost key documents in this investigation,” the statement by Camp and Boustany said. “The White House promised full cooperation, the commissioner promised full access to Lois Lerner emails and now the agency claims it cannot produce those materials and they’ve known for months they couldn’t do this.”

The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.