Little House in Crazy Base Land

Of course...Representatives come up for re-election thrice for every Senator's once; hence the heightened need to pander to the base. Plus, the GOP is sailing into a train wreck (note the deliberate mixed metaphor) this November; hence the urgent need to pander to the base. And the GOP base is one ugly bunch of mother fuckers--xenophobes, bigots, misogynists, gun nuts, pecksniffs, and Ann Coulter; hence the ugliness of GOP politics.


Divide Is Sharpening Among Republicans

From immigration policy to energy to emergency spending, House Republican leaders are publicly breaking rank with their counterparts in the Senate, fearing that Senate efforts at compromise are jeopardizing the party's standing with conservative voters.

The breach in congressional leadership has been especially stark in the past two weeks. As the Senate returns to the immigration issue this week, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said House Republicans will not agree to any plan granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship that does not require them first to return to their home countries. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) dismissed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposed $100 rebate for gasoline as "insulting" and "stupid." And House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) declared a Senate-passed, $109 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief and a bevy of home-state pet projects "dead on arrival."

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