Things in Politico That Make Me Want to Guzzle Anti-Freeze, Part the Infinity - Charles Pierce
God bless the beasts, and the children at Tiger Beat On The Potomac. Their faith is so innocent, so pure. Starting with the presumption that the Republicans will take back the Senate this fall -- A truism that is starting to look like it may be less than completely true, -- they have decided that the hope for Getting Things Done will lie with "pragmatists" like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins.
If Republicans win the Senate, McConnell (R-Ky.) - the prospective majority leader if he wins reelection - would be in a bind: stuck between demands of the tea party and moderates in both parties who are willing to strike a deal. Enter Manchin, who exemplifies the type of Democrat that McConnell would have to work with. "I am who I am. I don't fit anywhere," Manchin said of his politics, too conservative for most Democrats but too liberal for most Republicans. Even so, he's considering donating to GOP incumbents who share his centrist tendencies.
Codswallop. Joe Manchin is in it for Joe Manchin. (Later in the piece, he hints that, if he doesn't get his way, he'll go back and be governor of West Virginia, a state that has been absolutely pillaged and poisoned by the various industries that have financed Joe Manchin's career in the first place.) If the Republicans take over the Senate and retain control of the House, the only thing they will seek to accomplish is to crank the level of obstructionism and vandalism up to 11, and there won't be fk-all Joe Manchin can do about it. (Collins is just as hopeless.) By the time the new Senate takes office, the presidential campaign of 2016 will be starting to rev itself up, and the 2016 midterms will be grinding away in its wake. It will be time for so many people who run for office to run for office again that nothing much would get done even if the Republican majority were inclined to do anything except wave its dick in both chambers of the national legislature this time around -- which it won't be.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/senate-purple-politico-041514
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