The National Republican Congressional Committee has set up a number of websites that look like they could be a Democratic candidate’s campaign page, unless you read the fine print. They may even violate a Federal Election Commission regulation, Campaign Legal Center expert Paul S. Ryan explained to ThinkProgress. . . .
. . . Ray Bellamy of Florida says he was tricked by the page and accidentally made a donation to the NRCC. “It looked legitimate and had a smiling face of Sink and all the trappings of a legitimate site,†Bellamy told the Tampa Bay Times. The look-alike page uses the same colors as Florida candidate Alex Sink’s campaign, with the URL sinkrocongress2014.com. Once entering information, the person is redirected to an NRCC thank-you page.
They can’t get enough campaign money on their own, so they have to steal it from Democrats? Of course, this might just be one of those “because we can” things.
But Ed Kilgore says the House Republicans appear to be in retreat, generally.
So you have to wonder about last week’s House Republican retreat, which produced more confusion and division than was contained in its baggage from Washington to Cambridge, Maryland. Its much-heralded and heavily telegraped “principles on immigration,†written in codes and near-hieroglyphs, has created the largest and loudest row among Republicans on the subject since Marco Rubio helped Democrats build a super-majority for comprehensive reform in the Senate. The steely focus of Republicans on Obamacare is now being blurred by wrangling over alternatives. And the House GOP conference’s strategic decision on how to deal with an imminent debt limit measure has bogged down into arguments over what empty gesture to offer before surrender.
Immediately after the retreat ended, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor went on Face the Nation, and pressed mildly by Major Garrett on these obvious subjects, collapsed into incoherence.
Brian Beutler explains why he does’t think Chris Christie’s political career will survive Bridgegate. Beutler tends to be more optimistic about things than I am, and I will be hugely surprised if Christie doesn’t serve the rest of his term as governor. I think he can kiss off the White House, though. He doesn’t have broad enough support in the Republican base to ride this out.
Speaking of the Republican base, CNN reports that a conservative group is calling for the GOP leadership in the House and Senate to step aside.
“Time and again, year after year, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate has come to grassroots conservatives, and Tea Party supporters pleading for our money, our volunteers, our time, our energy and our votes,” said ForAmerica Chairman Brent Bozell in a statement to CNN. “In return they have repeatedly promised not just to stop the liberal assault on our freedoms and our national treasury, but to advance our conservative agenda. It’s been years. There is not a single conservative accomplishment this so-called ‘leadership’ can point to.”