Florida Shooters Network

I can't believe this is happening.
http://www.westernjournalism.com/john-b ... ite-house/

Another Establishment Republican.

Vote Romney if you'd like some more.

PS: I had read a few days ago that the House GOP leadership wants to lay low this year. This may be part of their perverse notion of how to do it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/us/politics/to-fix-image-house-gop-thinks-small.html

To Fix Image, Republicans in House Think Small
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — Unpopular and divided, the once mighty House Republicans are laboring to repair their image and frame a new agenda.

Absent for now is a big, contentious docket similar to last year’s, which included the goal of writing new health care legislation to replace the Obama administration’s law. A long-promised overhaul of the tax code seems out of reach. When Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican and majority leader, issued a memo this week laying out the body’s initial legislative agenda, a centerpiece was a modest tax cut for small businesses.

With their poll numbers sinking and President Obama attacking them — and poking fun in a weekend speech at the infighting among their leaders — House Republicans long to establish a reputation as the party of job creation and to blunt the notion that they are recalcitrant and combative.

Senior Republicans are eager to minimize the drama, letting the party’s presidential candidate, when he is finally chosen, take the lead.

“Most of us expect the major decisions aren’t going to be made this year,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a former chairman of the House Republican campaign committee. “It’s a very political year. The big thing for us is to not be part of the conversation instead of trying to inject ourselves into it.”

But attracting positive attention while avoiding confrontation is proving to be a challenge in an election year, particularly for a group that in 2011 seemed to relish showdown after showdown.

Members are still struggling to sing from the same legislative hymnal. Many want to do bigger things, like a tax code overhaul and changes to the Medicare program. Others, including Mr. Cantor, knowing they will get no help from Senate Democrats, seem to favor more incremental steps.

Many of the more conservative members, particularly some freshmen, want to continue taking the good fight to Democrats.

“We should focus on standing for principle and put the politics aside,” said Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, who is in a Republican primary fight for a seat in the Senate. “You have to keep doing what you think is the right thing to do.”

Others desperately want to find bipartisan compromises that can become law. “The system is designed to make things difficult,” said Representative John Campbell of California. “You just have to persevere. Agreements take time, and they’re supposed to.”

Outside pressures from each end of the political spectrum, which have dogged the House all year, are myriad: a five-year transportation bill, a major priority of Speaker John A. Boehner, is already being attacked by the left, for including new oil drilling as a way to pay for the bill, and the right — Heritage Action for America, a conservative group, is urging Republicans to reject new highway spending.

Further, Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor, whose strained relationship recalls the days of the intraparty intrigue that bedeviled Newt Gingrich as speaker, have had to spend time trying to stamp out perceptions that they are working at dangerous cross-purposes.

Their tensions are so well known that Mr. Obama joked about the two at a black-tie banquet Saturday night. (“Speaker Boehner, it is good to see you at the head table. I know how badly Eric Cantor wanted your seat.”) Members grouse regularly about the seeming divisions, and Mr. Cantor’s staff felt it necessary this week to extensively explain that their two staffs had called a truce.

“As you’re clearly aware,” Mr. Boehner said Thursday, “there have been some staff rumbles from time to time, but that’s to be expected when you’re doing big things. And members and our staffs, they’re passionate about what they do. Sometimes that leads to some disagreements.”

Also, a tangle in December over extending the payroll tax cut pitted House Republicans against Senate Republicans, who argue that their House colleagues need to settle down and find a uniform message with them.

“A body of 535 doesn’t sing easily in one chorus,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee. “I would get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say three words: ‘the Obama economy,’ ” he said, “Then say, ‘They’ve been in charge, they made it worse, we can make it better.’ And remember all three messages.”

Defense is not a position that House Republicans of the 112th Congress are accustomed to playing. The group had remarkable leverage last year, setting the agenda on spending — reining it in beyond what even Mr. Boehner would have dreamed — and beating back Democrats on a variety of policy areas in the process.

But the public audience was not always wowed by their accomplishments. Polls showed that many Americans, even those who agreed with the Republican fiscal agenda, found the process, which included nearly shutting down the government, too messy. And among hard-core conservatives, the Republican gains were often too slight to win them applause.

At their retreat in January, Republicans tried to get back on the same page. They are now trying hard to demonstrate where they agree with Democrats, like in the area of small business, while still hammering away at Mr. Obama on unemployment and energy policy, subjects they think resonate with voters.

Should the Supreme Court find fault with some or all of the health care law, Republicans will be ready with a replacement, they say, and will push a bill banning stock trades by lawmakers and staff members with conflicts of financial interests.

House and Senate negotiators are already locked in talks to extend the payroll tax cut through the rest of the year, as well as to extend unemployment compensation and stop a deep cut in payments to doctors treating Medicare patients.

“We’ve had a lot of positive discussions about the year ahead,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, “and our members are united against the president’s policies, which are making the economy worse, and united in our efforts to offer better solutions to help middle-class families and small businesses.”

House Democrats, for all their excitement over the other party’s missteps, have their own problems, including retirements by members in districts tilting Republican.

Small, for now, may be best, Republicans say. “We are worried about trying to produce a result, make incremental progress and find common ground here,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor. Time and time again, he said, “when you try to go big and grand and do grand bargain-type deals, it collapses of its own weight.”

“When that happens over and over again,” he continued, “what do you do? You try something new.”

The only people saying this are anonymous sources and the people parroting them. It wouldn't surprise me if he did this but I don't think jumping to conclusions is a good idea.

There's no mention, as yet, on the sispey street irregulars or the war on guns blogs.
And these are the guys who spread the word in the first place and have been reporting on it regularly.

g.willikers wrote:There's no mention, as yet, on the sispey street irregulars or the war on guns blogs.
And these are the guys who spread the word in the first place and have been reporting on it regularly.

I first read this on Sispey a day or so ago, actually. Some of Mike's sources were the ones telling him this.

Ah, found it.
It's the Feb 3 article on sispey, second page, most of the way down.
Even if the investigation is sabotaged, there's been such an awareness of the whole thing, that it has to have a serious effect on the 2012 elections.
While the voters, at large, might have short memories, the people who have been following this, all across the country, have mighty long ones.

g.willikers wrote:While the voters, at large, might have short memories, the people who have been following this, all across the country, have mighty long ones.

And none of them were voting for Obama anyway.

Such are the comforts of "moral" victories.

Aren't there going to be other elections besides the Presidential one?
Neutralizing the next elected President, with a favorable Congress, will be as important.

g.willikers wrote:Aren't there going to be other elections besides the Presidential one?
Neutralizing the next elected President, with a favorable Congress, will be as important.

The second part is true.

But the people who will vote in the Congressional elections because of what has been done in the F&F investigation so far were going to vote the right way anyway as well.

The key was to take down Holder. Then, in the fall, Republicans would have something tangible to waive as proof of wrongdoing (i.e. "Obama's Attorney General, his chief law enforcement officer, had to resign in disgrace!"). The great middle mass of idiots could grasp that. Without that, all Republicans can say is "We had an investigation and...um...we concluded it!"

All it is going to sound like to the unconverted is just more obstructionism. Without Holder's ass, it is a meaningless failure politically. And, ethically, Holder got away with it.

Maybe it will backfire.
Come time for the election, it can be ballyhooed, far and wide, that Obama refused to hold his corrupt and lying A.G. accountable.
Not that the mass media will contribute, but fortunately they are sliding, sliding away.

g.willikers wrote:Maybe it will backfire.
Come time for the election, it can be ballyhooed, far and wide, that Obama refused to hold his corrupt and lying A.G. accountable.

It will just be viewed as more partisan noise. You are WAY too optimistic. The idiots need things handed to them on a platter. The House GOP has failed to that--along with many other things.