Democrats target ‘ReTrumplican’ senators in new national campaign – The Washington Post By Mike DeBonis March 15 at 6:00 AM

Featured in the ad are senators Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), John McCain (Ariz.), Ron Johnson (Wisc.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Patrick Toomey (Pa.) — all of whom are amid competitive re-election campaigns — as well as House members Joe Heck (Nev.), David Jolly (Fla.) and Ron DeSantis (Fla.), who are seeking Senate seats this year.

None have endorsed Trump, but none have said they will abandon him if he is nominated. An on-screen message says all are “running in lockstep with Donald Trump.”

The DSCC is promising a “sustained campaign” on the “Party of Trump” theme, starting with the web ad and a new website featuring a list of “ReTrumplicans,” and expanding to television, radio, and social media ads. The committee reported having $13.6 million in its coffers last month.

Democrats target ‘ReTrumplican’ senators in new national campaign – The Washington Post

Republicans’ mindless obstruction has helped create something far worse – The Washington Post By Dana Milbank Opinion writer March 11

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan had said this would be a “Year of Ideas,” with legislation aimed at poverty and health care. But the House has conducted legislative business on only 154 of the 431 days since this Congress began. Much of that time has been devoted to the obscure (this month’s legislation to delay regulations for brick kilns) and the symbolic (nine Republicans opposed naming a post office after the late poet Maya Angelou, and two of them called her a “communist sympathizer”).

And the Senate? Republicans once complained about all the House-passed bills that didn’t make it through the Democratic Senate. But at this point in 2014, there were 205 House-passed bills awaiting action; now there are 298 House-passed bills awaiting action by the GOP-controlled Senate.

Republicans’ mindless obstruction has helped create something far worse – The Washington Post

No more laughing off The Donald | Albuquerque Journal By Ruth Marcus / Syndicated Columnist

Yes, the real estate tycoon is a know-nothing, uninterested-in-learning-anything buffoon. Also: a demagogue and a bully whose emotional instability would pose a threat to national security.

But the Cruz alternative, it seemed to me then, was even worse. Cruz is smarter than Trump, more calculating than Trump (which is saying something) and way, way more conservative than Trump.

A Trump presidency, or so I reassured myself, at least offered the prospect of unprincipled deal-making in the service of what is Trump’s only guidepost – promoting the greater glory of Trump. President Cruz would be as absolutist as Sen. Cruz, and therefore, from my point of view, the worse president.

I was wrong.

Since that column in mid-December, Trump has proved himself to be even less knowledgeable and even more unhinged. His election would constitute a grave threat to American values and, potentially, American democracy. …

Trump is Nixon with all of the megalomaniacal willingness to abuse power and none of the crafty realpolitik.

No more laughing off The Donald | Albuquerque Journal

If Republicans refuse to accord Obama the same right that they gave Raygun in February, 1988, then they are braying their hypocrisy for all the nation to hear in an election year. Please note this self-serving, self-dealing, despicable act by Conservatives. Don’t give Republicans the White House — and with it, the Supreme Court — take the Congress from these [expletive deleted].

 

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren 

The sudden death of Justice Scalia creates an immediate vacancy on the most important court in the United States.

Senator McConnell is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. In fact, they did — when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes.

Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the… Senate. I can’t find a clause that says “…except when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic President.”

Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that — empty talk.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren

Grassley hypocrisy from Democratic Underground via Occupy Democrats.