As bummed as I am that Kevin McCarthy is dropping out...

[YoungDemCA]

...there's plenty more where that came from!

One thing Congressional Republicans haven't helped themselves with recently is their war on Planned Parenthood. By a 12 point margin, 49/37, voters say they have a higher opinion of Planned Parenthood than the Republicans in Congress. That includes a 45/35 edge with independents.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/10/americans-dont-like-kevin-mccarthy-kim-davis-attacks-on-planned-parenthood.html

Unfortunately for the Utah Republican, Chaffetz’s evidence ended up embarrassing him, not his target. The chart’s data had been manipulated in a deceptive way, and it had come from an avid anti-abortion group, not Planned Parenthood’s annual reports. His winning argument was a disaster, which left the chairman momentarily speechless. The GOP lawmaker eventually concluded he would “get to the bottom” of this.

Well, Chaffetz has now had a couple of days to do that, and as it turns out, he’s still convinced he’s right.

[CNN host Wolf Blitzer] asked Chaffetz about a chart from anti-abortion group Americans United For Life that the congressman used during the hearing. The chart reflects the number of abortions and cancer screenings provided by Planned Parenthood between 2006 and 2013. But the lines on the chart make it seem like the organization performs more abortions than cancer screening if one cannot see the numbers.

Chaffetz said he did not believe the chart was misleading. “I stand by the numbers. I can understand where people would say the arrows went different directions, but the numbers are accurate. And that’s what we were trying to portray,” he told Blitzer.

I can appreciate why the Republican chairman was disappointed by how his hearing turned out. He did, after all, expect to make a powerful case against Planned Parenthood, which obviously didn’t happen. On the contrary, Chaffetz’s show trial even disappointed his allies.

Even if we put aside the fact that Chaffetz got the source of the chart wrong – he overlooked the fact that it literally says, “Source: Americans United for Life,” in all capital letters– his proof was gibberish. He and his staff, for example, created a chart with no y axis, rendering the entire image meaningless.

What’s more, over the course of the decade, the numbers really haven’t budged. Vox’s Tim Lee explained, “So it’s not true, as the chart implies, that Planned Parenthood has been performing more abortions while drastically cutting back the provision of other services. The overall number of non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood barely changed at all, going from 10.29 million in 2006 to 10.26 million in 2013.”

In other words, everything about Chaffetz’s argument was wrong. Literally, everything. And it’s against this backdrop that the committee chairman still says, “I stand by the numbers."

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-rep-stands-bogus-planned-parenthood-chart

Chaffetz finally opted to run for Congress himself in 2008, running to the right of six-term incumbent Chris Cannon successfully, and probably ensuring he’ll be in office until he either resigns or gets primary challenger to boot him out of office. Because Utah’s 3rd Congressional District is one of the rightest leaning places in the country, that even before it was redistricted in 2008, it had a +26 R lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. And that’s where we’ll begin looking at how Chaffetz continued to play at his base.

- Upon moving to Washington in 2009, Chaffetz quickly followed the lead of Tim Walberg, deciding it would be cheaper to sleep in his congressional office than actually get a real place to stay in town (which there was a whole ethics investigation about).

- In Sept. 2009, Chaffetz began a feud with the TSA, when he got into a shouting, swearing match with TSA agents for doing their job at Salt Lake City International airport, and claiming he was specifically targeted by them as revenge, because he voted against all TSA workers having collective bargaining rights.

- In October 2009, after hearing that President Obama had won the Nobel Prize, Chaffetz said, “I just lost all respect for the award. It used to be one of distinction, but it is hard to give it any credibility.“

- Later in 2009, Chaffetz was on Fox News, to demonize United States Census Workers as employing scores of child molesters, rapists, and murderers. That’s not only paranoid and crazy, but could have reduced census numbers when people were too afraid to answer the door when the census showed up.

- His feud with the TSA continued in 2010, claiming the TSA should institute a profiling policy instead of searching everyone equally (including him).

-Rep. Chaffetz went off on the TSA again in 2011, stating again that he felt they should be “behavior profiling”, and instead of body-scanners, and that people should just be allowed to be harassed instead with bomb-sniffing dogs.

- In October 2011, Rep. Chaffetz was pushing for legislation that would sell off federal public lands, to help balance the budget. He’s really big on this idea, having pitched it several times.

- With his own re-election in Utah’s 3rd almost guaranteed, Chaffetz was one of the greatest proxies for fellow Mormon Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign, oddly spending his time running around the country shadowing Newt Gingrich, in particular, in the brief time when Newt gained momentum in the GOP primary. He would spend most of the rest of the year trying to ensure a Romney presidency.

- A Republican budget plan in March 2012 saw Rep. Chaffetz put in an amendment within it that would preserve $40 million in tax breaks for oil companies and pay for it by again, trying to sell off some of our national parks.

- Chaffetz became one of the standout distorters of the truth regarding Benghazi, and while trying to prove a link to show that somehow, some way, the Obama administration was complicit in the death of 4 Americans there on 9/11/12. On October 10th, a month after he was making hay on the subject, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asked him if he had, in fact, voted twice to reduce the budget for security for foreign ambassadors since taking office. Chaffetz blew it off saying, “When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make tough choices. You have to prioritize things.” But y’know, it was that damned Obama’s fault, still.

- By October 19th 2012, Chaffetz realized the Republicans weren’t getting people fired up enough about Benghazi to help Mitt Romney win the election, so he started claiming there was a coordinated effort by both the White House, and the State Dept (thus, President Obama and Sec. Hilary Clinton) to remove security from Libya. Even Fox News had to ask if he had proof of this, and he clarified it was his “strong opinion”. And he further went on to call Susan Rice’s comments (which have since been proven accurate) “somewhere between an outrageus lie and total falsehood”.

- Perhaps the most outrageous move Chaffetz made while working with the Romney campaign, was that after Mitt Romney claimed on a campaign stop in Ohio, that a Jeep factory was closing because of President Obama’s mismanagement of the American economy. The CEO of Jeep Chrysler actually came out to say, “Uh, no. That factory’s not closing. And I would know, as the guy in charge of the company.” Jason Chaffetz actually claimed that the Romney ad was “100 percent correct and accurate”. Because what does a CEO know about his own company, right?

-In January 2013, Chaffetz decided to talk impeachment… AND Benghazi, not claiming there was any sort of a coverup, but that if the Obama administration didn’t do more to do the legwork to prove he should be impeached… it was an impeachable offense.
By May of 2013, after almost eight months of looking into what happened to Benghazi, no links had been found to show the State Dept. or White House were in any way complicit in affecting security there that would have made them more vulnerable to the attacks. Rep. Chaffetz claimed at that point that it was because Obama administration officials had threatened witnesses. Again, even Fox News thought that was bulls***, with Chris Wallace asking him for a specific example of such a witness claiming that had happened. Chaffetz could not offer one.

-In June of 2014, perhaps realizing that a report was about to be released revealing that there was no wrongdoing found during any of the numerous Benghazi hearings, Chaffetz decided to move on… by claiming that the IRS Scandal was a big conspiratorial cover up, and something sinister was going on there because the IRS lost Lois Lerner’s e-mails, and they could not be recovered. “We’ve got to find those geeks and those nerds,” he said.

- In July of 2014, Chaffetz turned heads by claiming that Mitt Romney would run for president again in 2016. And this time, HE’D WIN. Which was news to Mitt Romney, at the time, considering he had to be talked into even running in 2012.

http://republicinsanity.tumblr.com/post/98892559058/jason-chaffetz

Rest assured, the GOP will continue to deliver on their ridiculous idiocy and their views that make you go

[Iliyah]

1. What? I was so sure McCarthy would get in.

Geez . . . what a effed up selection to follow. McCarthy was bad, but now ugh. This reminds me of the movie "Idiocracy".

[procon]

2. The GOP is so fractured that no one will get the 218 votes

needed to take the speakership without the Dems running interference. However, the price Pelosi would demand to guarantee those votes would be a ballbreaker for any hapless Republican who takes that option.

Whoever those red-nosed, fright-wigged amateurs elect as the most qualified person to be 3rd in line to the presidency, he will still face the same problems as Boehner (if not worse). But these ignoramuses are proud to claim their lack experience and skills in government, and they boast about their absurd, uninformed ignorance. These are the mutant spores from the GOPs campaign of anti-government, anti-politics, anti-intellectual rhetoric that shaped the conservative movement.