Oh how I wish these guys were tied to “Progress Now.”  It could be used as a uni­ver­sal ral­ly­ing cry on the Right to finally bring down groups like “One Wis­con­sin Now” — a Progress Now affil­i­ate, once and for all.

(H/T The Weekly Stan­dard)

Jacob Con­way, who is on the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the Jef­fer­son County Demo­c­ra­tic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Cur­tis Mor­ri­son, who founded and vol­un­teered for Progress Ken­tucky, respec­tively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting.

Con­way says nei­ther the local nor the state Demo­c­ra­tic party had any part in the incident.

On the tape, McConnell and his advi­sors are heard laugh­ing and jok­ing about oppo­si­tion research they had on actress Ash­ley Judd, who had been con­sid­er­ing run­ning against McConnell next year. Many Demo­c­ra­tic groups blasted McConnell for the remarks yes­ter­day, dis­gusted by the fact McConnell would poten­tially use Judd’s sui­ci­dal thoughts as a child against her.

Reilly and Mor­ri­son have declined to com­ment for this story.

It is a crime in Ken­tucky to record a con­ver­sa­tion with­out the express per­mis­sion of the par­ties involved in it.  Accord­ing to reports from a Ken­tucky NPR-affiliate, the tape was made when two Progress Ken­tucky employ­ees infil­trated a McConnell open house after hours.

On Feb. 2, McConnell opened his cam­paign head­quar­ters in the Wat­ter­son Office Park in Louisville and invited trusted GOP activists and select media out­lets to an open house. The event lasted roughly two hours. After­ward, McConnell and sev­eral cam­paign advi­sors held a strat­egy ses­sion in an office meet­ing room.

Mor­ri­son and Reilly did not attend the open house, but they told Con­way they arrived later and were able to hear the meet­ing from the hallway.

“They were in the hall­way after the, I guess after the cel­e­bra­tion and hoopla ended, appar­ently these peo­ple broke for lunch and had a strat­egy meet­ing, which is, in every cam­paign I’ve been affil­i­ated with, makes per­fect sense,” says Con­way. “One of them held the ele­va­tor, the other one did the record­ing and they left. That was what they told to me from them directly.”

The meet­ing room door is next to the ele­va­tors on that floor. McConnell cam­paign man­ager Jesse Ben­ton has told mul­ti­ple media out­lets the door was shut and locked on Feb. 2. But the door has a vent at the bot­tom and a large gap underneath.

“Appar­ently the gen­tle­men over­heard the con­ver­sa­tion and decided to record it with a phone or record­ing device they had in their pocket. Could’ve been an iPhone, could’ve been a Flip cam­era or some­thing like that,” Con­way say.

This is not the first antics of this group in this cam­paign.  In the past, Progress Ken­tucky announced they were open to field­ing a fake Tea Party can­di­date to pri­mary the Sen­ate GOP leader.  Most recently, they were dis­graced by a series of racist tweets on Twit­ter about McConnell’s wife, for­mer Labor Sec. Elaine Chao.

Oh, it will never make it past the president’s desk and veto pen.  But, this is going to come back and haunt some Democ­rats up for re-election in 2014.

The Sen­ate over­whelm­ingly passed a largely sym­bolic res­o­lu­tion call­ing for repeal of a 2.3 per­cent tax on med­ical device com­pa­nies on Thurs­day, as more than 30 Democ­rats joined Repub­li­cans in approv­ing it.

The tax helps to fund Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s 2010 health­care law. It applies to a range of med­ical prod­ucts — from bed­pans to expen­sive heart devices — many man­u­fac­tured in the home states of the sen­a­tors back­ing the repeal.

The Sen­ate voted 79–20 to call for repeal of the tax, but the res­o­lu­tion is non-binding and will not change the levy. The sym­bolic mea­sure will be attached to a non-binding bud­get mea­sure drafted by Sen­ate Democ­rats that is expected to pass on Friday.

Full repeal of the tax may be dif­fi­cult to achieve, given its $30 bil­lion price tag and the oppo­si­tion of key Sen­ate Democ­rats, includ­ing Major­ity Leader Harry Reid.

Mind you, this is only a “sense of the Sen­ate” res­o­lu­tion and has no real stand­ing.  It was in essence, a “free vote.”  Christ, even Tammy Bald­win was “Yea,” which tells you how mean­ing­less a vote it was.

Ques­tion of course is — and there will be more votes — how do those roll calls end up?  Hav­ing tasted blood, the GOP is going to keep com­ing at this one.   For as hated as he is by some in the base, Mitch McConnell knows the rules of the Sen­ate and will use them to his advantage.

This is going to nag at a num­ber of Democ­rats up for re-election next year, espe­cially in states where their con­stituents work in the med­ical device industry…as it should.

Given the pathetic slate of poten­tial Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­dates in Wis­con­sin to chal­lenge Walker, I may start observ­ing the upcom­ing guber­na­to­r­ial elec­tion in Illi­nois more.  Frankly, it is going to be one hell of a fight down there.

For starter’s you have the Chicago Machine, you have the Obama Machine, and you have the Quinn Machine (what’s left of it) all fight­ing for con­trol of the Land of Lin­coln — and that’s before you add the Repub­li­cans to the picture.

The main focus at the moment is how long sit­ting Gov. Pat Quinn can hang on.  The guy’s pretty much hated by every­one.  He’s all but bank­rupt the state (in the name of sav­ing pub­lic employee unions) and has the low­est approval rat­ing of any gov­er­nor in the country.

Today, he lost his run­ning mate for 2014.

Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon will not run again with unpop­u­lar incum­bent Gov. Pat Quinn.

“I believe I’ve been effec­tive as lieu­tenant gov­er­nor and can be more effec­tive in other office and I look for­ward to that. Thank you,” Sheila Simon said Wednes­day morn­ing. And with that, Simon’s three minute and eight sec­ond news con­fer­ence was over. She’s mov­ing on– but she didn’t say where.

“Well, it didn’t come as a sur­prise,” Gov. Quinn said. The split with the gov­er­nor comes as Quinn strug­gles with a poor approval rat­ing and the pos­si­bil­ity of two high-profile pri­mary challenges.

Quinn is also under siege from his biggest ally in his last race: pub­lic employee unions that pick­eted his event Wednes­day. Sources close to the gov­er­nor say he hopes to find an African-American run­ning mate to shore up his increas­ingly shrink­ing base.

“I have a job to do on pol­icy. And I think that’s what peo­ple want their gov­er­nor to do. Not pol­i­tics, pol­icy,” Gov. Quinn said.

The Simon sur­prise comes as a new poll — con­ducted by The Paul Simon Pub­lic Pol­icy Insti­tute , a down­state pol­icy group named for Simon’s father — shows: Among Democ­rats, Lisa Madi­gan is the favorite in the race for gov­er­nor with 32-percent sup­port; Quinn gets 23-percent; and for­mer White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley gets 12-percent of pri­mary vot­ers. Twenty-eight per­cent say they’re still undecided.

Come on, be hon­est with your­self.  This is going to be a heck of a lot more excit­ing than wait­ing to see if Peter Barca runs as a sac­ri­fi­cial lamb, right?

I was will­ing to give him a pass for 2012 and back­ing Mark Neumann.

But how the hell do defend — let alone for­give and then endorse for a run for Con­gress — an admit­ted liar, adul­terer and God only knows what else in for­mer South Car­olina Gov. Mark Sanford?

Con­ser­v­a­tives take the hard­est line and exile their own who have failed them to the sidelines.

They should. We have val­ues and when those val­ues are betrayed by those who fight with us, we must often show them tough love and show them the door.

But we do a ter­ri­ble job with for­give­ness and reha­bil­i­ta­tion. Mark San­ford walked out of the Governor’s Man­sion and out of pub­lic life for a while. He comes back as con­ser­v­a­tives in Con­gress are fight­ing on all fronts, out num­bered, depressed, and need­ing every man capa­ble of man­ning the ramparts.

Mark San­ford can man the ram­parts. Unlike his oppo­nents, he has a stel­lar and uncom­pro­mis­ing record as a lim­ited gov­ern­ment, pro-life, fis­cal conservative.

I am will­ing to for­give him. And I’m will­ing to be grace­ful. We need him. There’s no bet­ter alter­na­tive. He’s with us. I endorse him with­out reser­va­tion. I hope the vot­ers of South Car­olina will show him grace and put him back in the fight at this des­per­ate hour for fis­cal conservatives.

Erick Erickson’s mind has offi­cially gone for a trip on the Appalachian Trail…

We don’t “need him” as Erick puts it.  We don’t need him to be used by the media as a punch­line, as a reminder to his past deeds, to be her­alded as an exam­ple of “GOP Hypocrisy” in the realm of fam­ily val­ues and other social planks of the party.

There are no doubt any num­ber of strong, viable can­di­dates in what is an over­whelm­ingly GOP-majority Con­gres­sional District.

Since this is for a House seat in South Car­olina, I can only fathom what else is going on in the back­ground know­ing some of the play­ers Erick­son is known to meet with behind the scenes.

Last week I got chas­tised by some for being too rough on Erick­son in my piece on RightWiscon­sin.  Hon­estly, I left him off the hook for a few other things I’ve heard about via rumors.  I at least have the stones to know a wannabe charleton and point him out when I see one,  not sure I can say the same about those who went after me last week.

Don’t know about them, but I take it as a mat­ter of pride that my invites to the annual Red­State Gath­er­ing are “lost in the mail.”   Hav­ing Erick­son endorse San­ford for Con­gress only con­firms he’s only look­ing out for him­self most of the time, not the move­ment, not the party.  Just him­self, his web­site and his radio show in Atlanta.

Iowa’s about to get a lot more inter­est­ing before 2016.

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says he will not seek re-election in 2014.

The 73-year-old Harkin tells The Asso­ci­ated Press in an inter­view, “It’s just time to step aside,” because by the time he would fin­ish a sixth term, he would be 81.

Harkin said it would also allow a new gen­er­a­tion of Democ­rats to seek higher office.

The announce­ment comes as a sur­prise, con­sid­er­ing he had $2.7 mil­lion in his cam­paign war chest and was plan­ning a fundraiser next month.

Harkin played a lead role in urg­ing the Senate’s more lib­eral mem­bers to back the 2010 health care bill.

No Iowa Repub­li­cans have taken for­mal steps toward seek­ing the seat. Harkin’s deci­sion eases the bur­den on the GOP, who have to gain six seats to win the majority.

The mas­sive retire­ments of Democ­rats in the Sen­ate is a very real pos­si­bil­ity in the next few cycles.  What is it on aver­age, a third or more of that cau­cus is in their 70s and 80s?

Yes, that might mean “no blood” in the com­ing years, but it also means that by hang­ing on this long, many of them were snuff­ing out their own farm teams in their home states.  Not every place is like Madi­son or Wauke­sha where you’re trip­ping over politi­cians try­ing to replace a long-time veteran.

Iowa’s a place where both par­ties are fairly strong, with two long-sitting incum­bents in Harkin and Grass­ley.  Deter­min­ing its next sen­a­tor could be a fight for the ages in the Hawk­eye State.

It’s too early to say if it is good or bad, but one thing you can tell early on in the minor­ity lead­er­ship of Mil­wau­kee Demo­c­rat Chris Lar­son is that senior­ity means noth­ing to him.

That’s under­stand­able on one level, Lar­son him­self has only been a state sen­a­tor for two years before his ele­va­tion to lead­er­ship.  But on the other, it is utterly dis­re­spect­ful to many of the more sea­soned mem­bers of his cau­cus.  Already, he’s upset Lena Tay­lor for auc­tion­ing off her spot on the pow­er­ful Joint Finance Com­mit­tee (she was co-chair prior to the Democ­rats los­ing the cham­ber) to Robert Wirch.

Today, the other long-time mem­ber Democ­rats have had on the JFC — and along with Tay­lor, the other Demo­c­rat on the com­mit­tee from 2011 to mid-2012 — Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, had his pub­lic hissy fit. 

Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) said he didn’t attend Tuesday’s pri­vate meet­ing of Sen­ate Democ­rats because he found it dif­fi­cult to trust Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Chris Lar­son (D-Milwaukee).

Also miss­ing Tuesday’s meet­ing were Sens. Jon Erpen­bach (D-Middleton) and Lena Tay­lor (D-Milwaukee). The three were the biggest losers in the lead­er­ship fight in Novem­ber.

Erpen­bach lost by one vote in the race for minor­ity leader. Once elected, Lar­son did not reap­point Jauch and Tay­lor to the pow­er­ful Joint Finance Com­mit­tee, instead replac­ing them with Sens. Bob Wirch (D-Kenosha) and Jen Shilling (D-La Crosse).

Erpenbach’s back­ers con­tend Wirch said before the vote he would back Erpen­bach but ulti­mately voted for Lar­son in hopes of secur­ing a seat on the finance com­mit­tee. Wirch has declined to say whom he backed.

“When (Lar­son) decided to barter one of the two Finance posi­tions for his own, I decided I’m going to serve my dis­trict — I don’t serve him,” Jauch said of his deci­sion to miss Tuesday’s meet­ing. “When you decide to put your­self and a title ahead of the best inter­ests of the cau­cus, I think it says more about him than me.”

“I’m still as strong a Demo­c­rat,” he added. “I don’t think I’ve changed. The Sen­ate has changed. I don’t like it.”

Again, as cau­cus leader, Lar­son is enti­tled to have whomever he wants on the Joint Finance Com­mit­tee, but he might be hurt­ing him­self in both the long and short-term.  By pretty much indi­cat­ing com­mit­tee assign­ments are up for sale to the high­est bid­der, Lar­son is show­ing that he can’t be trusted (I know, hard to imag­ine with him.) and that his word is only as good as the moment he gives it to you.

Trust is every­thing, espe­cially inside a cau­cus.  If Lar­son doesn’t have it now, what’s to guar­an­tee it in the future?

Sec­ondly, Jauch is up for re-election in 2014.  Such state­ments as “The Sen­ate has changed. I don’t like it.” tend to lead one to think he’s look­ing for the exits.  The 25th state Sen­ate dis­trict may be reli­ably Democratic-leaning, but he was barely re-elected in the 2010 wave; win­ning by only 51.3 per­cent of the vote.

If Democ­rats are hop­ing to have a chance of tak­ing back the state Sen­ate in 2014, they can’t risk play­ing defense in too many seats.  With the GOP pos­si­bly defend­ing the 1st, 5th, 17th, 23rd and 29th, Democ­rats can’t risk to be defend­ing any other seats besides the likely loss in the 21st.

Larson’s early intra-caucus games make it look like he’s on clear col­li­sion course ensur­ing he fails at tra­di­tional No. 1 job as minor­ity leader — re-elect and build upon party num­bers, so who am I to stop him?   It is his party after all, and if he wants to make sure it is filled with only Walker haters from Madi­son and Mil­wau­kee, that’s his choice.

Just imag­ine once the cal­en­dar turns 2014.

There’s a storm brew­ing over a pos­si­ble pri­mary match-up in next year’s Sen­ate pri­maries.  While most in the media are think­ing it will be Geor­gia Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Saxby Cham­b­liss, the much more likely intra-party fight maybe in the Gar­den State between Newark Mayor Cory Booker –seen as a ris­ing star in the Demo­c­ra­tic Party — and 88 year old incum­bent sen­a­tor Frank Lautenberg.

Booker set off the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of a tac­ti­cal nuclear bomb in New Jer­sey pol­i­tics late last year when he announced he wouldn’t run for gov­er­nor against Chris Christie and would instead run for the Senate.

One prob­lem with that move — Laut­en­berg hasn’t announced he’s retir­ing and his staff has all but indi­cated he’s going to be seek­ing another term.

So nat­u­rally, it is lead­ing to some butting of heads before the pri­mary has even tech­ni­cally “begun.”

Mayor Booker says, “I want to give him the space to make his own deci­sion. I’ve announced my inten­tion to run, but the real­ity is is we’ve got a good Sen­a­tor. He’s been loyal. He’s been there for a long time. And I think he’s got a deci­sion to make. So, I’m focus­ing on my job for now. And I hope to talk to him. We’ve reached out to him a num­ber of times. In fact, I had a plane trip going down to meet with him, but unfor­tu­nately with a lot of the chal­lenges going down in Wash­ing­ton, he had to can­cel the meeting.”

“He’s got a deci­sion to make?”  Wow, that’s impres­sive to say to a sit­ting sen­a­tor, espe­cially one in your own party.

Makes you won­der who calls their ver­sion of “Tony Soprano” first.  This is Jer­sey after all.