In-Fighting In The Republican Party Hits New Level

With the Republican clown car bus debates looming in early August, we've seen a circular firing squad already beginning to form among the 16-odd (and we do mean odd) candidates, with incoming and outgoing insults every day.  The turmoil isn't contained to the campaign trail, it seems, as the frothing natives in Congress are also increasingly restless and combative:

-- Sen. "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz (Tea Bagger-TX) recently claimed -- on the Senate floor no less -- that his Majority Leader, Sen. Mitch "Missy" McConnell lied to him and other caucus members over holding a vote on the re-authorization of the Export-Import Bank, which led McConnell and others to publicly humiliate Cruz (yay!);

-- Cruz's acolyte, Sen. Mike "Mini Me" Lee (Tea Bagger-UT) was just caught trying to get right-wing organizations to support his rule-flouting effort to demand a vote repealing Obamacare as an amendment to the pending transportation bill, causing McConnell to rip him a new one in a meeting of Senate Republicans;

-- Rep. Mark Meadows (Tea Bagger-NC) filed a "motion to vacate the chair" in a parliamentary maneuver to remove Speaker of the House John "Mr. Tangerine Man" Boehner. Meadows' motion read, in part:

[the] “Speaker has, through inaction, caused the power of Congress to atrophy, thereby making Congress subservient to the Executive and Judicial branches, diminishing the voice of the American People. Whereas the Speaker uses the power of the office to punish Members who vote according to their conscience instead of the will of the Speaker.”

We like that "voice of the American People" line, although we think the voice Rep. Meadows may be hearing is coming through the fillings in his teeth.

BONUS:  Nancy LeTourneau on the right-wing media that's largely the cause as well as the beneficiary of the turmoil.