John Feehery is a perfect example of how the growth in the Capitol City can be a full time employment program for anybody with a business card and a web site.  Feehery, President of the Feehery Group, his own “strategic advocacy firm” in Washington, D.C. is known for hanging out at the Capitol Grille, posting inane opinion pieces on his web site and occasionally showing up on CNN or MSNBC when bookers are desperate for a guest.

Feehery has written an hit piece on his blog titled The Loser Strategy.  In this pathetic piece, Feehery attacked our own Erick Erickson.  Not only did Feehery not take the time spell Erick’s name correctly, he made wild assertions that have little basis in fact for the purposes of distorting Erick’s record.  Maybe Feehery is jealous, because CNN has Erickson on far more than the establishment Feehery who routinely regurgitates Republican leadership talking points when interviewed on MSNBC or CNN.  The bottom line is that Feehery is a moderate to liberal Republican who absolutely hates conservatives.  Blinded by hate, Feehery wrote a misleading and error filled piece of garbage.

Feehery’s Op Ed posted on his own web site argues that Erickson somehow hates Republicans because he dared to support the efforts of the people of Delaware to send Mike Castle into retirement.

Erik Erickson has become famous for his visceral hatred of the Republican Party, and of course earlier this year he was immediately hired by CNN to represent the Republican view on various shows.  Erickson let the cat out of the bag when discussing the Delaware primary results last night.  He admitted that Christine O’Donnell, the winner, has no chance of winning the general election.  Erickson then admitted that he really didn’t want Republicans to win control of the Senate.

First of all, Erickson does not hate Republicans, he has a visceral hatred of squish Republicans like John Feehery who will support any candidate with an R next to his name.  Furthermore, to argue that CNN hired Erickson, because of Erickson’s alleged hatred of Republicans is silly.  Erickson spends far more time defending Republicans on CNN than he does attacking squishy Republicans like Feehery.  Now Erickson may agree with even Feehery that O’Donnell is not the front runner to win the Delaware Senatorial race, yet that statement of fact does not prove anything.  These wild allegations are motivated by the politics of destruction and Feehery seems seeped in the art of defaming public figures.

I have made the bold assertion that John Feehery is a squishy “moderate to liberal Republican who absolutely hates conservatives.”  Let’s look back at something Feehery wrote on April 14, 2009 for exhibit A in my case against Feehery.  Feehery argued that Republicans should support liberal Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter (pre party switch) because he had the best chance of winning Pennsylvania in 2010 over Pat Toomey. 

Do Republicans Want to Win or Just Look Good Losing?  Pat Toomey is trying to get Arlen Specter booted from the U.S. Senate, and is entertaining the fantasy that he can be his replacement. As much I have disagreed with many of the Pennsylvania Senator’s votes over the past two decades that I have been in Washington, I do appreciate his ability to win in the Keystone State.

Quick note to Feehery, Real Clear Politics has Toomey up by 9.0% today.  Also, Specter not only quit the Republican primary but he proved his ability to lose in the Keystone State when he lost the Democrat primary to Congressman Joe Sestak.  The basis of Feehery’s Op Ed has been proven false by the events of the past year in PA. 

Oh, but there is more silliness from Feehery in this same Op Ed:

This is gut-check time for the Republican Party. They can be serious about taking back the Congress, or they can look good losing. Pat Toomey may be ideologically pure, but he can’t win in Pennsylvania. If he could, John Cornyn wouldn’t be taking such a strong position for Specter (and against Toomey).   Arlen Specter can be a maddening figure to many conservatives, but he sides with the Republican leadership more often than not, and for the GOP to have any chance to take back the Senate a year from November, they need his seat to stay Republican.

Saying that Toomey can’t win in PA was motivated by Feehery’s hatred of the conservative Toomey.  Feehery had to know that he was wrong, because Toomey had almost beaten Specter in a primary race for Senate 6 years ago.  Clearly the Feehery assertion was evidence of Feehery repeating establishment talking points in an attempt to bully Pat Toomey out of the PA Senate race. 

Exhibit B proving Feehery’s liberal leanings is a letter John Feehery wrote on February 9, 2009 in Politico titled “An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh.” In this Politico piece, Feehery wrote a satirical letter from “The Republican Party” to Rush in an effort to mock and ridicule the conservative talk radio show host.  In this silly letter Feehery slanders Rush by arguing that Rush hates women, Hispanics and minorities.  This type of left wing rhetoric comes right out of Media Matters talking points.

We would like to see your plan to attract more women’s votes. While we always get creamed by single women in elections, even married women turned against us this time. Not sure if calling female leaders “feminazis” really works in this atmosphere, but we are willing to hear you out on that. We got killed by America’s fastest-growing voting population, Hispanics, in the last election. What is your plan to attract these voters? I know that you despise any kind of nuanced position on immigration reform, but we would love to see any of your ideas for getting some of these voters in the next election.  We got completely demolished by the African-American vote in the last election. No surprise there, given the top of the ticket. But we are wondering how referencing our president’s race in any way, shape or form is productive or relevant to the current discussion. Please let us know.

Making fun of Rush is Exhibit B.  Trashing a former boss is Exhibit C.  John Feehery brags on his web site that he worked for Tom DeLay, yet when the liberals at the Washington Post needed somebody to write a tell all Op Ed hammering “The Hammer,” John Feehery was more than willing to help out.

Before that stint, Feehery served from 1995 until 1998 as the Communications Director for Majority Whip Tom DeLay. Before becoming DeLay’s communications director, he served as the Whip office’s Chief Floor Assistant, during the historically notable “Contract with America”. He advised Members of Congress on how to vote, and helped the Whip Office count votes for the first eight months of the historic 104th Congress.

What he didn’t link to in his bio was his tell all Op Ed in the Post Sunday Edition on April 9, 2006 titled “Hammered:  What I Saw at the Republican Revolution.”  Feehery trashed his former boss and disclosed the inner workings of the DeLay Leadership team.  Loyalty does not seem to be in the vocabulary of this wordsmithth for hire, yet he has the audacity to attack Erick Erickson for not being Republican enough.  There are other examples of Feehery ridiculing conservatives, yet somehow Erickson is the guy who hates Republicans. 

Feehery’s ire was not limited to Erickson in his post The Loser Strategy, he also trashed the Tea Party and Sharron Angle (yet another name this guy can’t seem to spell).  He claims that the Tea Party hates Obama and wants Obama to keep control of the Senate.  This is an idiotic argument and a lame attempt at reductio ad absurdum.  He claims that the Tea Party nominated Angle because they knew she could not win.  It seems as if he is making the argument that Tea Party activists are helping Democrats to nominate candidates who have no chance of winning.  See below for his screed.

I call this the loser strategy.  These Tea Party zealots seem to hate Barack Obama so much that they want him to keep control of the Senate.  They want Obama to fail so completely, they want to make sure that Senate Democrats set the agenda, chair all the committees, authorize the funding for all investigations, schedule all of the confirmation hearings, schedule the floor and pretty much give the President the run of the upper chamber. Perhaps that is why the Tea Party worked hard to nominate Sharon Angle.  They thought that Angle, who has some pretty unconventional political positions, had pretty much no chance of winning.  I initially thought it was Harry Reid who set it up to have Angle win the primary, so that he would have an easy ride.  But now, I understand it was the Tea Party all along.   They want Reid to stay as Majority Leader.  The bitter irony is that Reid is so desperately unpopular, Angle still might win. The Tea Party believes that only by destroying the Republican Party it takes it over (or something like that, I guess).

The even more bitter irony is that John Feehery is dumb as a bag of rocks.  Check out self identified Tea Party candidates who are running for office and the Real Clear Politics poll numbers.  Sharron Angle is only down 1.4% to the sitting Majority Leader Harry Reid, Marco Rubio is up 9.8% over Charlie Crist and Kenrick Meek in the Florida Senate race, Ron Johnson is only down 1.0% to Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Rand Paul is up 8.4% in Kentucky, Joe Miller is up 6% or 8% depending on the poll, and Mike Lee of Utah is up over 25%.  These are all Tea Party candidates and most, if not all, of them are going to win.  I don’t see where the Tea Party is hurting Republicans.

Well, if it wasn’t enough for this guy to poke fun at Erickson, Limbaugh, O’Donnell, DeLay, the Tea Party and Pat Toomey, he then decides to make fun of Sarah Palin and Senator Jim DeMint.  Feehery calls Erickson and Palin “political gadflies, media creations, complete jokers.”  This is the same Sarah Palin who was the Vice Presidential candidate for Republicans in the last election and Senator Jim DeMint who is a darling of the conservative movement.  Is there a single conservative that Feehery does not despise?  More from John Feehery:

O’Donnell is not a serious candidate.  She doesn’t have the experience, the temperament, the character, or the ability to be United States Senator.  She is an embarrassment.  But then again, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and Eric Erickson already knew that.  They knew that she couldn’t win.  And yet, because they hate Barack Obama so much, they have decided to make the courageous decision to make certain that the President’s party still maintains control of the United States Senate.  It really is a selfless act by DeMint. The other two are just political gadflies, media creations, complete jokers.  But DeMint is actually a Senator.  He could have been a Chairman or at least a subcommittee Chairman.   But maybe he doesn’t want to be a Chairman.  Maybe he doesn’t actually want to pass legislation to balance the budget, reform the tax code, tackle the entitlement problems that face this nation, or actually solve problems of excessive government spending. Maybe he just wants to be a backbencher, an opposer, a guy who votes no and gets on with his day.

It is funny that Feehery is so clueless that he thinks it is Jim Demint’s goal in life to be a “Chairman or at least subcommittee Chairman.”  This is the mentality of these inside the beltway types.  They measure success by how many earmarks a member can funnel into the district and if the member can become the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.  Furthermore, Feehery didn’t do any homework or he would know that DeMint is the chief sponsor of the Balanced Budget Amendment in this Congress (S.J. Res. 27).  Furthermore, Senator DeMint has forced 9 votes this year on his proposals and one of which was an amendment to establish an Earmark Moratorium.  How is it reasonable to argue that Senator Jim DeMint, who has offered 9 amendments with roll call votes this year, is “a guy who votes no and gets on with his day.” 

The bottom line is that John Feehery is a moderate to liberal Republican.  He hates conservatives and has trashed them from time to time, because of his deep seeded anger toward the right.  He is perfect as a guy who sells himself to companies for spin, yet he is terrible as a political prognosticator.  Maybe John should man up and run, as a Republican, for office like Erickson.  In yet another irony, Erickson is an elected Republican member of the Macon, Georgia City Council and Feehery has not held public office.