Rayburn House Office building in an expanding mood!

BULLETIN:  We've just gotten word that as part of the Republicans' fix-up,clean-up, move-up Spring cleaning chores, they have cleared space in the Rayburn House Office Building  to accommodate some very important new residents.

One of the new offices adjoining Speaker John Boehner's digs will go to the NRA's Wayne  LaPierre, a non-elected VIP who will be conveniently on hand to advise the troops on their  next move in the gun control debate.  Just down the hall will be an office for David Keene, the NRA's president. And a few paces beyond that will be the double office  of the Koch Brothers, a nice office for Grover Norquist, as well as smaller offices for Karl Rove, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, and several bank and health insurance company lobbyists.

Boehner, who is in charge of the we-are-family overhaul, said it will be classified as another move by the GOP not only to satisfy its base but also to prove once again that the party is not ungrateful for the grassroots help it has received  from right-wing lobbyists.

"They will be closer than an e-mail away from the heart and soul of our business on Capitol Hill," Boehner said.

Some of the space will be sliced from Nancy Pelosi's office and that of a half dozen Democrats  who sit as a minority on House committees.  "They don't need the space anymore now,"  Bohner said, forcing a sly smile as he blew another smoke ring from his cigaret. "They don't have anything to do anyway."

The interview was interrupted by an aide who hurriedly advised the Speaker that Mr.LaPierre was on the phone and wanted to see him in the million-dollar gun lobbyist's office next door - without delay!"

Boehner rushed out without even asking what the call was all about.

PolitiFact: Here lies the biggest 2012 lie

Despite his poor showing on Election Day, Mitt Romney has bounced sideways with a national award:  PolitiFact cited him for  spreading the 2012 "lie of the year".  In a business where exaggeration and embellishment are common tools of the trade, Mitt's sin was that he continued to repeat it  even after it was repeatedly shown to be untrue.

In short, he claimed that Chrysler would cost American workers their jobs by moving its Jeep production to China.  PolitiFact described his campaign ads as "brazenly false". So did Chrysler's front office. (An Italian company that has controlling interest in Chrysler said that although China will  start building Jeeps, it would have absolutely no effect on Jeep production in the U.S., which, in fact, is expanding.)

That wasn't good enough for Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, one of Romney's top advisors, who's waving to you in the above photo.  He went on CNN just before the election to defend the political handiwork.  "I thought it was an important ad to run,'" Portman said in an effort to convince Ohio voters that President Obama was destroying  the company in America.

But he added:  "It doesn't mean that we'll have fewer jobs here, because hopefully our market will improve here as well, particularly under Mitt Romney if we get an expanding economy"

While we're at it, Talking Points Memo listed  all of the Republicans on Capitol Hill who have pulled away from the Grover Norquist tax pledge.  There is only  one Ohio Republican , retiring Rep. Steve LaTourette, who originally signed it, then backed off.    Portman remains firmly on the signers list.

Grover's alert to a perfect storm of Tea Party Two

No matter what he tells you, it wasn't  one of Grover Norquist's better weeks.  Not when  some of his anti-tax fraternity pledges  have decided that there might be a life after the Big Bad Wolf has huffed and puffed to blow their vulnerable  house down.

As you have probably heard  a million times  since the election, Grover Norquist is the  self-righteous operative  who runs Americans for Tax Reform, which argues that it really will not put up with a single tax increase for anybody (particularly for the wealthy who subsidize his lobby).

How big of an operative?   For the 2012 election he managed to have 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of 47 R's in the Senate who signed up.   Even the non-congressional sheep like  Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed his stupid handiwork. (It will soon become overwhelmingly obvious that Kasich is already running for reelection and doesn't need the distraction of a Tea Party candidate in the Republican primary, even if the Secretary of State Jon Husted is hungry for the job.) .

Norquist's  only inducement was the threat that if they turned him down he would field  a Tea Party candidate against them in the mid-term elections.   Notice that none of the defectors turned up before the November election.

But don't count on Grover giving up his livelihood that easily.    He was back on Meet the Press on Sunday for damage control , defiantly boasting that if the president  leads America over the fiscal cliff, there will be a second Tea Party that will "dwarf Tea Party  One"   that will seek unmerciful revenge against the taxers.   Nobody knows that more than Speaker John Boehner, who will be back on the biennial ballot.   He is currently acting like the captain of Norquist's ship, the last mortal to abandon it when the sea slaps across the deck.

Imagine that:  A non-elected lobbyist is presiding over a majority of Republican congressmen to set policy for the entire country.  A former newspaper colleague used to refer to him  as the "101st senator" because of his extraordinary influence over the elected ones.  But as Tea Party One failed to prevent Obama Two, will Grover's Tea Party Two  be any more effective against the defectors?

Norquist's "poopy-head" reference is more genteel

Now that we  learned from the election that the tax-hating emperor  has no clothes, we should still keep Grover Norquist around for a few bizarre comments that manage to entertain us when he isn't getting elected Republicans to sign his anti-tax pledge.   His latest offering:  Obama won the election because he defined Mitt Romney as a "poopy-head".  It's obvious that he meant what we call in impolite society  a "s--t- head."  But Norquist was making his rounds on  national TV and decided to clean it up for the adults, if not their children.