A noun, a verb and Bernie for the #IronStache!

Now that Rob Quist and Jon Ossoff got their butts kicked in special elections, the David Brock wing of the Democratic Party is now touting Randy Bryce, the "Iron Stache," as a hero for the 2018 midterm regular election. A spate of national news stories came out about him shortly after he cut his first campaign video announcing his run in Wisconsin against Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Those stories didn't come out of nowhere. They came out of the D.C.-based Democratic PR former of Hilltop Public Solutions, a place so astroturfy it invented the word "grasstops." That's the "HPS" in the photo.

And yes, it is astroturfy, too.

Meanwhile, in our Peter-principled inside-the-Beltway media, a young Washington Post writer Wednesday was clueless that she was even being fed this shite by high-dollar PR flaks.

When American democracy dies, it will be from the last reporter swallowing the PR sausage in entrails of political flaks, to riff on Voltaire.

As for policies, Bryce has none that he's willing to stand on.

Asked by Sarah Jones of The New Republic to comment on single-payer national health care, the response of the man who went through testicular cancer and whose family is a walking billboard for it, said, "I favor getting there."

Yep, that was it.

This, of course, leeds to spoofing.

Higher minimum wage? "I favor getting there."

Peace in the Middle East? "I favor getting there."

Draining the swamp? "I favor getting there."

Campaign finance reform? "I favor getting there."

Trans Pacific Partnership? "I favor getting there."

Moving beyond the current Democratic establishment? "I favor getting there."

Sadly, short of Counterpunch, that will never be covered. Even at The Nation, John Nichols can't or won't tell you that Bryce is already being "packaged" by DC political consultants. Or that these consultants are ultimately the David Brock wing of the Democratic Party.

Down with Tyranny puffs him too, insinuating he's a Berniecrat, when he's not, per his Twitter at right, and that doesn't mean that much anyway, other than the Sanders Institute funneling money to him, maybe?

(Bryce has now pulled down the Twitter post. I'm leaving the photographically blank space as a sign of how much of a political "Player" he is. In the first 72 hours after his campaign, after people like me and others started looking through his Twitter feed, he started doing — or HPS started doing — a massive cleanup effort on his account.)

Update, March 28, 2018: At DWT, Howie continues to puff the Stache to the point of ignoring he has a primary opponent, Cathy Myers, who arguably is to his left. More about her here.

Beyond that, the Stache is "meh" on the Trans Pacific Partnership and otherwise closer to being a Hillbot than a Berniecrat. Don't believe me? Go to his website or run through his Twitter feed, especially before he tries to clean up more stuff.

DWT also says "But Obama won that district in 2008." Big deal. Obama won by 3 percentage points while Ryan dodged Dear Leader's short coattails and was re-elected by 19.

Also don't forget he is not the only Dem in the race. Yes, there's an actual primary. And one of Bryce's three previous electoral losses was in a primary.

This obviously a coronation by DC folks sniffing way too much George Lakoff.

And there's more. The Stache loves him some Russian nutbar conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch. Loves her so much that he even offered her some neocon "Freedom Fries" in one Tweet.

This guy is Joe the Plumber with the addition of a David Brock tramp stamp.

And an FEC fine for failure to disclose campaign contributions when treasurer for Rob Zerban's Congressional run, it seems.

Others are noting his establishmentarianism, along with some of his fence-straddling. This one is not bad, though it tries to paint him as a full Berniecrat, which he wasn't at all.

I do appreciate one Twitterer for pointing me toward some of the things for this post. Sadly, I cannot recommend following him overall; it would probably be like the frog asking the alligator for a ride across a stream, or similar anecdotes about taking a scorpion too close to one's breast.

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Howie at Down with Tyranny also won't tell you that Bryce's DCCC national endorsement, like several others in House primaries (think of TX-07) has pissed off activist local Democrats. But Vice will tell you that, as well as tell you other issues that Bryce has, like stretching the truth in various ways.

That includes a link to a NYT piece about buying Twitter followers.