DownWithTyranny!: Only The Republicans Can Save The Democrats In November

God must love Harry Reid

Conventional wisdom in DC points to a landslide victory for the Republicans in November due, primarily, to apathy from Democrats and disappointment in Obama's Administration and the fractured Democrats inability to deliver anything worthwhile for their base. But even the dispensers of Beltway convention wisdom can't claim there are any positive vibes anywhere outside the Deep South and a few dark backwaters like Utah and Idaho for the Republicans.

Yesterday a low-ranking member of the Obama team, Jason Furman, seemed to send a signal to progressives that Obama may yet stand up for some of the basic values that inspired them to vote for him and help the Democrats take back both houses of Congress. Two things that will not fly for progressives are more tax breaks for the rich and buckling under to idiotic deficit hysteria and opening the door to dismembering Social Security. The fury progressives would have towards Obama were he to get behind either of those notions would be incalculable even for someone as calculating as Rahm Emanuel. The good-sounding news for anyone who still trusts the Administration even a little bit:

Temporarily extending tax cuts for the rich opens the door to permanent tax cuts and that is something the United States cannot afford, an economic advisor to President Barack Obama said on Tuesday.

Jason Furman, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, said a proposed short-term extension for the rich that some economists have advocated would put the country on a slippery slope it would be tough to pull back from.

"There is a concern that (if) you extend those tax cuts for even a year, and that is a way to get a foot in the door ... and make them permanent," he told an event in Washington on the impact of tax policy on families.

Republicans want to extend the lower rates for all income classes.

Some economists and conservative Democrats point to the economy's lackluster recovery to argue for extending the cuts for the wealthy on a temporary basis, such as one year.

The lower tax rates, enacted in 2001 and 2003, will expire at year-end unless Congress acts to extend them.

Obama and fellow Democrats support renewing the lower rates for the bulk of Americans, about 97 percent, but letting them rise for individuals making above $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.

The Obama administration has forcefully argued in recent weeks that the country can simply not afford the $700 billion 10-year price tag for extending the historically low rates of the richer classes.

I guess Obama could hammer the point home that he's still concerned about the 95% of Americans who aren't the super-wealthy by firing women-hating, seniors-hating, veterans-hating Alan Simpson this afternoon and disbanding that ill-conceived deficit commission filled with anti-Social Security pygmies. But that's not going to happen and if I had to bet that Obama throws Furman under the bus first, I'd take that one.

All the Democrats can count on, basically, is that the Republicans are as bad as they are. Menendez is certainly the worst DSCC Chair in memory. But Cornyn is even worse than that. Over at the DCCC Van Hollen's a disgrace-- and Sessions makes him look like Einstein. Tim Kaine is putrid; Michael Steele... may be a Democratic plant. And then there are the individual candidates. Sharron Angle. Rand Paul. Ron Johnson. Joe Miller. Any-of-the-three in New Hampshire. Rob Portman had a hand in every decision that has turned Ohio into a devastated zone-- and now he wants to be elected senator. Spectacularly failed business exec Carly Fiorina running on... what else-- her record as a business exec. Derivatives trader Pat Toomey. Marco Rubio and his woman beating sidekick David M. Rivera. Ken Buck. Mike Lee (all but guaranteed a Senate seat). All there are gubernatorial candidates every bit as insane, especially in Maine, Colorado Wisconsin and Minnesota.

And then there's the disarray. Extremists Jim DeMint wants to take over the Senate Republicans and Mike Pence wants to take over the House Republicans. The bitterness between the relatively mainstream conservatives and the neo-fascists is so palpable that they're not even endorsing each other after the primaries!

AZ-SEN: Sen. John McCain soundly trumped former Rep. J.D. Hayworth in the August 24 primary. Afterward, McCain never received a congratulatory phone call and Hayworth, who has not endorsed McCain, never received an invitation to a GOP unity event.

WA-SEN: Sarah Palin-endorsed Tea Partier Clint Didier was trounced by establishment candidate Dino Rossi on August 17. Didier has since withheld his endorsement until certain policy demands are met; Rossi isn’t budging. Didier’s spokeswoman responded, “So is Dino saying, ‘F*** you’ to those people [who supported Didier]? ‘F*** you,’ I don’t need your votes?”

MO-SEN: On August 3, Rep. Roy Blunt secured the GOP nomination over Tea Party candidate Chuck Purgason. Four weeks later, Purgason still has not officially endorsed Blunt.

FL-GOV: Rick Scott defeated Bill McCollum on August 24 in one of the most bitter primaries of the year. McCollum has since refused to endorse Scott, saying instead that “I still have serious questions…about issues with his character, his integrity, his honesty.”

CA-GOV: The bad blood didn’t end after Meg Whitman trounced Steve Poizner on June 8. Whitman continued to attack Poizner on the radio, leading the latter to declare that Whitman “apparently hasn’t gotten the memo that the primary is over” because she is “still misrepresenting my track record.”

NV-GOV: Brian Sandoval toppled Gov. Jim Gibbons on June 8. Sandoval spokesman Mary Sarah confirmed to ThinkProgress that Gibbons has not endorsed Sandoval following the primary.

IA-GOV: Bob Vander Plaats lost a contentious campaign to former Gov. Terry Branstad on June 8. Then, after Vander Plaat’s supporters fell just short of usurping the lieutenant governor slot against Branstad’s wishes, Vander Plaat himself said that he will not endorse Branstad for governor.

SC-GOV: After Nikki Haley secured the GOP nomination on June 22, one of her primary opponents, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, pointedly refused to show up for a unity rally.

NY-23: After Doug Hoffman drove RNC-endorsed Dede Scozzafava out of the 2009 special election because she wasn’t sufficiently conservative. Scozzafava proceeded not only to withhold an endorsement from Hoffman, but went even further and threw her support instead to Democrat Bill Owens.

SC-04: On June 22, Tea Party challenger Trey Gowdy defeated Rep. Bob Inglis 71 percent to 29 percent. Price Atkinson, a spokesman for Inglis, confirmed to ThinkProgress that Inglis has not endorsed Gowdy following the primary.

WA-03: Establishment candidate Jaime Herrera topped Tea Party candidate David Castillo on August 17. Afterward, Castillo would not endorse Herrera in the general election.

PA-04: On May 18, Tea Partier Keith Rothfus beat out GOP favorite Mary Beth Buchanan. ThinkProgress called Rothfus’s campaign, where a press contact who declined to give her name confirmed that Buchanan has not given an official endorsement.

IN-04: Todd Rokita defeated Brandt Hershman on May 4. Since then, Zach Zagar from the Rokita campaign confirmed to ThinkProgress that they “haven’t had any contact with Mr. Hershman’s campaign since the primary.”

KS-04: Mike Pompeo emerged out of a crowded field on August 3 but embittered himself with his primary rivals in the process. None of his three GOP opponents have endorsed his campaign.

FL-08: Daniel Webster emerged from a crowded GOP field on August 24. However, one of his top primary opponents, Kurt Kelly, was conspicuously absent at last night’s unity rally.

And aside from the national headline kooks like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle and Ken Buck, there are literally dozens of less well-known House candidates who are every bit as whacked-out, deep in the heart of Crackpotland. Even leaving Ben Quayle/Brock Landers aside, it's beyond belief how many Republican candidates are one step ahead of the law, usually in cases involving refusal to pay their taxes or some kind of financial chicanery highlighting severe hypocrisy-- like Rick Crawford in Arkansas, who said during the campaign that "If businesses in America spent money the way the federal government does, they would be in bankruptcy. If people ran their personal finances the way Congress does, they would be in jail. When is this reckless spending going to stop? It will stop when we unite to send citizen legislators to Congress who will not cave to the Washington-loving professional politicians.” He ought to know-- since he did skip out on his debts and file for bankruptcy. Serial tax scofflaw Allen West is a freeloading bum who just doesn't like paying taxes. No one does, but most of us do it anyway. He doesn't. And for all his malarkey about how poor people should show some "individual responsibility," he has an $11,000 IRS lien out against him, as well as liens from American Express and his homeowners association. At least he's in the right party in the right state! But, it could be worse-- he could be serial domestic violence abuser David M. Rivera, also of Florida, who we've discussed at great length. I don't want to give the impression that Rivera is the only candidate the GOP managed to run this year who likes beating up women. According to the Des Moines Register, Brad Zaun is almost as bad as Rivera, although he never actually beat the crap out of a woman the way Rivera did.

Republican congressional candidate Brad Zaun had to be told by West Des Moines police in 2001 to stay away from a former girlfriend who had accused him of harassing her, a police report shows.

The woman called police in the early morning hours in April 2001 to complain that a former boyfriend, identified as Zaun, had gone to her home and had pounded on her windows.

"Brad yelled from outside calling her slut and other names," the police report states.

No charges were filed.

Zaun, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell in Iowa's 3rd District, acknowledged in an interview Wednesday that the incident took place when he was Urbandale's mayor.

Zaun's also a Republican who hates paying his taxes-- and has been in and out of trouble with the IRS for years for nonpayment. But Zaun isn't in the same class as one of the GOP's big criminals of the year, Jim Renacci (OH-16) one of the worst of the Republican tax cheats.

Renacci has built a fortune from business interests that include nursing homes, real estate investments, auto and motorcycle dealerships, a bar and grill, an arena football team and a minor-league baseball team.

The tax department assessed Renacci about $1.4 million in back taxes, interest and penalties for misreporting his income in 2000. Renacci and his wife, Tina, filed a state tax return for that year that claimed they had a loss of $247,336, but an audit found they actually made $13,730,440. The couple filed a tax appeal when the state dinged them for $954,650 in back taxes, $146,938 in interest and $293,876 in penalties.

At issue was Renacci’s trust income from an "S" corporation that had not been subject to state taxes for several years before Ohio’s tax commissioner issued an "information release" in January 2000 that changed the state’s policy and directed taxpayers to add such trust income to their federal adjusted gross income. "S" corporations permit income to be taxed at an individual rate for federal tax purposes and avoid double taxation on corporate income.

The tax department followed up with another information release in 2002 warning that it was launching audits and would impose fraud penalties on taxpayers who did not file amended returns reflecting the trust income and pay the taxes due.

and that's just the tip of the iceberg and doesn't even take into account career criminal incumbents like Jerry Lewis, Ken Calvert and Gary Miller, three notorious California real estate swindlers. Easy for me to see? I'm just a liberal? Watch what Fox News had to say about one of the most corrupt men ever to stalk the halls of Congress, Ken Calvert:

UPDATE: Alan Grayson vs The Notorious Koch Brothers

Most Members get onto the ultra desirable House Financial Services Committee so they can load up on legalistic bribes from Wall Street. Almost every member of that committee should be thrown into prison for taking money from the very firms they are charged with protecting the public from. That's bipartisan. Alan Grayson is one of the only exceptions on either side of the aisle. And Wall Street hates him with a passion; they can't buy him. And his straightforward, clear solutions to protect the public from selfish predators and sociopaths drive them insane. Probably the worst of the Wall Street predators, the Koch Brothers want to take out one of the only tribunes ordinary working families have in Congress: Alan Grayson. They think they can buy themselves a seat in Orlando for a weak, easily corrupted shill, Daniel Webster. This is a note, in part, Congressman Grayson sent me this morning.

A couple of weeks ago, we suggested that Republican Dan Webster isn't the real opponent in this campaign. He hasn't been on the ballot in a quarter of a century. Dan Webster couldn't beat a pair of fives with a full house.

I said that someone else would be the real opponent. Now we know who that is.

His name is David Koch. He has $17 billion. And he is spending $250,000 of that in attack ads against me this week.

David Koch is the owner of the second largest private company in America. He made his money the old-fashioned way: he inherited it. Incredibly, his father got rich helping to industrialize and arm the Soviet Union.

Koch lives in New York. He often attends the theater. As far as we know, he has never been to Orlando. But he wants to choose who represents Orlando in Congress. And it isn't Alan Grayson.

For many years, David Koch was a member of the Libertarian Party. He serves on the board of directors of the right-wing Cato Institute. He is a reclusive billionaire whose political dirty tricks are exposed in the current issue of the New Yorker Magazine.

The title of that New Yorker article is "Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging war against Obama."

Why does David Koch support Dan Webster? Because Koch wants to cut Social Security. And so does Dan Webster.

David Koch is waging war on President Obama and on us. Will you help to launch our counterattack?

What it comes down to is this: who is going to choose our leaders? Us, or a crackpot billionaire like David Koch?