Exposing right-wing power grabs, corporate fraud, billionaires' misconduct, and Trump's war on democracy as he attempts to steal the 2020 election. @latestoutrage on Twitter / LatestOutrage Facebook / LatestOutrage.org
After the midterms resulted in billionaires buying a U.S. Senate majority for Republicans, the CRomnibus spending bill fight has re-energized progressives and set the stage for full-throated opposition to the GOP's agenda over the next two years.
"For the first time in this presidency, liberal Democrats feel as though something like a coherent bloc, outside of and sometimes in opposition to the White House, is beginning to form. Animated by a new sense of purpose, they're experiencing the flush of hope."
And explains why a resurgent, insurgent left is exactly what the Democratic Party needs going into the 2016 election cycle:
"In contrast to what the Tea Party does to the Republicans, a newly coherent and organized left is unlikely to impede any of the party's practical goals, nor is it likely to damage the party's image. The policy ideas favored on the left tend to be pretty popular, and liberal lawmakers aren't pushing for anything destructive like government shutdowns.
What they may do, however—and what the Tea Party did with such extraordinary effectiveness—is mobilize their party's base, to vote and contribute and organize. There are few things the Democratic Party needs more than that kind of energy."
Frustrated by their inability to win the national popular vote, Republicans are again exploring ways to re-write the rules.
By monkeying with the electoral college in blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin, they could elect a Tea Party President in 2016 with no more votes than Mitt Romney got in 2012.
A new poll released in the wake of President Obama's announcement of his executive orders on immigration shows two-thirds of voters likely to cast ballots in 2016 support these long overdue reforms. This includes 91% of Democrats and 67% of all Independents.
Yet 51% of Republicans still say no, fueled by Tea Party members who are opposed by a 2-1 margin. The GOP is out of step with the rest of our nation.
This week, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum announced he'd make a decision next year about running for the White House again in 2016. Last week, while guest hosting a right-wing talk radio show in Iowa, the ultra-conservative former Pennsylvania Senator gave the country a glimpse of what a Santorum presidency might look like.
Over the air, Santorum lamented the "breakup of any kind of cooperation in Washington D.C.," and said "this president is very much to blame for this," because Obama hasn't been enough of a gentleman. Unlike the late Republican Senator from North Carolina and hate-mongering demagogue Jesse Helms.
"There was no one nicer than Jesse Helms," said Santorum. "I mean, I don't think a single Democrat would tell you that on a personal level, there was anybody that was more gentlemanly, more kind than Jesse. He stood up for what he believed in, but he was always a gentleman about it."
This echoed the controversial comments made by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last year, when he told a crowd at the Heritage Foundation that Helms was the first political candidate he had ever donated to, and "we need a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate." He'll have at least one new Helms clone by his side next year, Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, who managed to hide her extreme right-wing views from enough voters to win a Senate seat. Santorum campaigned for Ernst in early November, telling volunteers her victory would "set a tone for 2016."
Santorum and Cruz are Helms' ideological descendants, so it's not surprising they would speak highly of the man. But as sane observers are well aware, the real Jesse Helms spent more than five decades stirring the pot of bigotry and hatred to win elections and further his political career.
(1) Creating scurrilous, race-baiting ads and handbills in 1950 for a white segregationist candidate.
(2) Denouncing the civil rights movement in TV and radio commentaries broadcast in North Carolina throughout the 1960s.
(3) Defeating his Greek-American opponent in 1972 in part by using the slogan, "Jesse Helms: He's One of Us!"
(4) Distributing tens of thousands of leaflets in 1976 during the Reagan-Ford primary fight in N.C. that alleged Gerald Ford was considering picking a black running mate.
(5) Opposing and delaying every effort ever proposed to impose U.S. sanctions on South Africa over apartheid, no matter how mild.
(6) Filibustering against renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.
(7) Spending 16 days filibustering against making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday in 1983, and ending up the only Senator to vote against it.
(8) Using shameless gay-bashing and fears of Jesse Jackson registering black voters to win re-election in 1984.
(10) Leading the opposition in the U.S. Senate to increased federal funding for AIDS research all throughout the 1980s, which left real blood on Helms' hands, because even a modest increase in spending could have saved tens of thousands of gay Americans who died horrible, painful deaths in the years before effective AIDS drugs were developed.
But according to Santorum, we shouldn't believe Helms' well-documented history of fearmongering and inflaming racial tensions, because he was a politician who exhibited "probably the starkest contrast of what the press used to portray and what the reality was."
While on the subject of Jesse Helms, Santorum also told listeners how fondly he remembers the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the man who blamed gays, feminists, and the ACLU for the 9/11 attacks. At the time of his death in 2007, Falwell was described as "a founder and leader of America's anti-gay industry" by Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
During the 1980s, Falwell's Moral Majority PAC raised $69 million for GOP candidates and claimed to speak on behalf of 6.5 million members. It helped elect presidents Ronald Reagan in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1988, and re-elect Sen. Helms in 1984. Falwell founded the Moral Majority in the 1970s to organize evangelical Christians behind conservative Republican candidates, and claimed it was Roe v. Wade that sparked his movement. Yet the so-called "Religious Right" he helped lead first came together to preserve the right of Christian schools to maintain racial segregation.
The divisive political figures Santorum admires tell us all we need to know about how he would lead America if ever given the chance. Hopefully we've come too far as a country to go back to the days when far right-wing demagogues using religion to cloak their narrow-minded agendas were guiding our national politics. We can be thankful Santorum's chances to succeed as a presidential candidate are remote, and his time on the national stage will eventually end up in the dustbin of history alongside the chapters on Helms and Falwell, where they all belong.
As a female Republican candidate with extreme, far right-wing views and a love for guns, Iowa's U.S. Senate hopeful Joni Ernst is a lot like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. In fact, Ernst's top campaign strategist, David Polyansky, was Bachmann's deputy campaign manager during her 2012 presidential campaign.
Joni Ernst is different because she's more dangerous. Unlike those other two faded Tea Party stars, Ernst comes across as slightly less unhinged, and thus more electable. And she has worked tirelessly since her June primary victory to distance herself from the hard right positions she had previously taken on most issues.
But although she's done a good job of hiding them, Ernst's ideas are as far outside the mainstream as any of the nonsense that spews from Palin or Bachmann's Twitter accounts. An ad released over the summer by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee featured Ernst calling Palin the "type of people that we need in our federal government," and that she was "just absolutely ecstatic to have her endorsement" after Palin backed her in the Republican primary.
Ernst, a first-term Iowa state Senator, faces four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, founder of the House Populist Caucus, in a toss-up battle for retiring Senator Tom Harkin's seat. If she wins, the GOP will probably latch onto Ernst as its latest national figure. As the rise of Palin and Bachmann showed, the GOP desperately needs more women in its ranks to counter its image as the party of rich, old white men. Of the twenty current female U.S. Senators, sixteen are Democrats and only four are Republicans, out of 45 GOP Senators in total.
Here are the top twelve reasons Joni Ernst has had to battle the glaringly obvious perception that she's "too extreme for Iowa":
(1) Wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. In an April debate, Ernst called for shutting down all three federal government agencies.
(2) Opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, and believes doctors who perform abortions should face criminal punishment. In 2013, Ernst co-sponsored a fetal personhood amendment to the Iowa State Constitution that would have outlawed abortion, and contained no provisions allowing for rape or incest exceptions. In a May debate, Ernst said, "the [abortion] provider should be punished, if there were a personhood amendment."
(3) Believes "the UN is behind" a conspiracy that involves, in Ernst's words from a November, 2013 campaign event, "moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city sectors and then telling them, 'You don't have property rights anymore'." This right-wing theory has been widely debunked as a myth.
(4) Not only opposes raising the hourly minimum wage in Iowa from $7.25 to $10.10, as her opponent Bruce Braley has called for, but wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage altogether. At a candidates' forum in March, Ernst said she thinks "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa."
(5)Supports a flat tax on income, which would give enormous tax cuts to the super wealthy and shift the country's tax burden further onto middle class and low-income families.
(6) Wants to send U.S. ground troops back to Iraq. In the campaign's third and final debate earlier this month, Ernst said she agreed with those who had "advised that we keep troops on the ground." "There is overwhelming support coming from the American people," she claimed.
(7) Thinks President Obama "has become a dictator" who "is not following our Constitution," and that "he should face...repercussions, whether that's removal from office, whether that's impeachment." She expressed these views at a candidates' forum last January.
(8) Has repeatedly called for an Ebola travel ban, prohibiting all flights into the U.S. from West Africa, which experts and sane observers agree wouldn't work and would actually make the global outbreak worse, plus lead to more U.S. cases of the deadly virus.
(9)Believes George W. Bush's discredited fairytale that there were WMD's in Iraq when the United States invaded in 2003. "I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Ernst told the Des Moines Register's editorial board in May.
(10) Would support legislation to arrest government employees trying to administer the Affordable Care Act.
In response to a 2012 questionnaire from a libertarian-leaning group, Ernst replied "yes" to the question "Will you support legislation to nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the unconstitutional health care scheme known as ObamaCare?" - Salon, 10/3/14
(11) Wants to privatize federal student loans. At an Iowa State College Republican Forum in April, Ernst said, "our students...we need to ensure that they're able to find student loans at reasonable rates within private banking entities. So let's get the federal government out of the business of student loans." Asked about her views on college affordability in August, Ernst replied, "Perhaps all of our students don't need four-year degrees."
(12) Can't see a need to change current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech," as she stated at her third and final debate with Bruce Braley, who is a strong supporter of campaign finance reform. Interviewed by Rachel Maddow in 2012 about how Citizens United had unleashed a whirlwind of big money into politics, Braley warned that "very powerful, monied interests are trying to buy the government they want. And have no restrictions, literally, on what they can spend."
In the most recent fundraising quarter, Ernst raised more than any other U.S. candidate for office in a single quarter during this election cycle. From July to September, her campaign took in a whopping $6 million, outpacing Braley's $2.8 million haul by more than 2-1. By comparison, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell only raised $3.2 million during the same period, despite being the top Senate Republican and facing a competitive, well-funded challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Clearly, a lot of wealthy GOP donors very badly want Joni Ernst to be the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. And they are salivating at the possibility of her extreme right-wing views influencing the laws of our land at least through the year 2021. It's a thought that ought to give every sensible American cause for concern.
The race for Iowa's open U.S. Senate seat is among the closest in the nation, and one of a handful that could determine control of the Senate this fall. In her final debate with four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst recently said she doesn't see a need to reform current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech."
Since the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision in 2010, big money has flooded into politics at levels never seen before, giving the ultra-wealthy the green light to use their megabucks to fund the kind of "political free speech" that's capable of drowning out everyone else's.
And that's the game being played by one of Joni Ernst's biggest donors, New York hedge fund co-CEO and near-billionaire Robert Mercer. Described by Bloomberg News as "one of the most powerful men in Republican politics that nobody is talking about," and ranked #6 on ABC News' recent list of 2014's "Mega-Donors," Mercer is fast becoming a GOP kingmaker.
Robert Mercer in 2012
By contributing $5,200 to Ernst this cycle, Mercer maxed out his legally permissible individual contributions to Ernst's Senate campaign. Yet, as revealed in a report released this week by the Brennan Center for Justice, Mercer's extensive support for Joni Ernst won him the dubious distinction of being 2014's "biggest-spending double-dipper." Double-dipping means donating the legal maximum allowed to a candidate, then supporting them with even more money by dumping cash into a super PAC set up solely to benefit that same candidate. Such super PACs can accept unlimited donations.
According to the report, Mercer spent $350,000 this year to "virtually fully fund" a super PAC called American Heartland, which is supporting Ernst. Despite its name, American Heartland is run out of Washington, D.C.
In this year's Iowa Republican primary, Mercer was outed as the money man behind American Heartland when the super PAC spent $140,000 opposing former energy company CEO Marc Jacobs, Ernst's closest rival for the GOP nomination. Jacobs' campaign manager said "Ernst has relied on out-of-state special interests" who were behind the attacks, and implored voters to "ask themselves, before they vote, will Joni Ernst represent them or a New York billionaire...something doesn't smell right."
But Mercer's generosity towards Republican political candidates and conservative super PACs he supports allegedly doesn't extend to his domestic help.
Last year, Mercer was sued by former members of his household staff for supposedly not paying overtime and docking wages when maids and other employees failed to promptly restock shampoo bottles, change razor blades in shavers, straighten pictures, or committed any of a laundry list of other offenses.
Defendants deducted money from Plaintiffs' semiannual bonuses as a form of punishment or "demerits" related to Plaintiffs' alleged poor work performance. Demerits initially began at $10 and during the course of Plaintiffs' employment, rose to $20 per demerit. Plaintiffs received demerits throughout the work year for alleged poor work performance, including but not limited to the following:failing to replace shampoos and other toiletries if there was an amount of less than one-third of a bottle remaining; failing to properly close doors; failing to leave extra towels in the bathroom; failing to change the razor blades in the shaver; failing to level pictures; leaving cleaning items out; leaving items in the refrigerator; and improperly counting beverages.
The lawyer representing Mercer's former domestic employees, Troy Kessler, said, "This is a social justice case. Domestic, low-wage workers are frequently taken advantage of and (in) this case it's particularly egregious."
According to Forbes, Mercer was the 16th highest paid hedge fund manager in the country in 2011, with a total pay package of $125 million. In 2012, he took home $90 million.
Entrance to Owl's Nest in Head of the Harbor, NY
In addition to his Owl's Nest mansion, located on a Long Island estate, Mercer owns a 186-foot luxury yacht named the Sea Owl.
Mercer was the 16th largest donor to super PACs in the 2011-12 election cycle, as estimated by the Center for Responsive Politics. During that period, he gave $5.5 million to pro-Republican super PACs, including $2 to Karl Rove's American Crossroads, and $1 million to Restore Our Future, the pro-Mitt Romney PAC. He also donated $600,000 to the Club For Growth's super PAC, whose attack ads were crucial to the rise of national Tea Party mouthpiece Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
This year, Mercer and his wife rank #6 on the list of the country's 100 top political donors, with $3.75 million in reported contributions to federal candidates and PAC's for the 2014 cycle.
Mercer is also 2014's highest single contributor to Freedom Partners Action Fund, the super PAC that the Koch brothers set up over the summer. Mercer wrote a check for $2.5 million to the fund, which was set up to bankroll ads that explicitly attack Democratic candidates and support Republicans.
Ernst probably first met Robert Mercer when she attended the Koch brothers' August, 2013 big donor retreat in New Mexico. At the time, Ernst was a little-known, first-term Iowa state Senator who had just announced her candidacy for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination against three male rivals.
As Politico reported, the Koch-sponsored twice-annual meetings "generally attract top conservative talent, for whom they can be quite useful, providing an opportunity to build rapport with some of the movements' deepest-pocketed backers."
Returning to this summer's retreat in California, Ernst was one of three GOP U.S. Senate candidates to address the donors, along with Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Colorado's Cory Gardner. "It started right here with all of your folks," said Ernst, offering her gratitude for the support of what she termed "this wonderful network" of wealthy, right-wing multi-millionaires and billionaires. A few days after her appearance, Charles Koch, his wife, son and daughter-in-law all gave the maximum legal contribution to Ernst's campaign, $2,600 apiece. Koch Industries also kicked in $5,000.
Ernst has lots of extreme views that probably find favor with her right-wing donors. She wants to abolish the EPA, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. She opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, believes "the UN is behind" a thoroughly debunked conspiracy to relocate farmers from rural lands into cities, and opposes a federal minimum wage (because she says "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa").
But most pleasing to their ears must be the fact that Ernst supports a flat tax on income.
If Joni Ernst goes to Washington, Robert Mercer's support for her candidacy will have earned huge dividends. He'll be one step closer to paying taxes on his enormous fortune at the exact same rate as the domestic workers he's been accused of nickel and diming over shampoo bottles and razor blades. For one of 2014's top "Mega-Donors," that would count as a great return on investment.
On Tuesday night, the Tea Party lost its last, best chance to knock off an incumbent Republican U.S. Senator this year. By a margin of 48-41 percent, three-term Kansas Senator Pat Roberts prevailed over Milton Wolf, a radiologist and first-time candidate who was mostly known for being Barack Obama's conservative second cousin.
Milton Wolf confronts Pat Roberts on July 30
Roberts appeared vulnerable earlier this year after questions were raised about his residency in Kansas, similar to what helped defeat veteran Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) two years ago. The New York Timesreported in February that Roberts was renting space from a supporter in order to maintain his voter registration in Kansas, an address where neighbors hadn't seen him in years. He compounded his problems with a verbal slip last month, when he admitted in a radio interview that he returns to Kansas "every time I have an opponent."
Home of Pat Roberts' supporters in Kansas where he is registered to vote
And Wolf was extreme enough to be a credible Tea Party standard bearer. While parlaying his family ties and far right wing views into frequent guest spots on Fox News and a column for the Washington Times, over the past few years Wolf repeatedly compared Obama and liberal Democrats to Hitler and the Nazis. He insisted "(Sarah) Palin indeed was right...death panels are all too real," about supposed secret provisions in the Affordable Care Act.
According to Wolf, the Act's requirement that people who choose not to buy health insurance be modestly fined (since by doing so, they risk burdening society with future emergency health care costs) was reminiscent of "Stalin's iron-fisted gulags." And he pledged to replace the ACA with his own "PatientCare" initiative, which would effectively destroy Medicaid by block-granting it to the states and changing it to a "premium-support plan" that would generously "afford the needy the ability to purchase their own private insurance."
These nut-job ideas helped him attract the support of Tea Party groups including former S.C. Senator Jim DeMin's Senate Conservatives Fund (now led by defeated Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli), who spent $580,000 backing Wolf; Fight for Tomorrow; the Madison Action Fund; and the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, who paid for a last-minute ad falsely accusing Roberts of improperly "taking a special exemption from ObamaCare."
But Roberts hit back hard and early, helped by his far superior campaign war chest. He refused to debate Wolf, which a week before the primary led to a memorable confrontation between the two when Wolf ambushed the Senator on the street prior to a campaign event.
Roberts' ads attacked Wolf over revelations that he had posted gunshot victims' X-rays to Facebook in 2010, accompanied by snarky, joking comments that Wolf was eventually forced to admit were "insensitive." And highlighted other missteps like Wolf's failure to vote regularly in local or state elections.
Except for an ad questioning Wolf's conservative credentials with an out-of-context clip of him saying he wanted to see Barack Obama succeed, Roberts refused to argue over policies, instead making the primary a referendum on Wolf's personal character. It was the same playbook that worked for other incumbent Senators who successfully fended off Tea Party challengers this cycle, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who beat back a well-funded campaign by businessman Matt Bevin. And Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), whose defeated opponent is still challenging Cochran's 7,667-vote runoff win on June 24 in their ugly primary fight.
Wolf was a flawed candidate, but he held Roberts to under 50% of the vote. His failed primary challenge effectively made the case to many Kansas voters that Roberts has been in Washington for too long. Roberts first went to D.C. in the 1960's as a congressional aide, was elected to the House in 1980, and moved up to the Senate in 1996.
Recent polls have shown a closer-than-expected race between Roberts and his Democratic opponent in the fall. Chad Taylor is the sitting District Attorney of Shawnee County, the county that includes Topeka, the capitol of Kansas. The telegenic, 40-year old Taylor was first elected in 2008, and re-elected in 2012 after facing no opposition. He won his own primary Tuesday night by a margin of 53-47%, beating a former U.S. Senate candidate with statewide name recognition. Taylor was endorsed by the Kansas City Star, who called his candidacy "impressive," listed his priorities as "growing jobs and the economy," and said he "promises pragmatic, bipartisan work."
Taylor has won accolades for eliminating his office's backlog of over 4,000 cases that he inherited from his predecessor. He made national headlines in 2011, when to draw attention to budget cuts, his office stopped prosecuting domestic violence cases, calling on the city of Topeka to provide funding. In a surprise response that was widely criticized, Topeka actually repealed its ordinance outlawing domestic abuse, which led Taylor to announce that his office would resume prosecuting such cases.
Last month, one SurveyUSA poll showed Taylor within five points of Roberts. This caused Steve Kraske, political correspondent for the Kansas City Star, to declare "something...dramatic is going on in Kansas politics," and said it "may be the closest a Democrat has been to a sitting Republican senator since Herbert Hoover bade farewell to the White House."
Roberts is also facing other headwinds. Kansas is experiencing a Brownback backlash, after current Republican Governor Sam Brownback swung the state hard to the right once being elected in 2010. Brownback, a staunch religious conservative and longtime Koch brothers ally, formerly served beside Roberts in the U.S. Senate, and ran for President in 2008, dropping out before the primaries began. While in the Senate, Brownback co-sponsored the Constitution Restoration Act of 2005, which would have forbidden courts from ruling on matters involving church/state issues, and stated that judges who did hear such cases would be subject to impeachment and prosecution.
As Governor, Brownback has pushed through drastic cuts to state education spending. He declared that life begins "at fertizilation," and signed five anti-abortion bills, including a May, 2011 law that forbids insurance companies to offer health care coverage for abortions except to save a woman's life, with no exceptions for rape or incest. He also blew a hole in the state's budget by slashing the top income tax rates in Kansas. In response, last April the state's debt rating was downgraded by Moody's Investor Service.
All year, polls have shown a tight race between Brownback and his current challenger, Kansas House Minority Leader Paul Davis. Unhappiness with Brownback's term has led nearly 100 Republican current and former officeholders from Kansas to endorse Davis.
In his classic 2004 book What's The Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Frank explored the rise of anti-elitist conservatism, and how the radical right had managed to hijack populism in our country's heartland. It detailed how long before the Tea Party came to national prominence, the state's far-right conservatives were waging war with moderates for control of the Republican Party. Ten years later, extreme right-wing craziness and heartless social policies may have finally gone too far even for a bastion of red state America like Kansas.
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With a week to go before this year's midterms, sane Americans are shaking their heads at all the madness that's been brewing this election cycle. Sensing a banner year, the GOP has nominated a crop of Tea Party-flavored, far right-wing nuts, flakes, and crazies for House and Senate seats all over the country.
Where to start? The GOP'ers gunning for Senate seats are the ones who could do the most damage in six-year terms. Tea Party diva Christine "I'm not a witch" O'Donnell in Delaware, who doesn't believe in evolution, condoms' ability to prevent AIDS, or the separation of church and state. Crazy Sharron Angle in Nevada, who thinks Social Security and Medicare are symptoms of America's "wicked ways."
Wealthy businessman John Raese, running for Sen. Robert Byrd's former seat in West Virginia on a platform of eliminating the minimum wage. Former Club for Growth head Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, whose views are so far-right he's like a real life version of Bob Roberts, minus the guitar and fascist folk songs.
But you've got to give folks like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) credit for stepping up to the plate and helping some of these wingnuts win their primaries, because it's going to cost Republicans control of the Senate.
Those two meddling fools flushed a guaranteed pickup of Joe Biden's old seat in Delaware down the toilet by endorsing O'Donnell. They were undoubtedly impressed by her willingness to stoop as low as necessary to win by gay-baiting moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle out of the running. This Palin clone's rise to national ridicule may be helping save another seat for the Dems, because the Delaware media market overlaps with Philadelphia. Democratic nominee Joe Sestak has clawed his way back into the race, partly by reminding voters that his opponent Pat Toomey and O'Donnell share the same warped political beliefs.
Most of these extreme right-wing candidates normally wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being elected to Congress. But all bets are off for 2010. In any low-turnout midterm election, it's the party out of power that has momentum on its side. And with a Democrat newly elected to the White House who just happens to be the first black President, the GOP has successfully scared up a tidal wave of right-wing rage with a decidedly racist tinge. Despite Democratic efforts to re-energize Obama's winning '08 coalition by boosting turnout levels among black, Latino, liberal, and young voters, this year's electorate is going to be older, whiter, and more conservative than America overall.
And to seal the deal, anonymous, filthy rich right-wingers are funding an avalanche of propaganda designed to sway the election for the Republicans. Shadowy GOP front groups have sprouted up like rotten mushrooms after the Supreme Court opened the shady money floodgates with its Citizen United decision.
Besides the big players, like Karl Rove's American Crossroads, and the American Action Network, headed by former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, there are lots of lesser known GOP gremlins doing the party's dirty work. Such as the patriotic-sounding, doublespeak-named Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Job Security, who are fighting to make the ultra-rich richer at everyone else's expense. And the 60 Plus Association, a particularly nasty front group that masquerades as an alternative to the AARP while agitating for privatization of Social Security. Then there's the Restore America's Voice PAC, based in Pittsburgh, which has set up dozens of fundraising websites to funnel cash from online donors to newly-minted right-wing celebrity candidates including Angle and O'Donnell.
We'll soon see what happens on Election Day, but the left has gotten caught napping this year, and things are not looking good for incumbent Democrats up and down the ballot. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile broke it down nicely when she recently said, "We should not have been in this position." The Tea Party crazies "crept in and took over the vacuum. Basically, we have danced to their negative drumbeat since. There's a lot of hands that need to be spanked when this is over with."
