So much for that Republican rebranding effort. As Rachel Maddow reminded us this Thursday evening, the GOP's social conservative problem is "worse than it's ever been." And the Republicans running for state wide office at the top of the ticket in Virginia don't look like they've got any interest in "taking it a little easy on the fire and brimstone hot sauce" any time soon.

And it's not just Virginia and wingnuts like E.W. Jackson and crazy comments about yoga and voodoo. We've got the Wisconsin Republicans and presidential hopeful Scott Walker with another forced ultrasound bill. The U.S. House is about to vote on a nationwide abortion ban. And then there's Rep. Trent Franks, who decided to do his best job channeling Todd Akin this week.

And last but not least we've got these "tea party" GOP senators and just about every Republican presidential hopeful showing up at the Ralph Reed's Faith & Freedom Coalition conference.

The first question that always comes to mind for me whenever I hear Ralph Reed's name is "Why in the hell isn't that guy in jail instead of having Republican politicians sucking up to him to this day?"

Steve Benen has more on the GOP's rebranding problems, which include Reed here: Three months later, GOP rebranding falls off the rails:

Continue reading »

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Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is urging Americans to be "skeptical" of income taxes, the estate tax and President Barack Obama's health care reform law because of last year's terrorist attack in Benghazi and a National Security Agency (NSA) program that collects millions of phone records each day.

Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Johnson on Sunday if he would oppose the nominations of Samantha Power to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland to become the next assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs.

"I think that's a possibility," the Wisconsin Republican warned.

Johnson charged that the Obama administration was "going through a crisis of credibility" because "the American people have lost their faith" in the president due to the NSA and Benghazi scandals.

"When Secretary Clinton came before our committee, you know, in response to my questioning her, she asked her own question, 'What difference does it make?' We're starting to see the difference it makes when the American people lose faith in this administration," he insisted. "I think a healthy distrust in government is a good thing."

"But what I'd like to do is to make sure Americans start to take a look at the awesome power government in other areas," Johnson continued. "You know, the ability to take 45 percent of your income, 40 percent of your estate, you know, tell you what doctor you can utilize, you know, what type of health care treatments are going to be made available to you."

"So, this is about limiting our government. And Americans do need to be very skeptical of a ever-expanding, ever-more-powerful government."

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Sunday accused tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) of using "non-facts" to argue that earned benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare needed to be cut in order to be saved.

"Unless we do something, these programs are going broke," Johnson opined during a panel on ABC News. "When I hear people saying Social Security is solvent to the year 2035, it's not."

"In a [sic] entitlement reform package, actually bringing in revenue for those entitlement reforms, I might look at that," he added. "But the fact of the matter is that we're already having a trillion dollars in tax increases hitting us in Obamacare. They're hidden, but it's middle class... As well as the $600 billion [in a January deal to increase taxes on wealthy Americans]. That's $1.6 trillion in tax increases hitting us in the next 10 years."

"We've just run aground right there," Krugman noted. "Your facts are false. The Social Security thing -- Social Security, it has a dedicated revenue base, it has a trust fund based on that dedicated revenue base. You can't change the rules midstream and say, 'Oh well, suddenly the trust fund doesn't count.'"

Johnson interrupted with the claim that "the trust fund is a fiction, it has no value in the federal government."

"It important to realize that the facts that are being brought out here are, in fact, non-facts," Krugman pointed out.

"They're absolute facts," the Wisconsin Republican shot back.

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As Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was about to sign their union-busting right-to-work-for-less bills into law, Chris Matthews spoke to UAW President Bob King and the State Director of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity's Scott Hagerstrom. Matthews attempted to get Hagerstrom to come clean about who "signs his paycheck" and despite repeated badgering from Matthews, refused to acknowledge that AFP is just a front group for the Koch brothers.

He just works for a grass roots organization, like the Red Cross don't you know! And they have lots of donors. He didn't want to talk about their one big one though. Here's more on Hagerstrom and his remarks back in February of 2011 from Think Progress: Koch Front Group Americans For Prosperity: ‘Take The Unions Out At The Knees’:

In a speech earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual conference, Americans For Prosperity-Michigan Executive Director Scott Hagerstrom revealed the true goal of his group and its allies like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) efforts. Speaking at CPAC’s “Panel for Labor Policy,” Hagerstrom said that AFP really wants to do is to “take the unions out at the knees”:

HAGERSTROM: It’s easy to go out there and fight taxes and increased regulation, you know we send out an action alert on taxes to AFP and we get thousands of people to respond. You send out one on a more complicated issue and it just doesn’t quite resonate…We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.

Taking “the unions out at the knees” has long been a goal of the Koch brothers and their many front groups. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Kochs worked with other anti-labor billionaires, corporations and activists to fund conservative candidates and groups across the country. Now after viciously opposing pro-middle class policies for years, Koch Industries is trying to eliminate the only organizations which serve as a counterweight to the well-oiled corporate machine.

Sadly they managed to succeed in that goal today in Michigan. Sourcewatch has more on Americans for Prosperity here and the fact that they are indeed just a front group for the Koch brothers here.

This interview has a bunch of right wing blogs worked up of course, the usual suspects that I'm not going to link to, calling Matthews "unhinged" and claiming he "berated" Hagerstrom because he asked him time and again who funds AFP. If they think this is Matthews coming "unhinged" they must not watch the show much, because this is pretty mild by his standards. There are times that stuff can be annoying out of him. This wasn't one of them.

The AFP chair was on there pretending he's got the interest of those workers in Michigan at heart and that they're just some grass roots organization instead of an AstroTurf front group who only care about a race to the bottom on wages so their rich donors can squeeze some more blood out of the working class.

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Yes, there is a storm a brewin' out there.

via CBS58.

SOMERS, KENOSHA COUNTY-About 40 protestors walked a picket line outside the Walmart here just as the store opened for Black Friday shoppers.

They are objecting to working conditions and the earlier and earlier hours for Black Friday shopping, which started at 8 p.m. Thursday.

Walmart is not the only retailer to launch Thursday night sales, but its workers have been the most vocal and active in protesting.

CBS 58's John Cuoco said the protestors were not stopping people from entering the store, and the demonstration was aimed at creating awareness over work rules, more than anything else.

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Former Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan says that his party lost the White House in 2012 because so many "urban" voters went to the polls, not because Americans rejected his Medicare and other budget policies.

"We were surprised with the outcome," the Wisconsin Republican told WISC-TV's Jessica Arp. "We knew this was going to be a close race. We thought we had a very good chance of winning it. I think that the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which definitely gave President Obama the big margin to win this race."

"There's always an Electoral College strategy to winning these things, and you know what states you need to win to get to 270 electoral votes. When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, those as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that's when it became clear we weren't going to win."

Ryan added that it was "disappointing" because "losing never feels good," but insisted that the race had not been a referendum on his budget plan, which would have slashed the size of government and turned Medicare into a voucher program.

"I don't think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare," the former nominee explained. "We clearly didn't lose it on those issues. I think what people want us to do is tackle the country's problems, and what I got out of this is they don't want only Republican ideas or only Democratic ideas, they want us to come together for common ground and to work this out."

Although exit polls showed that six in ten voters wanted tax rates to be raised, Ryan said he didn't believe that was what Americans really voted for.

"I don't know if I agree with that because we have divided government," he remarked. "They also voted for House Republicans to maintain their majority, which took a very clear stand against that."

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If anyone was wondering who put up those billboards that were attempting to suppress the vote in minority communities which were taken down last week, well, now we have our answer. Surprise, surprise... it's a wealthy Republican donor and hedge fund manager.

Author of voter fraud billboards steps forth:

Stephen Einhorn - a Wisconsin venture capital fund manager and major GOP donor - disclosed Monday that he and his wife, Nancy, paid for dozens of anonymous billboards in and around Milwaukee and two Ohio cities warning residents of the penalties for committing voter fraud.

Democrats and civil rights groups complained that the signs - which were taken down last week - were concentrated in minority neighborhoods and intended to suppress the election turnout.

"Stephen and Nancy Einhorn placed these billboards as a public service because voter fraud - whether by Republicans or Democrats - undermines our democratic process," said the Einhorns' statement, which was released by the Chicago public relations firm Culloton Strategies.

"By reminding people of the possible consequences of illegal voting, we hope to help the upcoming election be decided by legally registered voters."

The Einhorns have made campaign donations to many Republican politicians, including Gov. Scott Walker, to whom they have given $49,750 since 2005, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Einhorn and his son Daniel run Einhorn & Associates, a Wauwatosa mergers-and-acquisitions consulting firm, and Capital Midwest Fund, a venture capital fund. Einhorn's son David, a hedge-fund manager, sought unsuccessfully last year to buy a stake in the New York Mets.

On Monday, the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now and African-American website theGrio identified the Einhorn Family Foundation, based in Milwaukee, as the group that paid for the voter fraud billboard campaigns. [...]

Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, issued a statement Monday raising several questions for the Einhorns.

"Perhaps their Chicago public relations firm could answer why the Einhorns only felt it was necessary to target legal voters in minority communities, and why they didn't feel the need to do this 'public service' throughout communities across Wisconsin where a majority of the residents are white," Ross asked in his email. "Or put their name on it, rather than hiding behind the cowardly veil of anonymity."

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Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson says that voters in his state are going to vote for GOP hopeful Mitt Romney because they are not "at all" concerned about preserving reproductive rights for women.

On Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Johnson why women should vote for Romney after he endorsed Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who recently said that pregnancy from rape "is something that God intended to happen."

"I've had one person at all talk about the abortion issue during this entire campaign," the tea party-backed senator explained. "It's not even an issue here in Wisconsin. I mean, it doesn't even move the radar at all."

"What people are concerned about is -- it is unbelievable how many people came up to me demanding answers on Benghazi," Johnson added. "That's really the question on the table in the last ten days, is what happened in Benghazi."

"Abortion doesn't even show up."

[h/t TPM]

After standing tall in support of Mitt Romney's 47 percent comments, this secret video of Tommy Thompson promising TeaBirchers he'll do away with the "rest of the entitlements" comes up. Oh, the things they say and how they wish this wasn't the age of YouTube.

Meanwhile, Tammy Baldwin is running away from Thompson in the polls, even as Thompson continues to huddle with his pal Mitt.

Also, what is it with Republicans and PowerPoint presentations? Sheesh.

Update: After Tammy Baldwin smacked Thompson down over those comments, Thompson's campaign issued what might be the most disingenuous statement ever, saying:

In a statement to TPM, the Thompson campaign responded by saying Baldwin “would rather lie and demagogue the issues than put forth a credible plan,” declaring that Thompson “actually provides solutions to our nation’s problems.”

“In this video, Thompson was making the case for reforming Medicare so that we can protect it for current seniors and preserve it for future generations,” his spokeswoman Lisa Boothe said. “That is evidenced by his comments at the end of the video where he says he wants people to have a choice to either stay on Medicare as it is or give people another option.”

Bircher Bullsh*t.

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George Will admitted something on ABC's This Week that is as obvious as the nose on everyone's face and has been for some time -- that the economy doing well is not in the best interest of the Romney campaign and that they've got every reason to be rooting for it to fail.

TAPPER: I want to switch topics right now to a hardening we've seen in conventional wisdom about the state of -- of the -- of the election. We've seen in -- in Friday, these three swing state polls came back indicating, in Ohio, Obama's up 7 points, Virginia, Obama is up 5 points, Florida, Obama is up 5 points.

And, George, one of the amazing things is, Mitt Romney is no longer in polling beating Obama on trust to handle the economy.

WILL: Which is his campaign in one sentence. Those three states have one thing in common: They all have Republican governors. And all three Republican governors are bragging -- perhaps rightfully so -- that they have got their economies up and running. If you add Wisconsin, with Scott Walker, and -- to that list, you have a tension, a kind of disconnect between the interests of the Republican governors in the swing states and the interests of the Romney campaign.

What you'll never hear Will admit is the fact that a lot of the reason those states are doing better is because of federal intervention and President Obama's policies like that auto bailout and stimulus they want to pretend didn't work.

If we could get Will to admit the extent to which Republicans in the Congress have done their best to sabotage the economy purely for political gain, now we'd be getting somewhere.