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Republicans have done a whole lot of things to damage their "brand" and still haven't figured out what to do to quit being the "stupid party" after their losses in the last election, but note to Kathleen Parker -- refusing to raise taxes in order to lower the budget deficit is not one of them. The majority of their own constituents don't agree with them on this issue, but that didn't stop Parker from pretending it would damage them on this Sunday's Meet the Press:

GREGORY: What's striking to me is that these issues are still so hard and that the elections didn't seem to solve them completely enough. […] Is that true? I mean, why didn't it?

PARKER: Why didn't it? Because, look, the Republicans cannot give on taxes. They simply can't. It would damage their brand permanently and the President is unwilling... he is insisting on raising revenue through taxes. There's no way for them to have a meeting of the minds when those differences exist and that's not going to change.

Republicans are not worried about damaging their brand on tax increases with anyone other than the members of the one percent who are paying to keep them in office.

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The tea party Republican candidate who defeated Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar (R) after six terms in Tuesday's GOP primary says that his definition of "compromise" means that Democrats will have to come around the the right's way of thinking.

"What I've said about compromise and bipartisanship is I hope to build a conservative majority in the United States Senate so that bipartisanship becomes Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government, reduce the bureaucracy, lower taxes and get American moving again," Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock told CNN on Tuesday.

"What I hear you say is you are not going to compromise," CNN host Soledad O'Brien observed. "In fact, the only compromise you'll do is really getting other people on the other side of the aisle to your side of the aisle, which I guess is the definition against compromise."

"It is the definition of political effectiveness," Mourdock replied.

"Political effectiveness, you're saying, is not possible with compromise," O'Brien noted. "Some people would say political effectiveness in the Senate requires compromise. There are many issues that cannot be done if you do not get bipartisan support. You're not going to work towards bipartisan support?"

"The fact is you never compromise on principles," Mourdock explained. "If people on the far left have a principle they want to stand by, they should never compromise. Those of us on the right should not either. Compromise may come in the finer details of a plan or a budget."

"We are at the point where one side of the other will win this argument," he added. "One side or the other will dominate."

(h/t: National Journal)

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In what was overall a pretty softball interview with Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, there was one pretty telling moment to illustrate the type of toxic political environment we're living in, due primarily to Congressional leaders like Eric Cantor and that is the unwillingness to even admit facts.

When asked about his image of being someone who is unwilling to compromise and the fact that the man he claims is his hero, Ronald Reagan, was willing to compromise on taxes and work with Democrats, Cantor denied that Reagan ever "compromised his principles." When Leslie Stahl pointed out the obvious, that not raising taxes was one of his principles, Cantor's press secretary interrupted the interview, yelling from off camera that what Stahl was saying wasn't true.

As has been noted here at C&L, the Republican myth about Ronald Reagan being unwilling to raise taxes is just not true. Heaven forbid, Reagan raising taxes 11 times, not just several as the 60 Minutes report stated, might get in the way of their talking points about St. Ronnie.

You can watch the entire interview here.

Transcript below the fold.

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Cenk Uygur had better not stay on vacation for too much longer or he might find his job in jeopardy from the Rev. Al Sharpton who's been filling in for him for the last week or so. Sharpton has shown himself to be more than willing to go head to head with these right-wing conservative House members over the last week and this Monday's interview with Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) and self proclaimed astroturf "tea party" member was no exception.

I wish more people would give these people the same treatment every time they came on the air and maybe they'd decide doing television interviews wasn't such a good idea any more, but I don't have any hope of that happening any time soon.

Sharpton started out with hitting him for his uber-patriotic nonsense of claiming to "love America" and asking him if he also loved actual Americans like seniors on Social Security and working people who need Medicaid. Sharpton summed that up nicely when he said to Graves "I appreciate you loving America, but do you love Americans that have to survive in America?"

Graves comeback to that was to say that Sharpton had probably never been to a tea party rally, but a lot of them are on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and pretended that their policies are actually going to preserve our social safety nets rather than destroy them and that their new slogan of “cut, cap and balance” was just common sense that most Americans should agree with.

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Naturally we couldn't make it through another Sunday without our corporate media bringing on Sen. John McCain to prove he's living in Republican upside-down land.

I don't have much to add to Steve Benen's take on this, and please go read the entire post, but here's part of it -- McCain: Americans 'don't want compromise':

It’s safe to say Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) doesn’t have his finger on the pulse of public opinion. [...]

In every meaningful way, McCain’s assumptions are exactly backwards.

What the conservative senator seems to be arguing here is the notion of a mandate: Republicans campaigned against taxes, Republicans won, ergo Republicans can’t allow a compromise that imposes any tax increases on anyone ever. It’s an “elections have consequences” kind of approach.

And that’s not a bad pitch, if McCain were in any way correct about the details, but he’s not. For one thing, Americans elected a Democratic Senate. (McCain may have forgotten, but his caucus is still in the minority.) If voters left us with a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, how exactly does McCain perceive this as an anti-compromise electorate?

For another, the evidence is overwhelming that the American mainstream absolutely supports additional revenue as part of a larger debt-reduction deal.

And naturally we got no follow up from Crowley on just how wrong-headed McCain's assertions are or why he thinks it's acceptable to call something a "negotiation" when one side is completely unwilling to compromise.

McCain also floated the idea that the GOP might be willing to consider "certain revenue raisers" as long as no one dares call them a tax increase, but of course he refused to say just what those "revenue raisers" are.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Congressman Anthony Weiner appeared on CNN's Parker Spitzer to discuss the deal made between the Obama administration and Republicans on the extension of the Bush tax cuts and expressed a lot of the same frustrations that many of us have had with President Obama. Instead of taking the case to the public and trying to move public opinion to get legislation passed, he's acting like those vote counts are static.

SPITZER: So, let me ask this question. The president is negotiating against himself on the tax issue. Has he caved? Or is this a meaningful compromise where the wealthy are going to get all their tax cuts and the Democratic Party gets nothing back?

WEINER: Well, we'll see. And, by the way, you know, compromise is a device. Somehow, I have no problem with it -- I mean, we often have to do it. That's why we go to Washington and govern about.

But it seems almost as if I missed the part of the fight, like where was the fight where he said what he believed in, campaigned on it hard, tried to get people? You know, the problem with the president -- and I think he's trying to do the right thing -- he believes that these vote counts are static things.

You know, he's the president of the United States. He can move the meter on these things. Considering how many people agree with his fundamental position that we should extend tax cuts for the middle class and those struggling to make it, and even people doing fairly well, he hasn't really made the full-throated fight for it.

Now, what I'm hearing is this deal is being worked out. It's more than just unemployment assurance. Other things are going to be put in there. But whatever it is, I think that to some degree he underplays his hand. As I said today, it's almost as if he wants to punt sometimes on third down.

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Here's your Republican bipartisanship folks. From CBS's Face the Nation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tells Bob Schieffer that Republicans will be happy to work with President Obama on taxes, as long as he does everything they want and keeps the Bush tax cuts for the rich in place.

And extending them for two years would be just as bad or worse than letting them expire because it just gives Republicans another chance to keep beating this drum for the 2012 elections as well.

SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. Well, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell joins us today from Louisville, Kentucky. Senator, I want to start by giving you a chance to make some news here. You want to extend the bush tax cuts for all income levels that expire this year. You want to extend them permanently. The President’s opposed extending those cuts for the richest Americans, but in an interview to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES tonight, Steve Kroft asked the President if he’d be interested in extending the Bush tax cuts for those upper-income Americans temporarily as say two years. Presumably, in order to extend the tax cuts that he wants for lower-income Americans. Let’s just-- first listen to what President Obama said.

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Rachel Maddow explained pretty clearly why the Republicans in the newly won US House of Representatives actually have no incentive whatsoever to compromise with Democrats and the Obama administration. As she noted, they're set up to do nothing but block any compromise or progress and despite any of their platitudes, when you nail them down on the specifics of what their plans are, it comes down to stopping Democrats from getting anything constructive done.

Personally, I could have done without the laugh tracks. We all know it's laughable that the Republicans have any intentions of working with the opposition party on anything without the gimmicks. Their words and their actions speak loudly enough without the theatrics.

That said, the clips she played here should be shown to the public over and over again because our beltway Villager cocktail set wants to pretend that Republicans actually care about governing, when they don't and that Obama must listen to them because their ideas are somehow rational and they represent the "center" of the country when they're not and they don't.

A normal mid-term election with somewhat low voter turnout compared to Presidential election years and where the electorate in those races is normally a lot older does not equal a "mandate" regardless of the spin the corporate press is putting on the results. And that doesn't even account for the races that were lost by Democrats in districts that should have been Republican districts already but had Blue Dogs in there that were doing nothing but undermining the Democrats and voting against their party at every turn.

As Bill Maher noted, "We have a center right party, and a crazy party. And over the last thirty odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital."

The party that has "moved to a mental hospital" isn't going to cooperate with anyone. Of course the Villagers will demand that the already "centrist" Democrats move to the "sane" middle, which means caving to Republicans and kicking their liberal base in the teeth, or "hippy punching" as some of our friends here call it, and that meme has already started with them from day one if not earlier after the mid-term elections.

It's up to all of us to make sure they hear otherwise and push back against this nonsense.

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Haley Barbour backtracked from his previous statement that the $20 billion escrow account would make it less likely that BP will pay for everything in regards to the damages from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Now that he's found out the money will only go out in payments of $5 billion a year, he's much less worried his campaign donor will go out of business any time soon.

GREGORY: Governor, you--Governor Barbour, you've been concerned about the idea of this escrow fund, this $20 billion fund. Why?

BARBOUR: Right. Well, I thought that they were talking about taking $20 billion from BP all at once, and my fear was if you took $20 billion from them all at once, put it in an escrow account, then they wouldn't have the working capital to generate the revenue to pay us. I think the president was smart, and I congratulate him and BP that they reached an agreement. Instead of $20 billion taken out of that working capital all at once, it's actually going to be $5 billion this year, $5 billion the next year, $5 billion the following year and $5 billion the fourth year. That makes sure--as Mary Landrieu says, we want to make sure that BP stays in business, generates the revenues that will pay what they owe the states and our citizens. And I think the--I don't know if it's a compromise or not--the agreement they worked out not to do all the $20 billion, put it in an escrow account all at once, means that we're much more likely to get everything paid by BP, who, by the way, is supposed to pay everything.

I'm still wondering when Barbour will admit that there is a need for the fund in his state and that the oil has washed up on the shores of Mississippi as well.

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Rep. Pete Sessions rails on about how terribly unfair the Democrats are being by wanting to raise taxes on the "job creators". Here's the legislation he's complaining about. I guess somebody's got to stick up for those poor little old hedge fund managers and multi-national oil companies.

Democrats announce deal on extenders, tax on hedge fund income:

The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act will be released Thursday as the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 4213, the two said.

The bill extends several popular individual and business tax breaks, which are partly paid for by increasing taxes on a common form of income used by hedge fund managers to pay themselves. Levin and Baucus reached a compromise on how to tax "carried interest" which had been a divisive issue for years. Read on...

FACTBOX-U.S. tax, jobs bill targets fund managers:

The bill's total net cost, now at $31 billion, has been trimmed by Democrats several times to gain support from fiscally conservative Democrats.

... It would extend unemployment benefits that are set to expire at the end of the month for hundreds of thousands of Americans, tighten tax rules for multinational companies and renew a set of popular business tax breaks that expired last year.

Final action on the total package will have to wait until Congress returns from its recess on June 7, as the Senate was not expected to approve the bill before then.

... FUND MANAGER TAXES

The tax would hit the typical 20 percent share of profits that fund managers reap for managing money, known as carried interest. Fund managers, who can earn millions of dollars in a good year, pay a long-term capital gains tax rate of only 15 percent on their share of profits.

The bill proposes to treat 75 percent of those profits as ordinary income, a 35 percent tax rate for the highest earners. Until 2013, 50 percent of the profits will be treated as ordinary income.

The tax change would affect private-equity, venture-capital, real-estate and hedge funds, and has passed the House three times. It has yet to gain traction in the Senate.

The bill also slaps a 40 percent penalty on those caught attempting to skirt the taxes.

Revenue raised: $18 billion.

... BUSINESS TAX BREAKS

The bill renews a set of popular tax breaks for business and individuals, the biggest being the research and development tax credit used by major Fortune 500 companies. Other benefits extended include a tax credit for the use of biodiesel and renewable diesel and accelerated depreciation for certain business improvements. Cost: $32 billion

OIL COMPANIES, SPILL CLEANUP

The bill would boost the amount oil companies pay into a trust fund that pays economic damages from oil spills, to 34 cents a barrel from the current 8 cents a barrel.

The bill would also raise the $1 billion per incident limit on certain claims against the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to $5 billion. The fund was authorized for use in the aftermath of the Exxon Mobil Corp Valdez spill.