Americans Elect, the organization for people without an opinion, has died, and not a moment too soon.

Via Washington Post's Chris Cillizza:

Late Thursday night, Americans Elect, a much-ballyhooed group dedicated to securing ballot access for a serious third-party presidential candidate in 2012, issued a statement acknowledging failure.

“As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect online convention in June,” the statement read. “The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”

Darn. I'm not sure what anyone truly thought would happen with this group, but it was not one that benefitted progressives at all. Other opinions, via Cillizza:

In the end, no candidate was able to clear the relatively low 10,000-vote threshold to “win” the Americans Elect nomination. The candidate who came closest was Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who boasts a decidedly ardent group of supporters but is far from the centrist problem-solver the founder of Americans Elect had in mind when they hatched the idea. (And Paul wasn’t even a “declared” candidate for the Americans Elect nomination; former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer, who got north of 6,000 votes, did the best of that group.)

McKinnon and other true believers in the possibility of a third party insisted all was not lost. “The results are disappointing, but until confidence is restored in the parties and our institutions of government, disruptive ideas will continue to emerge,” said McKinnon.

Added former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination but since dropping out has been a major advocate for a third party: “Today’s pathetic political environment will be upended either by visionary solutions-based leadership or by the kind of disruptive organizing technology being fine-tuned by Americans Elect.”

Maybe. But the failure of Americans Elect to field a candidate in 2012 is yet more evidence that there is a cavernous gap between the idea of running a third party candidate for president and the reality of doing so — a gap no one has figured out how to bridge just yet.

Actually, I think a ticket with candidates who cancel each other out is a loser, and the death of this particular group is no great loss. Farewell, Americans Elect. Let's hope the Republican Party becomes as irrelevant as you were.

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Reuters says so. Open thread below....

State: New Hampshire

Type of election: Primary

How it works: Straight-ahead process where voters go to the polls and vote via traditional secret ballot. The primary is a modified open contest meaning that voters registered independent or 'decline to state' can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primaries. The state will award 12 delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Official election results: New Hampshire Secretary of State

Republican candidates: Michele Bachmann (she suspended her campaign after the ballot was finalized), Herman Cain (he suspended his campaign after the ballot was finalized), Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

Democratic candidates: Barack Obama

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney finished second in the Republican primary to John McCain, receiving 31 percent of the vote. Paul finished fifth with 8 percent. Obama finished second in the Democratic primary with 36 percent, losing to Hillary Clinton by three percent.

Newspapers: Concord Monitor, Nashuah Telegraph, New Hampshire Union Leader, full list

Television stations: Full list

Other websites: 2012 New Hampshire Primary

Progressive blogs: Bank Slate, Blue Hampshire, Democracy for New Hampshire, Miscellany Blue, New Hampshire Labor News, Susan the Bruce

Progressives on Twitter: Dean Barker, Blue Hampshire, New Hampshire Labor News, William Tucker

Media blogs: NH Journal, James Pindell, Shira Schoenberg, Dean Spiliotes

Latest polling: Most recent from each polling organization:

This week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided just the latest analysis confirming that U.S. income inequality is at record levels. But while the income gap is at largest in 80 years even as the total federal tax burden is at its smallest in 60, the 2012 Republican presidential field is proposing to make both much, much worse. As the numbers show, the GOP field's toxic mix of massive upper-class tax cuts, mountains of debt and draconian spending cuts would ensure the yawning chasm between the top 1% and everyone else grows wider still.

On the same day that Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his "Cut, Balance and Grow" program, the Washington Post reported "Republican candidates offer a diverse set of economic plans." Of course, a quick glance at their respective plans shows that diversity is in the eye of the beholder.

After all, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul would all slash the top income tax rate starting in 2013. Each would reduce corporate taxes, already down to their lowest percentage share of federal revenue since 1950, from 35 percent to as little as 9 percent. All would eliminate the estate tax, a $25 billion a year windfall to the richest families in America, only a quarter of one percent of whom now pay it. All but Romney would completely zero out the capital gains tax. (As the Washington Post recently explained the impact of the already historically low 15 percent capital gains tax rate, "Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.")

Regardless of which Republican emerges as the party's standard bearer in 2012, the result as John Harwood explained on CNBC, is that the richest Americans would get back "hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars" annually from the U.S. Treasury.

To which Rick Perry replied:

"But I don't care about that. What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies."

Which is quite evident from Perry's plan. His optional 20 percent flat tax rate would allow the top income earners to pay Uncle Sam at a much lower rate than the already low 35 percent level they pay currently. And Perry would not merely eliminate the estate tax, he would zero out the capital gains tax as well. Reviewing an analysis from the Tax Policy Center, the New York Times' Catherine Rampell concluded:

The highest-income households (at the 99th percentile) in every structure of family analyzed always benefit from opting into the Perry plan.

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Credit: Washington Post

It comes as no surprise that Congressional Republicans are balking at President Obama’s $447 billion program forecast to produce as many as 1.9 million jobs. But while the GOP has opposed Obama’s calls for new tax revenue from the wealthiest Americans to pay for it, most of the Republican presidential field wants to give them yet another trillion dollar tax cut payday by eliminating the capital gains tax.

With U.S. income inequality at its highest level in 80 years and the total federal tax burden at its lowest in 60, the last thing America needs to do is further reduce the capital gains tax. As a decade of data shows, the Treasury-draining Bush capital gains and dividend tax windfall for the wealthy not only failed to produce employment gains from America's so-called "job creators." As the Washington Post detailed, "capital gains tax rates benefiting wealthy feed [the] growing gap between rich and poor." Nevertheless, most Republicans are calling for a new capital gains tax rate: zero.

As the Post explained, for the very richest Americans the successive capital gains tax cuts from Presidents Clinton (to 20 percent) and Bush (to 15 percent) have been "better than any Christmas gift":

While it's true that many middle-class Americans own stocks or bonds, they tend to stash them in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, where the capital gains rate does not apply. By contrast, the richest Americans reap huge benefits. Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.

The convenient chart above tells the tale. And as the Washington Post suggests elsewhere in its jaw-dropping series "Breaking Away," plummeting tax rates overall and on capital gains in particular have been widening the chasm between the rich and everyone else in America:

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This is great! Just keep this dude talking. We don't even need Katie Couric - just put a mike in front of Texas Governor Rick Perry, and let him speak. If he were smarter he'd know how dumb he is - but he's not. So he says things like he did at his first ever national debate, Wednesday night at the Reagan Library.

This was after Jon Huntsman said, "Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I'm saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science. We can't run from mainstream conservative philosophy. We've got to win voters."

Yes. No applause from the L.L. Bean catalog audience. Silence on pro-science. A brave moment for Huntsman, fell flat (like the shape of the Earth). Then the question went to "Crotch:"

PERRY: Well, I do agree that there is -- the science is -- is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at -- at -- at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet, to me, is just -- is nonsense. I mean, it -- I mean -- and I tell somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell.

Yes. Because zealot extremists doubted Galileo, the father of modern science (who, turns out, was right...and brilliant) - we should act like those zealot extremists?! What?

Remember Perry's Texas A&M transcripts are on the Internet. He got an AVERAGE D in science classes and C in history. But, like I said - if he were smarter - he'd be quieter. But he kept on digging:

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It's absolutely crazy that the one Republican presidential candidate who acknowledges that global warming is a man-made problem is the one least likely to make it through the GOP primary, simply because he told the truth. On This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Jake Tapper interviews Gov. Jon Huntsman:

TAPPER: This was a big week for Texas Governor Rick Perry. He went out on the campaign trail and he raised a lot of eyebrows. He made some comments about evolution and he said this about climate change.

PERRY: "I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective, is more and more being put into question."

TAPPER: These comments from Governor Perry prompted you to Tweet, quote: "To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." Were you just being cheeky or do you think there's a serious problem with what Governor Perry said?

HUNTSMAN: I think there's a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party - the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012. When we take a position that isn't willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science - Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man's contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.

The Republican Party has to remember that we're drawing from traditions that go back as far as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, President Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush. And we've got a lot of traditions to draw upon. But I can't remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become a - a party that - that was antithetical to science. I'm not sure that's good for our future and it's not a winning formula.

Jon Huntsman--sounding ever so much more adult and reasonable than the rest of his fellow Republican hopefuls--tells Jake Tapper that it's time to get the hell out of Afghanistan.

We need to bring people home from Afghanistan. This should not be a nation-building exercise when we have nation-building to do right here in our own country. This is a counter-terror effort. We need people in Afghanistan who can collect intelligence, Special Forces capabilities and some element to train the national -- the Afghan national troops. But we should not be involved in nation-building.

And we've got to basically call it for what it is and get back to strengthening the core of this country or we are of no value to the rest of the world. That light, that goodness that traditionally has radiated over the years, that speaks to democracy, that speaks to liberty, that speaks to open markets and human rights. We're not projecting that goodness anymore. The world always is a better and a safer place with a strong America. And right now, we don't have a strong America.

Damn. I'm not used to agreeing with a Republican. I may need to sit down for a bit.

But what Huntsman says is absolutely true. We are nation-building in Afghanistan...and not very well. There is no end point in our mission, no point in which we can say we've "won". And it's hurting this country with each year we stay in that country with no clear end game in sight.

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Credit: Perrspectives

If nothing else, the 2012 Republican presidential contest has forced GOP White House hopefuls to run a gauntlet of ever more draconian pledges demanded by party purists. At the top of the list is the Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which demands candidates "solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases."

But at a time of record high income inequality, historically low federal taxes and rising national debt their party is largely responsible for producing, the GOP presidential wannabes must take a two-part vow about their own tax-cutting proposals:

(a) If my tax cut plan is enacted, my family and I will save ________ in federal taxes every year.

((b) If my tax cut plan is enacted, it will add ________ trillion dollars to the national debt of the United States over the next decade.

Call it the "MyTaxCut Pledge."

The need for the MyTaxCut Pledge became glaringly apparent after the 2008 presidential campaign. Republican nominee John McCain offered a Treasury-draining tax cut plan that would have produced a massive windfall for him and his heiress wife, Cindy. As the Center for American Progress explained at the time:

McCain favors making the Bush tax laws permanent, and also plans to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the dependent exemption and offer tax breaks on business income...Had McCain's tax proposal been in place in 2006, [they] would have done incredibly well - saving even more than they did under the existing Bush plan. John and Cindy McCain would have walked away with $373,429 in their pocket.

McCain's tax plan was radically more regressive than even that of President Bush - it would have delivered 58% of its benefits to the wealthiest 1% of American taxpayers. But John and Cindy's winnings wouldn't have ended there. As both the financial crisis and his slump in the polls deepened, John McCain proposed slashing capital gains taxes (a halving from 15% to 7.5%). Again, the gains from his scheme go overwhelmingly to the richest Americans (almost 60% of its benefits to families earning over $1 million a year), including his wife:

The McCains made $746,395 in capitals gains last year. A new analysis by Michael Ettlinger, Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reveals that McCain's capital gains cut would have reduced the McCains' taxes by $55,980 in 2007.

But the McCain's proposed personal payday pales in comparison to the vault-stuffing espoused by his surrogate Meg Whitman. During her failed 2010 run for governor of California, the billionaire former eBay CEO proposed killing the state's capital gains tax altogether. As the Los Angeles Times' Michael Hiltzik noted, ending the capital gains tax would cost California up to $10 billion in revenue annually even as it would put tens of millions of dollars directly into Meg Whitman's pocketbook.

The Whitman campaign refused to tell me this week what percentage of Whitman's income derives from capital gains (which can be defined as profits on stock, bond, real estate and other such investments). Whitman has thus far refused to make public her tax returns, which might hold a clue...Capital gains might even represent the majority of her income in some years.

As Chris Kelly of the Huffington Post aptly put it, "Meg Whitman's Tax Plan: She Stops Paying Hers."

That recent history suggests that the 2012 GOP presidential field should come clean about what their respective tax plans will do for their own personal finances. After all, by any standard most are wealthy, with Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and Herman Cain especially so. (Romney's fortune has been estimated as high as $250 million dollars.)

Alas, the odds of any of the Republicans taking the MyTaxCut Pledge are virtually zero. After all, as Politico reported earlier this year:

A POLITICO survey of the major GOP hopefuls found that none are promising to making their tax returns public, as then-candidate Obama did in 2007 and 2008 -- as well as during his Senate campaign in 2004 and later in 2006.

But if the would-be Republican presidents won't fess up about the personal bonanzas their tax policies are certain to produce, at least they could come clean about what they'll do to the national debt.

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John Huntsman turned down the Grover Norquist pledge to never raise taxes which did surprise me. Less surprising is the news that Pawlenty is standing on the fence about it:
Howard Fineman:

It's Grover time in the GOP, which has nothing to do with "Sesame Street" and everything to do with Jon Huntsman's effort to distinguish himself from the other two BWFGs (bland, white former governors) in the Republican presidential race.

This is the season in which the bearded, Harvard-trained ayatollah of the anti-tax movement, Grover Norquist, demands (almost always successfully) that candidates sign a document pledging to oppose any tax increase of any kind. The founder and leader of the Washington-based Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist is clever, meticulous and persistent -- and the leading enforcer and symbol of Republican tax-cutting orthodoxy. Most Republican presidential contenders have signed since Norquist started demanding that they do so back in 1988.
[..]
Tim Pawlenty signed a Norquist-style pledge when he was governor of Minnesota, but has not signed the official one yet this year. "I expect that he will," Norquist said, adding "I expect that they ALL will."

Maybe not. "We haven't said either way," said Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant.

And Huntsman told reporters Tuesday that he would not sign Norquist's or any other pledge this year -- on abortion, gay rights or any other topic.

"First of all, I don't sign pledges," he told reporters after announcing his candidacy near the Statue of Liberty. "I was asked to sign a pledge when I ran for governor in 2004, and I didn't. And I got attacked because I didn't. And then we went around and ended up cutting and reforming taxes at record levels [and] I never heard anything in the aftermath of our work. My take on all of this is, your record should say everything about where you are and where you're going. I don't need to sign a pledge."

I imagine Pawlenty will sign the pledge as soon as Grover turns up the heat on him, but Huntsman won't for sure now. However, on Fineman's report I find one terrible flaw:

But there are signs that his grip on the Party may be weakening a bit, which presents an opening for Huntsman and a dilemma for Tim Pawlenty.

Sorry Howard, I don't buy that for one second. Grover was once considered a radical Tea Party type when he first started his activism with Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff and the College Republicans thirty years ago, but today, tax cuts and never raising taxes is the mantra of Conservatives and the GOP. There's little doubt about his strength in their party.