They're so protective of fetuses and rich people, these Republicans! Plus, they're conditioned like dogs with an electric fence: Don't go near tax increases, or Pope Grover will make you hurt really, really bad. Even when a measure is overwhelmingly popular, they still insist they can't support it. Boys, keep up the good work - the voters are watching:

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a move to open debate on the so-called Buffett Rule, ensuring that a measure pressed for months by President Obama and Senate Democrats to ensure that the superrich pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent will not come to a decisive vote.

But the fierce debate preceding the 51-45 vote — the Democrats were nine votes short of the 60 they needed — set off a week of political wrangling over taxes that both parties insist they are already winning.

Senate Democrats intend to return repeatedly to the legislation, named after the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has complained that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. On Thursday, House Republicans will counter with a proposed tax cut for businesses that they say would spur job creation but would cost the Treasury almost exactly what the Democrats’ tax increase would raise.

Republicans say they like that contrast, and their language ahead of the vote on a motion just to take up the Buffett Rule was harsh and aimed squarely at Mr. Obama, who first proposed a 30-percent tax rate floor for anyone earning at least $1 million a year last September. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, went to the Senate floor and all but called Mr. Obama a liar.

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Let’s pick up where we left on Friday. Judgment Day is coming for the Senate Republicans this week, and man, they are squirming. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on “Fox News Sunday” over the weekend and once again could not muster up the courage to fully embrace Paul Ryan’s disastrous budget plan. McConnell was so scared of supporting the Ryan plan to gut Medicare that he could not even say whether he supported all of the provisions of this budget plan.

Meanwhile Senator Scott Brown has completed his flippity flop – known in the press world as “a walk back” – by now coming out against the Ryan plan. Uh, whatever you say Senator. As the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee noted, “Barn Coat” Brown is a “little light on straight talk” (via email):

“Scott Brown has lost his barn coat sheen. He talks like a D.C. politician who is trying to have it both ways and hide his own extreme positions,” said Matt Canter, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Brown’s op-ed today was certainly a tantalizing read, but there is still so much that Brown is refusing to tell his constituents about where he stands when it comes to Medicare and protecting seniors.”

So the Republicans are clearly scared. Their anxiety is only going to intensify if they manage to choke away what should have been an easy win an upcoming special election tomorrow in New York’s 26th District. Any loss there for the Republican candidate would be nothing short of an epic disaster and could become foreshadowing of how House Republicans will remain haunted by their vote to end Medicare as we know it.

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Judgment Day is almost here for Senate Republicans (oh, not this one). I am talking about the upcoming vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s crazy budget plan that is going to force the Senate Republicans to make a difficult choice (well, it shouldn’t be difficult for those who have economic sanity) on whether or not to support ending Medicare as we know it. The House Republicans chose to embrace it and results have not been pretty for them:

Associated Press: Protesters Greet Paul Ryan in Chicago. “Dozens of protesters carrying signs and chanting ‘Tax the rich’ marched outside a hotel in downtown Chicago to protest a speech by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan is the architect of the Republican budget plan, which includes a controversial proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Doug Adams of Chicago was among the protesters. Adams says people need to wake up because Republicans, Wall Street and big business think older Americans are an expensive commodity.” (LINK)

Arizona Republic (AZ): Anthem Audience Challenges Quayle During Presentation On Medicare. “U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle had finished a Power Point presentation on the national debt this week when members of the audience started a running commentary and flashing signs that read ‘Hands off our Medicare.’ About 225 people filed into the Fellowship Church in Anthem on Monday to hear about a $14.3 trillion budget shortfall and ways to resolve it. The gathering quickly turned into a sort of political rally, with people arguing with the freshman lawmaker who represents Arizona's 3rd Congressional District, which includes Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.” (LINK)

Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV): Heck Town Hall Meeting Sparks Passions. “The crowd didn't just argue with Republican Rep. Joe Heck at a town hall meeting in Boulder City on Wednesday. The 50 people in attendance often shouted at each other, indifferent to whether the Republican federal budget Heck was there to discuss would hurt or help Medicare and the job market.” (LINK)

Associated Press(MN): Freshman Rep. Cravaack Defends Medicare Vote. “Terry Bell, 62, of Cambridge, criticized the slides for being inaccurate. He asked Cravaack to point out the last time Republicans produced a balanced budget. ‘Your party has added to the deficit ever since the Ford administration,’ Bell said. ‘The only time you get the least bit concerned is when the Democratic Party gets in.’” (LINK)

Those are just few examples of backlash House Republicans are facing all across the country.

Of course, the traditional media are not covering these events with the same intensity as they were all over the infamous corporate-funded town hall protests by Tea Partiers during the summer of 2009. Nevertheless, the Republicans are feeling the heat, resulting in their rather cowardly disposition heading into next week’s vote. Sensing the momentum, the Congressional Democrats turned up the heat today by releasing a brand spanking new report that shows that Ryan’s “right wing social-engineering” will more than double what older Americans have to pay for health care in every state.

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We have been wondering all week whether Speaker John Boehner and the Senate Republican leadership will actively lobby and whip the Republican Senate conference to support Representative Paul Ryan’s disastrous and cruel budget plan that would gut Medicare. We now have an answer to this question. The Hill is reporting today that Senate Republican leaders do not have the testicular fortitude to whip Paul Ryan’s plan to gut Medicare:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is leaving Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan to its own fate in the Senate by not whipping his GOP colleagues on the vote.

Republican senators say McConnell has made it clear he will vote for the House Budget Committee chairman’s plan, but has said rank-and-file members should vote as they want on the 2012 budget proposal.

Okay then. McConnell is not up for re-election until 2014. According to the article Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), two key members of the Republican Leadership will vote for Ryan's proposal but that does not mean anything. Kyle is retiring and Alexander is not up for re-election until 2014 either. If these guys were really excited and supportive of Ryan's extreme budget plan, they would have actively whipped it. That is not happening as they are playing hot potatoes with it. Boy, when these Republicans need to impose party discipline they are ruthless about it yet we are seeing none of that here because they just do not have the courage to vigorously lobby their colleagues to support it.

So how do their counterparts in the House Republican Leadership feel about this? Eric Cantor and the entire right wing movement spent the whole week beating up on Newt Blingrich for daring to speak up against Ryan’s “right wing social engineering” project. What are they going to do now that even the Senate Republican leadership is too cowardly to embrace this crazy plan?

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Just days after thanking God for Representative Paul Ryan’s health care plan and saying that he would vote for it, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is facing an intense backlash in the Bay State, so now he is pathetically trying to backtrack:

The Massachusetts Republican said in a statement that he favors the overall direction Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's budget takes toward reducing spending.

But Brown declined, through a spokesman, to say if he backs Ryan's proposed Medicare overhaul, or if he would vote for the Ryan budget plan.

Brown's comments came four days after he told a luncheon crowd in Georgetown, Mass. that he would vote for the Ryan budget.

Uhm, someone needs to let Senator Brown know that there are no backsies in politics. He can’t have it both ways. He cannot present himself as supportive of budget cuts while now trying to distance himself from Ryan’s devastating "Robin Hood in Reverse" budget plan that would impose draconian and savage cuts to our Medicare program.

So soon Senator Brown and his Republican Colleagues in the U.S. Senate will have a chance to vote for Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as we know it. We will see if they are going to join Ryan and Boehner and throw America’s seniors off the cliff …

… Literally.

The vote is coming up next week. As Senator Harry Reid warned in his interview with the USA Today:

"I think we will see that not all Republicans will vote for it," Reid said. "If I were running for re-election, Democrat or Republican, I would want to stay as far from that Ryan budget as possible."

Good luck Senate Republicans.

While Senate Republicans like Scott Brown are taking a pounding for embracing Paul Ryan’s crazy budget plan to gut Medicare, their counterparts on the House side are once again facing intense scrutiny at the local town halls. Actually, they are just facing heat from angry constituents who are upset over realizing that their community interests are being sold out to big corporations in the new GOP controlled Congress.

Think Progress reported earlier today that Representative Ben Quayle (R-AZ) was laughed at for denying existence of billions in special oil subsidies. Now comes the word that Republican representative Jaime Herrera Beutler faced a “boisterous” crowd at her first Vancouver town hall event in Washington where she got ripped apart for defending Ryan’s plan to gut Medicare (emphasis added):

Saying she wanted to “share with you what I walked into” when she entered Congress, she spent the first 40 minutes of the 75-minute session on a power-point presentation with graphs and pie charts that showed the projected increase in Medicare spending by 2020, the breakdown of discretionary and nondiscretionary federal spending, and the increase in the amount of U.S. debt owed to foreign governments.

“My first priority is to preserve and protect Medicare for the present generation and for future generations,” she said. But when she insisted that the Republican budget blueprint for 2012 “protects Medicare,” a chorus of boos and catcalls and shouts of “liar” erupted in the auditorium.

Unfazed, she repeated her argument that the budget blueprint written by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which would convert Medicare to a voucher program and let seniors use the vouchers to buy insurance on the private market, actually ensures that Medicare will be there for future generations.

She compared the Ryan plan to the health care coverage members of Congress receive. ‘You get to choose your plan. It’s really that simple,” she said.

But the audience was openly skeptical.

The note about Ryan’s plan being comparable to health-care coverage that congressional members will receive is nothing short of a preposterous lie. As has been covered by bloggers such as Ezra Klein, Ryan’s plan will “end Medicare as we know it.”

It’s clear that these Republicans are getting desperate and flustered. They used to be smooth liars all larded up with Frank Luntz’s talking points. The pressure is getting so intense that they are stumbling, bumbling and fumbling away, looking not just crazy but petty amateurs in the process.

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Benjy Sarling from Talking Points Memo reported on Sunday that the embattled House Republican leaders are looking to “shock” their joke Medicare plan “back to life with a new message.” Representative Paul Ryan is going to try to sell his laughable “Path to Prosperity” nonsense at the Economic Club of Chicago today. Apparently watching the Speaker humiliate himself at the Economic Club of New York did not do anything to deter Ryan. Even Boehner blasted this out on his Twitter account on Friday:

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News reports that SS & Medicare will run out of money sooner than expected only underscore the importance of enacting Path to Prosperity

OK, a couple of things here. I will first show how disingenuous and dishonest Boehner was with the first part of his tweet. I will then point out that if Boehner really wants to talk the talk on “Path to Prosperity,” he will get a prime opportunity to goad his Republican colleagues from other chamber in Congress to walk the walk this week.

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I guess the Compressional Republicans are feeling pretty good right now about their brinksmanship in the debt ceiling debate. At this snapshot of time, their extreme hard line message is resonating with majority of Americans, who do not seem to have a detailed understanding about the stakes of not raising the ceiling. No wonder Senator Mitch McConnell is out there blustering - insisting that Democrats must agree to "significant changes" in Medicare in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The easy way to expose these guys to American public is to force them to caught up their plans in public instead of letting them hide behind their childish soundbites.

Jed pointed out how McConnell and his crazy band of Congressional Republicans are bluffing:

Obviously, Republicans are bluffing. Their financial backers would be furious if they refused to raise the debt ceiling and touched of a global economic crisis. So Democrats shouldn't take the GOP threats of economic terror too seriously.

Steve Benen lays out the options for both sides in light of McConnell’s predictable GOP hooliganism "strategy":

That leaves Republican leaders with two choices to get what they want. Option #1: the GOP can agree to some tax increases and Pentagon cuts as part of a grand bargain with Democrats. Option #2: the GOP can threaten to destroy the economy, on purpose, unless Democrats give in to Republican demands on entitlements.

Guess which one the GOP prefers?

Neither McConnell nor Boehner have been willing to speak publicly about exactly what’s on the GOP’s ransom note, but that’s part of the game, too — they’re keeping things vague so they can wait and see how far Democrats will go to fill in the blanks.

With that in mind, the White House is also effectively left with two options. Option #1: tell Republicans there will be no deal and when the economy crashes, it will be their fault. Option #2: tell the GOP negotiations can proceed after Republican leaders start adding details to their own ransom note.

Aahaa. There is a reason I highlighted that second option. Follow me after the split.

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SHORTER Lindsey Graham: "If we don't use American military power to overthrow Qaddafi, then the Iranians will never take us seriously about our threats to bomb their nuclear weapons infrastructure."

Unbelievable. And I'm not even going to get into John McCain's selective memory.  Republican politicians think there is only one source of government power - military - and that diplomatic, economic, and intelligence tools are just not serious options. That is, unless there's a Democrat in the White House. What maroons.

Hat tip to Justin Elliot.

A newly-formed organization called the "Consensus for American Security" has written an open letter to Senators Reid and McConnell, asking them to pass the New START arms control treaty before the end of the year. This letter has more than 40 signatures on it, including some very well-known and distinguished hawks.

Dear Senator Reid and Senator McConnell:

As retired military officers and national security experts who have spent our careers dedicated to protecting the security of the United States, we respectfully request you commit to a full Senate vote on ratification of the New START Treaty before the end of this year.

Building on the vision of previous presidents from both parties, New START allows us to invest in the nuclear security priorities necessary to confront the threats of today and tomorrow. The treaty offers a streamlined and modern verification system that demands quicker and more transparent inspections and information exchanges, bringing new weight to "trust but verify." With New START in force, America will be safer.

Currently, we have no verification regime to account for Russia's strategic nuclear weapons. Two hundred and ninety seven (297) days have elapsed since American teams have been allowed to inspect Russian nuclear forces, and we are concerned that further inaction will bring unacceptable lapses in U.S. intelligence about Russia's strategic arsenal.  Without New START, we believe that the United States is less secure.

As part of the vast consensus of national security professionals who have endorsed New START, we respectfully call on the Senate to ratify the New START Treaty in 2010.

Sincerely,

The Consensus for American Security

Nice touch, throwing in that "trust but verify" tag line of Ronald Reagan. Of course, the Republican senators will ignore any reference to this letter, because they aren't really interested in the professional opinions of "retired military officers and national security experts who have spent our careers dedicated to protecting the security of the United States." No, it's more important to embarrass and bring down President Obama's administration through continued obstructions than it is to address critical national security legislation.