Ralph Reed is back and has been on the campaign circuit raising lots and lots of money for his new, shiny, religious right PAC, the Faith and Freedom Coalition. If you'd like to see him in action, tune into CSPAN tomorrow for his shiny new conference, featuring such faithful stalwarts as Mitt Romney, Herman Cain and Glenn Beck.

But just in case you may not be familiar with Ralph Reed, let me share a small excerpt from the Jack Abramoff hearings a few years back, when Kent Conrad had his shot at him:

I was struck by the article in the Washington Post on Sunday. The beginning paragraph says Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and public relations consultant Michael Scanlon quietly worked with conservative religious activist Ralph Reed to help the State of Texas shut down an Indian tribe casino in 2002. Then the two quickly persuaded the tribe to pay $4.2 million to try to get Congress to reopen it. If this is not cynical behavior, I do not know what is.

On the one hand, it turns out Scanlon and Abramoff paid Ralph Reed $4 million to conduct a campaign to close down a casino, at the very time they are asking the casino to hire them so that it can get reopened. One week later, after Mr. Abramoff met with the Tiguas who were in danger of getting their casino shut down, a Texas consultant employed by the tribe thanked Abramoff for his visit and said he would push his proposal. Abramoff forwarded the e-mail to Scanlon with the message, ‘‘This guy needs us to save his ass.’’

It goes on to say, Ralph Reed, the conservative religious leader, was paid $4.2 million by Abramoff and Scanlon for his work opposing several tribal casinos. There is an e-mail traffic that is laid out in the paper in which Abramoff writes to Ralph Reed, ‘‘Great. Thanks, Ralph. We should continue to pile on until the place is shuttered,’’ referring to the casino.

Ralph Reed's job was simple: Get the grassroots stirred up and shaken so they would get active and oppose whatever it was his firm, Century Strategies, was paid to oppose. His partner, Tim Phillips, now director of Freedomworks, worked alongside Reed, but the strategies and interaction with Abramoff was strictly between Reed, Abramoff and Scanlon.

Ralph Reed should have gone to jail along with his buddy Jack, and by all rights ought to be slinging pizza in the outer reaches of south Georgia right about now. Instead, he's taken a run at the Lieutenant Governor spot in Georgia and runs Century Strategies, and now the Faith and Freedom Coalition as well. He is not repentant. He makes no apologies for what he did. Also? He made millions.

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Lee Fang of Think Progress was able to surprise David Koch after the swearing-in of his newly-minted House of Representatives last week for this impromptu man-on-the-street interview. The interview is posted in three parts, but Part One captures just how arrogant, uppity, and callous this man is. The other guy is Tim Phillips, who desperately tries to become a human shield for that most dangerous thing of all: the interview.

You have to watch the video to really catch the ebullience Koch has for his new Congress. He's nearly beside himself with joy.

TP: Hi sir, I’m Lee Fang. I’m with the blog ThinkProgress. I’m just asking what you’re expecting from the new Congress under Speaker Boehner?

KOCH: Well, cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and uh, support business.

PHILLIPS: Hey David, Lee here is a good blogger on the left, we’re glad to have him–TP: Just a quick interview. Are you proud of what Americans for Prosperity has achieved this year?

KOCH: You bet I am, man oh’ man. We’re going to do more too in the next couple of years, you know.

TP: What are you planning on doing. What are your goals?

KOCH: I just told you what we hope the Congress will do and AFP is going to support that.

[...]

TP: I’m curious to know, Mr. Koch, are you proud of what the Tea Party movement and what they’ve achieved in the past years–

KOCH: Yeah. There are some extremists there, but the rank and file are just normal people like us. And I admire them. It’s probably the best grassroots uprising since 1776 in my opinion.

This interview was done long before the events of Saturday unfolded. But Koch's casual toss-off of the "extremists" in the Tea Party is telling, particularly given the strenuous denials we're all hearing now. Like the way his 'grass roots' characterization seems to affirm astroturf as an organic thing, at least in the mind of David Koch? And hey -- it's totally fine with Koch to have an extremist or two in the mix as long as the whole thing is dag-gone grassrootsy and populated with "normal people like [him]." Funny thing. I haven't met even one single normal person in my entire life who is also a billionaire who spends millions and millions trying to defeat political opponents. But that's just me, I guess.

Let's consider those few "extremists". We have extremist Sharron Angle, with her "2nd Amendment remedies." Then there's "extremist" Sarah Palin, loading and reloading. Then there's lower-profile but still destructive extremists like Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy. If this video isn't bone-chilling and visceral evidence of extreme speech and views, I'm not sure what is.

Maybe David Koch wants to rethink his characterization of them as grass roots. I'm more inclined to think of them as "dry brush". The kind that ignites and destroys everything in its path.

The rest of Fang's interview can be viewed here and here.

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Memo to Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Kennedy: Your Citizens United chickens are coming home to roost in 22 major markets, starting tomorrow.

Los Angeles Times:

A conservative advocacy group Monday will kick off a huge ad campaign in 11 states and two dozen of the most competitive congressional races, slamming "wasteful federal spending."

The $4.1-million ad buy from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation does not mention individual candidates in the November election. The script attacks Washington policies, describing the economic stimulus program as a failure and declaring that "wasteful spending must stop."

Well, of course it doesn't mention individual candidates. That would mean they'd have to report independent expenditures to the FEC, but since it's an issues campaign that simply happens to dovetail with the teabaggers' lament, they can hide behind the curtain and never let the public know whose message this really is.

Americans for Prosperity. Such a misleading name. Rich Americans for Prosperity might be more apt. Americans for Prosperity is, of course, the Koch mouthpiece that funded last summer's town hall protests, the Sarah Palin bus tour, partners with every teabag operation out there, and lays astroturf in every town with a sidewalk.

And lest we forget, AFPs Tim Phillips got his start with Century Strategies, Ralph Reed's lobbying firm and close ally of Jack Abramoff. Rachel Maddow peeled that onion last year during health care reform.

So they're going to saturate key markets with claims of pork and waste in the stimulus bill, eh? Here's a suggestion for the DCCC and other groups getting ready to put ads up: Start with this list of Republicans who denounced the stimulus bill with righteous outrage while skulking back with their hands out for a second bite at the apple. Rapid-fire it at the viewer with a few key names. That ought to be an appropriate beginning.

I hope the Billionaire Boys' Club at Americans for Prosperity spends lots of money on their ads and stimulates the economy even more while their agenda goes down in flames.

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What hath Republicans wrought?

Sure, they believed, as John noted the other day, that when they were unleashing what Bill Kristol likes to call "guided populism", they were in fact opening the gates for right-wing populism. And now they're looking not only at a a phenomenon much more popular than the standard Republican brand, but a movement that is about to swallow them whole.

And the Tea Party organizers -- notably the Astroturf outfits that originated the Parties, such as FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity -- are making that perfectly clear. Two spokesmen for those groups -- Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and the AFP's Tim Phillips, went on Hardball yesterday and made this explicit:

MATTHEWS: Matt, how about third party? What about the Tea Party? Sarah Palin is kind of hard to read. She is fascinating. Let‘s face it, we‘re all fascinated with her, because she‘s exciting as a political figure right now. But she‘s talking third party. I mean, she answered the question of Lars Larson. Maybe it just came to mind, but she said, yeah, I might go third party, something like that. Would you guys knock off an incumbent Republican by going third party? You know how the vote splits. Split the right, the Dem wins.

KIBBE: The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is. We need to replace the Republican establishment with fiscal conservatives that are actually willing to cut spending.

All this talk about a "third party" is just so much smokescreen. What's actually happening is that the GOP is fast becoming a full-fledged right-wing-populist entity. Which means that the latent extremism lurking out on the right's fringes for so many years is becoming its new lifeblood, such as it is.

Funny thing is, as Matthews managed to point out early in the segment, not even the Tea Partiers' supposed hero -- Ronald Reagan -- can live up to their standards:

MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody—your grandfather‘s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?

KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.

MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?

KIBBE: Oh, he—he said that we shouldn't spend money we don‘t have, and he said that the government shouldn't get involved in things that it‘s not very good at doing.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?

KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history.

And he's your role model.

KIBBE: Well, President Obama is...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you. I have asked you one president that you can look up to who was good at tea party politics and ideology.

KIBBE: Right. Right.

MATTHEWS: If it's not Reagan, because he clearly didn't do it, who do you look to? Coolidge? How far do you have to look back?

KIBBE: I think we need to find somebody that can meet that standard.

MATTHEWS: So, nobody has recently?

KIBBE: No, certainly not.

Ah well. Blowing off cognitive dissonance is a special teabagger trait. It just adds to their "insane" mystique.

Republicans may have thought these guys had their backs. But now they're looking with increasing worry back over their shoulders. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, dudes.