Joy Reid at The Grio:

In a letter to members of Congress, which was obtained by NBC News, Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation (which recently found itself in hot water over the racial IQ theories of the co-author of their widely panned immigration reform study, Jason Richwine, who resigned from the think tank last Friday), urged Republicans on Capitol Hill not to govern, and instead, to focus on the would-be “scandals” plaguing the Obama administration.

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White House switchboard: 202-456-1414.
White House comments line: 202-456-1111.
Numbers for the Senate are here.
Numbers for the House are here.

Robert Reich explains why offering to cut Social Security plays right into Republican hands, who will turn around and campaign against "the Democrats who want to cut your Social Security." Of course, he doesn't want to acknowledge the elephant in the room: that Obama wants those cuts so much, he may be willing to accept nothing in return to get it done:

John Boehner, Speaker of the House, revealed why it’s politically naive for the President to offer up cuts in Social Security in the hope of getting Republicans to close some tax loopholes for the rich. “If the President believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there’s no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes,” Boehner said in a statement released Friday.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor agreed. He said on CNBC he didn’t understand “why we just don’t see the White House come forward and do the things that we agree on” such as cutting Social Security, without additional tax increases.

Get it? The Republican leadership is already salivating over the President’s proposed Social Security cut. They’ve been wanting to cut Social Security for years. But they won’t agree to close tax loopholes for the rich.

They’re already characterizing the President’s plan as a way to “save” Social Security — even though the cuts would undermine it — and they’re embracing it as an act of “bi-partisanship.”

“I’m encouraged by any steps that President Obama is taking to save and preserve Social Security,” cooed Texas Republican firebrand Ted Cruz. “I think it should be a bipartisan priority to strengthen Social Security and Medicare to preserve the benefits for existing seniors.”

Oh, please. Social Security hasn’t contributed to the budget deficit. And it’s solvent for the next two decades. (If we want to insure its solvency beyond that, the best fix is to lift the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes – now $113,700.)

And the day Ted Cruz agrees to raise taxes on the wealthy or even close a tax loophole will be when Texas freezes over.

The President is scheduled to dine with a dozen Senate Republicans Wednesday night. Among those attending will be John Boozman of Arkansas, who has already praised Obama for “starting to throw things on the table,” like the Social Security cuts. That’s exactly the problem. The President throws things on the table before the Republicans have even sat down for dinner.

While most eyes were trained on the State of the Union address (or a burning cabin in California), PBS last Tuesday aired a documentary on the ongoing fiscal deadlock in Washington titled, "Cliffhanger." In it, the House Speaker John Boehner is portrayed as hopelessly trapped between an equivocating and untrustworthy President Obama who "poisoned the well" and an immovable Tea Party caucus manipulated by the hyper-ambitious Eric Cantor. But the usually excellent Frontline series didn't merely get lost in the weeds of DC politics. When it comes to the unprecedented Republican debt ceiling hostage-taking that precipitated Washington's "cliffhanger," PBS missed the forest for the trees altogether.

What is the Fiscal Cliff? One of the most striking omissions from a film titled "Cliffhanger" is any definition of the so-called "fiscal cliff." That triple witching hour on January 1, 2013 when the Bush tax cuts and the two-year payroll tax reduction set to expire just as the $1.2 trillion, ten-year sequester was to begin is never fully explained. (The sequester drop-dead date was shifted to March 1.) And the risk in that manufactured crisis was not that the United States would suddenly increase its national debt, but instead reduce too quickly and thus trigger a steep (and unnecessary) recession.

Glossing Over the Original Sin. In "Cliffhanger", Frontline's sins are myriad. But none is more crucial than skirting past the original sin itself. That is, the Republican threat beginning in 2011 to trigger a default on the full faith and credit of the United States isn't just without parallel in modern American history. It is the GOP's extortion over the debt ceiling (which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called "a hostage that's worth ransoming" and a "new template") which is responsible for the sequester and "fiscal cliff" showdowns which followed.

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Yesterday, there was a very public civil war in the Republican Party over House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to block a vote on aid for Hurricane Sandy victims. But today, when Boehner’s Speakership is up for a vote – and just 17 GOP dissenters could derail it - Fox News pulled out their all-purpose Republican Rehab strategy: blame President Obama. But it didn't work as well with Michelle Malkin as they'd surely hoped.

In one of several Fox & Friends segments with the same theme, Steve Doocy sneered that President Obama, now "back on vacation in Hawaii," had promised “at a photo op with Chris Christie” that he was going to “eliminate the red tape” and “make sure FEMA follows through” with aid to Sandy victims. Doocy continued, “And now, 60 days later, nothing.” As he spoke, a banner on the screen read, “JUST A PHOTO OP: GOP gets hammered, but not the president.”

Doocy played a mashup video of Obama talking about getting the relief job done, “Just for people who have missed that."

Afterward, Doocy whined, “Then people on Capitol Hill are trying to blame Boehner when he was looking at that Senate bill that was loaded up with a bunch of pork.”

Although she jumped at the opportunity for jeering with a “golf clap” and an “Aloha and mahalo” over President Obama’s “Oscar-winning performance,” to her credit, Malkin did not let Boehner or Republicans off the hook. “I think it’s ridiculous to FULLY (her emphasis) blame Boehner for the gridlock that’s happening over this bill,” she said. She added:

And the context for the spat I think doesn’t bode well for the Republican leadership because although there are die-hard, committed fiscal conservatives who are sincerely opposing this bill because of the pork, the context for this battle was, apparently, a snit fit between Boehner and Canter over how the fiscal cliff vote went down… There were tweets and messages coming out of Capitol Hill late on Sunday that the bill was pulled because of the resentment between those two boiling over.

And so there’s a lot of intrigue going on there. In the meantime, the usual pork-stuffed, emergency relief bill is finally being torn apart – not so much by Republicans on Capitol Hill as conservative watchdogs and activists who’ve been blowing the whistle on all of the piggy porky stuff that’s put into this bill that’s supposed to be for Sandy victims but ends up benefitting Guantanamo Bay, fisheries in Alaska, Head Start.

In other words, Fox can try to smooth things over for Boehner and Republicans by pointing a finger at President Obama but the rifts in the party are real and deep and unlikely to go away any time soon.

Over the past four weeks, we've highlighted four contenders for the Stupidest Right-Wing Tweet of 2012, and our fifth and final entry today is from Fox News' clown Steven Crowder, who is deeply confused about basic American history.

Now, I've read a lot of wingnut revisionism about the American Revolution, but I'd never seen the British Empire under King George III described as "socialist." The Founding Fathers, don't you know, fought the American Revolution over his oppressive universal healthcare system and tyrannical welfare programs.

So, to review, here are the other four finanlists.

Peggy Noonan

Eric Cantor

John Hawkins

Michelle Malkin

Vote now!

Last week, we started the countdown of the five stupidest right-wing tweets of 2012. You'll be able to vote on the stupidest after we post the last one.

Our second contender is from Eric Cantor.

Since the modern Republican Party has created it's own alternate universe with its own revisionist history, it makes complete sense that they'd transform the American (and socialist!) holiday celebrating workers into one celebrating "job creators." But it didn't work so well at the polls in November.

Keep it up, Eric!

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Bad news for Eric Cantor. He spoke today at the Values Voter Summit, but he’s apparently still going to hell. Let me explain.

Jerry Boykin is the Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council and Tony Perkins’ right-hand man. FRC is hosting the far right conference that the House Majority Leader, who is Jewish, addressed today.

Boykin, much like Bryan Fischer, has a penchant for saying exactly what’s on his mind – things which others know not to say, even when they’re thinking the same thing. While you may know Boykin from his prolific Muslim-bashing, he also has some interesting things to say about Jews.

In a 2009 speech on “Why We Must Stand with Israel,” Boykin spoke out against pastors who say that “the Jews don’t have to come to know Jesus,” complaining that those pastors were “destroying the efforts” to lead Jews to Christ:

Last year, Boykin said that “one of the most disgusting things I hear is for people to call Hitler the extreme Right” because he was “an extraordinarily off the scale leftist.” He then lamented that “many Jews in America, for example, can't identify with the Republican Party because they're called the party of the Right, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth."

Boykin also said that President Obama is creating a Hitler-sytle Brownshirt army to force Marxism on America. And in 2003, then-Lt. Gen. Boykin said that the U.S. was fighting a war “in the name of Jesus,” prompting a rebuke from the ADL and President Bush.

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What do today's Republicans do when a national holiday celebrates workers and has its roots in organized labor (and socialism!)? They simply rewrite history and reinvent the holiday to suit their plutocratic ideology.

So Labor Day, which the country has been celebrating for over a century is now officially Boss's Day.

Can't wait until next Memorial Day when Cantor tweets praises of defense contractors.

There's an old saying that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. But when it comes to Paul Ryan and his radical GOP budget, Republicans would prefer to campaign in silence and then govern with an axe. While the Grand Old Party would love to enact Ryan's massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy, shredding of the social safety net, gutting of Medicaid and privatization of Medicare, Republicans hate having to talk about policies that are about as popular as the ebola virus. And as the history of Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" shows, that Republican discomfort increases as Election Day approaches.

Mitt Romney's own unease has been on display since the moment he first announced the House Budget Chairman from Wisconsin as his running mate. Romney has been quick to claim that he is running on his own budget, only to acknowledge "I'm sure there are places that my budget is different than his, but we're on the same page."

But as Politico and The Hill each reported Tuesday, among Republican strategists and GOP members of Congress that heartburn is approaching panic. "Away from the cameras," Politico noted, "there is an unmistakable consensus among Republican operatives in Washington: Romney has taken a risk with Ryan that has only a modest chance of going right -- and a huge chance of going horribly wrong." As The Hill explained:

Republicans strategists are worried that Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) addition to the presidential ticket will cost their party House and Senate seats this fall.

Their concern: Democrats will successfully demonize Ryan's budget plan, which contains controversial spending cuts and changes to Medicare...Many Republicans in tough races this year, especially in the House, voted for Ryan's proposal, which makes it hard for them to distance themselves from it.

Hard, indeed. After all, 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators--98 percent of all GOP member of Congress--voted for Ryan's budget in 2011. (In 2012, the numbers were 228 and 41, respectively.)

But that near-unanimous Republican support for Paul Ryan's extremist blueprint after the GOP takeover of the House was a far cry the Party's relative silence before the 2010 midterms were won. Put another way, for three years the GOP's backing of the Ryan Roadmap has been directly proportional to the distance to the next Election Day.

2009: Republicans Love Paul Ryan

In April 2009, twenty four months before all but four House Republicans voted for Ryan's plan to ration Medicare, the smaller GOP minority said yea on essentially the same plan. As Steve Benen detailed in the Washington Monthly in the fall of 2009:

In April, 137 Republicans voted in support of a GOP alternative budget. It didn't generate a lot of attention, but the plan, drafted by the House Budget Committee's Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called for "replacing the traditional Medicare program with subsidies to help retirees enroll in private health care plans."

The AP noted at the time that Republican leaders were "clearly nervous that votes in favor of the GOP alternative have exposed their members to political danger."

2010: They Love Him Not

But in February 2010, Rep. Ryan unveiled his "Roadmap for America's Future" and its "slash and privatize" agenda for Social Security and Medicare. Because the value of Ryan's vouchers fails to keep up with the out-of-control rise in premiums in the private health insurance market, America's elderly would be forced to pay more out of pocket or accept less coverage. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein described the inexorable Republican rationing of Medicare which would then ensue:

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"Vote with us and we'll buy ads in your district." This is the new bribery scheme hatched by Eric Cantor and the tea party corporations standing at the ready with plenty of cash to help them get re-elected.

It follows the conservative plan as outlined to the FEC to run ads on behalf of candidates which mention them by name in connection with an issue, so that it at least appears to be an "issue ad" which 501(c)(4) organizations like the YG Network which ran the radio spot above can use as leverage to buy their politicians' votes.

Think Progress:

Essentially, YG Network is saying that it will reward members who vote as they wish with “independent” expenditures on their behalf. Because the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt group is technically independent of Cantor, it can provide a significant carrot that the Republican Leader cannot offer himself.

While likely legal, Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center told ThinkProgress “many would characterize the way Washington politics has long worked as ‘legalized bribery.’” He observed that this is exactly what the 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court made possible by its Citizens United ruling:

When you allow unlimited special interest money in politics, this type of behavior should be expected. Criticism is fair, but never the less, its predictable. This is the world that this Supreme Court majority has given us with the Citizens United decision. It’s troubling, but entirely predictable.

Even more troubling is the likelihood of conversations behind closed doors — threats of huge corporate-funded independent spending campaigns made [for those who don't act in the corporation's interest on a given piece of legislation]. And much of it, we will never hear about.

Because the radio ad does not explicitly say "Vote for Vicky Hartzler," it falls within the FEC guidelines for independent expenditure ads by outside groups, and even though it is technically not coordinated with Eric Cantor, a public vote against any tax increases is the only gesture a Congressman needs to win an ad, paid for by unnamed oligarchs intent on preserving their wealth.

As the Supreme Court considers whether to hear Montana's challenge to the Citizens United case, I truly hope they're paying attention to how it is being abused.