I wonder why Eric Holder doesn't bring a RICO suit against Grover, Turd Blossom, and the Koch brothers? After all, you could make a reasonable case for extortion: Grover tells Republican officials to vote his way, or he will drown them in a primary challenge. It doesn't seem like that's how democracy is supposed to work. Lee Fang for The Nation:

Grover Norquist’s iron grip over much of the Republican Party is somewhat puzzling. Why should Senators and other lawmakers listen to a guy caught laundering money for Jack Abramoff?

But consider Norquist’s tax pledge and political power another way: that he’s just a proxy for the powerful interest groups that finance him. In the nineties, it was big tobacco that used Norquist’s tax pledge as a cover to lobby lawmakers against cigarette taxes (Norquist still uses an e-mail system donated to him by Altria to send out Tea Party action alerts against tobacco taxes).

Now, big PhRMA and other industry groups provide grants to Norquist while his foundation endorses other giveaways, like protectionist support against importing cheaper drugs from Canada and the classification of tax subsidies to refineries as “tax cuts” that must not be cut.

I took a look at the last available budget numbers for Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist’s group. Though they do not reveal their donors, we can cobble together much of Norquist’s donors using foundations and other nonprofits that donate money to him.

The disclosures show that only two billionaire-backed groups have provided over 66 percent of Norquist’s funding:

• The Center to Protect Patients Rights donated $4,189,000 to Americans for Tax Reform in 2010, 34 percent of the group’s budget that year.

• Crossroads GPS donated $4,000,000 to Americans for Tax Reform in 2010, 32.46 percent of the group’s budget that year.

The Center to Protect Patients Rights is the foundation used by the billionaire clique led by the Koch brothers to distribute grants to allied groups. In 2010, wealthy moguls like Steve Bechtel of Bechtel Corporation and Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group met behind closed doors to help lend money to these types of efforts.

Crossroads GPS is the undisclosed group run by Karl Rove. The only known donors are folks like Paul Singer, the “vulture” hedge fund king who benefits enormously from tax strategies like the carried interest loophole. Norquist’s pledge largely benefits billionaires like Singer and Schwarzman, who pay almost nothing in payroll taxes and likely pay a lower rate than their secretaries.

I know he's got an obscene amount of money to spread around, but I still get this feeling that old Karl is mentally switching focus to the House and Senate because he's not that optimistic about taking the White House. I could be wrong, but it seems like his heart's not in the presidential race. (Either that, or he already has his backdoor ready switch the electronic vote totals, so it's not an issue:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sensing an opportunity to keep Maine’s Senate seat in Republican hands, a super PAC started by GOP strategist Karl Rove is airing television ads in the state for the first time as part of a $5 million blitz in a handful of states.

The ad airing in Maine criticizes independent candidate Angus King as someone who supported tax increases as governor and also helped turn a surplus into a deficit. King was elected governor in 1994 and served two terms.

King is favored in a three-way race with Republican Charlie Summers and Democrat Cynthia Dill. The former Democrat backs President Barack Obama but supported George W. Bush in 2000. Republicans are worried that King would caucus with Democrats if elected to the Senate, but King won’t say if that’s the case.

Crossroads GPS is spending $309,000 on the ad campaign, which began Tuesday. The ad says King managed to turn a $60 million surplus into a nearly $1 billion shortfall. ‘‘With this record, Maine can’t afford Angus King in the Senate,’’ the ad’s narrator says.

Oh dear, oh dear. If the IRS rules that KKKarl Rove's Crossroads GPS superPAC is taking part in political campaign activity, not only will they be on the hook for a 70 percent tax bill, they might have to disclose their donors, too. On the bright side, they will be on the hook for a 70 percent tax bill, and they'll have to disclose their donors! Via Dan Froomkin:

WASHINGTON -- A new report from Congress' nonpartisan research arm suggests that the Internal Revenue Service won't have much patience with the argument from groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS that the ads it buys shouldn't be counted as political campaign activity.

The claim that ads attacking candidates aren't political -- as long as they avoid words like "vote" or "elect" -- is key to the empire of shadowy non-disclosing political groups that Rove, the Koch Brothers and other major political players have created.

By insisting that most of their budget goes toward "issue advocacy," rather than influencing elections, these groups exploit a loophole that allows certain non-political groups to keep their donors secret.

The Aug. 30 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), first reported by Diane Freda for Bloomberg BNA, reviews IRS rulings on what qualifies as issue advocacy, and strongly indicates that the Rove-style ads wouldn't be a tough call for the agency -- which could revoke an organization's tax-exempt status.

For instance, a recent $4.2 million Crossroads GPS ad buy attacked four Democratic Senate candidates, using the figleaf of calling on them to do such things as repeal health care or "cut the debt" -- as if there was imminent action about to be taken on the Hill.

The CRS report notes, however, that "when there is no pending legislative vote or other non-electoral activity, the IRS rulings suggest it can be difficult for an ad to avoid being classified as campaign activity."

Crossroads GPS publicly released its 2010 and 2011 tax filings in April, claiming tax-exempt status as a social welfare group under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

But the IRS has not yet approved its status. Should the IRS conclude that the group is primarily political in nature, the results could be politically explosive. Tax experts tell The Huffington Post that political groups that don't disclose their donations and expenditures to the IRS are subject to a 35 percent penalty on all donations that should have been disclosed but weren't and another 35 percent for the expenditure of that donation.

This purely political ad was prepared by the American Energy Alliance, which has a 501(c)4 tax exemption from the IRS. This exemption allegedly means it engages in charitable and community action and is not engaged in politics. The AEA is funded by the Koch brothers. It's bad enough groups like this are destroying democracy - but they're tax exempt, too?

I'm glad that the IRS is looking at this, but forcing people to disclose after the election may be far too late. They may have bought the election by then:

An Internal Revenue Service decision revoking the tax-exempt status of a small political nonprofit organization may foreshadow an investigation into groups such as Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA that spend millions on the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

At risk would be the groups’ nonprofit status, which lets them collect millions of dollars from individuals and corporations while keeping donors anonymous.

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are benefitting from such nonprofits.

Crossroads GPS was started with help from former President George W. Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Priorities USA was co-founded by Bill Burton, a former Obama aide.

The recent IRS decision sends a signal that it may turn its attention after November’s election to major nonprofits involved in this year’s election, said Marcus Owens, a lawyer and former IRS director who oversaw nonprofits.

“The message is groups like Crossroads need to be prepared to explain to the IRS why they’re entitled to tax-exempt status,” said Owens.

Why wait? It won't make much difference after the election.

The IRS decision released last month involved a so-called campaign school in which a partisan group trained candidates.

“You are not operated primarily to promote social welfare because your activities are conducted primarily for the benefit of a political party and a private group of individuals, rather than the community as a whole,” said the IRS letter telling the group it was losing its exempt status.

While the nonprofit wasn’t named, it was Emerge America, its president, Karen Middleton, told Bloomberg News. The national organization is based in San Francisco and works with nine state affiliates that train Democratic women candidates.

Middleton said in an e-mail that the national and state organizations are now incorporated under Section 527 of the tax code, which requires them to disclose their donors.

Critics of political nonprofits such as Crossroads and Priorities USA said the same IRS reasoning should apply to those groups. The organizations are incorporated under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, giving them exempt status as social- welfare organizations and barring political activity as the primary focus.

“There’s a boatload of groups that they should looking at,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. “When you look at the budgets of these groups, it’s clear that their primary purpose is political activity.”

I'm sure this will come as no surprise to anyone. The GOP is vowing to use the financial infrastructure they created in 2010 to continue pounding the President and Democrats in order to take over the government in 2012. This New York Times report lays it out pretty clearly:

Buoyed by the impact their blistering, anti-Democratic campaigns have had this year, two of the largest new conservative groups helping Republicans are planning to keep pushing their agenda in the lame-duck session of Congress that will begin in two weeks and are already laying the groundwork for a more aggressive campaign in the 2012 presidential race.

[...]

Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of American Crossroads, which, like Crossroads GPS, was started with help from the Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, said he also informed major donors late last week that “research and development” was under way to make the groups even more effective in the next election, part of a pitch for continued investment toward a larger goal.

“It’s a bigger prize in 2012, and that’s changing the White House,” Mr. Duncan said. “We’ve planted the flag for permanence, and we believe that we will play a major role for 2012.”

Gosh, that reads like they're bragging about buying the government, doesn't it? It sure does to me.

This effort is the accumulation of thirty years' work. They moved all the pieces into place for 2010, and plan to reinforce them for 2012. It may be the Koch brothers who are getting the heat, but don't be fooled by them -- there are many, many, many people out there with the money and the means to buy the US government lock, stock and barrel if we let them.

The truth is that they can buy ads, and they can kill a forest with mailers, and they can own media outlets, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it, other than get people to start thinking with their heads instead of the instant-gratification mode we seem to live in.

No one will care about those ads if we can recapture the populists that were hijacked by the Tea Party nonsense. Not one. But it's going to require constant engagement and a willingness to actually stay focused.