The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right
	Author: Lee Fang

After the 2008 and 2012 elections, we all thought the country was shifting toward liberal values. The right wing saw it too, so they warmed up their machine built over 30 years, stretching from Capitol Hill to local school boards. Think tanks and lobby houses, new media and old, consultants and old-time party hacks all fell into line to rev up The Machine against the newly-elected moderate Democrat named Barack Obama.

Yes, Hillary Clinton, there was and still is a vast right wing conspiracy. Luckily for us, Lee Fang has written the story of the conspiracy in the Clinton years and following right up to the 2012 election. Names, dates, and secret meetings are all in one compact book, where Lee's narrative proves what we all know: A small handful of billionaires and corporations drive politicians, the news, and day-to-day political discourse in this country.

Lee is one of the best investigative reporters out there, and his light shines brightest when he takes what he knows and puts it into the context of what we're living through. Those astroturf groups cropping up all over the place during the health care debate? Lee places them with their founders and paints the larger picture of how all of the cogs move together to grind out the daily message. From top to bottom, Lee takes the reader through the mazes of lobbyists, front groups, think tanks, strategists and their associated social media branches.

All of that is great, but it would be a boring read if it were something like a dictionary of right-wing organizations and their roles in the larger scheme. It is a lot of things, but it is definitely not boring. It reads more like a spy novel. Beginning with the tobacco lobbying groups and the Clinton administration through their relative dormancy during the Bush years, to the pre-emptive planned strike when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, readers get to jump on the ride and observe it in real time as Fang unfolds the story, dropping names, places, and dates of meetings. Lee brings an insider's view to the intense competition on the right between the fiscal conservative machine headed up by Grover Norquist and the lesser-known Weyrich Lunch, named as a tribute to Paul Weyrich. Despite some overlap between the two groups, there's a constant tension to control the overall message. Right now the Weyrich Lunch bunch are winning that battle, but winning is less important than keeping the war raging on more than one front.

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Because sometimes 100 seconds is all anyone can stand. More insanity to come, I'm sure.

[h/t TPM]

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Grover Norquist, that King of Government Drownings, seems to have absolutely no problem with excessive and unnecessary defense spending. On the other hand, those terrible tanning taxes and other miscellaneous taxes included in Obamacare (to pay for it) are just the Worst New Thing in the world.

In his appearance on Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulis, Norquist overlooked the amazing overspending on defense and "homeland security" in favor of an Obamacare-bash moment:

VANDEN HEUVEL: I want to make a deal with Grover. I want to make a deal with Grover. There are fair share ways to reduce the deficit. Short-term deficit isn't the main problem we have, but the Republicans last week voted to keep the defense budget out of the cuts, out of the sequester.

I would like to say to Mr. Norquist that the left and right, citizens of conscious and sanity, should agree that the most bloated, wasteful, fraudulent piece of our budget is the defense budget, and we should make cuts in that. We should do a financial transaction tax. We should tackle the subsidies to big oil, big pharma. Those are the drivers of the problems of our economy. Social Security shouldn't -- by law cannot contribute to the federal deficit, so it shouldn't even be in the same sentence with debt.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let him respond.

NORQUIST: While we talk about imaginary things that might happen in the future, on January 1st and 2nd, we have the very real thing that nobody here has talked about, and people at home know -- they haven't been hearing about it from the press, and that is, there is a series of tax increases to pay for Obamacare that start January 2nd in this country. And the president has taken those off the table. This is not part of the sequester or the fiscal cliff.

This is a trillion dollar tax increase over the next decade that just hits. So there's a $20 billion to $30 billion over the next 10 years, tax on medical devices, that is going to make stents or prosthetic devices --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: All passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.

NORQUIST: And it's the law of the land, and it's a tax increase. 90 percent of the tax increases to pay for Obamacare conveniently, interestingly, took effect -- begin to take effect after the president got himself safely re-elected. If you're a poor person and you get sick and you have a 7.5 percent of your adjustable gross income, of your income, used up in medical costs, the president's decided, the Democrats in Congress voted to take that --

Grover seems to be a little off on his timing. There are some taxes that kick in next year, including a small increase on Medicare taxes for the wealthy and a small tax on dividends in 2013. But the majority of the taxes don't take effect until 2014, when the individual mandate comes into being.

The mandate is Grover's biggest bugaboo, but as the Washington Post points out, more people get a tax break from Obamacare than pay more taxes.

To review, we’re talking about 1.2 percent of the population paying penalties, compared to 5 percent receiving tax credits or subsidies.

And those who pay penalties could choose not to pay those penalties, simply by being insured. So there's that.

On the other hand, there is egregious, unnecessary pork that could be cut from the defense budget, but for the fact that it is the Republicans' sacred cow, mixed metaphors notwithstanding. We're spending $45 billion on Homeland Security? Really? Seems like that could be cut way back. Ending the wars is another moneysaver. Closing bases overseas that we're not really using or in need of is another.

But all Grover cares about is complaining that some folks will have access to affordable health insurance in another year. That's terrible, but God forbid we cut back at all on the mayhem we've wrought on the world.

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I do love it when Grover "The Pope" Norquist, my very favorite unindicted co-conspirator, starts lecturing about how everyone should be happy to embrace Paul Ryan's "Let's Throw Granny From The Cliff" budget. It's hard to even keep up with the lies and the obfuscations (although George Stephanopoulos seems to get paid well enough that he should at least try). Then Matthew Dowd does the old "both sides are too extreme and won't let the adults get anything done" but Katrina Vanden Heuvel cuts to the real bottom line and puts them both in their places:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The middle exists in the country, it may not exist in Washington. But on your point about dogma, Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform, of course you popularized the no-tax pledge for many years. But on this plan by the speaker, which would have allowed taxes to go up on those making over $1 million a year, your group said this wasn't a tax increase, and that still wasn't good enough for a lot of House Republicans.

NORQUIST: Look, let's understand. There is a plan to actually solve the debt that's been run up, the deficits that continue, the entitlement reform and tax reform to get more pro-growth tax reform, and that's the Ryan plan, which has actually been passed twice by the House of Representatives. People can talk --

STEPHANOPOULOS: No support in the Senate, no support from the president. It's not going anywhere.

Notice the play here. Instead of pointing out that the Ryan plan is not a real budget, and that many credible sources say so, he comments only on the inside baseball. Time to become a lobbyist, George?

NORQUIST: But the Democrats in the Senate haven't done a budget in three, four years, haven't put anything forward that deals with entitlements.

There's one and only one plan that has actually been passed by one House. The president hasn't put anything forward that fixes entitlements. His plan, his budget, if you continue it out, you know, to 2040, 2050, takes you to 38 percent of GDP and the economy collapses.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: This gets to an issue that I think -- other analysts have brought up during the week, it is, you're right about Congressman Ryan's plan passing the House, but there has been an election in November, and the House Republicans are only one part of Washington right now. They are--

NORQUIST: And the president is only one part. The Republicans actually passed a budget that -- not a budget, not just a budget, but a budget plan that goes out through the years, gives you entitlement reform, gives you pro-growth tax reform, doesn't raise taxes. You don't have to raise taxes to balance the budget. The left wants to raise taxes, but you don't have to, to balance the budget and take the debt down.

So they have got a plan. They've passed it, and they got re-elected having done that. The Senate got re-elected because they never voted on anything. It's the only way they were able to get re-elected. And so they haven't even put something forward, and the president's plan was an outline that the House and the Senate voted against. You can't argue you have a mandate when your own party voted against your budget.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Katrina, respond to that.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, THE NATION: George, there was an election. And Americans voted very clearly for a sense of different priorities than Grover Norquist has stood for. One was that the richest in this country pay their fair share, and I also resist very strongly Matthew Dowd, with the good Band-Aid and all, but what he said about the left and the right. Because it's not just the left, it's not just progressives, it's Americans in survey after survey support Social Security, Medicare.

Katrina, if you insist that progressives aren't some unrepresentative, wacky left-wing equivalent to the Tea Party, you're not going to be invited back!

And to take Social Security away from widowed women when the richest are paying the lowest taxes in modern memory is not about being a compassionate country in this time of season. It is about a country that's lost its way.

There are good ways to reduce the debt and deficit, but the largest issue, George, is that this is a manufactured crisis. We don't have a short-term deficit problem. We have a jobs and growth problem, and we have a faltering recovery, but we should put off the sequester, put off this grand bargain, come back, let the Bush tax cuts expire, make sure the middle class --

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are saying just go over off the cliff at this point.

VANDEN HEUVEL: The cliff is a manufactured media drama, but the largest point is to say that the left or progressives are the ones who are supporting the great reforms of this country at a time when the richest are paying their lowest--

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- that may be, but on January 2nd, when everyone's taxes go up, it may not feel like it's a manufactured media event. It may feel real to an awful lot of Americans.

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The best part of this segment about rational, sane gun laws is Matthew Dowd, centrist extraordinaire, taking a stand firmly against the usual gun argument that the answer to mass shootings like Sandy Hook is to simply arm everyone, including teachers, doctors, preachers and Santa. Dowd made an apt analogy to schoolyard bullies that's quite clear:

When there's a kid in the school yard with a baseball bat, we don't give everybody else baseball bats and say go to deal with it and defend yourself. What we do is we take the baseball bat away from the bad kid or the bully and then we sit down and say what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen -- we've got to take the baseball bat away from the bully.

When Matthew Dowd is the sanest voice, aside from Katrina VandenHeuvel who is always sane, progress is being made.

Grover Norquist plays the Tea Party hand as usual, claiming that this is just lefties ginning up lefty arguments for purely political purposes, which is the typical argument being advanced by gun nuts. I would like to remind Grover that he had no objection to two wars being started or passage of the Patriot Act because of 9-11. Is there no greater and more clear example of using tragedy to advance policy?

That's how it works, Grover. Things happen. People respond. Policy is made in response, for better or for worse. It sounds lovely to try and minimize it by saying "oh, you're just using this tragedy to advance your long-held beliefs." But that's how it works. It's time to stop saying that's a bad thing.

As for Mayor Cory Booker, he is playing the middle against the ends here, as usual. Since he's declared his intention to run for the Senate, he has made the political calculus that "sticking to the pragmatic center" is his safest and best pathway to that office.

Props to Dowd for leaving the safe zone and saying the right thing. Booker could take a lesson from him.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Boy oh boy. This episode of Press The Meat is one for the record books. If you didn't know that Grover was a co-founder of the K Street Project and the host of his infamous Wednesday morning meetings, you might think he was really concerned about the integrity of the political process!

DAVID GREGORY: Grover, I want to start with you as we get first reaction to Secretary Geithner. the line in the sand is clear, and that is that the administration, the president, says that Republicans will indeed blink, that they will ultimately have to acquiesce, tax rates have to go up.

NORQUIST: Well, your interview with him was very, very helpful to me because in the past, there have been some Republicans who thought that maybe the administration, like Clinton, was going to be reasonable, that they might put real reforms like welfare reform like Clinton did on the table. what we just heard was no reforms. He even took the $1 trillion in spending cuts they agreed to, to the debt ceiling, took that off. So we’ll spend $1 trillion more there [...] this is a massive collection of spending increases and tax increases. Every Republican who had impure thoughts of maybe I could raise taxes a little because the other guy would be reasonable has to go back to the drawing board. They have just been told there are no real reforms in this budget at all.

GREGORY: But what about the –

NORQUIST: $1.6 trillion in tax increases, and some of the savings are actually tax increases.

GREGORY: How about the direct point? The Treasury Secretary telling me, look, Republicans are not going to stand in the way of tax rates going up. True or false?

NORQUIST: Republicans want to continue the Bush tax cuts and the extenders and the AMT patch and so on. And what we did two years ago, what Clinton signed two years ago, with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate did two years ago, is exactly what we should do now to start with. It’s the president who is threatening to raise taxes on the middle class if he doesn’t stamp his feet and get his way. He needs to get into a room with cameras there and negotiate. That was all show and no economics. Have it in front of C-SPAN cameras. If the Republicans are reasonable, we’ll see that. If not, we’ll see that. Have cameras there.

Actually, Grover, it wasn't Clinton - it was President Obama who signed that. But it appears you're feeling a little insecure and shaken up lately. I wonder why?

And if you want to negotiations to take place on C-SPAN, fine. Just as soon as your Wednesday morning meetings are televised, too. Only fair, right?

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.

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h/t Scarce

I can never decide if "May you live in interesting times" is a blessing or a curse. When you see Saxby Chambliss smack down the power that Grover Norquist wielded over the Republican Party in DC, I can't decide if this interesting development is a blessing or a curse:

There has been much fanfare about Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss’s (GA) break from Washington Lobbyist Grover Norquist. On a local television station, Chambliss spoke of breaking with Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes under any situation, saying, “I care too much about my country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist.”

Many progressives have been celebrating Chambliss’s rebuke of Norquist. While Norquist is indeed a powerful lobbyist who should not have so much influence over the Republican Party, progressives should not be fooled by Chambliss’s rhetoric. The senator is not breaking from Norquist because he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy or big corporations. Rather, he’s doing it because it will make it easier to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Here’s why. For more than a year, Chambliss has been involved with a group of senators who support the Bowles-Simpson plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits while lowering the corporate tax rate. This Bowles-Simpson plan closes a few token tax loopholes, and also reduces the popular mortgage interest deduction. Norquist is opposed to closing even the tiny loopholes that the Bowles-Simpson plan closes, so he staunchly opposes the plan altogether — which also means opposing Chambliss.

Chambliss is willing to deal with closing small loopholes in the tax code in order to get to the wider goals of the Bowles-Simpson plan: cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age, cutting Medicare benefits by capping overall spending, and dramatically lowering corporate tax rates.

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Dee Dee Benkie, a former Bush campaign aide, was on Fox News' America Live with Heather Childers, fearmongering about their favorite topic of the holiday season: the dread Fiscal Cliff. She was demanding that President Obama actually be president instead of the "mac-daddy candidate" and lead on the fiscal issues. She was quite adamant that the Republicans needed new leadership in the House and Senate, which means that Boehner and McConnell must go. She wants Marco Rubio the earth expert to be the minority leader.

Benkie was also all over Grover Norquist, who has become the favored scapegoat for some right-wingers as they look to pass the blame around.

BENKIE: I think Grover is over too. I mean, what is the deal with this guy? He should not be running Washington. He is part of the problem and we do need to find a way to work together.

Jehmu Greene, a lefty Fox Newsie who apologized to Tucker Carlson for calling him a bow-tie wearing white boy, agreed also that we need to take away Grover Norquist's death grip on the GOP so a deal can be made. Then Dee Dee got to talk about what she really wanted to discuss: spending in Washington.

BENKIE: What we have to stop to is the spending, the spending is so terrible in D.C. The waste is unbelievable when we have so much debt. We have to address that right away.

CHILDERS: What spending cuts?

BENKIE: We've got to cut across the board. I mean, Washington D.C. is so bloated, such terrible waste, and we're broke right now as a country. We need to make sure we can take care of Americans and I don't mean in a way (inaudible) as far as all the entitlements. I mean, we take care of the people who need to be -- we need to take care of the job creators so we don't have a stranglehold on them as far as taxing them to death, and then we've got to adjust Obamacare because it's really, a lot of the businesses right now are struggling. There's so much to be worked on.

CHILDERS) John Boehner said Obamacare needs to be on the table.

GREENE: Obamacare is the law of the land ladies and let's not forget it.

CHILDERS: We'll see.

Dee Dee just throws in a sentence or two about how we have to support the middle class, but then retreats to the republican familiar position of cutting taxes for businesses. Nothing about how we should save Medicare and Medicaid from cruel and unjust cuts just to appease the business owners.

Nope, it's the non-job-creating peons who need to shoulder the sacrifice. As always.

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As scarce noted earlier, Senator Saxby Chambliss is breaking the hold the Norquist pledge has over him. As Georgia goes, so goes the nation? Well, perhaps not, but Chambliss is doing the right thing as are other Republicans who understand that stonewalling just isn't an option if they want to keep their office and also do what's right for the country.

Via ThinkProgress:

“I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge,” Chambliss says. “If we do it his way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.” … Now Chambliss says he wants to do what it takes to right the U.S. fiscal ship, even if that means findings ways to raise revenue, which Norquist strongly opposes.

Does Chambliss think Norquist will hold the anti-tax pledge against him during his next re-election bid in 2014? Yes.

“But I don’t worry about that because I care too much about my country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist,” Chambliss says.

Perhaps Senator Chambliss heard the voters better than some Republicans. I hear rumbles in Tea-Party Land of third party challenges to anyone breaking the pledge. Oh, please, yes. Let the Tea Party break into a third party and see how relevant they become.