Tea Party’s Next Targets

Blocking judges and federal appointees and even killing the gas tax might be next for the band of ragtag obstructionist rebels known as the Tea Party.

by Daniel Stone , Eleanor Clift | August 7, 2011 10:0 AM EDT

As the nation sweated the very real possibility that America would default on its debt, a band of the freshman congressmen blamed for the standoff gathered for a long-promised pot of seafood gumbo at the home of Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL), just a few blocks from the panicked Capitol.

These 19 Tea Party freshmen, as they’ve become known—derided as “terrorists” by Vice President Joe Biden and “bizarro” by their own Republican Party icons like John McCain—showed no remorse about bringing the nation to the brink of financial Armageddon.

Instead, they calmly traded stories about families and what brought them to politics, poked fun at their accusers, and reveled in the satisfaction of knowing they had dramatically brought Washington to its knees—eventually to accept a deal, bitter to both parties, that slices $2.4 trillion from federal spending over the next decade without any immediate tax hikes.

This ragtag band of proud obstructionists is already looking down the calendar to its next targets: blocking President Obama’s judicial and federal-agency nominations, radically restructuring Medicare and other entitlement programs, and maybe even killing the gasoline tax.

“There are some more things we want to go after—we're not done,” said Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), who stood in the kitchen and stirred the pot of seafood gumbo that night. Now his fellow cast of novice politicians hopes to collectively stir a pot of political fear and anger unseen in a generation or two in Washington, if ever.

Jawboned into spending concessions they could never have imagined weeks ago, the White House and Democrats are no longer underestimating the GOP’s Tea Party wing and plan to mount a relentless campaign this fall to pillory the group as extremist and hypocritical.

From left: Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). , AP Photo

“It’s about destroying the public space,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told Newsweek, testing a line certain to make the fall attacks. “They did win [the debt-ceiling debate]. But they didn’t win it with the American people. They don’t believe in government roles … and we need to make sure the public knows it.”

Matt Bennett, of the Democratic group Third Way, expects Democrats to castigate the Tea Party as “reckless.”

“You can paint the entire Republican Party with the Tea Party, that these people are crazy ideologues, not fit to govern. They’re revolutionaries,” Bennett says.

Hypocrisy may also enter the equation.

For instance, while he was a constant presence on TV preaching the Tea Party’s mantra of getting America’s fiscal house in order, Illinois freshman Rep. Joe Walsh was stung by a story about his own fiscal house when the Chicago Sun-Times revealed he owes more than $100,000 in back child support.

“There are some more things we want to go after—we're not done,” said Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA).

Likewise, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the Tea Party’s iconic figure on the presidential-campaign trail, is facing scrutiny for the gulf between her rhetoric and her record. She collected a federal salary as a lawyer representing the IRS (an agency despised by the Tea Party), owned a stake in her father-in-law’s farm that collected federal agriculture subsidies, collected tens of thousands of dollars for caring for 23 foster children, and advocated for millions of dollars in special pet projects—known as earmarks—and stimulus projects for her congressional district while portraying both forms of federal spending as wasteful.

To the intended targets of these attacks, it may not matter.

If there is one thing clear from the Tea Party caucus’ first triumph, it is that its members don’t adhere to Washington convention or care about public sentiment. The greater the criticism, the more they stiffen. Their singular focus is collapsing the size of government, at any cost.

No tactic is too extreme, no issue too small (debt-ceiling votes used to be routine before they came to Washington), and no offer of a federal project for their district or a glitzy committee assignment can lure them from the stubborn line they intend to hold against spending.

“So you’re sitting down with [Speaker] Boehner and [House Majority Leader] Cantor, and they’re offering you stuff for a vote,” Walsh, the Illinois Republican, recalls. “They can help you and do some things, you know, committee assignments and help moving up the chain.

“But whew,” he says, making a whistling sound and sweeping his hand over his head. “You’re talking beyond me. I just don’t care.”

That just-don’t-give-a-damn attitude makes this group a force to be reckoned with in Congress, even if they are left with few friends in Washington besides each other or are driven from office in just one or two terms. They plan to just go out and get more folks like them to run for Congress.

Matt Kibbe of Freedom Works, a nonprofit political group that has supported the Tea Party’s agenda, expects the movement to target 12 to 14 Senate races and aim to knock off at least two establishment Republicans in next year’s primaries in hopes of adding to the Tea Party ranks.

The reason for their already oversize leverage is simple mathematics. Between the House and Senate, there are about 100 mostly fiscally conservative Republicans loosely aligned with the Tea Party movement. The biggest bloc comes from the 87 House freshmen and a handful of bombastic first-time senators like Rand Paul of Kentucky who won seats in the 2010 elections. A few are veterans of Congress, like Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bachmann of Minnesota, who used to be marginalized until the freshman crowd arrived.

Now the Tea Party alliance in Congress is big enough to block what it wants if it can stay together.

It has literally created a new form of triangulation—a term coined by strategist Dick Morris to describe President Bill Clinton’s strategy of governing between a Republican Congress, a Democratic minority, and a Democratic-controlled White House in the 1990s.

This time the geometry of triangulation is different. Obama is hunkered in one corner with House and Senate Democrats, who are increasingly alienated by the president’s willingness to compromise with the conservative wing of the GOP. Establishment Republicans like Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell occupy the second corner with the GOP’s traditional moneyed allies like the Chamber of Commerce. And then there is the Tea Party in corner No. 3.

Though the Tea Partiers blocked Sen. Tom Coburn’s bipartisan plan for cutting the deficit, they nonetheless earned the respect of the longtime fiscal hawk for putting deficit spending front and center in a nation mostly ignorant about its consequences.

“I think they’re great for the country,” Coburn tells Newsweek and The Daily Beast. “I don’t think we could have gotten this far without them, and I hope they grow.”

Frankly, the Tea Party members had no idea how powerful they could be until the vote to raise the debt ceiling arrived and they played an unrelenting game of chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States.

They firmly believed that raising the debt ceiling would simply continue America’s addiction to borrowing and spending, so they were bent on stopping it at all cost. Most withheld their support from a half-dozen plans floated to raise the limit and trim spending, and openly stated they were willing to let America default on its debts rather than settle for spending cuts they deemed too small—even at $4 trillion over 10 years. In the end, only about half the Tea Party caucus members in the House voted for the final deal.

Now, with a victory, they’re even more emboldened. Some Tea Party freshmen are planning to forgo part of their summer vacations just to thwart Obama’s ability to slip some of his long-blocked appointees into government jobs with a tactic known as recess appointments. To do so, the lawmakers plan to take three-day shifts each in the Capitol to prevent Congress from going into formal recess.

In the fall, the group plans to band together to oppose judicial nominees it believes are too favorable to increasing the size and influence of government, creating a standoff that could strain an already understaffed court system.

The famed tax activist Grover Norquist, whose alliance with the Tea Party faithful during the debt debate helped kill off any talk of tax hikes, has already set his sights on harnessing the Tea Party for another big, and until recently unexpected, tax battle. The annual federal excise tax on gasoline—which funds road and bridge construction—is set to expire Sept. 30.

Normally its extension is automatic, but Norquist hopes to unleash the Tea Party’s fury to block its renewal, betting that the appeal of shaving the price of $4-a-gallon gas will have populist appeal. It's an idea that rarely got much traction until the Tea Party appeared.

The biggest target for the Tea Party arrives around the holidays when a special 12-member committee of Congress, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, must identify $1.5 trillion in a second round of cuts required under the just-signed debt deal.

Congress can’t tinker with the committee’s recommendations, and can only vote them up or down. If the plan doesn’t pass, draconian cuts across the government and military take effect automatically.

It’s exactly the sort of gun-to-head scenario the Tea Party relishes. And it's a good bargaining position to be in, several of the freshmen concede.

The long-term question is whether the Tea Party can morph into something bigger, or whether it is a typical flash-in-the-pan movement that taps into American rage during a prolonged recession, just as Patrick Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s short-lived movements did during the recession of the early 1990s.

"The Tea Party today is the Buchanan Brigades and the Perotistas of ’92," Buchanan told Newsweek and The Daily Beast. "They rebelled against Bush One’s raising taxes and Bush One’s New World Order. It was a nationwide rebellion, and it was still the theme in ’94.”

But those movements faded as then-president Bill Clinton managed to move the U.S. economy from recession to the Internet boom and balanced the budget to the point of generating surpluses.

For however long this crowd stays in Washington, its members don’t intend to get distracted. And that means Washington had better be prepared for another round of rowdy hostage taking this fall.

Explosive Jackie O tapes 'reveal how she believed Lyndon B Johnson killed JFK and had affair with movie star'

• She will allegedly reveal affair with actor William Holden
• Believed Vice-President Johnson was behind husband's assassination

By LIZ THOMAS

Last updated at 6:20 PM on 8th August 2011

Former first lady Jackie Kennedy is said to have made the tapes within months of JFK's assassination

Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal.

The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him.

She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy.

Texas-born Mr Johnson, who served as the state’s governor and senator, completed Mr Kennedy’s term and went on to be elected president in his own right.

The tapes were recorded with leading historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963, and had been sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston. 

The then Mrs Kennedy, who went on to marry Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, had ordered that they should not be released until  50 years after her death, with some reports suggesting she feared that her revelations might make her family targets for revenge.

She died 17 years ago from cancer aged 64 and now her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, has agreed to release the recordings early.

John and Jackie Kennedy with daughter Caroline, who allowed the tapes to be released to ABC in return for their cancelling of the mini series about the family

Jackie is said to reveal her affair with actor William Holden, right, which she did in retaliation for her husband's many flings

In the tapes, Jackie allegedly blames President Lyndon Johnson for the death of JFK, who took over the post from her husband after his assassination

Daughter Caroline Kennedy released the 'explosive' tapes

A programme featuring the tapes will be aired by U.S. network ABC, and it is understood British broadcasters are in talks to show it here too.

ABC executives claimed the tapes’ revelations were ‘explosive’.

They are believed to include the suggestion that Mr Kennedy was having an affair with a 19-year-old White House intern, with his wife even claiming that she found knickers in their bedroom.

And they go on to reveal that she too had affairs – one with Hollywood star William Holden and another with Fiat founder Gianni Agnelli – as a result of the president’s indiscretions. It has also been claimed that, in the weeks before Mr Kennedy’s assassination, the couple had turned a corner in their relationship and were planning to have more children.

Historian Edward Klein, who has written several books on the Kennedy clan, said: ‘Jackie regarded the pretty young things in the White House as superficial flings for Jack. She did retaliate by having her own affairs.

‘There was a period during which she was delighted to be able to annoy her husband with her own illicit romances.’

It is believed that Caroline, 53, agreed to the early release of the tapes in exchange for ABC dropping its £10million drama series about the family.

The Kennedys, starring Tom Cruise’s wife Katie Holmes as Jackie, critically charted the family’s political and personal trials and tribulations since the 1930s. The series was eventually broadcast on an independent cable channel,  and on BBC2 in the UK, against Caroline’s wishes.

A spokesman for ABC said the claims about the content of the tapes were 'erroneous'.

He said: ‘The actual content of the tapes provide unique and important insight into our recent past from one of the most fascinating and influential First Ladies in American history.’

The broadcaster did not reply to repeated requests for comment and would not clarify what was on the tapes, saying the programme was not scheduled for broadcast until mid-September.

Nouriel Roubini’s Photos

Nouriel 11 hours 58 mins ago Twitter

I was just on Bloomberg TV with Tom Keene. Heading for a double dip in most advanced economies. yfrog.com/kfg9wxxj

My art piece "Two Gilded Ages" by Jeremy Dean: Income share of top 1% & bottom 90% from 1915 to 2010 yfrog.com/gzs64rxj

A Tea Party Caucus Fracas

Hastily written on August 5, 2011 in D.C. Douglas, Politics, Production and Voice Over. Comments (28)

The title almost sounds French so I must quickly apologize to any Tea Party patriots reading.  I meant no disrespect.   You guys certainly don’t surrender as easily as theydo!  A little history joke!  (Too bad most Americans only remember them helping us out during our revolution…  I think they sent crepes to Valley Forge, not sure.)

Fellow Americans! I am taking a moment out of my wretched liberal existence here in Hollywood to present a gift to the Tea Party.  Yes, indeed, I have cancelled tonight’s orgy with Alec Baldwin and Barbra Streisand.  I told John Cusack he would have to smoke his Mary Jane and eat his mushrooms alone in Joshua Tree park this weekend.  I even ended my Skype session with Rosie O’Donnell in the middle of her using foul language!

I did this, countrymen, so I could bring you a very important video.  A patriotic video that does what the media elites won’t do — Thanks the Tea Party for their patriotic work on the debt ceiling negotiations… Because someone has to!

If you are moved as I was, please pass this on to a Tea Party member you know.  Then hug them tightly (keeping your pelvic area out of the danger zone).

You can also stumble, digg, fark, tweet, facebook or boing this sucker – that helps, too!

The hypocrisy of "states' rights" conservatives

SUNDAY, AUG 7, 2011 10:01 ET

The 10th Amendment is sacred to the right -- except when it comes to fighting abortion and gay rights

BY ED KILGORE

AP/Jacquelyn Martin

Jonathan Paul Ganucheau, 24, left, and, Denise Buckbinder Ganucheau, 26, both of Dallas, Texas, have a religious wedding ceremony performed as part of a protest against same sex marriage

During the last two weeks, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, by most accounts on the brink of a presidential candidacy, has reversed himself on the question of the proper venue for dealing with the two of the hoariest cultural issues in American politics, same-sex marriage and abortion.

First, at a Republican governors meeting on July 22, he referred to the recent decision by the New York legislature to legalize gay marriage as something that was "fine with me," and said further: "That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business." But then, in a matter of days, he was performing what can only be described as a public act of penance on Christian right potentate Tony Perkins’ radio show, trumpeting his support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage nationally.

Meanwhile, on July 27, Perry took another hard-line states’ rights position, this time on abortion:

Despite holding personal pro-life beliefs, Texas Gov. Rick Perry categorized abortion as a states’ rights issue today, saying that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, it should be up to the states to decide the legality of the procedure.

"You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t," Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston. "You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, 'We’d rather not have states decide that.'"

By August 1, though, after public criticism of Perry from anti-abortion leaders, he backtracked again and made clear his support for a federal constitutional amendment banning abortion as well.

Aside from making Perry look like a flip-flopping pol who is afraid of conservative activist groups, these incidents probably confused some folks about what the authorized "true conservative" position on these issues actually is. Do they favor states’ rights or federal domination of state policy-makers on cultural issues? And if it’s the latter, how come so much recent conservative activism on abortion and same-sex marriage has played out on the state level?

The history of cultural conservatives on these issues is very clear: They favor the maximum legal heft the political market can bear in support of their views. From their point of view, a federal constitutional ban is ideal; federal statutes would be less effective but better than state action; and state action (via either state constitutional amendments or statutes) is a useful fallback position if national bans aren’t practical. Though conservatives often vary in their sense of whether federal or state efforts are most effective at any given moment, it is hard to find conservative activists who actually think the 10th Amendent’s reservation of non-enumerated powers to the states should be dispositive on these issues, which they consider a matter of fundamental, global, eternal issues of right or wrong.

Same-sex marriage is a relatively recent issue that first exploded into the national political arena in 1993 when Hawaii courts appeared to be moving towards a ruling banning discrimination against same-sex couples in the issuance of marriage licenses. The ensuing agitation led to the enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act by Congress in 1996, which supposedly protected states (and the federal government) from any obligation to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states, and then to a vast array of politically-driven state-level statutes, ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments banning such marriages or even civil unions and domestic partnership arrangements.

While some conservatives appeared to be happy with the idea of same-sex marriage being confined to a few liberal states, the steadily proliferation of states allowing gay marriage, along with court decisions undermining DOMA (followed by the Obama administration’s announcement that it wouldn’t pursue DOMA enforcement), has helped "traditional family" groups crack the whip among Republicans on behalf of a federal amendment. The 1996 and 2000 Republican Party platforms did not mention a federal amendment but instead simply endorsed DOMA and its enforcement. But the 2004 and 2008 platforms did endorse a federal amendment. With public opinion rapidly trending in favor of marriage equality, it has become far more common to hear Republican politicians argue against a big effort to enact a federal marriage amendment on practical grounds. In the current presidential cycle, Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich all favor a federal marriage amendment; only Ron Paul and Herman Cain have said they are opposed.

On the abortion front, the obvious difference is that federal constitutional law currently protects (to a greater or lesser degree) abortion rights, circumscribing the opportunities for anti-abortion activism. The fundamental position of the right-to-life movement, which has been enshrined in every national Republican platform since 1984(the 1976 and 1980 platforms endorsed a constitutional amendment, but with ambiguous language about its scope) is in favor of a Human Life Amendment that would not only overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but would establish fetal rights from the earliest moments of pregnancy (perhaps even prior to implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterine wall, threatening many popular contraceptive methods) as a matter of federal constitutional law. There is sometimes confusion on this point, since the only constitutional amendment calling itself a “Human Life Amendment” that obtained a congressional vote, a 1983 measure that failed in the Senate, merely denied a constitutional right to abortion, which would have effectively reversed Roe and turned the issue back to the states. But the term now clearly refers to the more sweeping variety of amendment banning abortion nationally.

While the ultimate position of the anti-abortion movement and the GOP as a party (with fewer and fewer dissenters each year) couldn’t be much clearer, there has been an explosion of state-level anti-abortion activity during the last few years, much of it stimulated by the first real crack in the wall of Supreme Court protection of abortion rights, the 2007 Gonzalez v. Carhart decision that validated a federal ban on so-called "partial-birth abortion." By expressing a tolerant attitude toward restrictions that don’t directly ban abortions, and by stipulating that lawmakers (presumably at either the state or federal level) could make factual determinations about the actual necessity of certain post-viability abortions to protect the health of women or the interests of the fetus, the decision seemed to open the door to a variety of restrictions, some aimed at procedures, some at abortion providers, and some at women seeking abortions.

Very recently, conservatives in a number of states have pursued "personhood" bills, ballot initiatives and constitutional amendment proposals that would test the limits of the federal courts’ deference to legislative policy-makers on abortion, and/or set the table for total abortion bans in the case of a hypothetical future reversal of Roe. (Most conspicuously, a 2010 ballot initiative in Colorado pursuing a "personhood amendment" was routed at the polls, but another will appear on the ballot in Mississippi this November).

With much greater success, anti-abortion activists have been promoting "fetal pain" bills that seek to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy (a standard that flatly contradicts Roe’s prohibition on bans prior to the third trimester of pregnancy) on the highly questionable grounds that this is the point at which the fetus can experience pain. Such bills have been enacted in Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, Indiana and Alabama. Legal challenges to these laws will eventually emerge, though some pro-choice advocates fear a rollback of federal constitutional abortion rights and note that only 1.5 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks.

Lest anyone think the fetal pain bills reflect a retreat from the right-to-life movement’s commitment to a national "solution" to abortion, it’s noteworthy that the pro-life group the Susan B. Anthony List recently pressed on presidential candidates a pledge that included support for a federal fetal pain statute. Candidates Bachmann, Pawlenty, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul signed on to it while Romney, Huntsman and Cain declined. (Romney, for his part, did not mention the fetal pain issue in his objections to the pledge.)

Since he is not a candidate just yet, Rick Perry hasn’t had to make up his mind about a federal fetal pain law. But given his recent experience, he is likely to deal with future demands from the Christian right and other cultural conservatives by simply saying: "Where do I sign?"

Will Voters Boot Wisconsin Republicans? 7 Things to Know About Tuesday's Recall Elections

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Posted on August 5, 2011, Printed on August 8, 2011

Tuesday, August 9 is going to be a big day not just for Wisconsin politics, but nationally. It was this winter, after all, that the Capitol building in Madison was the scene of not just protest, but a full-on occupation by workers and allies enraged by Republican governor Scott Walker's bill stripping collective bargaining rights from the state's public employees. Teachers, students, organized labor, local and national progressive groups, leaders, and even rock stars convened in Wisconsin to join the rallies, but the bill was passed anyway.
The movement in Wisconsin pivoted then from massive protest to massive organizing, and now Tuesday will see the recall elections of six Republican state senators who supported Walker's anti-worker bill. One Democratic state senator, Dave Hansen, has already successfully retained his seat after a July 19 election, and two other Democrats face recalls on August 16.
Just three wins, and the Democrats regain control of the state senate. And the polls look good to do just that. But Walker and his corporate and Tea Party cronies aren't going to give up easily, and with all political junkies' eyes on Wisconsin in the coming days, expect plenty of drama and dirty tricks.
Only three times in U.S. history have recall elections switched party control of a legislative body; Wisconsin has only seen two legislators recalled in its history. This is an unprecedented fight, and it's one where Democrats, progressives, and organized labor have been on the offensive. It has huge implications.
"I believe if given the facts they're going to make good decisions," Walker told reporters of the recalls. We couldn't agree more. We've compiled a list of things to keep in mind while the voters make those decisions.

1. Voter suppression
Wisconsin native Meredith Clark called Scott Walker's voter ID bill his “evil genius masterpiece.” The bill doesn't go into effect until 2012, but it requires poll workers to start asking for photo ID right away—a surefire tactic for confusing and driving away voters who believe they don't have the right to vote without these documents. (Though it's unlikely to have an impact before the recalls Tuesday, Walker also ordered closed several DMVs in Democratic districts, making it harder for voters to get state-issued photo ID.)
And that's just the legal voter suppression.
The other kind? Well, Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers' group) sent out absentee ballot applications to at least two of the districts that are holding recalls with instructions to mail the ballot back days after the real deadline of August 9. AFP called the mislabeled date a typo, but this isn't the first time AFP has been involved in some election shenanigans in Wisconsin, as AlterNet's Adele Stan reported.
It may be the first time, though, that they're so openly colluding with the religious right; as Stan wrote:

“The address for the "Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center" on the return envelope is a Madison post office box, 1327, that is the mailing address for Wisconsin Family Action, a religious-right group that is virulently anti-gay, and was a vocal supporter of Wisconsin's 2006 anti-same-sex-marriage ballot measure, which passed into law.”

A Milwaukee prosecutor also looked into charges that Wisconsin Right to Life and Family Action were offering gift cards to volunteers who signed up anti-choice voters to vote by absentee ballot in the recalls.
After a closely-watched state Supreme Court election was decided by 14,000 votes mysteriously found by a Waukesha County clerk, it's a safe bet that there will be more battles over the voting process in the next week.

2. Corporate cash
Elections aren't cheap in the post-Citizens United age, and these recalls have already broken records for spending in five districts. The amount of outside cash pouring in is staggering; the 8^th district, where Alberta Darling faces a challenge from Sandy Pasch, $7.9 million has already been spent. The Club for Growth alone has dumped $400,000 into Darling's race, which Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate called the "crown jewel" of the six.
Darling is the co-chair of the legislature's Joint Finance Committee, the committee that passed Walker's anti-union bill. She was originally considered the safest of the recall targets, but Pasch has polls that show her within range or even ahead of Darling.
As far as where the money is coming from to make these races so costly, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post noted:

“In fairness, labor is investing big money in the recall wars too, via a major ad campaign being waged by the labor-backed We Are Wisconsin. But labor has been involved in this fight since the beginning, and the sudden influx of outside conservative money suggests that national right wing activists understand that if Dems take back the state senate, it would represent a massive blow to their broader agenda.”

3. Women's issues
Unions were the big issues that led to the recall campaigns, but Walker and his crew have been awful on many issues. Walker's targeted Planned Parenthood for deep funding cuts and has a long history of anti-abortion action. and Wisconsin Right to Life has been pouring in funding and won a court battle just this week, removing the state's limit of $10,000 on individual donations to a candidate or political action committee. Right to Life's PAC isn't the only one bringing in the big bucks—Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition is involved as well.
The attacks on public sector workers has hit women hard as well. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, told me several months ago that Walker's union-busting bill was falling heavily on public sector nurses and teachers; jobs that are disproportionately female (and also disproportionately people of color). “Their plan unfolds on us and it's landing disproportionately on women because we're in the public sector,” Henry said.
It's no wonder, then, that five of the six Democratic challengers are women, and that national groups like EMILY's List and prominent national politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand, the senator from New York, are calling on women to support them with donations as well as votes and volunteer time. Nancy Nusbaum, running in the 2^nd district, is a former head of the pro-choice group Wisconsin NARAL, and Shelly Moore, in the 10^th district, is a member of the National Education Association Board of Directors.

4. National election picture
The 2012 election might be a presidential election year, but it's going to hinge on the states. Deeply unpopular conservative governors have driven polls up for Democratic incumbents, like Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who were previously looking vulnerable, and if Wisconsin is trending Democratic in 2012, that could be a good sign for Barack Obama's reelection (though he should be careful not to assume that he can ride reverse coattails if the national jobs picture is still dismal).
Meanwhile, Wisconsin's senior Senator, Herb Kohl, is retiring in 2012. Kohl is the lone Democrat representing the state after the defeat of progressive hero Russ Feingold in 2010. And a Wisconsin leaning left could be poised to elect the first out lesbian to the Senate—if Representative Tammy Baldwin decides to run. (“I think I am likely to run,” she told the Capital Times.) Widely considered one of the most progressive members of the House, Baldwin polls second among possible Democratic candidates to...Russ Feingold, though he has said he'll hold off a decision until September and has urged other Dems to get in the race.
Either one of them would add a much-needed progressive voice to the Senate.
There's also Paul Ryan, one of the austerity-obsessed GOP House leaders, who hails from Wisconsin's 1^st district.McClatchy reported:

“A Ryan loss would cost his party a lot more than a seat in Congress. It would deprive it of one of its most influential figures. And it would be a huge blow to its policy agenda, which Ryan has played a central role in crafting.”

Defeating Ryan would be an uphill battle, but a resurgent Democratic party will certainly give him the run of his life—and his popularity is stumbling after his polarizing budget proposal, which would have taken a hatchet to Medicare, among other things.
It's no wonder that organizations like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee are recruiting volunteers from around the country to call out the vote in Wisconsin.

5. The Tea Party
Scott Walker was one of the Tea Party-backed governors swept in in 2010, and the six state senators being recalled are closely linked to him. And the Tea Party is pulling out all the stops to keep them in power.
Andy Kroll at Mother Jones writes:

“Spearheaded by the Tea Party Express, the "Restoring Common Sense" tour brings together four different conservative groups—TPX, Tea Party Nation, FreedomWorks, and the Patriot Action Network—and plans to hit nine cities in what the groups see as a crucial battle to keep the GOP senators in office, and thus prevent Democrats from jamming up Republican Governor Scott Walker's agenda.”

The Tea Party may have been declining in influence since the protests erupted in Madison so spectacularly this winter, but they're not giving up and going away quietly, and the politicians they backed continue to forge ahead with destructive policies. The successful recall of several of the Republican state senators in Wisconsin could be a serious—and very public—blow to the image that the Tea Party so desperately wants to cling to, of a massive popular movement.

6. Labor
Organized labor has been declared dead so many times that it took even progressives completely by surprise when union-busting was the catalyst for some of the biggest, most dynamic protests this country's seen in a while. The protests were organic, pulled together by grassroots groups, but the big unions quickly realized the potential and made Madison a rallying point for their cause. And it spread to nearby Indiana and Ohio.
Labor knows that these recalls are going to be a show of its power, something it can point to come 2012 when the Democratic party comes calling for the usual ground troops. Significant victories here will prove that the unions still have the power to make or break an election, as well as provide an obvious issue for national Dems to rally around. If the recalls succeed, the so-called pivot to jobs that the administration and Congress are talking about after the deeply unpopular debt ceiling deal might actually succeed.

7. Recall Walker?
Scott Walker isn't eligible for a recall yet, because he hasn't been in office a full year. But if the Democrats manage to take back the state senate, expect a big target on Walker's back just as soon as it's possible.
Want up-to-the-minute updates on the recalls? Keep an eye on AlterNet, as we'll be following them closely, but there's also this Twitter list of Wisconsin tweeters that you can follow for the latest.

*An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Sandy Pasch was African-American.

THUNE: Another broccoli mandate?

Big Nanny mulls forcing long-term care costs down our throats

By Sen. John Thune

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The Washington Times

6:14 p.m., Friday, August 5, 2011

Illustration: Obamacare mandate by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

 When Congress was debating the Obamacare law last year, I raised many concerns about the size and scope of the law and the outrageous amount of new federal taxes and spending it created. Like many people, I also have grown concerned about the law’s impact on Americans’ personal freedoms. My concern stems not only from its controversial mandate that every American buy health insurance, but also from other federal mandates that could follow.

In challenging Obamacare’s individual mandate, the law’s critics have pointed out that if Congress can force Americans to buy health insurance, federal power would be nearly unlimited. Congress could pass a law requiring you to eat broccoli, for instance. Until recently, Democrats have derided this argument; the market for health care is unique, they have said, and so-called broccoli mandates would be so frivolous that Congress would never enact them.

Yet just last month, President Obama’s former budget director, Peter Orszag, changed course, suggesting that Congress should impose another mandate on the American people. Writing about the CLASS Act - a long-term care program created in Obamacare - Mr. Orszag admitted that the program suffers from a “serious risk” that only sick people will participate, making it unsustainable. He said the solution to this problem “may be to make the purchase of such insurance mandatory.”

Think about that for a minute. Before the health insurance mandate came along, a federal requirement for people to buy a particular product - insurance or anything else - was unprecedented in our nation’s history. Yet a little more than one year later, there already is a call for the federal government to impose another mandate on the American people. The first step in this direction was bad enough. A second step clearly would take us down a dangerous path of even more federal overreach.

This is not just idle speculation by a former government official. In fact, the way the Obama administration has defended its health care law makes it seem almost impossible for it to do anything except require that everybody buy into the fatally flawed CLASS program.

Here’s how it works: The administration claims that the insurance mandate is “essential” because, without it, insurance markets would be subject to adverse selection - only sick people would enroll and premiums would skyrocket as a result. But the CLASS Act is subject to the same - or even greater - adverse selection pressures as the market for health insurance. So if Obamacare has an essential mandate to purchase health insurance, it seems it would be just as essential that the government mandate participation in CLASS.

I am afraid that line of reasoning could be used to require people to participate in the CLASS program whether they want to or not. Even Democrats have derided the CLASS Act, with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad calling it a “Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”

The program was drafted in such haste that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted to me when appearing before a Senate committee that the CLASS Act is “totally unsustainable” as written in Obamacare.

That is the best reason to reject this kind of individual mandate, whether it is to participate in CLASS or to buy health insurance. Our government should not justify such mandates as “essential,” and therefore constitutional, merely to alleviate pressures caused by sloppy policymaking in Congress.

In rejecting the individual mandate and all of Obamacare in January, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson wrote that upholding the mandate “would have the perverse effect of enabling Congress to pass ill-conceived or economically disruptive statutes, secure in the knowledge that the more dysfunctional the results of the statute are, the more essential or ‘necessary’ the statutory fix would be.”

The CLASS Act and the recent proposal to require Americans to participate in the program provide a prime example of what could happen if the Supreme Court lets unprecedented mandates overcome ill-conceived policy generated byCongress.

We need to make sure this effort is stopped in its tracks - or else start learning to love broccoli.

Sen. John Thune is a South Dakota Republican.