At The American Prospect Anna Clark reports on the next step being taken by We Are Michigan organizers to resist the Republicans’ campaign to eviscerate unions in Michigan: “…Right-to-work could still be overturned, not as a referendum but as a ballot initiative to “approve or reject” the law…It has to meet the higher threshold of turning in petitions with enough signatures to equal 8 percent of the turnout in Michigan’s last gubernatorial election–more than 258,000 signatures. Organizers will have 90 days to do it, starting after the legislature adjourns. If they are successful, right-to-work would then go to a state-wide vote.”
Dems must have better monitoring of future ‘right-to-work’ sneak attacks. The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez and David A. Fahrenthold survey the GOP’s prospects for mobilizing ‘Right-to-work’ campaigns in other states.
Republicans had high hopes for getting a hefty bite of the Asian-American vote, but Bobby Cervantes Politico post “Poll: Obama won 71% of Asian vote” makes short work about that pipe dream.
Also at Politico, David Catanese reports that Dems are going after the SC governorship. SC’s senate seats are a bigger stretch, as Nate Silver explains.
If you need more evidence that Speaker Boehner has boxed himself into a political nightmare, check out Jonathan D. Salant’s Bloomberg post “Poll Says Republicans Get More Blame if Budget Talks Fail,” which notes: “The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey also showed that more than three-fourths of respondents — 76 percent — would accept as part of a deal taxes increasing as scheduled on families with annual incomes exceeding $250,000, the position Obama has staked out. Additionally, twice as many people said they trusted Obama over U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, in the talks on avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.”
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich makes an airtight case for reforms to require full disclosure of large campaign donors and matching federal grants for small donations.
Charles M. Blow coins an alliterative term, “the Ecru Era,” to describe the demographic transition, which was so powerful in the 2012 presidential race, long-ago projected by TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira and John Judis in their prophetic “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” Blow observes, “The browning of America is very real and unrelenting. Our task is to find a way to move into this new Ecru Era with as much ease and grace as we can muster. ”
Steve Benen reports at The Maddow Blog that Republicans in Virginia (as well as in PA and OH) are planning to tweak VA voting law to end “winner take all” electoral vote allocation.
Here we go with the ‘middle class malaise.’ But Annie Lowrey’s NYT article about middle-class income stagnation as an increasingly pivotal political force suggests Dems will have to factor it in the policy mix better, tempered by the party’s cornerstone commitment to help the working and unemployed poor.
Politifact gives Mitt the prestigious “Lie of the Year” honors for his silly distortions of Chrysler’s Jeep production plans.

Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine post “In Michigan, the Republican Will to Power” provides a lucid analysis of the rationale behind the GOP’s campaign to crush unions in Michigan, and throughout the industrial heartland. Chait describes the Republican’s ” obsession with the ways in which the power of government can be used to help the governing party maintain its own power” and adds:

… Norquist’s ill-founded suspicions of the Democrats was merely a failed attempt to mirror-image project his own operational mode, which is widely shared among movement conservatives. It was the driving force behind the Bush administration’s failed 2005 campaign to privatize Social Security, which conservatives widely and gleefully predicted would, if successful, bring tens of millions of Americans into the “investor class” and thus transmute them into allies of capital rather than labor.
This is the same mentality at work in numerous states where Republicans, having gained power in the 2010 off-year election wave, have invested their political capital in legal changes designed primarily to tilt the future playing field in their party’s favor. That is the basic purpose of the wave of laws to make voting less convenient (Democrats being more heavily represented among sporadic voters) and to crush unions. As much as Republicans detest unions as economic actors, they hate them far more as political actors, organizing significant minorities of voters as discrete voting blocs aligned with the Democrats.
This is the best way to understand the Republican party’s sudden attack on unions in Michigan. Last year, the Michigan director of Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing activist group, explained, “We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.” Republicans understand full well that Michigan leans Democratic, and the GOP has total power at the moment, so its best use of that power is to crush one of the largest bastions of support for the opposing party.

Despite the Republicans’ delusions to the contrary, Chait concludes “I don’t think Democrats abstain from this behavior (to anything like the degree the GOP employs it) because it’s made of angels. Rather, the Democratic party comprises an economically diverse coalition, including not just labor but business as well.” However, he adds, “nobody in the GOP cares about labor at all, so it’s easier to unify them behind the kind of political/class war strategy we’re seeing here.”

Dems who are following the current economic debate cannot help but be frustrated by the way that Democratic negotiating positions that are actually totally sensible in the context of dealing with an extremist opposition that considers the economy “a hostage worth ransoming” (in “Mich” McConnell’s memorable phrase) are criticized as “unreasonable” by deficit hawk critics who demand “leadership” or “compromise” from Dems – things that the hawks do not demand of the Republicans.
In fact, in a particularly infuriating maneuver, such critics actually use the extremism and irrationality of the GOP as the reason why Dems must meet Republican demands more than half-way. As Michael Gerson actually had the temerity to put it in a column today “Obama must give John Boehner political cover.”
Many of the spokesmen for the deficit hawk point of view are simply acting as open or covert representatives of the GOP and as such their political motivations are clear. But they are also joined by a substantial section of the mainstream media and the business community who begin from the premise that all sides should recognize the need for limits on deficits, spending and debt and a variety of related economic policies. They complain that Democrats are being “unreasonable” when they do not accept such points as the only proper foundation and absolutely necessary starting point for any serious negotiation.
Critics of this kind dismiss practical Democratic counterarguments about the futility of Obama’s attempts to offer historically unprecedented compromises in 2011 and the continual Republican pattern of “moving the goal posts” and undermining previously negotiated agreements as all irrelevant to the present day negotiations. In their perspective “reasonableness” necessarily consists in Democrats always and under all circumstances completely conceding the basic premises of the deficit hawk platform at the outset and negotiating on the basis of that foundation.
What is ironic is that most of the broad and general deficit hawk positions are actually not really controversial if they are viewed as only one partial aspect or component of an overall Keynesian or European Social Democratic approach. For example, not only a standard Keynesian textbook of the 1960’s but modern progressives like Paul Krugman and even the architects of the post-war Swedish Social Democratic welfare state would easily agree with propositions like the following:

• Except in exceptional circumstances (e.g. wartime) the budget should be balanced over the course of the long-term business cycle.
• Government spending and debt cannot perpetually increase as a percentage of GNP.
• At extremely high marginal rates, income taxes produce tax-avoidant behavior (e.g. use of tax shelters, capital flight) that makes them ineffective.
• The generosity of social welfare programs must be related to the level of real economic growth.

These and many similar propositions are not really controversial; progressives can easily agree with them when they are treated as just one component of a larger approach that is balanced with reciprocal propositions like the following:

• There must be a healthy balance between investment in the private and public sectors.
• Taxes to pay for needed public services and investment are the “price of civilization” and an obligation of responsible citizenship.
• The share of income going to the wealthy cannot continually rise as a percentage of total income.
• National economic policy in modern mixed economies must have as its objective the creation of adequate job opportunities and a basic level of economic security for the citizens of the country.

The American and Swedish mixed economies of the 1960’s reached different political compromises between these distinct classes of propositions, with the Swedish economy providing substantially greater social equality and economic security. But in both political systems, it was recognized that any “responsible” economic policy required the negotiated political reconciliation of many of these kinds of conflicting economic requirements and goals and not just the political imposition of one unbalanced side of the equation or the other.
Seen in this perspective, the inherently dishonest character of the arguments of most of the modern American deficit hawks becomes strikingly clear. They define only one pole of a comprehensive and balanced approach as representing the “responsible” position and simply ignore the other. This places Democrats in the position of having to forcefully assert the other side of the policy mixture simply in order to restore the missing balance to the policy debate. This then allows the dishonest deficit hawks to pillory the Democrats as “irresponsible” because they do not assert a fully elaborated and balanced Keynesian or social democratic view.
This is not economics. It is simply an old and rather transparent debaters’ trick. It can be met with an equally simple response – one that works just as well in negotiations with used car dealers as with political adversaries.
The basic rule is to require with absolute rigidity an equal and reciprocal concession for every concession offered. In this particular case it takes the following form:

I will agree with your assertion that proposition X is part of a “responsible” position if you agree that my proposition Y is also part of a “responsible” position.

So, for example:

I will agree that government spending and debt cannot continually increase as a percentage of GNP and must be held within limits if you will agree that the share of income going to the wealthy cannot continually rise as a percentage of total income and must also be kept within limits.

Conservative deficit hawks will not want to explicitly concede the latter point but – because it is every bit as mathematically inescapable as the former – will be unable to conceal the fact that that it is their own position that is not balanced or “responsible” in any meaningful sense of the word.
For every major plank in the deficit hawk program there is a corresponding and reciprocal progressive plank which can be counter posed to it and which exposes the fundamentally “irresponsible” character of the deficit hawk program when viewed in isolation.
An additional complexity is added to the current economic debate by the fact that one side currently uses the threat of damage to the economy as a “hostage” to extort concessions. In this case, applying the “reciprocal concession” rule to discussions with deficit hawks means demanding the following:

“Responsible and serious negotiations about the debt, deficit and spending cannot be conducted under the cloud of threats and blackmail. Any concessions or agreements on our part regarding deficits, spending or the national debt will be entirely dependent on the GOP first renouncing – and remaining committed to the renunciation – of threats to the economy and credit rating of the United States. Any agreements we may make during these negotiations will automatically and retroactively become null and void if such threats are employed now or at any time in the future”

Making the GOP renunciation of hostage-taking a non-negotiable demand at the beginning of any debates with deficit hawks will force them to either agree with the logic of the Democratic position and repudiate the tactic or, once again, to concede at the outset that it is their position that is not balanced or “responsible” but which rather legitimizes the use of hostage-taking by one political party but not the other. In either case, the spurious claim of “above politics” neutrality that the deficit hawks claim is revealed as empty and dishonest.
(A final note: in case you are wondering, the application of the reciprocal concession approach to negotiating with a used car dealer is to determine the real value of the auto from the Kelly Blue Book or other source and then to respond to each price offered by the salesman with an amount precisely as far below the real value as his is above it. While difficult to execute in practice, it is in principle impossible to defeat)

In his Washington Post column, “The Lansing-Beijing connection,” Harold Meyerson has an interesting take on the right-to-work sneak attack in Michigan perped by the Republicans. Like China, explains Meyerson,

…The United States also has a problem of a rising gap between profits and wages. The stagnation of wages has become an accepted fact across the political spectrum; conservative columnists such as Michael Gerson and David Brooks have acknowledged that workers’ incomes seem to be stuck.
What conservatives haven’t acknowledged, and what even most liberal commentators fail to appreciate, is how central the collapse of collective bargaining is to American workers’ inability to win themselves a raise. Yes, globalizing and mechanizing jobs has cut into the livelihoods of millions of U.S. workers, but that is far from the whole story. Roughly 100 million of the nation’s 143 million employed workers have jobs that can’t be shipped abroad, that aren’t in competition with steel workers in Sao Paolo or iPod assemblers in Shenzhen. Sales clerks, waiters, librarians and carpenters all utilize technology in their jobs, but not to the point that they’ve become dispensable.
Yet while they can’t be dispensed with, neither can they bargain for a raise. Today fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers are union members. That figure may shrink a little more with new “right to work” laws in Michigan — the propagandistic term for statutes that allow workers to benefit from union contracts without having to pay union dues.

Addressing the Republican argument that right-to-work laws are good for the economy, Meyerson responds:

…An exhaustive study by economist Lonnie K. Stevans of Hofstra University found that states that have enacted such laws reported no increase in business start-ups or rates of employment. Wages and personal income are lower in those states than in those without such laws, Stevans concluded, though proprietors’ incomes are higher. In short, right-to-work laws simply redistribute income from workers to owners…The gap between U.S. capital income and labor income hasn’t been this great since before the New Deal

Then Meyerson explains the real reason for the Republican war on unions: “The Republicans who took control of the Michigan statehouse in 2010 understand that Democrats’ foot soldiers come disproportionately from labor. GOP efforts to reduce labor’s clout help Republicans politically far more than they help any Michigan-based businesses or local governments. (The legislation, which Gov. Rick Snyder (R) signed into law Tuesday evening, establishes right-to-work requirements for the public sector, too.)”
It’s primarily political. But the Republicans also want to help corporations to avoid sharing their record-level profits with the workers who produce their products. As Meyerson concludes, “…Workers don’t get raises if they can’t bargain collectively, and all the hand-wringing about our rising rates of inequality will be so much empty rhetoric unless we insist — in Lansing and Beijing — on workers’ right to form powerful unions.”
Those who want to get involved in fighting the war against unions in Michigan — regardless of where you live — should check out this ‘Take Action’ post at The Nation, and also read this TDS post by J.P. Green identifying household products sold by the anti-union Koch brothers, who reportedly supported the Michigan war against unions.

The following article by Erica Seifert is cross-posted from the Carville-Greenberg Memo:
If you followed the punditocracy’s conventional wisdom in 2012, you were likely surprised by President Obama’s popular vote margin–which is now 3.7 points and climbing. Despite the fact that President Obama consistently led Mitt Romney- and by significant margins in the battleground states where a close race would likely be decided–pollsters and pundits presupposed a very tight race. Joe Scarborough pronounced, “…Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now… should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days.” The Wall Street Journal proclaimed “Obama and Romney deadlocked.” The Economist asserted the race was “about as close as it could be.” Most other media and pundits thought so, too. Except us.
Our final Democracy Corps poll (completed two days before Election Day) showed the race 49 to 45 percent -an unrounded margin of 3.8 points. With other public polls still showing the race tied or Romney ahead, our poll was an outlier.
We were so confident in our results, we put our reputations on the line in the waning days of the campaign. We were confident we had it right because we believed that the national poll tracking averages were likely underrepresenting Obama’s vote. The main issue was cell phones and the changing demographics that most other pollsters miscalculated. Those pollsters did not reach the new America. Plain and simple.
Our accuracy in this election reflected years of intense study and a series of careful decisions about demographic and turnout trends among pivotal voting groups, notably Latinos. And our accuracy also reflected our intense focus on the methodological changes necessary to accurately sample the full American electorate – such as insisting on a higher proportion of cell phone interviews, despite the higher costs.
This matters for many reasons. It is great to be right. It is even greater to be the rightest. But most of the time, we do not produce polls to predict imminent election outcomes. Most of the time, as now with the fiscal cliff, we poll the American people on major policy issues, on their own pocketbook experiences, and on the messages that speak to the positions and issues most critical to their lives. That we got it right not only undergirds our ability to speak authoritatively on these policy issues in the halls of power, but also allows us to fulfill our mandate to tell powerful people what real people think. After all, we cannot accurately represent American voters if we are not producing representative polls.
At this moment, when a very few leaders in Washington are making decisions that will effect our economy now and in the years to come, more than anyone else, Democracy Corps has the authority to tell leaders what voters sent them to Washington to do. It was not, as it turns out, to keep taxes low for the wealthiest while bargaining away middle class tax deductions. Nor was it to slash the Medicare and Social Security benefits on which this and future generations so deeply depend. Nor was it to defund local governments, preventing them from making investments in education and infrastructure.
Instead, this election was about the middle class–how to sustain, secure, and grow the middle class in this generation and the next. The people spoke clearly on this topic… and we were happy to represent them.
Democracy Corps projected the final vote more accurately than any other pollster:
Click here to see graphs depicting DCorps edge.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira pinpoints the kind of investments the public wants the government to make. As Teixeira explains, ” It’s not just taxes. A large part of the current fiscal showdown in Washington, D.C. is the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that will occur if Congress can’t come to an agreement to avoid sequestration. The public, however, doesn’t want cuts–they want spending to actually go up in key areas.
In a postelection Democracy Corps Economy Media Project poll, the public supported:

Spending $55 billion over the next three years on rehiring teachers and modernizing schools (65 percent to 30 percent)
Enacting a one-year, $53 billion tax rebate for low- and middle-income households to offset the expiring payroll tax cuts (56 percent to 33 percent)
Restoring 99 weeks of emergency unemployment benefits over the next three years (52 percent to 41 percent)
Investing $234 billion in infrastructure, along with creating an infrastructure bank (51 percent to 43 percent)”

As Teixeira concludes, “Conservatives may be allergic to spending on the unemployed and our social needs but the public clearly is not. Let’s hope conservative policymakers in our nation’s capital remember that fact as the fiscal showdown heats up.”

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
There was a headline in the Washington Post on Sunday that completely summarizes the Republicans’ fondest dreams as well as the expectations of the D.C. establishment’s conventional wisdom: “Debt Crisis Expected to Define Obama’s Second Term.”
In the eyes of Republicans, the Washington Post, and all the other “Serious” people inside the Beltway, deficits, debt, and the control thereof are all that matters. Deficits are the biggest problem. Deficits are the only thing important. Deficits are the priority above all other things. Deficits are a crisis, an emergency, a disaster, a catastrophe. Deficits are at the center of every debate. We are broke, we are in desperate trouble. And on and on and on it goes. The fact that we are still close to 8 percent unemployment doesn’t matter — even though the main reason we got to a surplus in the Clinton years was because of full employment. The fact that schools, roads, bridges, highways, airports, our electrical grid need to be rebuilt doesn’t either. Our economy is still top-heavy with a few Too Big To Fail banks that could easily crash our economy again; there are still over 10,000,000 underwater homeowners keeping our housing sector and economy from coming back; the climate change disaster is bearing down on us like a giant tsunami wave; student loans, skyrocketing tuition rates, and youth unemployment are creating a toxic stew of debt for our young people. The backbone of our nation’s economy, our middle class, continues to be hollowed out by flat wages, rising prices for necessities, and not enough jobs. But none of this matters, according to the Republicans and their pundit friends, because the deficit is everything-everything-everything.
It’s a reminder of something I learned when I first came to D.C. a couple of decades ago: the conventional wisdom in D.C. is almost always wrong. I have to smile when I think back on all the times that practically the entire punditry have been dead wrong over the years, it really is comical. George H.W. Bush was a shoo-in for a second term after the first Gulf War; deficits were intractable and would dominate our policy landscape all through the ’90s; Bill Clinton was done as president after the Republicans took over Congress in 1994; the Democrats would lose 30 seats in the ’98 Lewinsky scandal-dominated cycle; Republicans would keep the House throughout the decade of the 2000s; Obama would never win reelection after the 2010 cycle. Every one of these big assumptions couldn’t have been proven to be more wrong. Indeed, it is hard to think of one big time over the last 20 years when the conventional wisdom turned out to be right. And it could easily be proven wrong over the next four years. This isn’t to say deficits won’t continue to be an issue — the House Republicans will make sure of that. And Democrats and progressives should certainly engage in the debate over how bring deficits down over the long run — there are certainly plenty of progressive ways to do that, including: cutting wasteful subsidies for agribusiness and oil companies, cutting wasteful military spending, imposing federal contracting reform, a tax on financial trading, a carbon tax, and many other ideas.
At the end of the day, though, it is Barack Obama who will determine whether, as the headline suggested, debt and deficits will define Obama’s second term. That will only be true if he lets it be.
Here’s the first important point: budget issues are not the only thing that matters when you control the executive branch. When you think about the things Presidents like Lincoln, TR, Truman, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and GW Bush did in spite of major opposition in Congress for significant parts of their term, you remember that between regulatory authority, the Department of Justice, executive orders, and the bully pulpit, Presidents have a great deal of running room to drive their own agenda and do big things. I have written about this before. Obama can use all the powers of the presidency and executive branch to get things done on behalf of the middle class, and to get the economy back on track, and if he was aggressive in using this power, no one at the end of his second term would be writing that debt or deficits defined his second term.
Another very big factor is whether Obama uses the political powers of his office to shape the debate in the country and help the Democrats win in 2014. How Clinton’s last two years, and therefore his second term, were viewed in retrospect had a lot to do with the fact that he emerged from the 1998 off-year elections triumphant rather than on the defensive and running scared. People close to the president tell me he is very excited and relieved to never have to run for office again, which is very understandable. But if he thinks he can now leave politics and partisanship aside, the Democrats will get swamped in 2014, and that will make his last two years really ugly. People have an aversion the word “political,” but I will go counter-intuitive here and say that Obama needs to embrace being political, to make the 2014 elections his last chance to make a statement on behalf of his agenda and on behalf of America’s middle class. If like Clinton, he comes out of that election triumphant, he will be able to keep the Republicans backpedaling his entire second term.
Obama needs to resist all the establishment cliches about being above politics, and he needs to resist his own feelings of relief that he never has to run again. In order to have a successful second term, a term where he aggressively sets the agenda and solves problems instead of just presiding over a tiny range of options hemmed in by an unhealthy obsession with the federal deficit, Obama needs to embrace politics and act as if he does have to stand for election again, because in a sense, in 2014 he does. He needs to think about what voters will care about; he needs to remember the political coalition that won him the election, the Democratic base and working class swing voters. If he fights for that coalition, and focuses on what they would want, he will be a lot stronger president and be able to define his second term the way he wants to define.
That “debt crisis expected to define Obama’s second term” headline will only come true if Obama passively lets it happen. He has the power of the executive branch, and the power of his majority coalition, to make things different if he is willing to use the power.

The heat is on Michigan Governor Rick Snider to reverse his position and refuse to sign the so-called ‘right-to-work’ bill the Republicans snuck through the state legislature last week. Here’s a good example of a creative protest being mobilized by ‘We Are Michigan’ to persuade the governor to do the right thing. The President will meet with Snyder today, and here’s an update on other protests being planned in the state.
Dave Zirin reports at The Nation on the groundswell against the right-to-work bill, including the pro baseball and football unions. He quotes DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFLPA: “When you look at proposed legislation [called] ‘right-to-work’ let’s just put the hammer on the nail. It’s untrue… What this is instead is a right to ensure that ordinary working citizens can’t get together as a team, can’t organize, can’t stand together and can’t fight management on an even playing field…So don’t call it a ‘right to work.’ If you want to have an intelligent discussion about what the bill is, call it what it is. Call it an anti-organizing bill. Fine. If that’s what the people want to do in order to put a bill out there, let’s cast a vote on whether or not ordinary workers can get together and represent themselves, and let’s have a real referendum.”
And Greg Sargent has an excellent update on the Democratic strategy to encourage the governor to allow the RTW bill to be subjected to popular referendum.
At The Daily Beast Hedrick Smith argues persuasively that the “Fiscal Cliff Is Latest Symptom of Unfair Redistricting“: “…The partisan manipulation of congressional districts garbles more than the numbers. It sharpens the partisan divide in Congress. Both parties try to create safe districts and within those highly partisan lines, moderates tend to lose out and extremists tend to win. Both parties become more polarized. Without gerrymandering, red states would be less red, and blue states would be less blue. The middle would have more chance to re-emerge.”
And Crystal Ball’s Larry J. Sabato and Geoffrey Skelley take an extensive, state-by-state look at the 2014 battle for control of governorships, and why it is critically important for national politics.
Here’s an interesting NPR post by Liz Halloran about an overlooked demographic group which gave President Obama 70 percent of its votes — the “nones,” a.k.a. the “religiously unaffiliated.”
Peter Grer has a Monitor update on “Obama’s Medicaid expansion: How many states are likely to rebel?”
The “we don’t need no stinkin’ science” crowd apparently gets much more MSM coverage in the U.S. than elsewhere. Mijin Cha reports at Demos that “the U.S. gives a significant amount of media attention to climate deniers — far more than any other country. Over one-third of articles on climate change in 2009-2010 contained viewpoints from climate deniers, even though only a fraction of the scientific community questions the existence of climate change…of 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles, just 24 reject the idea of global warming — a mere 0.17 percent.”
From CNN Politics: According to the Politico/George Washington University Battleground survey released Monday, 62% of registered voters say they back an immigration reform proposal that would allow illegal or undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship over a period of several years, with 35% opposed…The new poll is in line with an ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted right after the November election that indicated Americans supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants by a 57%-39% margin.”
The accolades for Mitch McConnell’s unique achievement keep on coming.

if you only feel like reading one article about the motivation for Jim DeMint’s sudden bail-out from his safe senate seat, Richard Eskow’s “Tea Party Quitter DeMint Cashes In, Exposing DC’s Dark Side” at HuffPo makes as much sense as any. From Eskow’s explanation:

DeMint’s leaving to run the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Reagan-era “think tank.” Is he a policy expert, a problem solver, a “thinker”? What was DeMint’s professional background before he entered politics?
Sales. DeMint ran a small marketing group (one to four employees, according to business databases) in Greenville, South Carolina.
That’s not as incongruous as it sounds. The Heritage Foundation is a marketing organization, founded by billionaires and corporations to provide cogent-sounding arguments — sales pitches, really — for policies which favor them at the public’s expense.
“Join Rush Limbaugh and nearly 700,000 other conservatives as a Member of The Heritage Foundation today,” chirps the “think tank’s” website — presumably because the first name that comes to mind when Americans hear the word “thinker” is Rush Limbaugh.
DeMint’s new job will undoubtedly consist of promoting far-right ideas, lobbying his fellow politicians, and raising money from millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.

And the kicker:

…DeMint should feel right at home at an organization co-founded by right-wing beer magnate Joseph Coors. According to Right Wing Watch other corporate donors include General Motors, Ford, Proctor and Gamble, Chase, Dow Chemical, Mobil Oil, and Smith Kline pharmaceuticals.
The job pays more than a million dollars a year.

Raw greed is never much of a shocker when assessing Republican motives, surprised though some tea party purists may be. Throw in the prospect of even stronger Democratic control in the senate, and you can understand why even a tea party ideologue would decide to grab some green while he can.