Castagnera on Risk Management in Higher Education… and more: Let's take down the Tea Party

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Let's take down the Tea Party

Dear Jim,

In 73 days we'll find out if the Tea Party will strengthen its stranglehold on the House or suffer a major setback to their campaign to take over Congress.

Rep. Todd Akin has dominated the news with his inexcusable comments on rape. But he's just one of many extreme, ignorant and out of touch Tea Party Republicans in the House who share his goal of redefining rape and taking women back to the Stone Age.

Today, we're announcing the final candidates we're working to defeat in CREDO SuperPAC's Take Down the Tea Party Ten campaign. And wow do they deserve an accountability moment.

Chip in $5 to help Take Down the Tea Party Ten, and Michele Bachmann, too.

Mike Coffman in Colorado's 6th district is a paranoid birther who took his race-baiting and xenophobia so far he actually had to apologize to the President.

Jim Renacci in Ohio's 16th district is the poster boy for Tea Party economics; he's championed tax cuts for corporations and multimillionaires like himself while increasing the tax burden on the rest of us.

But in the most extreme Congress in history, we couldn't stop at just ten. So we're turning this campaign up to eleven. We're adding the queen of the Tea Party ball: Michele Bachmann.

Bachmann has said more hateful, astonishing and downright crazy things than just about anyone else in Congress. And after a surprisingly weak showing in her Republican primary last week, we are jumping at the opportunity to hold her accountable. We're going to take her down, too.

Chip in $5 to help Take Down the Tea Party Ten, and Michele Bachmann, too.

Not only did Coffman, Renacci and Bachmann join Rep. Todd Akin in co-sponsoring the House Republican bill to redefine rape, but they've all voted to gut the Clean Air Act, to destroy Medicare, and to defund Planned Parenthood. And they've all helped bring about the most vitriolic and dangerous Congress in our history.

Shady dealer Jim Renacci was forced to pay $1.2 million in back taxes after misreporting $13 million in income¹ — just in one year! — while supporting a 23% sales tax that would effectively slash the taxes of corporations and millionaires like him while dramatically increasing the tax burden on the middle class and the poor².

Only a hateful birther like Mike Coffman would have gone off the rails smearing President Obama, saying he wasn't sure if Obama was actually born in the U.S., but "I do know this, that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American."³

And then there's Bachmann. Michele Bachmann thinks natural disasters are a warning sign from God about government spending⁴ — but she claims there "isn't even one study" that carbon pollution is dangerous.⁵ Bachmann implied that Democrats could be the cause of the swine flu, and said the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation,⁶ while repeatedly voting to restrict access to birth control and to deny women life-saving medical care.

Bachmann has worked to put Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block, but she and her husband operate a "Christian counseling clinic" which has received more than $137,000 in federal Medicaid funds while practicing controversial and medically-unsound ex-gay conversion therapy.⁷And of course, she says that "[gay marriage] is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation, in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that."⁸

These are members of our Congress. It is totally unacceptable. Chip in $5 to hold them accountable.

In the last few months, we've built local grassroots campaigns against eight Tea Party Republicans. Our volunteers are making sure their neighbors are learning the ugly truth about their representatives' radical records.

Our local offices are organizing thousands of volunteers to talk with voters at the door and on the phone. Every one of these contacts is far more powerful than the negative advertising Republican super PACs are spending millions of dollars to buy. But we need your contributions to help put organizers on the ground, open more offices, and print signs and literature.

Now we've got the final candidates. And we've got 73 days to make sure that we hold the worst of the worst accountable, and do everything we can to restore some measure of sanity to our Congress.

Chip in $5 to help Take Down the Tea Party Ten, and Michele Bachmann, too.

Thanks for everything you're doing.

Becky Bond, Political Director
CREDO Action