Far-right groups warn GOP: No new taxes, or else

This who's setting GOP tax policy. The leaders of some the nation's most far right-wing groups want Republican Congress members to remember who's boss in all this talk of a grand bargain. Their message: capitulation on any tax increases will mean political death.

"My organization has gone in and launched primary challenges before," said Amy Kremer, chairman of Tea Party Express, a conservative political action committee ready to jump-start another round of challenges to Republicans who agree to raise tax revenue. "We've done it before, and we will happily do it again, if the need arises." [...]

"If any of these Senate Republicans or House members get conned by the president, they are toast," predicted Herman Cain, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, in an interview. Mr. Cain, now a radio talk-show host, said he often hears from listeners who "are sick of Republicans using the excuse they had to compromise."

FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth are in there, too, both using these negotiations to determine their primary targets in 2014. Club for Growth already has a list of nine House members it wants to target, and is fundraising off of it. So the 10 to 17 percent of Republicans that the Cook Report thinks might be vulnerable to President Obama's charm offensive is probably overestimated, at least when it comes to a grand bargain and tax hikes.

That's reflected in one vote Greg Sargent picked up on this week in the Senate Budget Committee. An amendment to the Democrats' budget would have closed loopholes that allow large corporations to pay nothing in taxes. Republicans voted against it unanimously. This isn't just a symbolic measure, as Sargent notes, because there are more than two dozen major, profitable American corporations that paid no taxes in the 2008-2011 period.

Judging by that vote, it would seem that Republicans are taking the threats coming from their right flank very seriously. They're not even ready to consider closing loopholes if it could mean the least little bit of a tax burden for their corporate masters. Probably because the corporate masters are the ones funding all these right-wing groups.