Wednesday Open Thread

Welcome to the Wednesday edition of your open thread. I’m still playing around in West Virginia. It’s a laugh riot! Now play nice and have fun.

There’s a very interesting scenario going on in Colorado right now. Dan “abortion bikes” Maes is the GOP candidate for governor. Tom Tancredo is running for governor as a Constitution Party candidate. Maes is so ridiculous that his support has collapsed and much of it has gone to Tom Tancredo. A GOP county chair lays out a scenario in which the GOP gets less than 10% of the gubernatorial vote and becomes a third party.

Here’s Kerber’s memo:

MINOR PARTY STATUS

“First the determination of whether the Republicans would be a minor party is if the a party’s candidate for Governor receives less than 10% of the vote. Should Dan Maes receive less than 10% of the vote, all Republican candidates for the next two election cycles 2012 and 2014 will have minor party status.”

BALLOT PLACEMENT

“The current rule is that the major parties (currently Republican and Democrat) have a lottery to determine which candidate will be first and second for all races. Then the minor parties have a lottery to determine their respective order beneath the major party candidates. Finally independents appearing on the ballot through petition will have a lottery to determine their ballot placement below the major parties and minor parties.

“The effect of the designation of minor party status for the 2012 election would be that our candidate for president will not be in the top two lines which will be reserved for the Democrat and American Constitution Party candidates. We will be left to compete for ballot position with the Greens, Socialists, American Communist Party, Libertarians. Prohibitionists etc.

“Our state house and senate candidates will similarly be relegated to bottom positions. In 2014, when we have our US Senate, Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer etc races, again, we will be at the bottom of the ballot fighting the libertarians etc for ballot placement. As we all know, being at the top or toward the top can mean several percentage points in the vote, enough in a close race to secure victory.”

And I thought the Delaware GOP had it bad. At least they’ll still be a major party in Delaware after November.

Despite Republican’s assertions to the contrary, the biggest beneficiary to unlimited corporate funding of elections has been the Republican party. One of the biggest spenders on behalf of Republicans is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which accepts foreign donations.

The largest attack campaign against Democrats this fall is being waged by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a trade association organized as a 501(c)(6) that can raise and spend unlimited funds without ever disclosing any of its donors. The Chamber has promised to spend an unprecedented $75 million to defeat candidates like Jack Conway, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jerry Brown, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), and Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). As of Sept. 15th, the Chamber had aired more than 8,000 ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates alone, according to a study from the Wesleyan Media Project. The Chamber’s spending has dwarfed every other issue group and most political party candidate committee spending. A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding.

The Chamber has operations in places like Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Egypt and Russia. Why wouldn’t big foreign multi-nationals support the party that thinks corporations have more rights than people? We’ve already learned that big corporations don’t care about the economy as a whole, as long as their leadership gets the big bucks they feel fine.