By now you have probably seen the web ad from the Fiorina campaign. It was featured prominently on the Rachel Maddow Show yesterday as well as at Talking Points Memo. If you have not seen it, well you are in for a 3 minute 22 second treat! It is really, really bad in terms of production values as well as costuming, but that is not why I want to point it out.

First, take a minute to watch the video:

Sure, the whole demon-sheep thing is funny, but let’s look at what the Fiorina campaign is hammering Mr. Campbell for. The gist of this attack is the man is not fiscally conservative enough. He is being pilloried for supporting raising taxes in a state have has a 20 billion dollar budget deficit.

Right now California is in the midst of cutting social services left and right. Because the hard core Republican Minority in the Senate consistently balks at increasing income taxes on the wealthy or at all, the state is going to cut 2 billion in social spending that will cost it another 5 billion in federal dollars. It also takes Mr. Campbell to task for what the California Legislative Analyst office writing “Multi-billion dollar operating budgets will persist, even in the best of times”. What this commercial fails to note is that it is Campbell’s plan did not increase revenues enough to close that gap!

Now, there is an argument to be made that increasing taxes on everyone in a recession is a bad idea, however, California is home to many of the richest people in the nation. An increase on the top earners, even a temporary one would go a long way to solving the crisis. But that would assume that sanity is a major trait in the Republican primaries in the Golden State.

Sadly California is home to many of the most insane anti-taxers. The commercial hits Mr. Campbell for failing to sign the Americans for Tax Reform pledge. ATR is Grover Norquists group and the pledge reads:

I, pledge to the taxpayers of the state
of , and to the American people that I will:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax
rates for individuals and/or businesses; and

TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and
credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

This is what Republicans think is the most important thing of all, opposing all increases in taxes, under all circumstances as well as keeping all loopholes open.

In a way, it is really sad. Mr. Campbell, who is no-ones dirty freaking hippy, is being hammered by others of his party for failing to be completely insane when it comes to governing. It is a trend we have seen more and more in the last few years as groups like the (Hair) Club for Growth and Norquist’s Americans for Tax Relief have insisted on this straight jacket for all Republican candidates.

Still, we may be in the end days of this insanity. As more and more states face the realities of having to cut billions from their budgets or raising taxes, it may finally become clear to the majority of the voters that you can not get something for nothing. If you want streetlights to be on, if you want cops and firefighters to be available when you need them, if you want your parks to be maintained, this costs money. The place where that money comes from should be the wealthy.

For the last 25 years, the rich have received tax break after tax break with the number of brackets decreasing and the percentage of the top bracket going ever downward. It is time for the people who get the most benefit out of being Americans start to pay their share again. The middle class is afraid of tax increases because they are already squeezed to the breaking point. The rich do not have this problem.

In the end it is up to us. The people of California and elsewhere have to say “Enough!” this insanity. If there is no room to increase revenue when a state desperately needs it or the nation needs it, then we will become a nation like we had at the beginning of the 20th Century, with a small percentage of very wealthy and a vast majority of working poor.

Until then, we will see this kind of thing from the Republican Party. Yes, it is funny in how strange it is, yes it is gob smacking that any campaign for senate would produce and run something like this, and yes it is tragically sad that this is the state of debate in one of the two parties in this nation.

The floor is yours.