Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) is in a tough reelection fight against Spike Maynard, a formerly Democratic judge who switched parties this year to challenge Rahall as a Republican. Maynard’s bid — the first credible challenge to Rahall in years — has strong backing from national Republicans, including an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and support from the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Young Guns program (despite the fact that Maynard is in his 60s).

Maynard has also received support from outside conservative groups, like the West Virginia Conservative Fund. The group’s new ad makes a fairly apparent attempt to appeal to bigots, fear mongering about Rahall’s work doing outreach to Arab-Americans during President Obama’s 2008 campaign:

Unfortunately, this is not the first racial ad of the race. A recent spot run by Maynard’s campaign itself attacks Rahall’s vote for the stimulus package by stating that the program gave tax breaks to Chinese companies, and thus Rahall cares more about creating jobs for Chinese people than Americans. “It’s on our jeans. Even on children’s toys — ‘Made in China,’” the ad’s narrator says ominously. “With skyrocketing unemployment, only a politician who’s been in Washington for 34 years would vote to help foreign companies making Chinese windmills.” The ad was so ugly, and its claims so baseless, that lawyers from Rahall’s campaign asked TV stations running the spot to take it down.

Maynard is a notoriously close friend of West Virginia’s coal industry, even taking a trip to Monte Carlo with Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship while he served as chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court. The trip occurred as Maynard’s court was hearing a trial involving Massey, and the revelation of the luxury vacation forced Maynard to recuse himself from the case in shame. (HT: Reader Daniel)

Hertiage Foundation analyst Nile Gardiner claimed last month that the “the conservative revolution that is sweeping America” offers “the best hope for saving the future of the Special Relationship” between the UK and the US. But conservative UK Prime Minister David Cameron poured cold water on that assessment. In an interview with The Financial Times, Cameron emphasized his “differences with the American Right,” particularly the tea parties’ desire to engage in a “culture war“:

Later, I would ask him what he thinks of American conservatism’s lurch to the libertarian extreme.

“How shall I put this? We seem to have drifted apart… there is an element of American conservatism that is headed in a very culture war direction, which is just different. There are differences with the American right.”

Indeed, the passion of the tea party movement seems to arise from racial angst, an anti-immigrant posture, opposition to gay rights, and Islamophobic fears, among other factors. Those issues seem to have less sway with conservatives across the pond. One British conservative activist, who is trying to lead a British tea party-like effort, conceded, “We are less concerned with God, guns and gays.”

The GOP has been roundly panned for many of its claims in the “Pledge to America”. They declared that it was a grassroots-inspired document, despite being authored by a lobbyist for AIG, Exxon Mobil, and Pfizer. House Republicans maintained that it wasn’t necessary to include an earmark ban because they already had a self-imposed moratorium, despite the fact that the agreement expires before the next Congress even begins.

Now, House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) is peddling absurd claims about the Pledge’s fiscal policies. Responding to a question during a conference call with Republican supporters on Thursday, Cantor claimed that next Congress, the GOP would “stop this cycle of” deficit spending because, he alleges, the increase in the national debt we’ve incurred since President Obama took office “has exceeded that which this country has incurred over the last 200″ years.

JAMES: I’ve been very concerned for quite some time about the fact that the national debt just keeps growing, growing and growing. The point being that it’s around $13 trillion now. What makes us different than, say, Greece or Spain, in terms of facing collapse while we’ve already borrowed all the money we can from China. It appears to me that we have the Federal Reserve loaning money to the Treasury, for God’s sake. What’s going to stop this?

CANTOR: Well James, we can stop it, and that’s why we need your help. We’ve got to stop this cycle of spending money we don’t have. This spending and debt we’ve incurred over the last two years has exceeded that which this country has incurred over the last 200. And so, you’re right by issuing the alarm that if we do not stop and arrest this trend, we will become like those European welfare state countries where more and more people are going to be taking more benefits from the government than that which they pay in.

Listen here:

Both assertions are laughable. First, CAP’s analysis found that the GOP’s policy proposals in the Pledge would result in a budget deficit that was $200 billion larger in 2020 than it would be under President Obama’s budget, “and over the next 10 years deficits would be $1.5 trillion higher than under the president’s budget.” Consider the two plans side-by-side:

Second, on the day President Obama took office, the national debt stood at a record $10.6 trillion. Since then, the debt has increased an additional $2.8 trillion. The notion that President Obama incurred more debt over the past year and a half than had been incurred in the two centuries prior is comically false.

It seems that “Young Gun” Cantor — the brains behind the GOP’s “You Cut” website — needs a basic class in accounting.

Last week, Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi jumped to his death after two classmates secretly recorded his sexual relationship with a man and broadcasted it over the internet. Tragically, Clementi marks the fourth gay student to commit suicide in three weeks because of anti-gay harassment from fellow students. Seth Walsh, 13, Asher Brown, 13, and Billy Lucas, 15, also took their own lives last month because fellow students bullied them in school.

The growing number of suicides reveal the “unique set of safety concerns” that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students face both in secondary school and college. According to a National Education Policy Center study released yesterday, “over 85% report being harassed because of their sexual or gender identity, and over 20% report being physically attacked.” The “highly troubling pattern of mistreatment, negative consequences” and “the dramatic failure” of educational institutions to “adequately address” LGBT students’ concerns has contributed to a suicide rate among LGBT students that is “3-4 times higher than that of their straight counterparts.”

Many states across the country are taking laudable steps to enact measures that bolster administrators’ ability to protect students who face such harassment. However, despite the evidence supporting the need, right-wing lawmakers and activists insist that anti-bullying measures are nothing more than insidious tools of the “homosexual agenda”:

– The American Family Association of Michigan has spent years decrying a proposed anti-bullying measure as “a Trojan Horse to sneak [homosexual activists'] special rights agenda into law” and to “legitimize homosexual behavior” which is “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” The bill “died in 2008 in the state Senate because senators could not agree” on whether to address bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the measure.

– In Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer said he would not sign the anti-bullying Safe Schools For All bill because “I don’t want the government” instead of parents to be on “the front line of defense of our children.” Indeed, Emmer voted against and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) vetoed the same bill in 2009 after the right-wing Minnesota Family Council pushed legislators to reject the bill in 2009 because it would “promote acceptance of homosexuality.”

– The right-wing Christian media ministry Focus on the Family is attacking an anti-bullying standard on the federal level. Insisting that bullying prevention is being “hijacked by activists” who are “politicizing or sexualizing the issue,” Focus on the Family’s Candi Cushman claims that the anti-bullying bill currently before Congress “cater[s] to a narrow political agenda” that “becomes a gateway for homosexuality promotion in school.” In their current back-to-school guide “equipping” parents with tools against the “sneaky” gay agenda, Cushman told parents to look out for bullying seminars, diversity lessons, and “cute little pictures of furry animals” as “red flags” signaling the “gay agenda.”

Currently, only eight of the 44 states that have laws to address bullying specifically reference bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity as prohibited conduct. Sen. Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA) introduced a bill in August, the Safe Schools Improvement Act, that would require any public schools receiving federal funding to develop race, sex, and gender-specific anti-bullying policies and teach harassment prevention strategies.

“These tragedies underscore the need for a federal law that comprehensively addresses bullying and harassment in schools,” Casey’s spokeswoman told ThinkProgress. In response to Focus on the Family’s charges, she noted that, along with educators, administrations, and civil rights groups, the legislation has been endorsed by the National PTA. When announcing the bill in August, Casey asserted that the harassment of a student “to the point of suicide or where he can’t function or is subject to violence” is “just wrong.” Failure to address “the horror so many kids go through every single day” amounts to “one word: betrayal.”