In recent weeks, there have been extremely disturbing revelations about how the nation’s biggest financial institutions handle foreclosures. After widespread reports about “robo-signers” — bank officials who would sign foreclosure forms without even reading them — several large financial institutions declared they were halting their foreclosure process. For example, a Bank of America official admitted in a bankruptcy case that she signed 7,000 to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and “typically” did not read them “because of the volume,” and last week, Bank of America announced it was stopping all foreclosures across the country until it could be sure the process was fair to homeowners.

Several lawmakers have joined the banks in calling for foreclosure moratoriums until banks can carry the process out in a fair and legal manner. And a bipartisan group of attorneys general is also demanding action — for example, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, is asking 30 lenders to stop foreclosures until they can prove it’s being done legally.

On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) called for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures, saying “it’s absolutely imperative that we keep people in their homes.” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) disagreed strongly, however, saying he was “just perplexed” at Wasserman Schultz’s answer, and that “people have to take responsibility for themselves.”

CANTOR: I’m just perplexed to that answer, Bret… what we’re seeing if you do that, if you impose a moratorium on foreclosures what you are telling people and institutions that lend money is they do not have the protection to take the risk they need to, to extend credit for people will get a mortgage. You’ll shut down the housing industry if that is the case[...]

What we’re talking about, Debbie, you have 10 percent, if that, of the population who are now in a foreclosure situation or in a mortgage that they have been unable to meet the obligations… Now, come on, people have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don’t need government intervening in every step of every aspect of this economy.

Watch it:

Congressional Republicans have largely been silent on a foreclosure moratorium, as the Wonk Room has noted. But now, apparently, they are ready to take a stand — in defense of the housing industry. Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine piled on later on Fox News Sunday as well. “I thought it was really troubling when Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz said we need to keep people in their homes,” Easton said. “What she should have said was ‘keep people in their homes they can’t afford.’”

But of course, people may be losing their homes when they should not, due to the banks’ reckless foreclosure process. Sorting out the potentially thousands of homeowners who may have been improperly foreclosed upon is going to be a monumental task, as is reorganizing the process to ensure that no more homeowners are improperly thrown out of their homes. This is about more than simply those homeowners: it’s about upholding the rule of law and due process. A moratorium and investigations are more than warranted, despite the seeming desire of Cantor and other Republicans to protect big financial institutions.

On Face the Nation this morning, host Bob Schieffer grilled both White House advisor David Axelrod and GOP strategist Ed Gillespie on the millions of dollars being secretly funneled by Wall Street and the oil industry to defeat Democratic candidates this November, and particularly the role of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gillespie, along with Karl Rove, is the mastermind behind American Crossroads, a group tied to the Chamber which also funnels corporate money into attack ads. As first revealed by a ThinkProgress report, the Chamber solicits funds from foreign corporations — including state-owned oil companies — that go into the same general account that funds their $75 million electioneering campaign. Using a neologism coined by Sarah Palin, Gillespie argued that the Washington Post and the New York Times had “completely refudiated” the report:

GILLESPIE: The Washington Post and The New York Times both completely refudiated this charge of foreign money being funneled through the Chamber of Commerce into American campaigns. The charge of illegal criminal activity, that was based on a blog posting that the President of the United States repeated, that was put on a website that’s affiliated with Center for American Progress, a liberal nonprofit advocacy group that does not disclose its donors.

Watch it:

In fact, neither the Post nor the Times “refudiated” the ThinkProgress report. Both merely quoted Chamber of Commerce officials who only discussed the limited “AmCham” funds, only one of several avenues for foreign funding of the Chamber. Both articles recognized that there is no outside oversight of the Chamber’s money flow. “Money, however, is fungible,” the New York Times editorial board explained, “and it is impossible for an outsider to know whether the group is following its rules.” As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes, “The Chamber still hasn’t addressed in any detail the core allegation against it.”

Only Gillespie has made the “charge of illegal criminal activity.” Although it is illegal to solicit foreign funds for electioneering, the essential fact is that there are no disclosure requirements that provide oversight to know whether or not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is obeying the law. The Chamber successfully lobbied to kill the DISCLOSE Act, which would have closed the loopholes opened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Earlier in the program, Axelrod explained:

This issue of this special interest spending is very important. It’s never happened before, that organizations are are spending this kind of money. And the American people need to ask why is the oil industry, Wall Street and others spending this kind of money to defeat candidates and elect others in this sort of secretive way? You know, that is a threat to our democracy.

Unlike the Chamber, the Koch brothers, and Ed Gillespie, the Center for American Progress strongly supports the DISCLOSE Act and broad campaign finance reform.

Appearing today on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) finally revealed just how extreme a GOP candidate needs to be in order to be rejected by their party leadership. Reacting to Ohio GOP Congressional candidate Rich Iott’s membership in a Nazi reenactment group that “salute[s]” Nazi sympathizers who viewed the Third Reich as “the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life,” Cantor expressly repudiated Iott’s candidacy in an exchange with Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL):

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: You have one candidate in Ohio who actually thinks it’s a good bonding experience to reenact Nazi battles with his son. [...]

CANTOR: Now Debbie went and launched into her attacks as to some of the reports about some of the candidates that are running, particularly the one in Ohio having to do with a Nazi reenactment.  She knows that I would absolutely repudiate that and do not support an individual that would do something like that.

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Well you haven’t.

CANTOR: I’m doing it right here.

Watch it:

Cantor did the right thing by repudiating Iott, but his decision to do so is surprising in light of the fact that Cantor and other GOP leaders have consistently refused to denounce the most extreme right-wing candidates in this election cycle. Here are just a few examples of the kind of radical views that are perfectly at home in today’s Republican Party:

• Eliminating Medicare” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, proposed phasing-out Medicare by replacing the entire Medicare program with a privatized voucher system and then having that voucher gradually decrease in value over time. Yet Republicans have kept Ryan as their chief budget policymaker in the House, and Cantor even co-authored a book touting himself and Ryan as the party’s new “Young Guns.”  Some Republican candidates have even claimed that Medicare is unconstitutional.
• Privatizing Social Security: Countless GOP lawmakers and candidates — including Republican budget chief Ryan — want to privatize Social Security, even though privatization imposes significant new risks on seniors, creates new administrative costs, forces benefit reductions, and costs more money than the present system.  Some of these candidates also believe that Social Security is unconstitutional.
• Tearing Up The Constitution: Beyond the fringe claims that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, leading GOPers have embraced repealing the Constitution’s grant of citizenship to all children born in the United States, repealing the constitutional right to elect your own senators, and one leading GOP Senate candidate claimed that it is unconstitutional for the United States to belong to the United Nations.
• Former Witches Against Masturbation:  The National Republican Senatorial Committee even cut a $42,000 check to Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, an anti-masturbation activist who “dabbled into witchcraft” and who wants to stop the “whole country from having sex.”

Lest there be any confusion about what positions GOP candidates are allowed to embrace, ThinkProgress is happy to provide this handy chart explaining which stances the GOP does and does not view as too extreme: