In February, while attending the Tea Party Patriot Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, I came across the grand opening of a new front group called “Dodd Frank Exposed.” Two staffers for the new group were eagerly shaking hands of Tea Party activists while asking them to fill out a survey about their perception of the Dodd Frank Wall Street reform law passed last year.

On a television set up at the booth, a video played on loop claiming Wall Street reform is an “unconstitutional takeover of the U.S. economy.” The video, set to scary attack ad music, argued that Tea Party activists should be as angry at financial reform as they were against President Obama’s health reforms:

NARRATOR: From the same people who brought you Obamacare comes a controversial sequal: Dodd Frank. Last year, President Obama and the Democrat-run Congress rushed through the sweeping overhaul of healthcare amounting to the unconstitutional power grab followed quickly by Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act. Just like Obamacare it created a massive, unconstitutional regulatory bureaucracy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a runaway regulatory machine completely unaccountable to the president, the Congress, and the courts.

Watch it:

I spoke briefly to a young staffer for the group, who told me that the entire law had to be repealed. “All of it?” I asked. “Anything to stop the bleeding,” she replied. According to the survey results posted on the Dodd Frank Exposed website, Tea Party Patriots by a wide margin agreed: repeal the financial reform law.

Who is behind Dodd Frank Exposed? Although the organization is ostensibly hosted by the “Judicial Crisis Network” — a group that has no actual registration or office — Dodd Frank Exposed is actually run by two veteran astroturf lobbyists, Gary Marx and Robert Bork Jr. Marx is a vice president at Ralph Reed’s lobbying firm Century Strategies. Bork runs his own public relations company called the Bork Communication Group.

Bork, the son of famed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, has made a career coordinating front groups on behalf of corporations facing negative scrutiny. In a memo to an association for corporate attorneys, Bork explained that he improves the perception of his corporate clients by using right-wing bloggers and nonprofits to drape an ideological cover over abuses related to environmental crimes or defective consumer products: Read more

President Obama last week announced a task force that will “investigate to see if fraud or manipulation in oil markets is behind the spike in gasoline prices,” which has significantly cleared $4 per gallon in several parts of the country. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) has also raised the notion of a grand jury investigation into oil market speculation.

According to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the government’s commodity markets watchdog — speculative positions in energy are currently at an all-time high and several analysts (including those at Goldman Sachs) have concluded that speculation is pushing up gas prices. Thanks to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that was signed by President Obama in July 2010, the CFTC is allowed to set “position limits” on such speculation, but the final regulations won’t be implemented until early 2012.

But the CFTC could have gotten started on its rulemaking two years earlier were it not for Senate Republicans. In July 2008, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill directing the CFTC to limit speculation in the oil market. However, Senate Republicans filibustered the bill in the Senate, preventing it from ever coming up for a final vote:

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a vote on legislation to rein in speculation in the energy markets, instead calling for energy votes that would expand domestic petroleum production and more nuclear power development. Democrats, in a 50-43 vote, failed to gain the 60 votes needed to bring the speculation bill forward for consideration on the Senate floor.

Amongst Republicans, only Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted for the legislation (while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voted against it as a procedural matter, allowing him to bring the bill up for consideration later). At the time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that “we don’t have a problem with taking a look at speculation,” but that the GOP would refuse to move forward unless the bill included opening up more federal land for drilling (which would have a negligible effect on gas prices).

Having the CFTC begin in July 2008 the work that it began last July would have brought limits on speculation online this summer, instead of next, if the CFTC were working on the same timetable it is now. Technically, Dodd-Frank called for speculation limits to be in place three months ago, but the CFTC missed its deadline, in part due to conservative opposition to the limits.

Since House Republicans passed House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) radical 2012 budget, several potential Republican presidential contenders for 2012 have been asked whether they are on board with Ryan’s plan to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid while cutting taxes for the richest Americans (and likely increasing them on the middle class).

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich distanced himself from Ryan’s plans for Medicare, while former governor Mitt Romney said he and Ryan “are on the same page.” Former governor Tim Pawlenty refused to get into the details, but congratulated Ryan for “offering real leadership.”

In the Washington Post today, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) — another potential 2012 candidate — offered unabashed praise for the Ryan budget, calling its destruction of Medicare “exactly the right direction to head“:

In the debate between Ryan and Obama, Daniels knows where he stands. He called Ryan’s proposal for ending Medicare’s defined-benefit structure “exactly the right direction to head,” though he says he is open to other serious alternatives. Asked about Ryan’s proposal to convert Medicaid into a block grant with full flexibility for states, he replied, “Bring it on.” He says that means testing should be part of any solution to restructuring Social Security and Medicare.

The Ryan budget would turn Medicare into a privatized voucher system, and according to the Congressional Budget Office would effectively double the amount that seniors pay for health care. Ryan’s plan for Medicaid, meanwhile, would force states to limit benefits and cut many people off from the program entirely. It’s worth remembering that two-thirds of Medicaid beneficiaries are seniors or people with disabilities.

Aside from his affinity for the Ryan budget, Daniels also supports changes to Social Security (which the Ryan budget does not include), and has called for raising the retirement age, which is a highly regressive change. Daniels’ justification for wanting to raise the retirement age is that younger people may someday live to more than 100 years of age.