How the conservative swindle machine could lead to global financial Armageddon

If you consider a chart of the ever-rightward march of congressional Republicans, you begin to wonder just what is fueling the movement. Doesn't matter what party the president is from, whether it's peacetime or war, if taxes are high or low, or if it's rainy or sunny outside — Republicans are always getting more conservative. Why?

Surely there are many reasons, but a big one is straight-up grifting. Excellent reporting by Eric Lipton and Jennifer Steinhauer in The New York Times shows that a significant number of conservative political action committees and consultancies are essentially multilevel marketing scams, devoting almost none of their proceeds to the political causes they ostensibly support.

Scamming has long been a hallmark of the right wing. But it is running headlong into American political realities, with the approach of the debt ceiling in just a few days. The consequences could be disastrous.

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How does the grift work? The basic formula is to get a list of committed conservatives, raise money off of one conservative cause or another, and sink most of the proceeds back into the organization and more fundraising (as opposed to, you know, doing something about the supposed cause). For example, Paul Ryan looks to be the new speaker of the House, so the faux-PACs are calling him a RINO — not because of anything he's done, but because they need a new target to fleece the rubes.

Lipton and Steinhauer's story fits exactly with previous reporting from historian Rick Perlstein. He documented some of the ham-fisted scams targeting the elderly (recall that the average Fox News viewer is 69 years old) that come with bargain-basement conservative publications like Newsmax or Human Events, as well as the first iterations, back in the 1970s, of the perpetual fundraising-and-radicalization machine. Zack Beauchamp discovered similar scams aimed at the survivalist crowd, who were convinced that President Obama was about to round up everyone into FEMA internment camps.

It's not just old Fox News watchers on Social Security, either. Convincing aging billionaires to support some presidential campaign is practically a cottage industry these days — witness the $150 million spent by Sheldon Adelson alone in 2012.

Again, such groups are none too concerned with actual political goals, but they're a key part of the cracked ideological climate on the right, fueling hatred of the Republican leadership in Congress. In the conservative fever swamps, liberals are always this close to implementing Agenda 21, and the Republican leadership is constantly betraying true conservatism — but you can help, with an emergency donation. Click here to smash the libs!

It's bogeyman politics that relies on the fact that none of the nutcase premises are even close to being true. If Obama were really going to use the military to impose a dictatorship in Texas, a few chinless direct-mail marketers wouldn't be much of an obstacle.

It would all be little more than a sideshow were it not for the fact that the nation has to be governed, and that the nuttiest conservatives hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives. If the world is to avoid financial Armageddon starting Nov. 3, somebody has to raise the debt limit before that time.

It's worth reviewing just exactly what the debt limit is, in case you forgot since the last time we saw this show. When Congress passes a budget, it legally obliges the U.S. Treasury to take in a certain amount in taxes and spend a certain amount — thus mandating borrowing to make up for any revenue shortfall.

In nearly every other country on Earth, that would be the end of it. But due to an obsolete legal construction from World War I, in the United States additional borrowing authority also has to be authorized. Extremist Republicans see this as a great source of leverage. United States bonds, as about the safest asset in the entire world, are the bedrock of the world financial system. Hitting the debt limit would mean the government would soon miss an interest payment — meaning default and horrible market chaos. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling until President Obama agrees to defund Planned Parenthood, or abolish the welfare state, or whatever, is thus taking the entire world economy hostage to extract policy concessions Republicans are unable to get through the normal legislative process.

Naturally, the so-called "Freedom Caucus" in the House included hostage-taking among its list of demands for supporting Ryan in his bid to become speaker. He seems to have thwarted them for the time being, but there's no guarantee he can keep them in line as the deadline approaches.

In a country where the political class had the slightest whiff of genuine patriotism or common sense, holding the debt limit hostage wouldn't even occur to anyone. Denmark, for example, set its ceiling so high that it may never hit it. But a small minority of House conservatives, egged on by a self-perpetuating scam machine, might just get it done.