Photograph by Moses Robinson/Getty Images

The Miz and John Cena battle during their WWE match at the WWE Monday Night Raw Supershow Halloween event at the Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, in this file photo.

Professional wrestling fans won’t see Glenn Beck tonight when they tune in for Monday Night Raw.

The WWE franchise invited Beck to appear on tonight’s show after the talk show host and conservative pundit panned as “stupid” a character with links to the Tea Party.

“Unfortunately I am currently booked doing anything else,” Beck said, according to the Blaze, the news and commentary Web-site he started in 2010. Raw is set to film live tonight before an audience of 12,000 in Dallas, where Beck’s production company, Mercury Radio Arts, has offices.

The feud erupted last week after WWE reinvented character Jack Swagger as “a xenophobic ‘Real American’ who delivers anti-immigration ‘State of the Union’ addresses,” according to WWE’s Web-site. Swagger acts as an antagonist to WWE world champion Alberto Del Rio of Mexico, whom he taunts along with mentor Zeb Colter as a “man who only came into this country to reap the rewards of our motherland.”

Beck called out the story-line for “demonizing” the Tea Party. World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. has conservative ties, formerly headed by Linda McMahon, a Republican who last year lost her second U.S. Senate bid in three years in Connecticut.

While an article in The Blaze said many conservatives were “disgusted” by it, the story-line may connect better than Beck thinks, given the franchise’s fan base. As Swagger and Colter said in their videotaped invitation to Beck as they stood in front of a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, 20 percent of the show’s 14 million weekly viewers are Hispanic.

“WWE is in the entertainment business, creating characters and stories that revolve around our Superstars as well as culturally significant current events,” it said on its Web-site.

Original post is Glenn Beck’s WWE Smackdown by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg

Demonstrators crowd in to the rotunda inside the Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, on Dec. 11, 2012.

As an estimated 10,000 people surrounded the Michigan Statehouse today, an Americans for Prosperity white tent was ripped down and tables overturned, with supporters of labor awaiting action on right-to-work laws inside.

The Capitol in Lansing was ringed with protestors, the stairs at the front blocked by people holding signs such as this one: “Snyder is a turncoat.”

If the Republican-dominated legislature approves the bills and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signs them as promised, Michigan would become the 24th state to enact such legislation, and the second this year after Indiana.

The change would be a practical and symbolic rout in a stronghold of organized labor.

After the tent fell, some state police arrived with batons — refraining from hitting anyone, yet holding them high, forcing people to move. Snow fell at one point, a building thermometer reading 32 degrees Farenheit.

Adoption of these laws, labor leaders and allies said, would lead to further political turmoil.

“There will be blood,” Rep. Douglas Geiss, a Democrat from Taylor, said in debate before a vote.

Bill Bagwell, a 55-year-old United Auto Workers member from Westland, said the measure would create friction at his General Motors Co. plant in Ypsilanti. Members who pay union dues would detest those who enjoy the benefits of the contract but don’t contribute, he said.

“It’ll create civil war,” Bagwell said.

See the full story on Michigan’s labor dispute at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Union Member: `Civil War’ in Michigan’s Right to Work Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, left, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, center, and fMitt Romney in Las Vegas.

Bloomberg conducted an utterly unscientific and informal poll of state leaders attending the National Governors Association annual meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, this weekend, asking them to guess who they think will join presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in his bid for the White House.

One Democratic governor, who diplomatically declined to single out anyone on the record, was the survey’s first respondent and topped his list with names that would come up repeatedly throughout the weekend: Ohio Senator Rob Portman, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker kept the first two names and added one more: U.S. Representative and fellow Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, who he said would add heft to the ticket for his economic and budgetary expertise. Colorado’s democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, also ranked Portman and Pawlenty on top, adding that he thought Romney would appreciate the former’s disciplined and deliberative nature. Alabama’s Robert Bentley, a Republican, picked Rice.

Oklahoma’s Mary Fallin, a Republican, said governors are uniquely qualified for their experiences running states and pointed to Virginia’s Robert McDonnell, New Jersey’s Chris Christie (who was said to be at the meeting yet proved elusive to this reporter), and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal — though Portman and Rice would be good too, she said.

Arizona’s Jan Brewer, a Republican, said she was a betting woman but declined to put her money on anyone in particular. Her fellow party members Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, David Heineman of Nebraska, and Terry Branstad of Iowa also declined, as did Democrat Jay Nixon of Missouri.

While the governors meeting is typically a bipartisan affair focused on shared concerns, Vermont’s Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, used the opportunity to take a pot-shot at his colleagues across the aisle. “These people have become so unpredictable and irrational that I can’t possibly understand how they think so I won’t try to guess,” he said. “They’ve lost my ability to try and follow their reasoning.”

William Selway contributed to this post

Original post is Veepstakes: Governors Edition by Political Capital.