“A Never-Ending Gravy Train”: The GOP Civil War Is Going To Make Both Sides Rich
If you haven’t been paying attention to rubbernecking reports on the most recent “GOP civil war,” because you’ve been paying attention to more important stories like the DoJ targeted-killing white paper or the disastrous retooling of once-promising NBC sitcom “Up All Night,” here’s what you’ve missed: A couple of well-funded conservative groups made a big deal about being mad at a new well-funded conservative group, giving all the groups involved a wonderful new sales pitch for their fundraising efforts.
Most stories are presenting the fight as a war for the soul of the Republican Party, with sellout pragmatist Karl Rove and his “Conservative Victory Project” on one side and the purist conservative groups like the Club for Growth on the other. In a radio interview, a CVP spokesperson referred to venerable conservative huckster Brent Bozell as a “hater,” which led to a very overwrought open letter signed by two dozen huge conservative movement players, from Frank Gaffney to Ginni Thomas, demanding the spokesperson’s firing.
This isn’t actually an ideological battle. It’s mainly an argument about strategy. Karl Rove is savvier than most of the people he’s warring with. He’s in many respects the best friend the conservative movement could have, if they actually listened to him: Rove’s “pragmatism” means electing as many Republicans as possible, so that the conservative movement can implement its conservative agenda. Rove knows that moderate Republican elected officials give true conservatives power. Rove’s CVP is going to attempt to aid electable Republican Senate candidates in party primaries, to avoid Todd Akin situations. The Club for Growth exists to push already-elected Republicans to the right, by threatening to fund primaries against them. The groups don’t necessarily have to be at odds: The Club for Growth’s model has effectively kept the Senate in the hands of the Democrats. It’s also, in its defense, pushed the party, and Congress, closer to a purer conservatism.
Karl Rove is smarter and more accomplished than most of the people who signed this letter, if we’re talking electoral politics. If we’re talking list-building and fundraising, though, you can’t do much better than these signatories, most of whom belong to think tanks or publications or “activist groups” of very questionable influence. These are people who’ve spent years perfecting a scheme in which conservative people send them money, for accomplishing next to nothing to advance conservatism.
The conservative movement is a massive and elaborate moneymaking venture. Numerous nonprofits exist almost solely to raise money, which they spend on their own salaries and, obviously, more fundraising. A conservative civil war is great for business. Karl Rove throwing money at “electable” Republicans is a wonderful opportunity for people to raise money for groups that promise to elect crazies. More primary campaigns means more jobs for consultants. More third-party groups fighting for the soul of the party means more desperate pitches to gullible millionaires and billionaires. Plus more crappy books sold in bulk to conservative book clubs!
Rove’s super PAC and dark money nonprofit spent more than $300 million losing the last election. He obviously intends to raise even more money over the next two cycles. And the more his ostensible competitors will raise, which is why they all sound suspiciously like cartoon Tex Avery wolves audibly salivating in their quotes for this Politico story:
[FreedomWorks] CEO Matt Kibbe welcomed the prospect of squaring off against the Conservative Victory Project, asserting, “The guys who fund groups like Rove’s want to re-establish that they’re in charge, but they just don’t understand the inevitable decentralization and democratization of politics.”
And Club for Growth President Chris Chocola added that Rove and Law have gotten CFG donors’ attention and “may energize the groups that they view as ‘the problem.’”
He said, “When you think about a Republican primary, and you think about a principled conservative versus a moderate Republican — well, our model wins more often.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said his group will focus on a few races — primarily in the Senate. He said it’s just as well that “the moderate Republicans who have been involved in these primaries behind the scenes [are] making it clear that they intend to engage in primaries and defeat conservatives.”
“Donate to us or Karl Rove will defeat true conservatives” is a great pitch. Maybe even better than “donate to us if you actually want Republicans to win elections.” While only an idiot would send any money to FreedomWorks, an organization that currently pays Dick Armey a six-figure salary to not work there, the last cycle showed how many well-heeled idiots are out there asking to be fleeced.
It was hilarious last week watching respectable right-wing commentators like Peggy Noonan and Rich Lowry slobber over the inane Super Bowl ad featuring the disembodied voice of the late Paul Harvey, a right-wing huckster par excellence. Harvey was a broadcasting legend not just for his longevity, but also — maybe primarily — because of the apparent sincerity with which he hawked completely useless crap to the Social Security-collecting set. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, neither of whom have qualms about ripping off their audiences, are his spiritual heirs despite their narrower appeals.
The entire modern conservative movement these days seems like a successful experiment in getting rich people (and lots and lots of non-rich people, whose donations are less coveted but accepted nonetheless) to pay an ever-growing number of pundits, think tank “fellows” and “scholars,” failed campaign hacks and people like Ginni Thomas who seem to serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Like Paul Harvey, the super PACs and nonprofits know it doesn’t matter if your products — in this case, ideas and candidates and electoral strategies — are worthless, as long as you push the crap convincingly. Whether Rove succeeds or fails in helping the Republican Party, his campaign will be great for the movement.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, February 11, 2013
“I’m Not Complaining”: John Boehner Purges “The Wreckers”, But War For Soul Of The Republican Party Isn’t Ending
Looks like there’s been an interesting behind-the-scenes wipeout of some of the most notorious dystopian wreckers who’ve been a thorn in Speaker John Boehner’s side. The GOP Steering Committee has removed Reps. David Schweikert (AZ-06) and Walter Jones (NC-03) from the Financial Services Committee, and Reps. Justin Amash (MI-03) and Tim Huelskamp (KS-01) from the Budget Committee—reportedly all for failing to support their own party with sufficient gusto.
Indeed, Roll Call says that committee members “reviewed a spreadsheet listing each GOP lawmaker and how often he or she had voted with leadership,” so it’s no surprise to see that this quartet failed to make the cut. Jones has been an occasional gadfly from the left (mostly on foreign policy), but the other three, especially Amash, practically live to give Boehner agita, as I’ve written about before. Amash has been the biggest offender when it comes to voting against Republican budgetary measures, and renegades like him brought Boehner close to the brink more than once last year.
And if you follow the House puzzle on a regular basis, you’ll recall that Schweikert defeated fellow Rep. Ben Quayle in a redistricting-induced primary earlier this year. The well-connected Quayle was the favorite of House leaders, and John Boehner went out of his way to fluff him. That led the Club for Growth to threaten Boehner to stay out of the primary—which he did, but in the end, it seems like he’ll get the last laugh: It’s a pyrrhic victory for the Club if Schweikert gets neutered in terms of committee assignments.
But you have to wonder if this kind of payback will actually succeed in bringing the Club and other conservative meddlers to heel, or if it’ll just inspire them to fight the establishment even harder. The Heritage Foundation’s action arm is already furious, in particular calling Schweikert’s removal “unthinkable,” but will it still be worth winning all these primaries if Boehner reduces all their favorites to backbencher status?
I’m going to guess they won’t give up, though—these organizations have no purpose except to drive the GOP as far rightward as possible. They are predisposed against ever going along to get along. And that’ll just mean that the GOP’s intra-party turf wars will continue on their current trend and grow ever nastier, damaging the Republican brand further and occasionally even handing seats over to the Democrats (as we saw in this year’s Indiana Senate race). Hey, I’m not complaining.
By: David Nir, Daily Kos, December 3, 2012
“Ideological Orthodoxy”: How The Media Is Enabling The GOP’s Rightward Drift
Richard Lugar’s loss in Tuesday night’s primary has been heralded by commenters on both sides of the aisle as a harbinger of doom for moderate Republicans. The conventional wisdom has quickly congealed: Lugar lost because he voted for Barack Obama’s Supreme Court candidates, worked with Obama on an arms control treaty, and was generally not partisan enough for a GOP dominated by the Tea Party.
That interpretation is plausible. But it’s not the only, or even the most likely scenario. There’s a high probability that Richard Lugar lost because he was 80 years old, didn’t keep a house in Indiana, ran an indifferent—at best—campaign, and focused on foreign policy rather than bringing home benefits to his state. But the first reading is the one that will be accepted by the press and, more importantly, by Republican politicians. Everyone is biased to believe that Lugar lost because of an ideological purge—and the acceptance of that interpretation will unfortunately further encourage Republican Members of Congress to stick as closely as possible to the rejectionist ideologues who run the GOP.
There’s a long history of foreign policy experts in the Senate finding that their constituents care a lot more about goodies for the state than accounting for loose nukes in the former Soviet Union (or whatever national security issue is on the table). And a Roll Call story by Shira Toeplitz a week before the vote made a good case that Lugar, like many aging legislators who hadn’t needed to engage in a serious campaign in years, had no idea how to run a modern campaign.
Why is there such a strong bias to accept the other interpretation? Movement conservatives, of course, want to claim credit for defeating Lugar; they’d like to use that story to pressure politicians into ideological orthodoxy. Individuals and organizations within that movement, too, have an interest in acquiring a reputation for being giant-killers. Oddly enough, partisan Democrats also prefer this narrative: It’s much better for fundraising to tell your donors that you’re competing with a powerful extremist movement than to tell them that some out-of-touch Republican senator lost.
Who else? Washington-based centrists love Dick Lugar. Therefore, they’d prefer to pin the loss on outside forces and crazy ideologues than to find any fault with Lugar’s own behavior. Nor do they want to accept the perhaps sad reality that part of the price for foreign policy leadership may be that constituents won’t care about your accomplishments. The national press gets a better storyline, too. In Indiana, “what happened to Richard Lugar?” might make a compelling headline, but from a national perspective a continuing story of conservative purges is far more exciting than a one-off about a Senator who may be a Washington institution but isn’t very well-known outside the Beltway.
There is one person, though, who has an incentive to play up the “out-of-touch” version of events: Richard Mourdock, the guy who won. After all, he’s now a general election candidate, and whatever he wants to be known for down the line (and whatever he said during the nomination campaign), right now he wants to win votes of moderate Republicans. However, Mourdock may well believe the pervasive ideological purge story himself—and, even if he doesn’t, the conservative groups who invested in his victory (whether or not they were the ones who made a difference) will be sure to remind him of it if he wins in November.
Add it all up and there’s an excellent chance that by the time the 113th Congress meets in January, every Republican Senator will “know” that Dick Lugar was defeated for being too reasonable and too moderate. Granted, they’ll also all make sure to check that the state of their home state residency; we’re not likely to see that mistake again for a while.
But congressional Republicans will take Lugar’s defeat more as a call to pay attention to Club For Growth’s key votes than to schedule some extra visits home and a few more town hall meetings. They’ll be even more motivated to reject compromise on principle and be uber-vigilant about opposing by filibuster Barack Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominations (if Obama is still in the White House). That’s bad for the proper functioning of democracy regardless of the reason, but it will be especially tragic if the real cause was just Dick Lugar’s losing touch with home.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The New Republic, May 11, 2012
“Attack Of The Right”: Ryan Budget A Disappointment To Conservatives
The conservative group Club for Growth said Wednesday that a Republican House budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) is a “disappointment” to fiscal conservatives that falls short of making necessary cuts to balance the nation’s budget.
The group’s president said in a statement that Ryan’s plan does not put the country on a path to chop deficits quickly enough.
Chris Chocola also complained that that the budget largely waives massive cuts that are set to go into effect in January as a consequence for the failure of Congress’s special deficit reduction “supercommittee.”
According to the Budget Control Act — the hard-fought law that raised the nation’s debt ceiling over the summer — failure of the supercommittee was to trigger about $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade, split between military and domestic spending.
In Ryan’s budget, the so-called sequester–deeply unpopular to Republicans because of its powerful hit to defense–would be replaced. Tackling only the first year of the cuts—about $110 billion—his budget calls for instructing Congressional committees to come up with $18 billion in trims the first year and $116 billion over five years.
“It is hard to have confidence that our long-term fiscal challenges will be met responsibly when the same Congress that passed the Budget Control Act wants to ignore it less than one year later. On balance, the Ryan Budget is a disappointment for fiscal conservatives,” Chocola said in a statement.
Ryan’s budget also seeks to eliminate deficits by 2040. The Club for Growth has called for a budget that balances within the decade. Chocola said the budget contains “several important reforms and pro-growth policies” but is not enough.
“The Club for Growth urges Republicans to support a budget that balances in the near future and complies with the Budget Control Act,” he said.
The attack from the right comes as Ryan is facing a far more vigorous outcry from Democrats—who believe this plan slashes programs for the poor and elderly even while cutting taxes for the wealthy.
They have also complained that the Ryan plan slices agency budgets by $18 billion more than a year-long cap agreed to in the debt deal—a key concession made to conservatives whom Ryan will need to get his budget plan through the House.
With Democrats unified against Ryan’s plan, the Club for Growth statement could pose problems for its passage in the House if it persuades the GOP’s restive caucus to waver in its support.
Some centrist Republicans are also anxious about Ryan’s plan—fearful it will set the House on a path to another nasty clash with the Senate just weeks before the November election.
By: Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, March 21, 2012
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