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November 16, 2007
Howard Beale in the White House
Fake news host Stephen Colbert couldn’t get his presidential campaign off the ground. Will real news host Lou Dobbs make the cut? In an online commentary last week, the populist CNN host, who has come to be the television voice of the anti-immigrant movement, wrote:
I believe that independent Americans will demand a far better choice than any of the candidates now seeking their party's nomination. I believe next November's surprise will be the election of a man or woman of great character, vision and accomplishment, a candidate who has not yet entered the race.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, Dobbs is talking about himself as that candidate, on a third- or even fourth-party ticket. (Via Ross Douthat.)
The idea of a Dobbs candidacy has been floated before—and there are already a couple “Draft Dobbs” websites. But recently, major figures on the Right—including James Dobson—have made threats to bolt from the GOP, and while there are surely points on Dobbs’s platform they would abhor (like his view of Iraq), immigration is not one of them.
In protesting the Bob Dole—Bill Clinton race in 1996, Dobson voted for the Constitution Party (then called the U.S. Taxpayers Party), whose founder, Howard Phillips, has also been part of recent discussions about bolting. This party would likely be the focus of any religious-right third-party candidacy, and it may be a nexus between the Religious Right and the nativist Right: Prominent anti-immigration activists Jim Gilchrist, Alan Keyes, and Jerome Corsi have all been named as potential Constitution Party candidates.
Dobbs, like Tom Tancredo, has a very dedicated core of followers, who may even drive him out of his TV job and into a quixotic, Ross Perot-like campaign. But actual electoral success based on stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment is a lot harder to achieve, as Virginia Republicans learned this month.
Posted by Ezra at 6:02 PM | Permalink
The Triumphant Return of Tom DeLay
The media is reporting that Tom DeLay is set to unveil his own right-wing version of MoveOn.org as he seeks to salvage his own reputation and the Republican Party’s electoral chances heading into 2008:
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has formed a new grass-roots organization that he says will help conservatives better convey their message to voters and take back control of Congress.
The Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM) — co-founded by Mr. DeLay, Texas Republican, and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell — will establish "chapters" in all 50 states, which will be used to lobby lawmakers, coordinate political messages and influence members of the press.
"Right now, liberals are better organized, funded and active than I have ever witnessed," Mr. DeLay said. "Our goal is to work with the talented leaders of the conservative movement to complement their efforts, using an army of activists to push for the policies and leadership conservatives are begging for."
Roll Call reports that while CCM is DeLay’s baby, Ken Blackwell is going to be doing most of the heavy lifting:
CCM, a DeLay brainchild, actually will be headed by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who lost his 2006 gubernatorial bid to then-Rep. Ted Strickland (D). But DeLay is helping to establish CCM as a viable group and is in the midst of raising money for the venture and building its infrastructure.
…
CCM plans to establish several local chapters in major media markets throughout the country (a meeting of the Houston chapter, in DeLay's political backyard, is scheduled for Nov. 27). CCM particularly is targeting those media markets where left-of-center advocacy groups and 527s are operating.
Through these chapters and Blackwell's personal outreach, CCM plans to "identify, recruit, train, inspire, activate and mobilize conservative activists to take specific action on policy issues and political causes" nationwide, according to an advance copy of the group's brochure obtained by Roll Call.
Moving forward, DeLay will remain active in CCM, in particular as honorary finance chairman. DeLay has spent the past year building the foundation of the organization and preparing it for launch. Blackwell is serving as CCM's chairman.
Blackwell is a logical choice to partner with DeLay in this effort to unify the Republican Party’s economic and social conservative base since, following the failure of his own 2006 gubernatorial bid, Blackwell was embraced by both strands of the GOP’s base, securing not only a position as Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment with the socially conservative Family Research Council, but positions with the economically conservative National Taxpayers Union and Club for Growth as well.
On top of that, Blackwell shares DeLay’s gift for inflammatory, partisan rhetoric:
CCM believes it will be uniquely suited to bring together “security, economic, and cultural conservatives” by uniting them behind a common agenda committed to protecting American families from their myriad of “enemies”:
Conservatives believe that security without prosperity is fleeting and that prosperity without security is impossible. We believe the family - rather than the group or the consumer - is the basic unit of society and civilization and that government as such has a special responsibility to protect our families, and in particular our children from all enemies: foreign, domestic, or judicial.
It is good to see that DeLay has not lost his taste for demonizing and threatening the judiciary since leaving office.
Posted by Kyle at 5:11 PM | Permalink
Clinton Will Unify The Right
The current malaise and discord among the Right will fade if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination vows Rev. Pat. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition : "Faith leaders have bemoaned the fact that no single Republican candidate has energized or inspired values voters. Those fears and concerns will melt away very quickly should Senator Clinton become the Democratic nominee for President. You will see renewed energy and unity within the faith community as they work to defeat Senator Clinton in November of 08."
Posted by Kyle at 3:35 PM | Permalink
Beware "The Golden Compass"
CWA's Matt Barber warns that "The Golden Compass" is trying to turn kids into atheists: "With The Golden Compass, Phillip Pullman shares his heart with us - a heart that says, 'There is no God.' And he clearly wants to influence your child's heart as well. This movie's creation - or chance materialization, take your pick - has a specific agenda. It is clearly targeted toward unsuspecting children with the furtive goal of enlisting the next generation of 'fools.'"
Posted by Kyle at 3:20 PM | Permalink
No Christmas for Fido
In their never-ending crusade to save Christmas by apparently demanding that every retailer in America to use the word “Christmas” in its holiday (sorry, Christmas) promotions, the American Family Association is now targeting PetSmart for denying Christmas to the nation’s pets:
At PetSmart, Christmas doesn't existOf course, since Christmas is a holiday, it kind of makes sense that all of the Christmas gifts would also be holiday gifts as well. But apparently PetSmart has already gotten the message:Send an e-mail to PetSmart and ask why they refuse to include Christmas in their promotion, choosing to only use holiday.
At PetSmart, Christmas doesn't exist. It is not to be found anywhere on their Web Site. AFA checked out the local PetSmart store and there was no Christmas there, either.
A search on PetSmart's home page found 252 references to "holiday." It also found 43 references to "Christmas." But, alas, this is very misleading. When you click on "Christmas" you are directed to a page containing the same gifts you get when you search for holiday. Of all the items that pop up when you search for Christmas, not a single one mentions Christmas or is identified as being a Christmas gift.
At PetSmart, everything is "holiday."
Posted by Kyle at 11:37 AM | Permalink
An Evening With Fred Thompson
The Florida Family Policy Council is hosting a Gala Dinner tonight and attendees will not only get to hear from Ft. Lauderdale’s anti-gay Mayor Jim Naugle, but Fred Thompson as well:
The Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC) will host a Gala Dinner at the Westin Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida beginning at 6:30pm on Friday evening, November 16, 2007. The event is being designed to introduce South Florida to the mission of the FFPC and will feature former Senator and Law and Order Actor Fred Thompson as the keynote speaker. Mr. Thompson will be accompanied by his wife Jeri Thompson.
For a mere $10,000, you can secure seats at Thompson’s dinner table, but don’t expect to talk to him about his flagging presidential campaign:
The FFPC is a 501c3 non-profit organization and therefore Mr. Thompson is attending the event as a private citizen and not as a campaigning presidential candidate.
Given Thompson’s notorious work ethic and unremarkable one-and-one-third term in the Senate , it seems slightly implausible that Thompson would be invited to address this dinner were he not running for President, but it’s probably a good thing that he’s attending as a private citizen since “the Florida Family Policy Council is associated with Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family” and Dobson has already declared Thompson unacceptable as a candidate.
But hopefully for Thompson and those in attendance, he’ll be interesting and informative enough that he won’t be reduced to begging for applause when he finishes his remarks.
Posted by Kyle at 10:19 AM | Permalink
November 15, 2007
Playing the 'Race Card' Card Against Obama
Edward Blum has long been a vocal opponent of affirmative action, having worked for anti-affirmative action groups such as the Center for Equal Opportunity, the American Civil Rights Institute, and his own Campaign for a Color-Blind America (now vanished). In recent years, however, Blum has expanded his purview to another area involving opportunities for minorities: the basic right to vote.
Blum is now director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Project on Fair Representation, which was started in 2005 to oppose the renewal of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the clause requiring states and localities with a history of disenfranchisement to get federal approval for any new voting regulations. Since then, Blum has come to the defense of the embattled Bush appointees to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who have come under fire for overruling career attorneys for apparently partisan reasons. Blum attacked the career attorneys as having “run amok,” and jumped to the defense of Hans von Spakovsky, the “point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.”
Spakovsky gained his experience in voting law by engineering the purging from voter rolls of supposed felons; indeed, he was a board member of a group involved in the 2000 purge in Florida that disenfranchised thousands of legit voters. As a Justice Department appointee, Spakovsky redirected voting-rights efforts toward combating supposed fraud; his politicized tactics have caused opposition to his subsequent nomination to the Federal Election Commission.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has spoken out against Spakovsky’s appointment to the FEC, emphasizing the importance of protecting the right to vote in light of ongoing attempts at suppression, particularly aimed at minorities. Which leads us back to Edward Blum, Spakovsky’s defender, who paints his man as a hero fighting against “liberal staffers” whose efforts to enforce the Voting Rights Act were supposedly making the voting section “an arm of the ALCU.” Earlier this year, musing at length about Obama’s racial identity, Blum expressed hope that the candidate would come out against affirmative action. But now Blum is attacking Obama for "either a complete ignorance of Voting Rights Act….or a willingness to mislead the public in order to promote his civil rights bona fides."
WHEN YOU'RE TEN points behind in the polls, less than two months away from the first presidential primaries, and African American Democrats are divided between you and the front-runner, what is the easiest way to narrow that gap?
Apparently, if you're Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), you play the race card.
If any discussion about the documented ways in which voter ID laws unduly affect the elderly, the poor, and minorities is “playing the race card,” what do you call Blum’s career of trying to undermine policies designed to redress racial discrimination?
Posted by Ezra at 6:05 PM | Permalink
Manuel Miranda's New Job
After the failure of his Families First on Immigration effort, it appears as if Manuel Miranda has found a new job: "Miranda's official title is director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. There, he's giving instruction on democratic principles to Iraqi lawyers and lawmakers, a group of whom he escorted around the Capitol complex yesterday ... Miranda, who moved on to work as judicial nominations counsel for then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in 2003, was forced from his job in early 2004 after an internal Senate investigation determined he and a junior aide had swiped 4,670 documents, memos and e-mails."
Posted by Kyle at 2:38 PM | Permalink
The Future Home of Right-Wing Intellectuals?
The Colorado Springs Gazette profiles The John Jay Institute for Faith, Society and Law, founded by a former Family Research Council and Focus on the Family associate: "[Students] are learning how to spread their moral beliefs in a thoughtful manner, without beating people over the head with their faith. The yearlong program combines their calling to public life with their conservative Christian worldview. After a semester of academics, they will be interns at conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, where they can further hone their skills in Christian persuasion."
Posted by Kyle at 2:23 PM | Permalink
Former FRC Head Blasts Current Right-Wing Leaders
Ken Conner, former president of the Family Research Council, is blasting Dobson, Perkins, and the like for selling out: "They've enjoyed having a seat at the table for so long that they didn't in many instances stand on principle when they should have, and they've lost credibility with their people."
Posted by Kyle at 2:16 PM | Permalink
Enemy of Your Enemy?
Americans United and Pat Robertson find themselves in a select group: they have both been attacked by right-wing pastor Wiley Drake: "We're going to encourage people to call in [to CBN] and let them know that until Pat Robertson repents and comes back to the Lord, we will not listen to The 700 Club and we will not make any donations to The 700 Club."
Posted by Kyle at 2:10 PM | Permalink
Wash. Times Finds NRLC Thompson Endorsement 'Interesting'
"... a man who once offered legal advice to a pro-choice group, voted against key pro-life issues in the Senate and now espouses convoluted reasons for rejecting constitutional protection of the unborn." More here.
Posted by Ezra at 10:44 AM | Permalink
November 14, 2007
National Right to Life Endorsement of Thompson Called Selling Out
Rounding out a spate of recent right-wing endorsements of Republican presidential candidates, Fred Thompson has secured the support of the National Right to Life Committee. While not as far-fetched as Pat Robertson’s Giuliani endorsement, the pairing ought to raise some eyebrows, and not just because of Thompson’s rejection of major NRLC priorities such as the Human Life Amendment and federal intervention in Terri Schiavo’s case, or the candidate’s warning that a national abortion ban could lead to putting girls in prison, a notion Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America called “insulting.”
In his cornpone video message to NRLC’s annual convention last summer, Thompson played up his kinship with the group and his “100 percent” anti-abortion record in the Senate, but Thompson’s signature accomplishment in Congress was passage of campaign-finance reform, a bill hated by anti-abortion groups (as John McCain discovered) and arguably by no one more than NRLC.
In fact, Thompson’s campaign-finance hearings in the late 1990s specifically targeted NRLC, subpoenaing its and other groups’ financial records in search of evidence of electioneering. As recently as 2003, Thompson wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the law’s regulation of “sham issue advocacy by non-party groups”—a point decided by the Court this year, in favor of “sham issue advocacy,” in a case involving NRLC affiliate Wisconsin Right to Life. (NRLC’s continuing disdain for campaign-finance regulation is also implied by its neglect to mention in its press release that the endorsement is actually by NRLC’s affiliated PAC.)
The odd endorsement led conservative-movement stalwart Paul Weyrich to suggest that the group had been bought off. "I think in all probability the Thompson people were engaged with the National Right to Life people in financial dealing," he said.
(The Thompson campaign turned this accusation back at Mitt Romney, whom Weyrich recently endorsed, noting “the Romney campaign's long history of spreading money around to anyone who will take it.” See here and here.)
According to NRLC, the whole campaign-finance thing is no big deal. “Our opposition to McCain-Feingold dealt with our consideration of the ability of National Right to Life and grassroots citizens to express themselves in the process," said the group’s director, David O’Steen. "That cannot be compared to the question of protecting the lives of innocent, unborn children and preventing them from being slaughtered.” The group similarly waved off disagreements about a constitutional abortion ban and Terri Schiavo. It’s all about judges, said O’Steen: "What [Thompson] said was he was going to concentrate on what he could affect. And that's what we want him to do. And what he can affect is to see that judges are appointed that will interpret the constitution according to its actual text."
While NRLC’s endorsement gives Thompson’s sluggish candidacy a much-needed jolt of pep, the group’s apparent compromise on formerly absolute principles may dull the buzz. Veteran clinic protester Joseph Sheidler downplayed the importance of the group he rallied with in the 1980s and 1990s: “With…so many [pro-life organizations] active and so many taking other positions on other candidates…10 years ago it would have been a much bigger influence.”
Other anti-abortion hardliners have been more blunt in recent months. A spat over an anti-James Dobson ad in May led NRLC to come to the defense of Dobson against its own state affiliate, Colorado Right to Life. Colorado RTL President Brian Rohrbough seemed to predict Weyrich’s words when he accused NRLC of selling out:
"What happened in the abortion world is that groups like National Right to Life, they're really a wing of the Republican Party, and they're not geared to push for personhood for an unborn child -- they're geared to getting Republicans elected," he said.
Posted by Ezra at 5:03 PM | Permalink
Smells Like Christmas Spirit
It’s mid-November, and we are well into this year’s “War on Christmas,” the seasonal campaign in which a melodramatically aggrieved Right—occupying a fantasy world where we’re not all surrounded by Christmas music and commerce—claims that Christianity is under attack, pointing to retailers that say “Happy Holidays” and the decoration regimes of a handful of small-time local administrators.
Yesterday morning, for example, the American Family Association sent an alert to its members warning that Lowe’s was selling Christmas trees without using the word “Christmas” enough in its catalog. “Lowe's evidently did not want to offend any non-Christians, therefore they replaced ‘Christmas tree’ with ‘Family tree.’ Of course, if Christians are offended that is evidently ok,” sniffed AFA. (AFA retracted the alert later in the day after assurances from Lowe’s that “Christmas trees” would appear in its advertising.)
Long before 2005, when Fox News host John Gibson penned a book on how it was all a “liberal plot,” right-wing commentators have reached for a conspiracy theory that would place such petty gripes in a context they would be able to use to attack their political opponents, and this year is no different.
Last week the American Family Association pounced on a nursing home in Plant City, Florida, where a decoration policy stopped “an 85-year-old grandmother” from putting up her mistletoe. This small-city nursing home claimed that it was following federal guidelines from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, leading AFA to conclude, “Their tradition is now banned by the federal government.”
Of course, there is no such HUD policy on decorations in nursing homes, and AFA later corrected itself; nevertheless, AFA spokesman Randy Sharp claimed the Plant City debacle as proof of a nation-wide trend: “It does give credence to the fact that there is a strong anti-Christian bias in this country by those who would like to place God inside a box, leave the wrapping on it, and never take him out.”
Newt Gingrich similarly uses the poor Plant City nursing home as evidence of so-called elites “imposing” their “anti-religious bigotry” on the American people:
It's another example of the biases of the elites -- in this case, anti-religious bigotry -- being imposed on the American people.
According to Gingrich, then, the director of a small nursing home in Florida is example number one of the “legal and governmental elites,” a group that presumably does not include Gingrich himself, a jet-setting former House speaker who has made his living as a political consultant and author.
The “War on Christmas” is an example of a common tactic among the Religious Right, what we’ve called the “persecuted majority syndrome”: Creating an absurd storyline in which Christianity is imperiled in the U.S., religious-right activists rush to its defense and merge this sentiment with their own reactionary politics.
Take Bishop Harry Jackson’s column this week:
I have been shocked that many Christians just don’t seem to grasp the fact that we are in very sophisticated power struggle. We don’t seem to want accept that there is an all-out assault against Christians being waged in the legislature, teamed with the mainstream media.
According to Jackson, three of the “four major attempts to thwart faith in the U.S.” are federal hate-crimes protections for gays, workplace discrimination protection for gays, and the Fairness Doctrine. (The fourth is an investigation into possible tax fraud on the part of several high-rolling televangelists.) It’s one thing to oppose policies like civil rights for gays; it’s quite another to claim these policies constitute “an all-out assault against Christians.”
Posted by Ezra at 11:04 AM | Permalink
November 13, 2007
Tancredo's Successful Presidential Campaign
Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo has made no secret that even he believes he has no chance of actually becoming the Republican nominee for president. Instead, he says, his goal is to promote his hard-line anti-immigrant position, and by that measure, he can argue that he’s winning. From an interview with the Washington Monthly (via Kevin Drum):
What happens is, you provide people with some space to get into where they can say, "That guy is a racist xenophobe. That guy is just so crazy that we can take a more moderate stance." To tell you the truth, that's okay with me. It is not the worst thing in the world to have changed the debate so significantly, at least among Republicans running for office, that they are willing to say things like "We will secure the border" and "We will go after employers." That's the moderate position now. …
I have to set the bar as high as I can. I'm being completely candid with you. If I had actually set out to become president, then of course it would be ludicrous for me to do it in the way I'm doing it. I don't have that as my goal; I never have. The only way I can get on that plane and go to Iowa or New Hampshire and spend night after night in hotels in places you've never even heard of is by saying, "Think about why you're doing this, Tom. It is because the issue is important. You are the person that is advancing it." I have the luxury of saying, "I will set the goalposts as far as I can down the field because then I will have a better chance of getting the game played on my side." In one recent debate, we spent the first thirty-five minutes on immigration. That has never happened before. It's wonderful—I've got the two top guys attacking each other. Romney can spend a great deal of money, and he is enormously articulate, and the fact that he will take on Giuliani on this issue—I have to tell you, I don't get many questions, I stand there like a bookend for most of the debates, but it's still enormously gratifying.
Indeed, an applause-line about taking a tough stand on immigration is now de rigueur in GOP stump speeches, alongside cutting spending and appointing Supreme Court justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, and Tancredo can claim a big part of the credit for that. Even Mike Huckabee—who likes to say he’s just as far-right as anybody but not “angry” about it—caught himself comparing himself to the angriest candidate out there:
I think I am as clear on immigration as anybody. But because I also say, "Look, let's not just be angry at these people. Let's recognize that if we were them, we'd want to come here too." That's not amnesty. I'm not for amnesty. I'm not for sanctuary cities. I'm no liberal when it comes to that. I think I am almost as hard-line as, well I was going to say [Tom] Tancredo, but ... I think I am pretty adamant that we ought to obey the law. But my frustration with the immigration issue is not directed so much at desperate people as it is at a dysfunctional government.
Adopting Tancredoism may be an okay tactic for collecting fragments of a divided right-wing base, it seems counterproductive for candidates hoping to prove their general-election electability. Virginia’s GOP hoped anti-immigrant sentiment would carry the day in Tuesday’s legislative elections, but the results proved otherwise, as Democrats took control of the state Senate. A similar pattern was evident in the 2006 national congressional elections.
UPDATE: Tancredo's new Iowa ad, a dramatization of a fictitious terrorist attack supposedly the result of failure to take the Tancredo position on immigration (via Matt Yglesias):
Posted by Ezra at 10:08 AM | Permalink