Club for Growth

After his loss in the Republican Primary, Mike Huckabee blasted various leaders in the Religious Right movement for failing to support his campaign, which was really just a continuation of what he had been doing during his campaign.

Since then, in addition to maintaining his relationships with the various second-tier (and increasingly radical) leaders who did support his candidacy, he had been slowly making in-roads with those who had withheld their support.

The underlying issue that had plagued Huckabee during his campaign was that he was opposed by the economic conservative groups like the Club for Growth, which had soured the Religious Right on his prospects.  For all of the influence that the Religious Right wields within the GOP, the fact remains that it is the support of economic conservatives that can make or break a candidate and without that support, essentially no candidate can win the nomination, no matter how strong they may be on the social issues upon which the Religious Right power-brokers stake their claims. 

With that in mind, it looks like Huckabee, should he decide to run for president again, will find himself in the very same situation this time around:

But authenticity isn’t enough, and he’s also been giving thought, and some effort, to the part that failed him in 2008: political organizing.

“It would have to be far more organized and extensive than last time,” he said. “I would not try to go out and operate without the financial support.”

He’s also been meeting, he said, with some of the evangelical and Republican leaders who rejected him before. “In some of their cases, there’s a very different attitude to me now,” he said.

But some attitudes don’t change. Huckabee met in the spring with Pat Toomey, then the president of the Wall Street-backed Club for Growth, which had attacked him during the 2008 campaign for raising taxes in Arkansas.

“It wasn’t very productive,” he said of the meeting. “I realized then that these guys are just what I thought they were — they’re pay for play, and they do it anonymously on behalf of people who don’t want to be known as the funders of these hit operations. I find that repulsive.”

If Huckabee runs again and can't win over groups like Club for Growth, it will be a real test for the Religious Right: will they back the candidate who most closely shares their views and even brags that while other candidates come to them for support, he comes from them, or will they once again waffle and refuse to support him out of fealty to the economic conservatives and fears that he can't win, leaving Huckabee to settle for the fringe second and third stringers who made up the bulk of his support the last time around? 

Yesterday we noted that Doug Hoffman's campaign for the House seat in NY-23 had been endorsed by a veritable who's who of right-wing leaders and organizations.  In fact, endorsing Hoffman has become something of a test of one's conservative bona fides and so it was interesting that one name that was conspicuously absent from Hoffman's list of supporters was Mike Huckabee, and is appears as if Huckabee's refusal to endorse Hoffman is not going unnoticed by those on the right: 

“It’s very disappointing,” said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council. “You have names out there like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Tim Pawlenty who are willing to take a stand. You’d think that would have pushed him to make a decision.”

“It concerns me. I think he should endorse. I think Doug Hoffman is his kind of candidate,” said Mike Mears, executive director of Concerned Women for America’s political action committee.

“I keep hoping that he is going to do it,” he said. “Conservatives are lining up behind Doug Hoffman.”

...

“When you’re a leader of the conservative movement, as Mike Huckabee is, you should make a bold statement,” said Mike Long, president of the New York State Conservative Party. “If you’re a leader, how do you not get involved?”

“If you want to show leadership, you’ve got to break away from the club,” Long added.

Politico speculates that Huckabee's reluctance to endorse Hoffman might be rooted in some sort of animosity he still holds toward Fred Thompson or the Club for Growth, both of whom have endorsed Hoffman, though that seems like a ridiculously unlikely reason for Huckabee to sit out this race to me.  But it does provide an opportunity for the Thompson, Club for Growth, and Huckabee teams to renew their rivalry and take pot-shots at one another: 

Both the Thompson camp and the Club for Growth gave evidence of those tensions by taking shots at Huckabee for his nonendorsement. 

“We’re very disappointed that Gov. Huckabee saw fit to come into the district for a Conservative Party event and then didn’t support or contribute to Hoffman,” said a source close to Thompson.

“He’s only hurting himself with his silence,” said Club for Growth Executive Director David Keating, who noted archly that “some people might conclude he supports Scozzafava.”

Sarah Huckabee dismissed the idea that Mike Huckabee had decided to stay out of the race because of any lingering tensions with Thompson or the Club for Growth, noting that he had thrown his early backing to Club for Growth favorite Marco Rubio in the hotly contested Florida GOP Senate primary.

“It’s absurd to say he doesn’t take sides,” Sarah Huckabee wrote in an e-mail. “He has taken a stand time after time for conservative issues. Where were all the conservatives when he was saying TARP was a bad idea?”

Club for Growth, the radically anti-tax and anti-government organization, has often targeted Republican incumbents it deems insufficiently devoted to its free-market fundamentalism. But Politico points out that its endorsement may not be such a great thing for candidates these days.

It couldn't have been a nicer Saturday for Democrat Frank Kratovil, up on stage playing blues guitar for an oyster-slurping, beer-drinking crowd on the water in Queen Anne's County, Md.

 When he's done with his set, reporters from CQ, Politico and the New Republic are waiting to talk with the man who may be the next member of Congress from Maryland's 1st District.

This isn't what the Club for Growth had in mind.

Back in February, the conservative PAC helped knock off moderate Republican Rep. Wayne Gilchrest in the GOP primary here, in the hopes of installing a more conservative Republican in his place.

But it may not work out that way. With less than a month to go before Election Day, Kratovil is running neck and neck with the Club for Growth-backed GOP nominee, Maryland state Sen. Andy Harris, in a district that's about as red as they come.

And with voters worried about their retirement accounts and suddenly suspicious of the free-market economics espoused by the Club for Growth, Kratovil is using the Club for Growth's support of Harris as a way to bludgeon him.

 "We need to stop listening to those people, like my opponent and his million-dollar backers, the Club for Growth, who believe in no regulation," Kratovil says.

For Club for Growth-backed candidates across the country, this is sounding like a familiar story.

Politico reports that Rep. Tim Walberg, elected in 2006 after defeating moderate GOPer Joe Schwarz in a Club for Growth backed primary challenge, is now seeing the Club's backing used as a major line of attack from his opponent. And it's forcing the GOP to spend money to defend what were once considered safe seats:

Still, the club's investment in GOP efforts may end up costing the party more than it saves it, forcing the National Republican Congressional Committee to spend money in what might have been forget-about-'em races if more moderate Republicans were on the ballot.

It seems likely that Grover Norquist's expressed desire to shrink government to the size that he could "drown it in the bathtub" doesn't resonate too well with voters who see the financial meltdown draining their retirement plans as the result of a little too much "magic of the marketplace" and not enough oversight or regulation.

In addition . the group played a key role in funding conservative Rep. Steve Pearce in his New Mexico Senate primary victory against Rep. Heather Wilson. Wilson was viewed as the more electable Republican against Democrat Tom Udall; with Pearce as the nominee, the GOP has written off the seat.

Matt Lewis, writing for Politico, suggests that Pat Toomey might be considering making another Senate run Pennsylvania while the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins might be considering his own run against embattled Louisiana Senator David Vitter in 2010:

Former Louisiana state Rep. Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, and former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), president of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, are both rumored to be considering leaving their positions to run for the U.S. Senate — an office both have unsuccessfully sought before.

Perkins would presumably seek to “primary” Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter, who was linked to the “D.C. Madam” prostitution scandal last summer. After all, who better to challenge the first-term senator than the head of the Family Research Council? “Social conservatives in Louisiana would be pleased to support a candidate like Tony Perkins, who would have just as strong or stronger of a voting record than Sen. Vitter has had in the Senate but who comes to the race without all the personal baggage,” said Gary Marx, who has served as conservative coalitions director for the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.

And if Vitter’s personal peccadilloes aren’t enough of a contrast to satisfy fiscal conservatives, Perkins can also bring up the fact that the senator opposed the one-year ban on earmarks recently championed by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).

Of course, Perkins might have a hard time attacking Vitter, since has claimed that he would gladly vote for Vitter, provided he can prove he has "moved on" from his scandal and that Vitter last year earmarked $100,000 for the Louisiana Family Forum, which was founded by Perkins in 1999, for its efforts to “combat evolution.”