republican national committee

Cross-posted at AlterNet

Pete Sessions heads the National Republican Congressional Committee and in that role his top goal is electing Republicans. To that end, Sessions has worked with Log Cabin Republicans – and was honored by the group with its Barry Goldwater Award in 2010 – in spite of his own strongly anti-gay voting record: during the past three sessions of Congress his rating on HRC’s scorecard has ranged from zero all the way to six percent and now sits at three percent.  Sessions has voted repeatedly for federal constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage, and against ENDA and repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Today on WallBuilders Live, David Barton and co-host Rick Green had the National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher as a guest to discuss NOM’s efforts to defeat senators that voted for the marriage equality law in New York, especially the law’s four Republican supporters. Following Gallagher’s interview, Barton lauded NOM’s campaign and warned that unless those Republicans are defeated, “Ken Mehlman,” the former head of the Republican National Committee and Bush campaign chief who recently came out as gay, “and his kind [will] come in and start rewarding these guys for going against pro-family stuff.” Barton went on to say that “this is where you hang a bloody scalp over the gallery rail,” to intimidate other Republicans who consider supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians:

Barton: If you allow the Ken Mehlman kind of Republicans to come in, and Melhman’s the guy who ran the Republican National Convention, he’s the guy who came out, who’s openly homosexual, trained with Karl Rove and was an understudy to Karl, if you allow those guys to be able to facilitate the Republicans to turn on these issues and other squishy Republicans across the country will say, ‘hey I can take on these pro-family people,’ they’ll start doing the same thing. Then you’ll lose your opportunity to have at least one party that still has the ability to allow people to talk about biblical, moral issues. You just cannot let this happen. Here I sit in Texas, I’ll contribute to the campaign to take these guys out, I’ll send money from Texas to New York.

Green: It’s kind of like the Iowa deal, going after judges up there and the necessity to defeat them.

Barton: Hey, you think that didn’t scare a bunch of judges straight in other states? You bet it did. And I want to see pro-family guys scared straight that are squishy on this issue, and if we can’t take out these four Republicans and the Majority Leader in New York, we will have opened a huge door for Melhman and his kind to come in and start rewarding these guys for going against pro-family stuff, and you just can’t let that happen.

…

Barton: No disrespect to our Native American friends, but this is where you hang a bloody scalp over the gallery rail. You hang these four Republican scalps over the Senate rail and every other Republican senator looks up and sees those scalps and says, ‘my gosh, I’ll be hanging up there beside them if I don’t stay with this pro-family stuff.’ And that’s exactly what has to happen.

Ralph Reed's "Faith and Freedom Conference & Summit" kicks off on Friday and, as today's New York Times reports, it serves as proof that Reed has been able to shrug off his deep ties to Jack Abramoff and regain his prominence and prestige as a leading Religious Right organizer:

As with the Christian Coalition, this group’s conference roster includes nearly all the likely contenders for the presidential nomination, including former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Herman Cain, a retired businessman, and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, as well as a famous almost-candidate, Donald Trump. There will also be evangelical leaders like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and establishment Republicans like Speaker John A. Boehner and Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman.

...

Many of the retirees gathered here could not even recall who Ralph Reed was, let alone ponder his past. But they loved his message. Weaving together themes of the Tea Party and evangelical Christians, he called the debt crisis a sign that the country has lost sight of its founding moral principles. He said that by working together, fiscal and cultural conservatives can “begin the process of turning the country around.”

Yesterday Reed appeared on The Jordan Sekulow Show to discuss the upcoming conference, during which he predicted that Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain would be the Religious Right's candidates of choice:

Sekulow: Ralph, let me ask you about the field. Has anyone caught your attention that maybe is a name that people aren't talking about enough or that is really exciting social conservative voters?

Reed: It's awfully early, but there are two that I'm hearing on the ground that are really getting a close look. One is Herman Cain, who is a terrific speaker and has a compelling personal testimony in addition to his conservative credentials. And the other is Michele Bachmann.

I think if they both go - and Cain's in and Bachmann looks like she's going to get in - they're both going to do extremely well among this constituency.

Reed then went on the predict that this event was not only going to change the lives of those in attendance, but the life of the nation as well ... which is the same thing he said last year:

Indiana Governor and potential presidential candidate Mitch Daniels has taken a pounding from the Religious Right, since June and even up to today, for suggesting that there should be a “truce” over social issues in order to increase attention to the country’s economic problems and debt. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the fiercely anti-choice and poorly named group the Susan B. Anthony List, writes in the National Review that the debate over the next chairman of the Republican National Committee shows that GOP has decidedly rejected any moderation on social issues such as the right to choose and gay rights. She praises the conservative views of the RNC chair candidates and also points out that Daniels himself even backpedaled on his own call for a truce. But while Dannenfelser believes the GOP is united over the importance of social issues, CPAC’s growing crisis reflects otherwise.

The debate was completely devoid of the kind of fireworks that political commentators love. As SBA List and National Organization for Marriage Skype pre-interviews had suggested, each of the five candidates affirmed without hesitation their determination to support the Republican platform’s social-issue stands and to honor that support in the party’s programs, from recruiting candidates to buying ads to micro-targeting votes.

The aura of unity sorely exasperated professional cynics like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who fumed for his readers, “The candidates were nearly dissent-free. Abortion? All opposed. Lower taxes? All in favor. Gay marriage? All opposed. Cutting spending? All in favor.” Jon Stewart found comedy in the comity.

Far from being a dull affair, however, the debate proved that the 2011 GOP has an unshakable core — and this core exercises real influence over the expressed convictions of the GOP’s national leaders. After all, only two short years ago, current RNC chairman Michael Steele — who was a board member of the pro-choice Republican Leadership Council — told GQ magazine that he believed abortion was an “individual choice.” Maria Cino, one of the four leading challengers he faced this week, served on the board of WISH List, a political action committee devoted solely to electing pro-choice Republican women.

At the debate, both Steele and Cino expressed profound pro-life conviction and commitment.

…

Governor Daniels, for his own part, made another attempt just after Christmas to explain away his “truce talk,” saying that his message was not directed at social conservatives but at the people “aggressively trying to change the definition of marriage.” His advice to the liberal activists: “Stand down for awhile” so the country can focus on its deepening fiscal crisis.

All of this is progress — and rapid progress at that. It’s also recognition that the conservative resurgence this past November involved a confluence, and not a divergence, of the social, fiscal, and national-security streams within the GOP. One week into the two-year cycle that leads to the reelection or defeat of Barack Obama, the GOP truce on internal disunity is turning out to be the one that really counts.

I know that Tea Party activists have been working hard to rebut the movement's reputation for racism, so I am sure that this decision will raise a few eyebrows:

One day after former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska declined to throw her hat into the ring to become the Tea Party movement’s choice to lead the Republican National Committee, a leading Tea Party group threw its support behind Saul Anuzis of Michigan.

Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, announced in a statement on Tuesday that he was supporting Mr. Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. Mr. Phillips said the leadership race was a critical “battle for the heart and soul” of the party.

“Capturing the chairmanship of the R.N.C. is important to the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Phillips wrote in a letter to the members of his group, one of the largest Tea Party organizations in the country. He added: “We need a conservative in as chair of the R.N.C. If not, we will end up with the same class of G.O.P. knuckleheads that blew it so badly in 2006 and 2008.”

And the reason it'll raise eyebrows is because of Anuzis' support of Kyle Bristow:

Saul Anuzis, leader of the Michigan GOP until last year, announced earlier this week that he would be challenging Michael Steele for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Anuzis had made a failed but significant run against Steele, the party’s first black leader, for the same post in 2009.

Writing about his hopes for the RNC, Anuzis, an avid Twitter user and blogger, especially emphasized his tech-savviness at online social networking as an asset for making electoral gains for the party. What Anuzis didn’t mention was the kind of contacts he cultivated offline in Michigan, in particular his vocal support of the right-wing extremist Kyle Bristow. Bristow led the Michigan State University campus branch of Young Americans For Freedom (MSU-YAF) and was so virulent in his politics that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) began listing it as a hate group in 2006. Bristow also served as a Republican precinct delegate.

Bristow’s MSU-YAF engaged in extensive racist activities. One of its first stunts was presenting a 13-point agenda that would have established a “Caucasian caucus” at MSU and, in turn, eliminated all student government representation for practically every other non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male or non-Christian student group at the university. Bristow was on record saying, “Homosexuality kills people almost to a degree worse than cigarettes. … these [pro-gay rights] groups are complicit with murder.” MSU-YAF sponsored a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” contest, held a “Koran Desecration” competition, jokingly threatened to distribute smallpox-infested blankets to Native American students, and posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus. Bristow’s YAF also brought several extremists to speak at the MSU campus, including Holocaust denier Nick Griffin, leader of the whites-only British National Party.

None of this seemed to bother Anuzis. “This [Bristow] is exactly the type of young kid we want out there,” Anuzis, then already the GOP state chair, said on a radio program in May 2007, the year after MSU-YAF’s more outrageous activities were made public. “I’ve known Kyle for years and I can tell you I have never heard him say a racist or bigoted or sexist thing, ever.” Just this past October, Anuzis’ Michigan GOP issued a press release attacking a Democratic candidate for secretary of state because she once interned at the SPLC, which the release said used “fear and intimidation” in its hate group listings.

Since receiving this outpouring of support from Anuzis, Bristow has graduated to the top ranks of the American radical right. Now a law student at the University of Toledo, Bristow recently self-published a novel, White Apocalypse, whose plot revolves around a series of violent revenge fantasies against Jewish professors, Latino and Native American activists. A major subplot ends in the bloody assassination of a character apparently based on an SPLC staffer. Several notable white supremacists and anti-Semites have endorsed the novel.

Just yesterday Anuzis was asked about his past support for Bristow and he again refused to disavow it.

For the last few days we have been noting the battle between the Religious Right and the gay conservative group GOProud set off by the latter's effort to get the Republican Party to ignore the social issues that are at the heard of the former's entire agenda.

This question is obviously going to be a significant one as the GOP prepares to take control of the House and sets out its agenda heading into 2012 ... which makes this announcement rather interesting:

Conservative activist Grover Norquist will quiz candidates running for Republican National Committee chairman at a debate to be held just two weeks before elections, he told Hotline On Call Wednesday.

Norquist, who runs Americans for Tax Reform, will moderate the Jan. 3 debate at the National Press Club. It's an effort, he says, to take the race for chairman beyond the 168 members of the national committee and to bolster transparency.

As you may recall, Norquist was savaged by Religious Right leaders for joining GOProud's advisory council, with Tony Perkins slamming him for selling out the conservative movement.

So I wonder how the Religious Right feels about the next RNC chair being vetted by someone like Norquist who clearly does not care about their social issues agenda and, presumably, has no interest in including such questions in the debate process.

At this point, nobody really expects much from the RNC, but even by their low standards, this is pretty pathetic:

Republicans are questioning Elena Kagan’s ties to a liberal icon and the nation’s first African American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall.

In its first memo to reporters since Kagan’s nomination to the high court became public, the Republican National Committee highlighted Kagan’s tribute to Marshall in a 1993 law review article published shortly after his death.

Kagan quoted from a speech Marshall gave in 1987 in which he said the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was “defective.” She quoted him as saying the Supreme Court’s mission was to “show a special solicitude for the despised and the disadvantaged.”

“Does Kagan Still View Constitution ‘As Originally Drafted And Conceived’ As ‘Defective’?” the RNC asked in its research document. “And Does Kagan Still Believe That The Supreme Court's Primary Mission Is To ‘Show A Special Solicitude For The Despised And Disadvantaged’?”

The point that Marshall was making is, you would think, rather uncontroversial: 

I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.

You know, the last time I checked, the Constitution had been amended twenty-seven times, under the procedure set out in the Constitution itself, in order to do things like abolish slavery and give women the right to vote.

Does the RNC think the the Constitution, as drafted, was perfect that therefore shouldn't be amended ?

If so, they might want to re-write their party platform:

We favor adoption of the Balanced Budget Amendment to require a balanced federal budget except in time of war.

...

Twenty-six years ago, President Reagan’s Task Force on Victims of Crime, calling the neglect of crime victims a “national disgrace,” proposed a constitutional amendment to secure their formal rights. Today, that disgrace persists in courtrooms across the nation. Innocent victims – battered women, abused children, the loved ones of the murdered – still may not be told when their case is being heard. They can be excluded from the courtroom even when the defendant and his friends may be present. They have no right to a speedy trial, and a judge or parole board has no obligation to consider their personal safety in making release decisions. In short, the innocent have far fewer rights than the accused. We call on Congress to correct this imbalance by sending to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of crime victims.

...

Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.

...

Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it.

In yesterday's "Washington Update" from the Family Research Council, the group finally followed through on its lingering threat to urge its activists to stop donating to the Republicans:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is at the center of another controversy, this one regarding nearly $2,000.00 spent at a bondage-themed strip club outside of Los Angeles. Information about the $1,946.00 dollar expenditure at Voyeur West Hollywood became public when the RNC released its most recent financial disclosure report. The public controversy over the expenditure led to the firing of the staffer yesterday who had incurred the expense. This latest incident is another indication to me that the RNC is completely tone-deaf to the values and concerns of a large number of people from whom they seek financial support.

Earlier this month the RNC made a big deal about hiring "renowned Supreme Court lawyer" Ted Olson to represent the RNC in a campaign finance case that is expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yes, this is the same Ted Olson that is trying to overturn the results of the marriage amendment in California. The outcome of Olson's challenge to Prop 8 goes far beyond nullifying the votes of nearly 7 million voters in California; his efforts could lead to the overturning of amendments and laws in all 45 states that currently define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

I've hinted at this before, but now I am saying it--don't give money to the RNC. If you want to put money into the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who you know reflect your values. Better yet, become a member of FRC Action and learn about the benefits it offers, including participating in the FRC Action PAC which can support candidates who will advance faith, family and freedom!

The FRC has actually been making these sorts of threats for some time now, starting shortly after the election in 2008 when they attacked Pete Sessions, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, for attending a fund raising dinner for the Log Cabin Republicans, saying such outreach was should be causing "pro-family voters[to] reserve judgment about giving their financial support" to the GOP.

UPDATE: Perkins tells CNN that this incident was just the last straw for social conservatives who are angry that the GOP has been ignoring their issues since the 2006 election:

• Don Wildmon is officially stepping down from his role at the American Family Association due to on-going health problems.
• Politico got its hands on a rather remarkable RNC fundraising presentation, and the RNC is already furiously backing away from it, calling its images and language "unacceptable" and saying "it will not be used by the Republican National Committee – in any capacity – in the future."
• Shirley Dobson has been dismissed from the lawsuit against the National Day of Prayer.
• Rick Perry has been the Governor of Texas for more than a decade, so why is he playing off his primary win last night as some sort of shot at the establishment?
• Rick Warren and the Jonas Brothers, together at last.
• Wow, FRC is really producing groundbreaking research.
• Finally, the quote of the day from Rev. Rob Schenck reacting to marriage equality officially coming to Washington DC today: "Let me remind everyone that there’s nothing new about what happened today at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Marriage Bureau. In fact, it’s very old. Thousands of years ago, the world at the base of Mount Sinai looked very much like Indiana Avenue, NW, the street outside the Marriage Bureau office. Actually, it was far worse. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Christian Church was born at Jerusalem, Greco-Roman athletes competed in the nude and engaged in homosexual acts to titillate insatiably wild crowds. Worse, Roman men of stature kept wives to sire children by, but young boys as sexual play toys. Temple prostitutes were used and abused as an act of worship. It was into this kind of moral abandon that the Jews first taught God’s moral code and Christians later were called to evangelize. Both remain our challenge today. It was this kind of sin-sick, miserably wretched, often shockingly coarse and even frightening world that 'God so loved,' and to which He 'gave His only begotten son' ... If there’s anything to be disappointed about today here in the Nation’s Capital, it’s that we thought human progress had come so far, but, in fact, it has regressed."