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An RNC national committee member from Indiana, Jim Bopp and nine others, have proposed a resolution to not allow the national party to send money to candidates who do not meet eight of the ten party principles.
Those principles include opposing abortion rights, opposing same-sex marriage, opposing the stimulus package and cap and trade bills and supporting surges in Iraq and Afghanistan and gun rights, among others.
If the resolution passes, it may make things even more difficult for Kelly Ayotte in her quest for the GOP US Senate nomination and for the seat itself.
Bopp may get a vote on the floor of the RNC meeting this Jan. in Hawaii, or RNC chair Michael Steele may succeed in once again blocking a measure that could prove embarrassing. But candidates, and the party's professional class, uniformally call the resolution a bad idea.
John Nichols, in his blog at The Nation, has the exact wording of the resolution, plus compares the record of Ronald Reagan against it. Reagan comes up a loser.
Here is a partial list:
1) Deficit spending soared during Reagan's presidency. Strike one.
(5) Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to most undocumented workers who could prove they had been in the country continuously for the previous five years. After he finished his presidency, Reagan continues to speak out forcefully for immigration rights. Strike five.
9) Shortly after his inauguration as governor of California, Reagan signed into law the most liberal abortion statute of its day". Strike nine.
So if Bopp and other extremists have their way, even Ronald Reagan would be unacceptable, maybe even be "Scozzafavaed".
cross-posted from Hannah Blog, where you can see an image of the "documents."
In 1960, any number of public officials didn't want the people they were supposed to serve counted, especially in the South. So, one of the tricks they employed was to arrest the enumerator who was going door to door, preferably on a Friday afternoon, on a charge of "impersonating a census taker," and let him languish in jail over the weekend until the federal supervisor could be brought in on Monday to authenticate his employee. No doubt, a weekend in jail was discouraging to some. Which was why many neighborhoods had to be canvassed over and over again.
Now, almost fifty years later, the Republican National Committee has progressed. Instead of charging enumerators with "impersonating a census taker," they're sending out documents to impersonate the census itself. While, upon closer inspection, the overt purpose is to solicit monetary donations to promote the election of Republicans in 2010, the packet that arrived in the mail is so fraught with deceptions that it's hard to imagine what they're actually up to, or to know where to begin. So, I'll just work from the outside in.
Foster's Daily Democrat reported today that the NHGOP's former chairman, Fergus Cullen, is disappointed with John H. Sununu's leadership of the party. According to Foster's, while attending a RNC convention in Maryland, the elder Sununu made a concerted effort to divide the already weakened Republican Party by failing to show up and vote on resolutions.
Fergus Cullen, the former NHGOP Chairman said of Sununu's flagrant disrespect for the GOP:
"It is unfortunate that New Hampshire is one of the states undermining the chairman of the RNC and challenging his authority," he said. "Some members prefer to act like a college debating society and argue about silly resolutions than to build a majority coalition that can win elections."
Cullen went on to say Sununu's behavior could jeopardize the Granite State's first-in-the-nation primary:
Cullen said national committee members should mostly worry about protecting the state's kick-off primary since getting "into fights with other members ... risks making enemies our state doesn't need."
"At a time when Republican voter registration has reached a 25-year low and national polls continue to show Democratic leaders enjoy widespread support, the GOP remains splintered because its party leaders, like John H. Sununu, have alienated moderates and moved their party dramatically to the right. Between the rise in GOP defectors and John H. Sununu's blatant absenteeism, it's clear that the Republican Party has a long way to go before it is out of the woods," said NHDP Communications Director Victoria Bonney.
(Posted by Victoria Bonney, Communications Director for the New Hampshire Democratic Party)
[Phyllis] Woods is not supporting a resolution "recognizing the Democrats' march toward Socialism," which picked up steam from the RNC's conservative caucus.
...It proposes that Democrats acknowledge they have evolved from "a party of tax and spend to a party of tax and nationalize and, therefore, should agree to rename themselves the Democrat Socialist Party."
I personally would have gone with Commie Rats, but maybe that's a bit over the top. Still, I find myself as disappointed as the NHGOP base, as expressed in full by the UL comment section of the article.
Without some kind of pointless name calling for Rush and FOX to toss around, how will we ever improve on these numbers? I mean, just how many TeeVee torture laudations can the the Cheney clan make on our behalf?
Compared to 2001, when George W. Bush first took office as president, GOP self-identification has fallen by ten points among college graduates, nine points among those 18-29 years of age, nine points in the Midwest, six in the East, five in the West, and even four points in the South. Married people identifying as Republicans have decreased by five points, and the difference is eight points among the unmarried. The list goes on and on.
The Republican National Committee is holding an emergency session next week. Normally this would be about as interesting and newsworthy as a meeting of the East Overshoe Odd Fellows, but it's different this time. That's because this curious mix of buffoons, dinosaurs and wit-crackers intends to pass a resolution demanding that the Democratic Party change its name. They are insisting that we must forthwith be known as the Democrat Socialist Party. This should be a joke. It isn't.
With all that ails the GOP, it would reasonable to expect the party's leaders to turn inward and try to find a set of common principles and beliefs they can regroup around. But "reasonable" is not in their job description, and instead they are pushing this bit of nonsense. So since they are insisting we change our name, we need to come up with a new name for them.
My personal choice would be the New Whigs, since they seem to be madly rushing down the path taken by that party.
Chair Michael Steele takes umbrage at the notion that Limbaugh is the de facto head, er, voice, er, whatever of the RNC, calling him (of all things) an entertainer.
They're so cute when they fight amongst themselves.
This revelation Ambinder caught hold of from an "RNC rules maven" is disturbing, to say the least:
Republican rules for the first time give the members of the Republican National Committee, by a 2/3 vote, the option of adopting a mandatory 2012 state primary election calendar.
States whose legislatures, which may be controlled by Democrats, refuse to schedule a primary that complies with RNC rules face a draconian choice.
Either their party gives up its presidential primary and instead holds (and pays for) a presidential preference caucus -- or the state suffers a loss of 1/2 of its delegates to the 2012 Convention.
Many party leaders, who, for ideological or personal reasons, prefer a low-participation caucus rather than a higher-participation primary, see this Rule as a great opportunity to transform the party. (It would become more conservative.)
I'd dismiss this if the particulars on the ground weren't so apt for those words. Think about it - the RNC chair race is dominated by southerners, and the New Hampshire Primary this time around resurrected a candidate, John McCain, that was widely unappealing to the southern base, at least before Palin entered the picture. I would not at all be surprised if the southern GOPers were blaming '08 on Granite State Republicans who they see as not representative of the hard-right national core.
And then there's the whole disenfranchising aspect of the plan, which just fits perfectly into what we've come to see from the national elephants.
I'm no expert on what Fergus worked out for 2012, and/or whether that negates any of this danger for our state that Ambinder's post implies. Those who are, please fill me in.
p.s. And didn't the NHGOP delegates have to endure losing half their voice this time around too, IIRC?
Turns out indefensibly offensive jokes might actually be the ticket to a leadership post at the RNC:
The controversy surrounding a comedy CD distributed by Republican National Committee chairman candidate Chip Saltsman has not torpedoed his bid and might have inadvertently helped it.
Four days after news broke that the former Tennessee GOP chairman had sent a CD including a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" to the RNC members he is courting, some of those officials are rallying around the embattled Saltsman, with a few questioning whether the national media and his opponents are piling on.
"When I heard about the story, I had to figure out what was going on for myself," said Mark Ellis, the chairman of the Maine Republican Party. "When I found out what this was about I had to ask, 'Boy, what's the big deal here?' because there wasn't any."
Makes me wonder if the politically violent "joke" in the NHGOP letter was premature. Might've come in handy right about now for an RNC run.
But in all seriousness: if the piece at the link above (plus this extra bit here) has any relationship to how things really stand in the rudderless nat'l party, I strongly suspect the GOP will need at least one more cycle of humiliating defeat before they figure out what to do to turn it around. Which is fine by me.
And how about that quote from the Maine GOP chair? That just tells me that Collins' win is even more impressive, because she must not have been able to rely on him for strategery.
First there was this Draft Sununu. But kind of a bummer: he admitted he wasn't interested. Probably too much money to recoup on K Street. And besides, wouldn't, at a minimum, attendance at the last RNC convention need to be a requirement to be RNC chair?
http://tpmelectioncentral.talk...
Candidate For RNC Chair Was Member Of Whites-Only Country Club
By Greg Sargent - November 24, 2008, 12:04PM
Now here's a good way for the GOP to make the case that it hasn't been reduced to a southern regional rump party that's held hostage by intolerant crackpots: Elect as the new chairman of the Republican National Committee a southerner who just resigned a longtime membership in a whites-only country club.
Katon Dawson, the South Carolina GOP chairman, announced his candidacy for RNC chair yesterday.
And guess what: Back in September, when Dawson was first quietly laying the groundwork for his RNC run, The State newspaper reported that he resigned his membership in the nearly 80-year-old Forest Lake Club. Members told the newspaper at the time that the club's deed has a whites-only restriction and has no black members.
Dawson claimed to the paper that he'd actually been working since August to change the club's admission practices after reading about them in the press. Nonetheless, his membership could become an issue in the RNC chair race.
Call me silly, but: isn't it a little odd to start an RNC Chair draft movement for a guy who spent the last two years pretending not to be a Republican on the outside, whose campaign literature and design nowhere said "Republican" on it, who fled like the Sprinter he is from any association with the current Republican president, and who was so scared of being branded with his own party's label that he didn't even attend the RNC convention?
Time for some of that "national dialogue." Whenever we have a national racial incident -- say, Michael Richards and his tragic crackup in L.A. -- someone calls for a "national dialogue on race." So we have it, for a couple of days or maybe a week, and then we drop it. Forgive the analogy, but the point is, if we don't want to talk about it, we don't talk about it.
Politics, for good or ill (and I would argue, ill) never stops. So maybe -- maybe -- this endless and breathtakingly expensive political campaign will spur some useful dialogue.
I had planned to bring this up on November 5 or 6. But some conservatives are jumping the gun.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny
Obama's Take Raises Questions About Web
Barack Obama's unconventional fundraising success, many experts say, could transform the campaign finance system, though it also raises new questions.
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008; Page A01
Sen. Barack Obama's record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.
Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.
"There is so much money coming in and yet very little ability to say with certainty that you know who is giving it," said Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee's chief counsel.
Sean, my friend, please take this in the spirit that it is intended: You are a lying sack of s**t. But don't take my word for it, look across the proverbial aisle:
In a paper outlining those safeguards, provided to The Washington Post, the [Obama] campaign said it runs twice-daily sweeps of new donations, looking for irregularities. Flagged contributions are manually reviewed by a team of lawyers, then cleared or refunded. Reports of misused credit cards lead to immediate refunds.
In September, according to the campaign, $1.8 million in online contributions was flagged, and $353,000 was refunded. Of the contributions flagged because a foreign address or bank account was involved, 94.1 percent were found to be proper. One-tenth of one percent were marked for refund, and 5.77 percent are still being vetted.
I suppose Mr. Cairncross would argue that it's easy for the wealthy Obama campaign to vet its donors, whereas he needs every dime. But afford is a relative term in politics, and the RNC has plenty of cash.
It's great to see that the Obama folks are so cautious. Here's hoping it's genuine vigilance and not "Let's cover our a** from potential criticism from McCain." Then again, I shouldn't care about the motivation.
The main premise of this concern, that credit card transactions are "anonymous," is patently ridiculous. In our great nation, every financial transaction involving a bank (including you taking 20 bucks from an ATM) is monitored. Those transactions are ranked according to risk. Higher risk transactions, like large cash deposits, are flagged immediately, as are certain behaviors -- if you take a credit card cash advance in a casino, that goes on your credit report.
This article cites conservative bloggers using fake names to make Obama donations. Thanks for the money, guys. All the transaction software cares about is the card. I know this because, yesterday afternoon, I bought groceries using a debit card. The cashier did not ask me for an ID. And by the way, this was not my regular supermarket, so the guy had never seen me before. The line had to move.
My wife is licensed in her profession, so she pays a fee to the state licensing board. Once or twice, she's forgotten to mail the form and had me pay online to make sure it got there on time. This happened at least once before we were married. How does the state know I'm not committing fraud? It doesn't. The transaction device does not care about the name.
So these conservative bloggers are either deliberately ignoring this fact and trying to create trouble for Obama, or just unaware.
I am here to help. I'm looking forward to our national dialogue on campaign finance.
Some little old lady in Real Hampshire gave money to the RNC to help John McCain...and it went to Saks Fifth Avenue for City Slicker Sarah:
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
And some poor moose hunter in Real Alaska paid his taxes...so that City Slicker Sarah, and family, could sleep at night at the Essex House next to Central Park:
In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
. I had no idea Manhattan was one of those Pro-America places.
1) Read today's Granite Status from the Union Leader about how the Republican party is punishing the New Hampshire GOP delegation for our First in the Nation Primary.
2) Now re-read it, making the following mental substitutions: Howard Dean for Mike Duncan, DNC for RNC, Barack Obama for John McCain, and Ray Buckley for Fergus Cullen.
3) Brainstorming time! Using your familiarity with the Union Leader, ask yourself what this article would have looked like with the new names.
That's probably why the Air Force, the entity most favored by our flyboy Presidents and president-wanna-be McCain, has committed itself to a fleet of stealth fighters and bombers, despite the fact that they're hard to land and don't do well when there's salt in the air. But, that's not my topic today. Rather, alerted by Laura Clawson to the fact that Huckabee had set up a new PAC in support of Republican long-shots, I was prompted to take a look at what else the fellow, who supposedly gave up on his quest for the Republican presidential nomination in early March, has been up to.
Of course we knew this, but good for the UL's DiStaso (despite putting it near the bottom of his column) for laying it out in a way that's worth making more widely known. And a standing ovation to Ray Buckely for navigating the deep waters of this calendar conflict successfully.
The NHGOP Chair, Fergus Cullen, not so much.The Republican National Committee essentially declared our primary unlawful:
And ironically, after all the criticism, commissions and committees, the Democratic National Committee ends up looking a lot better than the Republican National Committee from the New Hampshire perspective. After a fuss that began even before the 2004 primary, the DNC rules committee voted 28-2 last Saturday to seat all of New Hampshire's delegates, which is nice in its own right, but far more importantly means that it ended up recognizing the primary as a legitimate event. The RNC, on the other hand, has said New Hampshire's primary is not a legitimate event under its rules and has decided to seat only half the state's delegates as punishment for having a primary before Feb. 5.
State Democratic Chairman Raymond Buckley said it wasn't easy to change DNC minds, but he had many conversations with members from other states. He said it was important to have strong support from the rules committee members from the other early voting states, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada.
Members from all four early states decided to make a show of unity and testified jointly before the rules committee in asking for waivers for their delegate plans.
Fergus, Judd: why does your party hate New Hampshire? Why are they telling us to pick corn too?
So what was NH GOP Chair Fergus Cullen's reaction to RNC Chair Mike Duncan's repeated threat to strip half of our state of its delegates at the Republican convention?
New Hampshire Republican Chair Fergus Cullen said he is not in a position to do anything about the primary date.
"We at the party have no say when the date will be set," Cullen said. "There is nothing we can do to resolve the conflict between the state law and Republican committee's rules.
Did this strike anyone else as unbelievably wimpy, this sorry, I have no power or influence at all confession? Because it did me, and I was planning on a post essentially pointing out the NH GOP's strange meekness on this, when a new press release from the NHDP provided some much needed context:
On Wednesday, October 24, RNC Chairman Mike Duncan will appear at a NH GOP fundraiser at Former Gov. and Mrs. John H. Sununu's estate in Hampton Falls. The former Governor's son, John E. Sununu, is facing an extremely tough and expensive re-election.
Ray Buckley says it better than I can:
"Apparently they [the NHGOP] are desperate for money because in the same week that the RNC has threatened to take away NH GOP delegates, they are holding a fundraiser with the RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. Asking Duncan to headline a political event in NH is like asking Cheney to headline a gun safety conference."
I can't imagine living in the top-down world of the Republican party. How on earth could you be a Granite Stater and give money to an event headlining a guy who is advocating punishing us for our primary?
Today brings news that 5 million plus e-mail messages were deleted from the White House e-mail system, in apparent violation of federal law.
Also, the RNC has been deliberately purging e-mail messages once they get to be 30 days old.
Hmmm.... Remember those phone calls from James Tobin to the RNC, right around the time of the phone-jamming? And how nothing ever surfaced to explain their nature?
Fortunately, Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove have full confidence in the ability of US Attorney Tom Colantunono to get to the bottom of this. That's why he kept his job, right?
Well, that didn't take long. The numbers are in: $125K from Wayne's World's state elephants, and $5K each from the national parties involved.
Seems a bit small to me, considering that they were angling for $4M and the judge was willing to let them try. Still, I love this quote from Kathy Sullivan:
"Over the next five years, every time a Republican donor makes a donation to the Republican State Committee, they will know a portion of that is going to the Democratic Party," she said.
Talk about depressing the base.
Anyone out there surprised at how abruptly this thing ended, and by the amount? Frankly, I thought the trial aspect of it was going to be a greater PR benefit than the damages, in the sense that it would keep Sununu's victory in question just as he gears up for a possible round two re-match.
Sunday Update: More context on the settlement from the UL:
Sullivan noted the civil suit might be settled, but the federal criminal investigation is on-going.
She said the U.S. Justice Department has far greater resources than the state Democratic Party to continue looking into the matter.
She noted that with two key witnesses refusing to incriminate themselves, their attorneys believed they had gone about as far as they could in identifying others involved in the scheme.
