Liz Cheney, Jim Bunning and the Republican National Committee just pulled the plug.
With three events that happened in such lockstep it makes you think it was intentional, the conservatives in Congress and outside have been badly served by some of their number who showed, by accident and on purpose, just how desperate and mean-spirited they’re willing to be in order to advance their agenda.
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The Republicans’ lock on their old strong suit, national security, isn’t what it used to be; two wars and responsibility for the worst attack on American soil won’t enhance its bona fides on that front over the long haul. And so, the former vice president Dick Cheney has, in speeches and op-ed pieces and a forthcoming book, been working furiously to rewrite history as it relates to the panoramically criminal actions of the Bush administration.
Daughter Liz has happily entered the family business. On March 1, Liz Cheney’s right-wing advocacy group, Keep America Safe, released a breathtakingly ridiculous Web video that suggests that lawyers at the Justice Department responsible for defending the military prisoners collectively misidentified as “detainees” share the ideological viewpoints of the al-Qaida network.
It was a revisitation of the same innuendo and character assassination perfected by Republican Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and unleashed on the country for three harrowing years during the McCarthy hearings in the 1950's. And like her apparent ideological mentor, Liz Cheney had her Joseph Welch moment. In fact, she had more than one.
Cheney’s DoJ broadside got a lot of pushback from a broad range of conservatives, some from previous Republican administrations, who indicated that the video was off base in its ad hominem attacks of Justice attorneys. The Conservative Power Line blog called the video “vicious” and “unfounded.”
Reginald Brown, former Bush associate White House counsel said “the video is truly offensive … It’s beyond a cheap shot to suggest that a lawyer is an al-Qaida sympathizer because he advocates a detainee’s position in the Supreme Court ...”
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Cheney’s YouTube mal mot surfaced two days before a story in Politico, a piece highlighting GOP fundraising documents apparently lost or forgotten at a Republican National Committee leadership retreat for top donors and fundraisers, held Feb. 18 at the Gasparilla Inn & Club in Boca Grande, Fla.
The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart, Politico reported on March 3. The 72-page document was provided to Politico by a Democrat who was apparently at the hotel.
The docs, assembled as a PowerPoint presentation, shows one graphic that highlights desired motivational triggers for getting donations from conservative supporters. At the top of the column for “Visceral Giving” (read: spot donors) is the word “Fear.” In another column headed “Calculated Giving” (code for deep-pocketed donors), motivations the document said are ripe for exploitation include giving that’s “Ego-Driven” or powered by a desire for “Access” or “Personal” reasons.Another slide in the deck reads: “What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House or the Senate? Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”
From the Politico story: “In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.”
It was all too clear for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. “The Republicans simply don’t respect American voters,” he told MSNBC on Thursday. “What this shows is that they don’t even respect their own donors among their own voters.”
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As you’d expect, the damage-control machine went off loudly at RNC headquarters.
“This was an internal matter,” RNC Chairman and apologist-in-chief Michael Steele told Fox News. “Clearly it’s not something I would tolerate … We’re dealing with it administratively within the RNC.”
“They don’t get it,” Judson Phillips, an attorney and organizer of the recent National Tea Party Convention, told the Daily Beast. “They freaking don’t get it.” Phillips said he disagreed with the characterization of small donors as “reactionary” and motivated by “fear.” “Our motives are patriotic,” he said. “Can they be any more insulting?”
