Yesterday I listed the year’s upcoming Young Eagles RNC fundraisers and wondered what their fate would be. Today we get an answer:
We are canceling all Young Eagles events until the club review is completed. This includes: Opening Day with the Phillies, U.S. Training Center, YE’s Leadership Summit and Gold Cup. If there are others in the pipeline, they are also on hold until further notice.
The “U.S. Training Center” event was to be held at a Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) facility.
The former AEI fellow is taking his firing in pretty good spirits. From a party invitation going out to friends:
Tommy Christopher interviews Dale Robertson, the Tea Party activist who became infamous after I published a photo of him holding a sign with the phrase “Taxpayer = NIGGAR.” Robertson’s unhappy, understandably, with his new status as an activist who’s pilloried every time he’s quoted.
The photograph in question, available in hi-res here, depicts Robertson holding a sign that says “Congress=Slaveowner, Taxpayer=N***ar.” The misspelled n-word appears to have been duct-taped over the original sign, which Robertson claims read “Congress=Slaveowner, Taxpayer=Slave.” He says he never taped anything over the original sign, nor did anyone else. He says the photo must be a fake.
How convenient! In reality, a source in the Tea Party movement who was worried about Robertson’s bid for mainstream cred — his TeaParty.org site was promoted in an email from the fairly mainstream ResistNet — emailed me a very high-res version of the photo. I checked with people who were at the 2009 Tea Party where Robertson held the sign, who told me he was encouraged to leave — there was no tolerance for his sign. I checked in with Robertson’s publicist on Jan. 4, did not get a response, then, later that day, ran the photo. Robertson has had several months to correct the record, but I’ve never heard from him, nor have I heard anyone else contradict the story of him at the Tea Party event.
Jason Mattera, a 26-year-old conservative activist and video journalist, has been named editor-in-chief of Human Events, replacing the departed Jed Babbin.
Mattera, the author of a new book titled “Obama Zombies,” has risen to prominence by filming punchy, made-for-Fox News interviews with liberal activists and Democratic members of Congress — most recently, he confronted Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) in a stairwell and demanded answers about whether the health care bill would fund jungle gyms. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite ripped into Mattera; Mattera, in an interview with Newsbusters, responded.
Tommy Christopher’s a joke. Nobody reads him. It’s probably him and his two moms. That’s about it.
Mattera also won some cable TV infamy for a speech at CPAC which The New York Times criticized for “racial tones” and “racial stereotypes.” The young, Brooklyn-born activist was furious — what the paper described as a “Chris Rock dialect” was how he actually talked. And I can confirm this. Hearing Mattera call somebody “brother” is like hearing him use the words “the” or “but.” It was, however, an example of just how dedicated he is to roiling the left.
The anti-gay marriage group emails supporters, asking them to buy a copy of Sean Hannity’s new book. The email is after the jump.
Which Republicans are working to undermine traditional marriage? It’s unclear to me — perhaps Meghan McCain and GOProud, and then I’m out of ideas.
If you missed it yesterday, Heritage Foundation’s president Ed Feulner’s pushback on President Obama — who gave the conservative think tank credit for developing the idea of an individual mandate — makes for some interesting reading. There’s some degree of political rhetoric (“It is a sign of desperation that he, his handlers and the media echo chamber are reverting to the campaign practice of selling the President and his policies as centrist, middle of the road and aisle-crossing.”) and some spin — Feulner frets about the “over 16,000 new IRS agents” to be hired, a claim that FactCheck.org has convincingly debunked. But here’s the meat:
[T]he President knows full well—or he ought to learn before he speaks—that the exchanges we and most others support are very different from those in his package. True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obama’s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance.
Moreover, we completely disagree that President Obama’s law improves the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market. On the contrary, it will create a staggeringly complex and costly insurance system that will drive up premiums for Americans.
This sort of pushback may prove less effective than the straightforward arguments against the mandate.
The senior senator from Texas is set for an 11 a.m. announcement on whether or not she’ll retire from the Senate, setting up what, for now, would be a Republicans-only race to replace her. Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams has been running hard all year in the expectation that Hutchison would either win the gubernatorial primary or retire. Bill White, the Democratic former mayor of Houston, switched from the senatorial to the gubernatorial race out of the belief that the latter was more winnable and 100 percent likely to happen. Hutchison had promised to leave the Senate after her vote was no longer needed on health care reform, so everything points to a retirement, even though the state establishment has been trying to keep her on.
UPDATE: CNN is reporting that she’ll break her pledge and stick around.
Last week, conservatives grew annoyed with the way Democrats discussed the threats against them — it was unfair, said critics of the health care bill, to link all extremism to their opponents. This week, the conservative pushback is being led by Andrew Breitbart, who’s been posting — piece by piece — proof that supporters of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) heckled and threw eggs at the Tea Party Express bus at last Saturday’s Searchlight, Nev., rally.
Here’s video of Breitbart taking heat from Reid backers who — realizing they’re on camera — soft-pedal their anger at him.
And Chris Burgard, riding on the Tea Party Express bus, conducted interviews on the egging — his interview with the bus driver was uploaded to the official breitbart YouTube account.
The “Egg Crime 1984,” as Breitbart refers to it (a reference to the Eurythmics song “Sex Crime 1984″) is the most compelling part in a disconnected conservative campaign to flip this script. Tea Partiers say they have proof of outrageous conduct against them, while Democrats have no evidence of the attacks on black members of Congress alleged during the health care debate. Here, for example, is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) saying the members don’t have evidence to back up their claims.
When I asked Mike Connolly of the Club for Growth what, exactly, could strip candidates who’d signed the Club’s “Repeal It” pledge of official support, Connolly suggested that repercussions couldn’t really happen until January 2011, when new members of Congress have a chance to introduce repeal legislation. If they whiff, he said, then they’ll hear about it.
Today, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) dodged a question on whether, as he’s said before, he’d back full repeal. Greg Sargent gauged Connolly’s reaction.
“He said that he’s going to do this,” Club for Growth spokesman Mike Connolly just said by phone. “We expect him to live up to his pledge.” … “He’s made a promise to the people of Illinois,” Connolly continued. Asked if failing to follow through could cost Kirk the Club’s support in a general election, Connolly said: “We’ll have to see.”
Sargent calls this the Club “ripping” Kirk, but I don’t see it. According to FEC records at OpenSecrets, the Club hasn’t even given anything to Kirk — there’s nothing to take back or withhold, really. But if the Club is going relatively easy on candidates, I don’t think Tea Party activists — always cool on Kirk — will.
File this under “problems that we really should have seen coming”: conservatives, egged on by the likes of Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), declining to return census forms and possibly shrinking the political power of states like Texas. The Lone Star State’s return rate for census forms, so far, is 27 percent. The national average is 34 percent. And the data are worse for Republican areas:
In Texas, some of the counties with the lowest census return rates are among the state’s most Republican, including Briscoe County in the Panhandle, 8 percent; King County, near Lubbock, 5 percent; Culberson County, near El Paso, 11 percent; and Newton County, in deep East Texas, 18 percent. Most other counties near the bottom of the list are heavily Hispanic counties along the Texas-Mexico border.
The McCain-Palin ticket carried 74.3 percent of the vote in Briscoe, 92.6 percent in King and 65.5 percent in Newton — although Obama-Biden won tiny Culberson County.
UPDATE: Some friendly folks on Twitter have called this a false meme, so I checked the new data at the Census site. Here are the return rates, so far, for the five most Republican districts in Texas.
King County (92.% for McCain) – 14% return rate, down from 48% in 2000.
Roberts County (92.1% for McCain) – 22% return rate, down from 68% in 2000.
Ochiltree County (91.7% for McCain) – 39% return rate, down from 71% in 2000.
Glasscock County (90.1% for McCain) – 30% return rate, down from 49% in 2000.
Oldham County (88.4% for McCain) – 26% return rate, down from 72% in 2000.
Obviously, with so much time left to complete the Census, lots of populous and Democratic areas are way off of their 2000 rates so far — Harris County, for example, is only at 35%, when in 2000 it had a 68% return rate. But these numbers in conservative areas are worth watching.
I think Carly Fiorina campaign spokeswoman Amy Thoma deserves some sort of prize for this spin on an email — sent to supporters of the former executive’s Senate bid — that commemorated Passover as a time to “break bread.”
We meant all bread, leavened and unleavened, and matzo is just unleavened bread so that’s what we meant by that.
It’s true — you can’t have a Seder without matzo.
Based on their media releases over the past 24 hours, we can determine that Concerned Women for America finds two things to be absolutely beyond the pale.
One: The RNC paying for a night at a Hollywood bondage-themed nightclub.
Did they really agree to reimburse nearly $2,000 for a bondage-themed night club? We have several questions: For the Republican National Committee, why would a staffer believe that this is acceptable, and has this kind of thing been approved in the past.
… As women we find the very idea of officials from either party approving of endeavors that objectify and demean women outrageous. This kind of behavior is not appropriate for national leaders that our children should be able to look up to as role models, and that our daughters could be working for. Did you really swill drinks, ogle young girls, and plan party business at this kind of establishment? Please explain!
Two: Gay activists getting jobs in the Obama administration.
Over the weekend, President Obama bypassed the Senate confirmation process to appoint radical homosexual activist Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) while the Senate was out for the Easter recess.
Feldblum is the primary author of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which forces employers to hire homosexuals and other sexually confused individuals despite their moral or religious objections. As a commissioner, Feldblum’s fanatical ideology would negatively shape the EEOC and its decisions.
“In this position, Feldblum would not be impartial in her decision-making process. From her own account, Feldblum would have a difficult time ever deciding that religious liberties should trump homosexual rights,” said Shari Rendall, Director of Legislation and Public Policy.
“She is way beyond what most Americans would consider mainstream. Feldblum not only asserts that ‘gay sex is morally good,’ she also believes in polygamous relationships.”
Just to emphasize how different the Young Eagles’ view of what’s fun and acceptable is from that of the base that Michael Steele needs to keep on his side.
My colleague Rachel Hartman reminds me that the Young Eagles’ plans for 2010 were spelled out in the infamous RNC fundraising memo obtained this month (yes, two RNC finance scandals in one month) by Ben Smith. Here, after the jump, is a rundown of the upcoming Young Eagles events, with the fundraising hauls expected from from them in parentheses.
Some notable highlights: The Young Eagles will be at the Phillies opening day baseball game (where President Obama will throw out the first pitch), a September “Texas bird hunt” and an October Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Las Vegas. The Young Eagles are also planning a September trip to London to meet Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who by that point is expected by many to be the prime minister of the United Kingdom. (As I noted before, the training facility event is at a Blackwater/XE facility.)
April
4/1 Phillies Opening Day ($15,000)
4/8-4/11 Southern Republican Leadership Conference ($60,000)
4/16 U.S. training facility ($60,000)
May
TBD Reception in Francisco featuring Steve Forbes ($22,500)
5/14 Event in Atlantic City ($30,000)
5/20 Event at the Indy 500 ($50,000)
June
6/11 Event in Oxford, MD ($20,000)
July
7/16 Event in Detroit
7/23 Event in Boise with Gov. Butch Otter (R-Idaho)
August
8/12 Major donor summer meeting ($50,000)
September
9/10 Texas bird hunt ($40,000)
9/17 London trip, meeting with David Cameron ($80,000)
October
10/8 Vegas UFC Fight ($60,000)
10/15 Professional bull riding ($50,000)
November
11/27 Ohio State vs. Michigan football game $30,000
Reid Wilson breaks the news:
Allison Meyers, director of the RNC’s “Young Eagles” program, was terminated yesterday after reports that the RNC reimbursed a donor for a nearly $2K expense at the Voyeur nightclub in West Hollywood.
A CA GOP consultant, Erik Brown, was reimbursed for the expense after a Young Eagles event in Beverly Hills. A CA blog reported that an RNC staffer’s credit card was declined at the club, so Brown grudgingly put the expense on his own card.
That’s 180 degrees away from what many people thought yesterday — that Brown had acted overzealously, that the reimbursement was for a night he planned, and that the RNC had slipped up in cutting the check. Now Brown, whose reputation was dragged through the mud for a day, looks like the victim of a media frenzy. Today, Republicans are making sure that everyone knows Brown was caught up in something he did not plan — his mistake was asking for the reimbursement, apparently convinced that it would be fine with the RNC, since it was Meyers’ idea. That’s still going to deliver a hit to Brown’s reputation.
What happens next at the RNC? The Young Eagles are, naturally, a bit more on-the-edge when it comes to fundraising events — they’re the group planning the upcoming event on Xe’s property — but I am told that the RNC will introduce some new ground rules about what can and cannot bought and rented with an RNC credit card, or under the RNC’s auspices.
Via Jonathan Chait, we see Vietnam War hero Bud Day — known these days for his support of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his habit of constantly wearing his Medal of Honor around his neck — giving Charlie Crist an endorsement he might regret.
“You know, we just got through (electing) a politician who can run his mouth at Mach 1, a black one, and now we have a Hispanic who can run his mouth at Mach 1,” Day said. “You look at their track records and they’re both pretty gritty. Charlie has not got a gritty track record.”
Day confirmed he was speaking of Obama and Rubio.
“You’ve got the black one with the reading thing. He can go as fast as the speed of light and has no idea what he’s saying,” Day said. “I put Rubio in that same category, except I don’t know if he’s using one of those readers.”
SwiftVets.com
Chait sees a “racist trope” at work in the teleprompter mockery, although for what it’s worth, The Onion has mocked Obama’s use of the device, too. What the relative ethnicities of Obama and Rubio have to do with anything, though — well, you’d have to ask Day. And this is more bad luck for Crist, whose attack this month on Rubio — he joked about him getting a “back wax” with taxpayer dollars — also had racial overtones.
The RNC’s research arm, not distracted by scandal, is still firing away at its target. Today’s best oppo dump: a bunch of quotes (and reported quotes) from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. To wit:
Sarkozy Mocked Obama’s Naïve Approach To Nuclear Weapons, Telling United Nations “We Live In A Real World Not A Virtual World.” “Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, came close to mocking his American counterpart for the good intentions, which Mr Obama had heralded as an ‘historic’ step towards nuclear abolition, even though it set no specific targets or fresh mandates. ‘We live in a real world not a virtual world… And the real world expects us to take decisions. President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.’” (Alex Spillius, “UN Leaders Back Nuclear Resolution But Grow Impatient With Iran,” Telegraph, 9/24/09)
And it goes on.
Politico has the email circulated inside the RNC announcing — but not naming — the departure of the staffer who let a $1900 expense for a night club party slip through the cracks. And below the jump is the email sent to the media last night by RNC spokesman Doug Heye:
At the outset, Chairman [Michael] Steele was not at Voyeur West Hollywood. He had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location acceptable. While some in the press have suggested Chairman Steele was at the venue, he was not and no proof has been offered that he was. When the expense was incurred, Chairman Steele was on United flight # 0084, returning from the RNC Winter Meeting.
Upon finding out of the expenditure this morning, Chairman Steele demanded the committee get to the bottom of this matter immediately.
The committee has taken appropriate steps to address the issues relating to the reimbursement of certain expenses. First, as reported, the expenditure in question will be recouped by the RNC. Second, appropriate personnel actions have been taken and accounting and reimbursement processes are being revised to ensure that such an action cannot reoccur. We recognize the difficulty this incident has caused and assure our members and supporters that any necessary and proper remediation is being implemented immediately.
It is unfortunate that a loyal GOP donor who has recruited other donors became involved in this incident while merely trying to help what turned out to be the improper request of a staffer who is no longer with the committee.
California Republican Chuck DeVore’s senatorial campaign sends over word that it’s “severed all ties with Erik Brown,” the Orange County GOP consultant who billed the RNC for a night at the Voyeur night club in Hollywood. For what it’s worth, though, Brown is still listed as the political director of the OC Young Republicans.
DeVore’s statement from spokesman Joshua Trevino:
This is a quick note to let you know that DeVore for California has severed all ties with Erik Brown’s Dynamic Marketing, Inc (DMI). This is relevant news in light of recent revelations in the media.
The history of the campaign’s engagement with DMI is brief and straightforward: we had them print some campaign letterhead, trifold signs, and stickers. That engagement ended some weeks ago when we contracted with a different printer, and will not resume.
This is a non-story in itself, but as Chuck DeVore is being noted in some media outlets as a Brown client, it’s important to provide proper context for the relationship, and to publicly state that there is no present relationship with DMI.
Jonathan Martin writes that the RNC Voyeur scandal isn’t likely to “change the political facts of life” keeping Steele in his job until he’s up for re-election in January 2011. I’m inclined to agree. If anyone would take a jab at Steele over this, it would be Indiana RNC committee member Jim Bopp, an attorney who’s been responsible for multiple party resolutions urging a tougher line against Democrats and more ideological tests inside the party — all of which has been watered down before passage. But when I reached Bopp, he took a pass on the story, declining to criticize the party apparatus or Steele.
“All I know is what I’ve read in the papers,” said Bopp. “I’m not going to comment on that.”
From my conversations with people in and around the RNC, I do think stories like this render a second Steele chairmanship — which would take him through the 2012 presidential election — a bit less plausible.
The indispensable Red County blog digs in on the story with some intel about how, exactly, Erik Brown came to bill the RNC nearly $2,000 for a night at Hollywood’s Voyeur nightclub:
According to sources who were in attendance that night, the “official” part of the evening started with 50+ person dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, then carried on throughout the evening, eventually ending up at Voyeur. While RNC employees, who were in town to recruit members to its ”RNC Young Eagles“ program, did participate throughout the entire evening and did find their way to the bondage-themed club, Michael Steele himself was “not in attendance” for any portion of the evening. Brown, by the way, is reportedly a “Young Eagle” himself, a fundraising sub-group of the RNC which targets larger donors based on age group.
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with young RNC donors patronizing a bondage-themed night club, but it’s not the kind of thing that gets broadcast at this level — much less the kind of thing a party reimburses. It’s the kind of thing that allows Democrats to ask whether the RNC is holding fundraisers at strip clubs.
