Author: David Weigel

One state party lashes out with a sort of unfair hit in response to today’s RNC story — it’s ending, for now, with consultant Erik Brown returning the money he got as a reimbursement for a mysterious bill at a Hollywood nightclub.

“The Louisiana Democratic Party is looking into reports that David Vitter may have attended or benefited from a Republican National Committee fundraiser at a California strip club,” said Louisiana Democratic Party spokesman Kevin Franck. “Given his past exploits, it is certainly not a stretch to imagine that David Vitter would show up at a seedy club where topless women simulated sex acts and money exchanged hands. If David Vitter did attend or benefit from this fundraiser, he should come clean right now. If he did not, he should immediately denounce it.”

This stretches the facts that we know about the Brown reimbursement, but it indicates just how much fun Democrats are having with a made-for-Saturday Night Live story.

The man arrested in Philadelphia for a video death threat made against Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) did not limit his activity to the GOP minority whip. At his YouTube account, going by the name shiamuslimcantbestop, Leboon recorded hundreds of rambling, poorly-lit video threats against movie studios, politicians, religious figures and media pundits.

I’ll be interested to see what conservatives do with the information that Leboon donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign — that decision aside, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the threats Leboon would make, looking into a camera, as the self-appointed “messiah.”

Leboon threatens President Obama.

Leboon threatens movie studios over the movie “Babe.” “That movie pig, that Babe, was created by Lucifer, because he was a disgusting pig. A greedy, fat pig. That’s all he was. He was a pig god.”

Leboon threatens federal judges: “You will all, as federal judges, lose your first born sons. You will lose your first born sons as you sleep. I did this to the Pharoah.”

Leboon threatens white supremacist David Duke: “Your mouth is coming to an end. Your last breath. And your paradise has ended.”

Last week’s poorly researched Debbie Schlussel story on Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concerts burned some of the people who posted on it, such as David Frum. Schlussel’s claim that Hannity’s organization wasn’t giving much of the money from the concerts to charity didn’t hold up. But the door was wedged open, and now CREW and VoteVets are running through it with complaints to the FTC and IRS, accusing the Freedom Alliance (which runs the concerts) of engaging in political activity.

From Crew’s press release:

CREW’s IRS complaint against Freedom Alliance asks the IRS to consider revoking its charitable tax status because the organization has engaged in prohibited political activities.  When Freedom Alliance first formed in 1999, the IRS conditioned its charitable tax status on the organization removing politically partisan materials from its website and warned it not to intervene in political campaigns.  Despite those warnings, Freedom Alliance’s website includes links to Lt. Col. North’s columns, which are largely political, rents its mailing list to a communications firm that works for organizations that “seek to reach Republicans and conservatives across the United States,” and hosts an annual “Freedom Cruise” with Republican politicians such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.  In addition, Freedom Alliance appears to have a relationship with Team America, a PAC formed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), dedicated to anti-immigration efforts and supporting conservative candidates.

Here’s the filing:

Former Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.), a candidate for governor who delayed his resignation from the House to vote against health care reform, was also fleeing an ethics committee investigation on his outside income. The  Office of Congressional Ethics has released its report anyway:

Nathan Deal far exceeded congressional limits on outside income and used his U.S. House office and staff to preserve a private stream of money coming from a no-bid state business deal, a report from the Office of Congressional Ethics has found… the congressional ethics office found that Deal made at least $75,000 in 2008 in earned income, far exceeding the limit of $25,830. Deal, a Republican candidate for governor in 2010, personally intervened with Georgia leaders to preserve an obscure state program that earns his company nearly $300,000 a year.

Deal is remaining in the race for governor. Unlike the Eric Massa scandal, this investigation came about after a newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ran an investigation.

A Philadelphia man named Norman Leboon has been arrested after recording a YouTube message threatening Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who has accused Democrats of “fanning the flames” of outrage by publicizing threats against them since the health care vote.

Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring responds with a timeline and the word that the office won’t issue any more comments about this. The timeline puts the threat several days after Cantor’s “fanning the flames” comments, which came in response to a bullet hole being found in an office he sometimes uses.

Over the weekend, Congressman Cantor was notified by law enforcement that a threat was made against his life. Law enforcement officials informed Congressman Cantor that the threat was determined as credible and they were responding accordingly. The Congressman was later notified that an arrest was made and a suspect was in custody.

At this time, the Congressman will have no further comment on this threat or the investigation, and asks that inquiries be directed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Congressman is deeply grateful for, and would like to dearly thank all local and federal law enforcement involved, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia and Philadelphia, U.S. Capitol Police and the Henrico Police Department in Virginia.

I waited a little while to link to Jonathan Strong’s story about — well, it’s about two things. Half of the story concerns rumors about Michael Steele’s lavish wishlist, and half concerns big expenses that appear on the RNC’s FEC reports, the most eye-popping one being nearly $2,000 at a Los Angeles strip club. It’s that latter nugget that’s getting all the attention from the press and from the RNC.

Like other reporters, I’m told that the RNC is internally investigating its records in response to the story — the investigation is going on right now. And like other reporters, I’ve seen extremely tough pushback — the committee wants a retraction for the implication that it was Steele himself patronizing the strip club, and it’s challenging Strong’s version of his contact with the RNC. (He says he tried to get an interview with Steele; they deny it.) But I don’t expect the Caller to back down on any other parts of this — Strong reported this story carefully and has records of his contacts with the RNC sources who, today, are trying to smother the campfire.

Zachary Roth digs up something I’d nearly forgotten about. In April 2009, Kristopher “Pale Horse” Sickles posted a risible YouTube video beseeching fellow militia members to descend on Washington for a “Million Militia Man March.”

A peaceful demonstration of at least a million — hey, if we can get 10 million, even better — but at least one million armed militia men marching on Washington. A peaceful demonstration. No shooting, no one gets hurt. Just a demonstration. The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.

Today, the 27-year-old Sickles is one of nine militia members charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government. Also, I can’t help but notice that the commentary about this on fairly mainstream conservative sites is more skeptical of the FBI than of Sickles and the militias. Neither the left nor the right takes this stuff as seriously as law enforcement does.

Carol J. Williams profiles John Yoo, who provides some of the most deliciously boastful quotes this side of a James Bond movie. He’s done, he thinks, with the campaign to prosecute him for his advice during the Bush years: “I hope that this closes this chapter in trying to use criminal and ethical charges to carry out political fights against the policy of a past administration.” But he has the most fun tweaking his colleagues and his academic environment.

“I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of Marxism,” Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan smile registering the discomfort of colleagues walking by en route to the bar.

He sees his neighbors as the human figures of “a natural history museum of the 1960s,” the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a graying, long-haired, pot-smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology’s half-century-old heyday.

“It’s like looking at the panoramic displays of troglodytes sitting around the campfire with their clubs. Here, it’s tie-dye and marijuana. It’s just like the 1960s, with the Vietnam War still to protest.”

Troglodytes!

GOP candidates Charlie Crist, John McCain and Ed Lynch have all taken a hard stand for health care repeal (ZUMA)

Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) agreed on one thing in their 40-minute debate on Fox News Sunday: Both of the Republican hopefuls for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat pledged to repeal the health care bill — at least, to whatever extent they could.

“What we need to do is go ahead and repeal this thing,” said Crist bluntly. “Let’s start over.”

“I think the first step is to repeal it,” said Rubio, “and we need to win a few elections before we can get there.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Rubio has surged into a lead over Crist by promising to “stand up” to President Obama in a way the governor, who’s built a reputation as a moderate, hasn’t. Since the passage of health care reform, however, Crist has recast himself as a candidate ready to roll back health care reform — he immediately endorsed state Attorney General Bill McCollum’s lawsuit against the individual health insurance mandate. The whole exchange on Sunday revealed something that more Republican candidates are finding out: The GOP base is clamoring for its party to repeal health care reform — indeed, promising anything but full repeal can prompt a mini-revolt — but there’s plenty of wiggle room as to what exactly repeal would mean.

“You’ve got Rubio saying ‘repeal and start over,’” said Michael Connelly, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, the conservative group whose early support for Rubio was a factor in his rise. “You’ve got Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying ‘repeal and replace.’ Some kremlinologists will say there’s daylight between those statements, but as far as we’re concerned it doesn’t exist.”

If any organization can nudge Republicans toward a “repeal” pledge, and keep them honest after they take it, it’s the Club for Growth. It launched a one-paragraph “Repeal It” petition in February, when many considered health care reform a dead letter. And since the passage of reform, the number of signatories who hold or are running for electoral office has surged past 400. That number includes Senate candidates like New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, Kentucky’s Trey Grayson, Colorado’s Jane Norton and Illinois’s Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who are warily viewed by Tea Partiers and conservative voters, but who have been able to use the “repeal” message to prove their bona fides.

“It’s going to be repealed and replaced and it’s going to be done soon,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is facing a primary challenge from the right, in a Friday rally with Sarah Palin. “It will not stand.”

Republican members and candidates are reinforced by Republican governors who can complain about “ObamaCare” without tackling it legislatively. All are backed up by a steady stream of polls from Rasmussen Reports and others that seem to validate the wisdom of coming out for repeal.

“Newt Gingrich is saying we should ‘repeal and replace,’” wrote Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) in a weekend op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. “That works.” Jindal dealt with the purported impossibility of electing enough Republicans to repeal the legislation by saying his election in Louisiana had been unlikely, too. And would President Obama veto a repeal bill? “Yes, he sure would. Do it anyway. And do it again after he is gone. (By the way, President Clinton vetoed welfare reform twice before he signed it into law.)”

In the three ongoing special elections where Republicans hope to take seats once held by Democrats, “repeal” has become a rallying cry for local activists and national fundraisers. The next election on the calender will come April 13 in the 19th District of Florida, some of the safest Democratic terrain in the state. The Obama-Biden ticket won 65 percent of the vote there, while Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) won re-election with 66 percent. But Ed Lynch, the businessman running as a Republican to replace Wexler, has taken to the pages of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government to call his race “the first referendum on nationalized health care.”

“By contributing, 5, 10, or 20 dollars to our campaign,” wrote Lynch, “your donation will count towards a full and unequivocal REPEAL of the most dangerous legislation passed since this nation’s founding.”

In an interview with TWI, Lynch made it clear that he backed full repeal, and wouldn’t quibble about parts of the legislation that Republicans have occasionally endorsed, such as preventing coverage from being denied for pre-existing conditions. “This bill is going to kill our seniors,” said Lynch. “Making something less bad doesn’t mean making it good.” He would sign the “Repeal It” pledge, he said, and he’d also co-sponsor legislation Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has introduced to repeal the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act. “I’m a big supporter of Michele,” he said.

The other candidates who will face voters in the next two months have come around to the same argument. Tim Burns, a first-time candidate running for the seat of the late Rep. John Murtha (R-Pa.), has challenged his Democratic opponent to sign a pledge to repeal health care reform. Charles Djou, a Honolulu city councilman who’s running to replace Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), has threaded the needle a little differently, telling voters that he’d prefer a chance to fix the bill over outright repeal. He explained to TWI that he favors that approach because he views repeal as legislatively unlikely.

“Repeal isn’t going to happen unless Republicans capture a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override an Obama veto,” said Djou.

Former congressman Tim Walberg, who’s running for his old House seat in Michigan, said that a “repeal” message would work best if coupled with Republican promises to pass a better sort of health reform.

“I don’t mind the term repeal if that’s what we have to do,” Walberg told TWI. “But I think there are some elements of the health care bill I introduced when I was in Congress that we can go back to. Reform is needed, just not this kind.”

The only political mistake Republicans can make on health care, so far, is to signal to the base that full repeal might not be a priority. Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) created an opening for a minor challenger in his U.S. Senate bid by arguing — accurately — that Barack Obama’s presence in the White House made repeal of health care reform unlikely until at least 2013. That was worrying to some Republicans, whose best-case scenario in 2011 is a Republican Congress that would be unable to override Obama’s vetos.

“I see where Republicans are with this,” said one GOP aide in the House, “but it drives me insane. What happens if you run, win, and don’t repeal?”

But for all the rhetoric, that might be where Republicans are headed. Before the health care vote, on March 9, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told a reporter that Republican voters would understand if the GOP couldn’t repeal health care reform right away. “Whether you want to call it repeal,” he said, “or whether you want to call it a referendum, I don’t think makes a dime’s worth of difference.” After the vote, on March 23, Cornyn appeared to support “non-controversial stuff” in the reform package. The blowback from the conservative base was immediate and immense. If it was a preview of what Republicans can expect before and after the midterms, it didn’t look good for Cornyn.

“Make no mistake about it,” clarified Cornyn. “I fully support repealing this Washington takeover of health care.”

I’m a little surprised that ThinkProgress’ pull from Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Express speech this weekend has gotten so much attention. Well, not completely surprised — it’s a quote from Sarah Palin. But is this supposed to embarrass her?

In these volatile times when we are a nation at war, now more than ever is when we need a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor lecturing us from a lectern.

That’s basically a sauced-up version of this line from her speech at the National Tea Party Convention:

Treating this as a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risks because that is not how radical Islamic extremists look at this. They know we are at war. To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.

The ThinkProgress take is that this is hypocritical because the “Tea Party movement loves to express its affection for the Constitution.” Well, yes. They love the Constitution. But “Constitutional law professor” does not, for Tea Partiers, sound like someone who loves the Constitution. It sounds like a liberal elitist who dreams up ways to work around it. Maybe this is the start of some liberal pushback against that narrative, but it’s a Palin dog whistle, not a Palin gaffe.

Will Bunch has the name of Glenn Beck’s upcoming adult novel (he’s already written a Christmas story for children) to be released in June. The news comes in Bunch’s extremely entertaining report on a Beck speech and rally in Orlando. The book, explains Bunch, will be “‘a story of America in a time much like today where the people are confused,’ with a government in crisis and the rise of a citizens’ group called the Founders Keepers, which ‘leads to a battle and a civil war, and life is upside-down planetwide.’”

On first blush it sounds like “Atlas Shrugged” with a bit more violence, and with 9-12 Tea Partiers taking the place of underground intellectuals. And it will also ruin for all time a term political scientists have enjoyed and Beck recently discovered. (In that clip, an early title for the book is “We Are Americans: The Overton Window.”)

I wrote last year about the strategy that had brought some online success to the Washington Examiner: editor Mark Tapscott’s aggressive hiring of conservative reporters and columnists. The Washington City Paper takes a swing at this, calling it the capital’s “greatest media mystery.”

The paper provides indispensable coverage on D.C. politics, regional transportation, crime—all the rugged beats that a city daily should own. Then you turn the pages, through the national politics and the business. And you land on the opinion/commentary pages. It’s a strange lineup that’s preaching to one of the country’s most liberal jurisdictions.

I’d offer that when there’s no local news scoop to lead the paper, the front page is often more conservative than other publications too. But it certainly has worked out for the paper as the competition at The Washington Times reels.

I followed up with GOP congressional candidate Charles Djou to clear up what he meant when he said Republicans should “try to work on dramatic reform first” before moving to repeal the health care bill. In an email, I asked Djou whether he’d sign the Club for Growth’s “Repeal It” pledge — he hasn’t yet — and whether, if he got to Congress, he’d co-sponsor Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) repeal legislation.

At a rally for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sarah Palin — who I do think has been unfairly attacked as a source of “violent” backlash against health care — dismissed outright the idea that opponents of reform were reacting violently. Palin called it a “ginned-up controversy about us common-sense conservatives kinda inciting violence,” inspiring someone in the crowd to yell that activists would oppose the bill “with our votes!”

“That’s right!” said Palin. “When we take up our arms we’re talking about our vote.”

McCain, who made multiple promises to “repeal” the health care bill — “we’ll fight it in the courts, we’ll fight it in the streets” — called the uprising against health care a “peaceful revolution.”

So Charles Djou, one of the three GOP candidates vying for a blue seat in a special election right now, is not promising to move immediately to repeal health care reform. What about the other candidates, Tim Burns in PA-12 and Ed Lynch in FL-19?

Burns:

Republican special election candidate Tim Burns has challenged Democratic special election candidate Mark Critz to sign a pledge to repeal the measure. Burns said he is opposed to the health care reform bill but would support tort reform and interstate competition.

“Critz offers a hollow explanation with a tentative promise of ‘likely’ being against the bill,” Burns said in a release. “If he is serious about making sure Nancy Pelosi and the liberals don’t allow for taxpayer funded abortions and fighting for the constituents of this district, he should join me in signing a pledge to repeal the bill. Voters deserve better than weak statements regarding policy and are in need of a strong congressman who will stand up to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi in Washington.”

Lynch:

By contributing, 5, 10, or 20 dollars to our campaign, your donation will count towards a full and unequivocal REPEAL of the most dangerous legislation passed since this nation’s founding, as well as a vote against the pending power grabs that are in the works by the Obama administration- pushes for the passage of cap and trade legislation as well as blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants.

And at a rally in Arizona today, John McCain made multiple promises to repeal the legislation.

James O’Keefe himself tweeted out a link to the AP news:

Conservative activist, 3 others have charges reduced in phone caper at La. senator’s office.

That means O’Keefe is no longer charged with a felony.

Charles Djou, a Honolulu city councilman who’s mounting a strong — and lucky* — campaign for Hawaii’s first congressional district, doesn’t sound like he’s joining the “repeal health care reform” bandwagon. B.J. Reyes reports on a candidate forum in Honolulu:

Although Djou said he would have voted against the bill, he stopped short of saying he would join GOP efforts to repeal it.

“I think if we do not dramatically reform it and introduce a number of reforms … then yes, we do need to repeal,” Djou said. “But let’s try to work on dramatic reform first.”

Another report on the candidate forum confirms this — Djou wants to look at reform first, and repeal it if and when Democrats refuse to accept more GOP ideas. Djou isn’t exactly pounding the table about this issue.

*He’s facing two credible Democrats in a winner-take-all race, raising the possibility that he could win with a plurality of the vote in a split field.

The “Bell Curve” and “In Our Hands” author and AEI scholar writes at length in National Review about the departure of David Frum from AEI. The argument: Frum had become “invisible as a member of the institute,” and that he can’t be serious about donors complaining about his work.

The idea that AEI donors sit down to talk with AEI’s president about who should and shouldn’t be on the staff, or what the staff should write, is fantasy. David has never seen the slightest sign of anything like that at AEI. He can’t have. He made it up. AEI has a culture, the scholars are fiercely proud of that culture, and at its heart is total intellectual freedom. As for the reality of that intellectual freedom, I think it’s fair to say I know what I’m talking about. I’ve pushed it to the limit. Arthur Brooks is just as adamant about preserving that culture as Chris DeMuth was, and Chris’s devotion to it was seamless.

Meanwhile, Frum’s wife Danielle Crittenden fires at the critics of her husband:

We have both been part of the conservative movement for, as mentioned, the better part of half of our lives. And I can categorically state I’ve never seen such a hostile environment towards free thought and debate — once the hallmarks of Reaganism, the politics with which we grew up — prevail in our movement as it does today. The thuggish demagoguery of the Limbaughs and Becks is a trait we once derided in the old socialist Left. Well boys, take a look in the mirror. It is us now.

Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), whose moderate record has made him the GOP’s most likely candidate to win a Senate seat in a blue state this year, has suggested (practically) that repeal of health care reform was not really a promise Republican  candidates could keep. “While this president is in office,” said Castle, “repealing this full law is not realistic and not the best use of our efforts.”

Castle’s reward: “Repeal Castle,” a new Website and multimedia campaign launched by Christine O’Donnell, his conservative primary challenger. (She was the party’s sacrificial lamb against now-Vice President Joe Biden in 2008.)

O’Donnell’s not going to defeat Castle unless he makes a ton of mistakes — I’m from Delaware, and can confirm that Castle is one of the most popular politicians of either party in the First State. But what does this mean? First, Castle won’t sign onto Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) repeal bill, which takes some air out of that campaign. Second, Castle isn’t promising to support repeal if he makes it to the Senate in 2011. And that takes some air out of Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) campaign for a similar repeal bill. If Republicans pull an inside straight and win the Senate, right off the bat they’re going to disappoint on one of their campaign promises.

I haven’t joined the dogpile on Sarah Palin’s response to the health care reform vote — she set up a page of vulnerable Democrats that displayed target signs on their districts — because Palin’s been using this rhetoric for her entire career in national politics. This tweet, for example, has quickly become infamous:

But that’s a reference to what, according to Palin, is a family witticism. The final chapter of “Going Rogue” begins with a quote from her father, Chuck Heath:

Sarah’s not retreating; she’s reloading!

I think Palin’s gotten tripped up by the same thing flummoxing other conservatives this week — in the context of angry threats against pro-health care Democrats, the revolutionary rhetoric of the GOP this last year sounds… well, revolutionary.