Republican Civil War Isn't Just About Money… Bigotry And Racism Are Big On The Right As Well

Matt Bevin, the radical right's McConnell slayer?

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation, is probably the most prodigious Democratic bundler in California. It was huge news when he backed Obama instead of Hillary in 2008. Today's news was that he's back on board with the Clintons. In the last 2 cycles, plus this year, he's personally donated over $3.5 million to Democratic organizations and candidates, particularly Priorities USA Action. Between 1990 and 2008, he wrote checks for $1.3 million. Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn't contribute to outfits like Blue America; he gives to the DCCC, DNC, DSCC and to Democratic Party organizations in states. And those organizations guard their big donors like ravenous wolves. When a Florida local elected official agreed to contribute to Blue America, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz went ballistic and threatened to "cut him off." I'm certain (really, I am) that this is just a coincidence, but he was found dead a few weeks later.

Another of L.A.'s biggest donors had been trying to get me to join the board of one of her companies and I had explained I didn't have the time or space. She's a smart cookie and she offered to throw a fundraiser at her Beverly Hills mansion for one of the Blue America candidates. I agreed to meet her to talk about what I'd have to do on the board. That evening, she entered the room, saying, "Oh, Howie, I just got off the phone with Steve [Israel] and he said your candidate has no chance and won't even wind up running in the end." That candidate, as it turned out, nearly did win, coming closer to beating the longtime incumbent since the district was first created! He lost because Steve Israel sabotaged his campaign with easily-manipulated Democratic contributors who don't know they're being played for fools by the Israels and Wasserman Schultzes.

And the Republican versions of Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, it was reported by Jeremy Peters in the NY Times this morning, are working hard to de-fund the grassroots GOP organizations on the right. Same boss-like mentality from the Beltway Establishment careerists who seek to control the political life of the country. Of course, with their crackpot candidates, the Republican Establishment at least has a legitimate reason to undermine their own extreme right wing. Israel, Hoyer, Crowley and Wasserman Schultz don't. They just have that ole lust for power and control.

One of the biggest challenges for Republican leaders in the 2014 midterm elections will be how to hang on to the Tea Party support that has been so instrumental to the party’s growth, while winning back voters alienated by hard-right candidates. These conflicting goals were evident last week as Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio shelved plans to tackle immigration reform in the House, bowing to pressure from conservatives.

“We’re not picking a fight with the basis for the Tea Party,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who noted that most Republicans were sympathetic to the free-market, small-government philosophy that inspired the movement. “But some have hijacked the Tea Party model and taken it to an extreme level.”

The chamber has become one of the establishment’s most powerful forces this year by taking the highly aggressive step of working in primaries to defeat Republicans who are seen as unelectable and damaging to the national party.

“Let’s not screw around eating our own,” Mr. Reed said. “Let’s win a seat.”

Tea Party groups and other conservatives who are challenging the traditional party leadership say the pushback this year is as hostile as it has ever been.

“I’ve been told by a number of donors to our ‘super PAC’ that they’ve received calls from senior Republican senators,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, which is supporting challengers to Republican incumbents across the country. The message from these donors was blunt: “I can’t give to you because I’ve been told I won’t have access to Republican leadership,” Mr. Kibbe said. “So they’re playing hardball.”

Few have fought rougher than Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, who is facing a primary challenger at home and Tea Party angst in Washington.

Under his direction, the National Republican Senatorial Committee cut ties with a prominent Republican advertising firm and pressed individual senators to do so as well because of its work with a group that targets incumbent Senate Republicans, the Senate Conservatives Fund. That group has accused the McConnell campaign of pressuring its bookkeeper into resigning because she feared that she would never get work from Republican candidates again.

“He’s essentially joined the I.R.S. in targeting conservative groups,” said Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund. “It’s all meant to intimidate.” Aides to Mr. McConnell had no comment.

In other races, the party’s mainstream elements have been pushing back quickly, albeit with less brute force.

In Alaska, Joe Miller, the Sarah Palin-backed candidate who in 2010 tried to unseat Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican, is running again this year and faces a crowded Republican primary. But when he sat down with the staff of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to gauge its support, members came armed with polling data and warned him that he was too unpopular to win.

In West Virginia, the Chamber of Commerce is working to neutralize opposition to Shelley Moore Capito, the leading Republican candidate. They have already claimed one casualty: A former State House member, Pat McGeehan, who claims to hold the record for the most “no” votes cast. He dropped out.

“Pat is a little bit on the ...” said Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, trying to find diplomatic words. “I’m just going to say he has a little bit of an ideological edge to him. We certainly let it be known by running our ads and so forth that Shelley would be a better candidate.”

In South Dakota, Senator John Thune, a member of the Republican leadership, has thrown his support behind Mike Rounds in the race for the seat being vacated by Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat. Mr. Rounds, a former governor, is being opposed in the primary by several candidates, including one, Stace Nelson, who was banned from the Republican caucus in the State House after being too combative with other members.

Ground zero in the establishment-strikes-back fight may be the House race in Idaho between Representative Mike Simpson, an eight-term member, and Bryan Smith, a lawyer who has the backing of the anti-tax, anti-spending group the Club for Growth. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has started running ads depicting Mr. Simpson as the true conservative, rebutting Mr. Smith’s claim that he is a “RINO”-- Republican in name only.

Mr. Smith said he had anticipated the pushback, but was seeing encouraging support locally. “I always knew that a 15-year incumbent who’s a close ally of John Boehner’s was going to outraise me,” he said before ticking off some recent triumphs. “We’ve raised over half a million dollars. Last week I got two more endorsements from the Republican Party on the county level.”

Mr. Reed, of the chamber, said he had it on good authority that his message to the more recalcitrant Republicans was sinking in.

“Boehner has told me that in the House caucus meetings there are a lot more guys sitting up straight,” he said. “They aren’t sitting in the back with their feet up on the chairs hurling spitballs.”

Mr. Black, the Virginia state senator, said he bore no ill will toward the friends who endorsed his opponent. But he does question what kind of shape his party is in if its leaders go on attacking the movement that is the source of so much grass-roots energy. “So many of the big-money interests are very antagonistic toward the base,” he said, “and I’m not sure where the Republican Party is headed.”

And, of course, on the GOP side, it isn't only about the loot, like it mostly is on the Democratic side. Jim DeMint's proto-fascist operation, Heritage Action, is viciously trying to undermine the Chamber of Commerce passed on ideology. Republican grassroots groups can let their racist hair down more freely than the Establishment groups, who need to persuade independents and moderates they're not exactly the same thing as Nazis (they are), care to. Earlier today DeMint's stooge, Michael Needleman, claimed that the comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate last year with some Republican support-- Lamar Alexander, Kelly Ayotte, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, Mark Kirk, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and Marco Rubio (FL)-- is the result of "corporate cronyism" and was "written behind closed doors by the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce."

This morning the Tampa Bay Times confirmed the rumor that former Florida state Rep. Ana Rivas Logan had left the Republican party and is re-registering as a Democrat. "The GOP of today is not the party I joined," said Rivas Logan, who also served on the Miami-Dade School Board. "It's not the party of my parents. It's a party that has been radicalized and held hostage by a group of extremists." She pointed out that the Republican Party "a party that attacks women and minorities-- and one that asked me, and my former Hispanic Republican colleagues in the Florida legislature, to turn on their own people by supporting extreme anti-immigrant policies." I wonder how she'll define being a Democrat.

Another right-wing PAC, FRC, ran this radio ad against mainstream conservative Republican Richard Hanna (NY) who teabaggers deride for being insufficiently extreme. Obama tied both McCain and Romney in Hanna's R+3 upstate New York district (Utica, Rome, Binghamton) and this one could easily fall to a Democrat if… oh, never mind… Steve Israel neglected to recruit a Democrat gainst one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Northeast.

Listen.