GOP Civil War: Conservative Activists Warn Crossroads Donors Away From New Rove Group

BEN DIMIERO/Media Matters For America:

Conservatives continue to wage war over the future of the Republican Party, with Media Research Center president Brent Bozell and several other activists penning a letter discouraging donors from giving money to Karl Rove's new political group.

Rove has been the focus of conservative anger for weeks following the announcement of Conservative Victory Project, a new group he is launching with the help of the allies behind his Crossroads political groups. According to the New York Times, the group will seek to "recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts."

The letter, flagged by TIME reporter Zeke Miller, is signed by Bozell, Tea Party Express chairman Amy Kremer, Citizens United president David Bossie, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, and a handful of other conservative activists who claim to represent "millions of grassroots conservatives."

Addressed to "Top Crossroads Donors," the letter rips Rove's Crossroads political groups for supporting moderate candidates and having "squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in what were arguably the most inept campaign advertising efforts ever."  

It continues:

Mr. Rove and his allies must stop blaming conservatives for his disastrous results. It is time for him to take ownership of his record. He must also stop posturing himself as a conservative: his record supporting wasteful government spending and moderate candidates over conservatives spans decades.

No matter how he positions himself in this attempt at damage control, Mr. Rove's efforts will not elect the type of leaders who will come to Washington to fight for conservative principles. In fact, they are likely to stifle the emergence of candidates like Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, and Rand Paul. Further, the model that will be employed by the Conservative Victory Project has proven to be ineffective and a waste of political resources.

In recent weeks, Rove has been labeled by conservative media figures as (among other pejoratives) a "propagandist" and "a total loser." Conservatives have also branded his new group "absolutely repulsive," and "an incumbency protection racket." 

Last month, after a spokesman for one of Rove's Crossroads groups labeled Bozell a "hater" for his criticism of Republican leaders, Bozell's allies -- including several of the same people who signed the latest letter -- wrote a letter demanding the aide's firing. In the letter, the activists lauded Bozell for being the nephew of conservative luminaries like William F. Buckley and called him "a beloved and critically important player in American history."

Conservative activist threatens to steer donors from RNC if GOP raises taxes

By Alexander Bolton/The Hill

Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser, is threatening to steer donors away from the Republican Party if GOP lawmakers sign a deal to raise taxes.

Bozell sent a letter to Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus on Wednesday pledging to make it his mission to counsel conservative donors to shun the party if its leaders in Congress agree to raise taxes. 

Bozell, the chairman of ForAmerica Inc., has been active in conservative political circles for three decades and estimates he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for “an alphabet soup of conservative causes.” 

“Reince, it pains me to say this, but if the Republican Party breaks its word to the American people and goes along with President Obama with tax increases, it will have betrayed conservatives for the final time,” Bozell wrote. 

“I will make it my mission to ensure that every conservative donor to the Republican Party that I have worked with for the last three decades — and there are many and they have given tens of millions to Republican causes — gives not one penny more to the Republican Party or any member of Congress that votes for tax increases,” he warned. 

A spokesman for the RNC did not respond to a request for comment. 

Bozell is the founder of the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, which has an annual budget of more than $10 million. 

He sent a separate letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) earlier in the week, pushing them to reject Obama’s call to raise taxes on the wealthy.

“With the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ rapidly approaching, both sides are making opening gambits and the talk so far is alarming,” Bozell wrote in a letter dated Nov. 27 to Republican leaders. 

“Conservatives have one question to ask: If you now claim a tax increase on small business is the correct course of action, were you lying all along when you claimed this tax increase would decimate the economy?” he wrote. “Because if you were not lying, you will now be willing participants in the destruction of American jobs in a time of economic crisis.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and incoming Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) were included on the letter. 

Several Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), have said in recent days that they do not feel bound by the anti-tax pledge they signed in the past. 

The pledge, sponsored by Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, requires signatories to oppose any legislation that raises tax rates or eliminates tax breaks without offsetting the action by cutting other taxes. 

“When you’re $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece, and Republicans — Republicans should put revenue on the table,” Graham said in a television interview over the weekend. “We’re this far in debt. We don’t generate enough revenue. Capping deductions will help generate revenue.” 

Boehner and McConnell have signaled in the wake of the election that they would be willing to strike a deal with Obama that raises taxes to reduce the deficit, although they insist it must be linked to reforming entitlement programs. 

Bozell is not the only conservative to warn that signing onto a deal hiking taxes would prompt a strong backlash. 

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Tea Party caucus, warned that conservatives could back challengers to sitting lawmakers who vote for tax increases. 

“If there is a bad deal, I just think you’re going to see conservatives around the country coalesce around better candidates, better-trained candidates, and to recognize the Republican Party needs to reflect more conservative principles,” he said. 

DeMint said a lot of conservative donors have already stopped giving to the official Republican Party committees and sent their dollars instead to outside groups. He said that trend is a major reason why the Senate Conservatives Fund, which he founded, has raised millions of dollars. 

On Tuesday, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, urged colleagues to extend the Bush-era tax rates only for families earning below $250,000 to avoid a tax increase on middle-class families at year’s end. He said Republicans could resume the fight against higher taxes on wealthier families next year. 

DeMint, however, said decoupling tax rates for families earning above $250,000 per year and those below that threshold would be a mistake. 

“I don’t think any decoupling of the rates is a concession we should make. I think that’s capitulation. It doesn’t help the country. For the Republicans to agree to that is bad policy and I think it’s bad politics,” he said. 

In his letter to Priebus, Bozell warned of dire political consequences if GOP leaders fail to stand their ground against Democrats. 

“If the GOP again abandons its pledge of fiscal responsibility, including the promise not to raise taxes on ANYONE, again conservatives will walk,” he wrote. 

“Pure and simple, in the ongoing debate over the so-called ‘fiscal cliff,’ the Republican Party is giving new definition to the word ‘surrender.’ The GOP is signaling a desire to abandon its solemn commitment to advance fiscal restraint,” he added. 

Brian Darling, senior fellow for government studies at the Heritage Foundation, predicted a conservative backlash against any deal leaders strike to raise taxes.

“You’re going to have a lot of pressure in the Republican caucus against any measure that hikes taxes, that closes loopholes to gain more revenue,” he said. “Some would be outraged if a deal was cut where Republicans affirmatively voted to raise taxes. I think the Tea Party would be outraged.”

As Gingrich Is Assailed By Conservative Press, Conservatives Blame "Liberal Media"

by Eric Boehlert/Media Matters

Talk about throwing good money after bad.

Last week, cantankerous media watchdog Brent Bozell announced his group, Media Research Center, was launching the largest initiative in its 25 years history -- a $5 million marketing campaign urging the "liberal media" to "tell the truth!" Bozell urged Americans to stand up during this election year and "declare, once and for all, that the leftwing so-called news media are no longer going to pick winners and losers."

Featuring mobile billboards and "Tell The Truth!" placards, the MRC campaign is drawing inspirationfrom Newt Gingrich's candidacy, and specifically Gingrich's calculated pushback against the press. That crusade reached its peak on the night of the South Carolina debate when he won a standing ovation after castigating moderator John King for opening the debate by asking about allegations Gingrich's former wife had made in the press that week about their marriage.

Bozell soon announced Gingrich's primary win in South Caroline represented a "defeat for the liberal media." He  urged GOP candidates to pick up Gingrich's anti-media mantle and to denounce the elites' "mission to destroy" Republican hopefuls.

All of this, as usual with Bozell, is a charade.

In fact, all that the MRC's new "Tell The Truth!" campaign does is highlight the dubious nature of the long-running "liberal media" bias production. The punch line surrounding this multi-million dollar marketing drive? It's being rolled out at the exact moment the conservative press is attacking Gingrich.

It's true. Last week Gingrich likely received better, or at least fairer, treatment in the pages of The New York Times than he did at The Drudge Report, which dedicated several days to posting a litany of harassing headlines and relentlessly targeting the former Republican Speaker of the House, treating him as if he were the political reincarnation of Bill Clinton.

It seems conservative pundits are the ones on a "mission to destroy" Gingrich's candidacy. But Bozell can't say that out loud because he has a phony, "liberal media" campaign to launch.

Here are the facts on the ground, as reported the Associated Press [emphasis added]:

Right now Newt Gingrich's most ardent critics are conservative pundits and columnists, many of whom have launched aggressive campaigns to discredit him and trip up his run for the Republican nomination.

Indeed, Gingrich surrogate Fred Thompson made the media rounds echoing the same message, that Drudge was "in the pocket" of the Romney campaign. And it's hard to argue otherwise.

Even conservative bloggers can't miss the startling turn of events:

Thursday the Drudge Report had no less than 13 anti-Gingrich links scattered across the page with somewhere around five "above the fold." The same day, National Review Online, the American Spectator, and pundit Ann Coulter all published missives railing against the former House Speaker.

Large portions of the conservative opinion press spent the last week taking Gingrich out at the knees, and seemed to do it with glee. Yet against that backdrop Bozell announced a $5 million marketing campaign to call out network news because they're the ones trying to undermine the likes of Gingrich? 

Gimme a break.

As part of his "Tell The Truth!" public relations push, Bozell bemoaned the personal attacks and "onslaught of character assassination" against Republican candidates like Gingrich. Character assassination, by airing a sit-down, on-the-record interview with one of the candidate's ex-wives, the way ABC News recently did? If Bozell's looking for the real media assassins circling Gingrich's campaign he might want to keep an eye out for Emmett Tyrrell at the conservative American Spectator, who recently uncorked a jarring, anti-Gingrich broadside:

His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out.

And if Bozell's looking for pundits mercilessly mocking Gingrich, he should  scold conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who dismissed Gingrich as an "angry little attack muffin," or Ann Coulter who smacked down the Georgia Republican,  declaring "hotheaded arrogance is neither conservative nor attractive to voters."

This intramural phenomena has been documented over and over this month: Spooked by the prospect of a Gingrich nominee, key members of the so-called Republican Establishment orchestrated an attack campaign against the candidate. And where have most of those attacks being launched? In the conservative press. This while Bozell, the right-wing's Captain Ahab, sets his sights in the opposite direction, on ABC, CBS, NBC.

Even Beltway journalists suggest that far from attacking Gingrich or attempting to drive him out of the race, the press has been helping him try to derail Mitt Romney's march towards the nomination. Why? The press prefers a to cover a long, drawn-out nomination fight because it's good for business.

That loyalty to ratings and a solid click-through rate explains the media's "institutional rooting interest" in Gingrich's campaign,  wrote John Heilemann in New York this week. 

But Bozell and the MRC can't admit that, and they can't admit it's conservative pundits who are actively undermining Gingrich's candidacy. Bozell can't admit the reality because it would undercut the existence of the "liberal media" bias complex within the conservative movement.

It turns out, Brent Bozell can't "tell the truth." 

Fox Celebrates Holidays With Outrageous Race-Based Attack On Obama

by Solange Uwimana/Media Matters

Fox News' animosity toward President Obama, three years into his presidency, is by now well-known. This is the network that routinely calls Obama a socialist, accuses him of being involved in all sorts of conspiratorial plots, and claims that he hates America. But, as witnessed Thursday on Hannity, Fox's attacks have taken an increasingly racially charged tone: Brent Bozell, who runs the factuallychallenged outfit of conservative misinformation known as the Media Research Center, likened Obama to "a skinny, ghetto crackhead."

Bozell appeared on Hannity as part of the show's weekly "Media Mash" segment to talk about purported mainstream media failings. After listening to a clip of MSNBC host Chris Matthews saying that Newt Gingrich "looks like a car bomber," Bozell responded:

BOZELL: How long do you think Sean Hannity's show would last if four times in one sentence, he made a comment about, say, the President of the United States, and said that he looked like a skinny, ghetto crackhead? Which, by the way, you might want to say that Barack Obama does. Everybody on the left would come forward and demand he be fired within five minutes for being so insulting towards a leader of the United States.

A few months ago, Fox's Eric Bolling came under fire for his racially charged criticisms of Obama, including his claims that Obama was "chugging 40's in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO" (which he latertried to amend), and that Obama was hosting "hoodlum[s] in the hizzouse" when he welcomed Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba and rapper Common to the White House.

These attacks have become a pattern at Fox News. 

Since April of this year when Obama announced he would be running for reelection, attacks haveranged from false claims about the president's place of birth and religion to claiming Obama has "black nationalist sympathies." Fox's Monica Crowley, for example, derided Obama as a "committed wealth redistributionist" for the apparent benefit of African-Americans.

But this is nothing new. Fox News and its personalities have a long history of aggressive race-baiting and racially charged commentary. Moreover, Fox News' news-aggregation website, Fox Nation, has ahabit of prominently featuring race-baiting headlines and content in an apparent effort to attract and encourage racist commenters. One memorable headline read: "Obama's Hip-Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs."

Aside from sanctioning in-house race-baiting, Fox hasn't shied away from welcoming those who spread the same message. For example, after going on an extended, racially charged tirade about crime and "too many urban thugs, yo" in Atlanta, radio host Neal Boortz found a welcoming home on Fox News to discuss the economy.

During the Hannity segment, Bozell also blasted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as a "little worm" for accurately describing, in a "melodramatic" fashion, Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal to end Medicare. Bozell accused Krugman of "hatemongering" and "fearmongering," then said to guest host Mark Steyn:

BOZELL: You think, Mark, about those endless lectures we've heard from the left over the years about hatemongering and fearmongering and civility, and they're always giving those lessons to Sean Hannity, to Rush Limbaugh, to Mark Levin, to Ann Coulter, but then Paul Krugman says this kind of thing and the silence is deafening. Paul Krugman is just a little worm.

Brent Bozell's real agenda: crippling the Smithsonian

by Todd Gregory

Media Research Center president Brent Bozell took to CNN last night to make the outrageous accusation that the Smithsonian Institution has put on an art exhibit that would be appealing if "you are into religious bigotry." In doing so, Bozell ignored reporting from his own organization and used a series of contentious descriptions of the works in the exhibit to incite anti-gay sentiment.

Bozell also has sent letters to Congress that purport to speak "on behalf" of "the overwhelming majority of Americans who call themselves Christian." In the letters, Bozell demanded "Congressional hearings to investigate the Smithsonian Institution for its attack on Christian values and common decency." The letters repeatedly reference the federal tax dollars that the Smithsonian receives.

This isn't just about Bozell's attempt to control what the public can and cannot see at museums. It's also about attempting to choke off public funding for the arts.

Here's how Bozell began his tirade against the exhibit, called Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, which is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington:

Look, if you like depictions of sadomasochism where you have a mummified human remains, if you have a portrait of a man eating himself, if you like homoerotic art -- calling it art -- all sorts of male genitalia, a portrait of -- called Two Brothers, kissing -- two naked men making out, and they're brothers. If you are into religious bigotry, and you like this kind of things with ants walking all over the Lord Jesus Christ -- and this man to say it's not sacrilegious. Of course it's sacrilegious. If you like that, fine. There's a place in some seedy art something somewhere for you to watch it, that's your business.

It's obvious that this litany of questionably accurate descriptions of the exhibit's artwork was designed to provoke anti-gay sentiment. Just look at the words Bozell uses: "sadomasochism," "homoerotic art," "male genitalia," "two naked men." These are invocations of classic stereotypes used to define gay people, especially gay men, as deviants.

As we've noted, such a description of the exhibit is simply not honest. While it is true that Hide/Seekdeals with themes of sexuality and gender, a description like Bozell's cherry-picks the most provocative elements of an exhibit that includes works by artists like John Singer Sargent, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Andy Warhol. From the National Portrait Gallery's description of the exhibit:

This is the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture. "Hide/Seek" considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art -- especially abstraction -- were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society's evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment.

The exhibition begins with late nineteenth-century works by Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent and charts the twentieth century with major works by such American masters such as Romaine Brooks, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe. The exhibition arcs through the postwar period with major paintings by Agnes Martin, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. It continues through the end of the twentieth century with works by Keith Haring, AA Bronson, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres about life, love and death during the AIDS crisis, and charts the vigorous reassertion of lesbian and gay civil rights in the twenty-first.

(Bozell's effort to prey on anti-gay sentiment in this situation fits in well with the MRC's decades-longlosing battle to ostracize gay people.)

Furthermore, it seems that the only evidence that Bozell and the MRC have provided that the exhibit contains "religious bigotry" is that it included a video work called "A Fire in My Belly," in which ants are shown crawling over a crucifix. I write "included" because the Portrait Gallery removed the video on Tuesday, more than a day before Bozell appeared on CNN to express his outrage.

The article that instigated this ginned-up controversy -- from CNS News, which is a division of Bozell's MRC -- featured a picture of the imagery in question:

There it is. Bozell's evidence that Congress should spend taxpayers' money to investigate a display of "anti-Christian bigotry" at the Smithsonian.

On an individual level, Bozell's sputtering declaration that this is most certainly "sacrilegious" is questionable -- Fox News' Juan Williams said on Hannity last night that "as a Christian," it doesn't "blow [him] out." But the CNS article itself provided a very specific explanation of why it is not sacrilegious [emphasis added]:

Through the NPG's external affairs office, [David C. Ward, a National Portrait Gallery historian who is also co-curator of the exhibit] and co-curator Jonathan D. Katz issued a statement to CNSNews.com about the video "A Fire in My Belly." It reads as follows:

"David Wojnarowicz went to Mexico and in Mexican life he found colorful metaphors for AIDS in America. Seeking to convey his anger at the American government for its inattention to AIDS he took images of suffering, marginality and extremity in an attempt to create and art that would awaken a sleeping populous.

"Katz feels that there is no more potent image of AIDS in America than the image of the construction workers [in the video] standing on the concrete that they are trying to remove from the wire suspended in the air.

"The crucifix, covered with ants, represents the lack of attention to Christian teachings in that Christian morality has been cast to the ground and the teachings of Jesus abrogated by speaking in his name. In the film this represents that the most vulnerable and the most in need are the most aggressively attacked."

And this is the main point about Bozell's objections to the contents of the exhibit. Bozell is a conservative activist who purports to detect "liberal bias" in the media.

He's entitled to his opinion, but his is not the final word on art.

During the CNN segment with Bozell, Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik repeatedly questioned Bozell's standing to made unilateral judgments about art. Gopnik said, "The question is, do we want to have museums that show the best art they can have?" As he turned to Bozell, he then asked the most important question: "Do we want to have art museums at all? No one objects to the National Gallery, that's full of pictures that everyone agrees are fantastic, wonderful works of world art. The question is, with contemporary art, who's going to decide that?"

When Bozell returned to calling works in the exhibit "offensive," Gopnik interjected, "That you find offensive -- let's make it very clear -- that you find offensive. And lots of people don't. I don't."

Later, Gopnik explained further: "It seems to me that we just have a very different notion about what art should do, maybe. I think that it's good that art is getting you angry. I think it's good that this stuff is provoking you. That's why some of this art was done. The brothers kissing is meant to be provocative. It's meant to make you wonder and think about these issues."

Again, all this comes back to a very specific political agenda. Bozell wants a congressional investigation. "Americans will not rest until we receive answers to why this exhibit was approved, how the Smithsonian justifies using tax-payer dollars for such a display of anti-Christian bigotry, and what corrective actions will be taken," he wrote in the letters to Congress.

It's wrong for Bozell to appoint himself the sole arbiter of what's acceptable art and what's not. Media outlets should keep that in mind when they're reporting on his campaign to attack the Smithsonian through congressional investigations.