Conservatives target their own fringe
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
<http://www.politico.com/reporters/KennethPVogel.html> |
2/27/10
[Tom Tancredo and a tea party activists are shown in this composite.]
The conservative establishment is looking to
eliminate the appearance of extremism within
the GOP. Photo: AP photo composite by POLITICO
After months of struggling to harness the energy of newly engaged
tea party activists
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27077.html> , the
conservative establishment - with critical midterm congressional
elections on the horizon - is taking aim for the first time at the
movement's extremist elements.
The move has been cast by some conservatives as a modern version of the
marginalization of the far-right anti-communist John Birch Society
<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/goldwater%E2%80%94the\
-john-birch-society%E2%80%94and-me-11248> during the reorganization of
the conservative movement spearheaded in the 1960s and 1970s by William
F. Buckley Jr
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0208/William_F_Buckely_Jun\
ior_has_died.html> .
"A similar effort will be required today of conservative political
and intellectual leaders," former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson
wrote in his column in the Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR20100\
21803414.html> . "It will not be easy. Sometimes it takes courage
to stand before a large crowd and proclaim that two plus two equals
four."
But for Gerson and other conservatives, this is not just an intellectual
exercise. They have a very specific political goal to deprive
Democrats and their allies a potentially potent weapon to use against
the GOP in November.
"I don't believe we should be giving (extremists) a platform or
empowering them to do anything based off their conspiracy theories,"
said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, "because they give
the left ammunition to try to define the tea party movement as crazy and
fringy."
The attempt "to clean up our own house," as Erick Erickson,
founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is
necessary " because traditional press outlets have decided to
spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and
focus on them as if they're a large part of this tea party movement.
And I don't think they are."
Until recently, organizers and activists mostly seemed content to
ignore, or in some cases tolerate, extremists in their ranks, confident
they'd be drowned out by the hundreds of thousands of activists who
took to congressional town halls
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25646.html> and marches
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27058.html> around the
country to protest big-spending initiatives pushed by President Barack
Obama and the Democratic Congress.
But inflammatory rhetoric such as former congressman Tom Tancredo's
racially tinged speech at this month's tea party convention, reports
of the involvement of right wing militia groups, and the continued
propagation of conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama have
sometimes cast the movement in an unfavorable light.
Erickson has advised new tea party organizers on how to avoid
affiliations with extremists, and this month banned birthers
conservatives who believe that Obama was not born in the United States
and is, therefore, ineligible to be President from his blog (he
has long blacklisted truthers, those who believe that the U.S.
government was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks a
conspiracy theory with devotees
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0909/Jones_apologizes_for_statem\
ents_denies_911_doubts.html> across the political spectrum).
"At some point, you have to use the word `crazy,'" said
Erickson.
Ryun's American Majority
<http://americanmajority.org/feature-content/birfers-truthers/> , a
group that trains tea party activists and others around the country, has
done much the same thing. Its website has moved to close its sessions to
activists who identify themselves with the birther, truther or militia
movements, or the John Birch Society.
Ryun conceded that extremists are involved in the tea party movement,
but he said "it's just such a small percentage and it should not
be portrayed as representative of the broader movement ."
The fringe-fighters' methods range from censuring signs at rallies
or banishing unruly participants completely to challenging the
media's focus on the fringe and highlighting the movement's
diversity and tolerance.
They have gone out of their way, for example, to promote activists
<http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/02/httppaja\
masmediacominstapundit71600.html> and movement-backed candidates of
color, including tea party stars Marco Rubio and Allen West, running for
U.S. Senate and House, respectively, in Florida, and Texas Senate
candidate Michael Williams all Republicans.
Ryan has another strategy. He has commissioned a poll that he thinks
will show that tea partiers share a commitment to reducing taxation and
government spending with independent voters and prove that the tea party
movement is " very much mainstream."
But the tea party movement's decentralized structure, vaguely
defined goals and anti-establishment tone makes it an attractive place
to channel angry feelings. Mainstream media organizations such as the
New York Times, which recently ran a 4.500 word story
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html>
focusing on the infiltration of the movement by a militia-linked group
called Oath Keepers, have recently focused on that aspect of the
movement.
And, as tea party supporters such as Schultz have expected, liberals
have been acutely attuned to any evidence of extremism.
Independent of their actual numbers, it's in both political
parties' interests to inflate the influence of the other side's
fringe, said Tom De Luca, a Fordham University political science
professor who studies political movements and wrote the 2005 book
"Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil
Debate in American Politics."
"That creates this dynamic that seems to exaggerate the influence of
the extremes," DeLuca said.
Much as conservatives have sought to link Democrats to environmental
extremism or socialism, he said, it's an obvious countermove for the
left to try to link Republicans with the more extreme elements that have
gained traction around and sometimes within the tea parties.
So it was that liberals have demanded to know where Republicans stood on
Obama's citizenship, or that last week found left and right debating
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0210/Brown_muses_on_frustration_\
in_Austin_crash.html> which side had more in common with Andrew Joseph
Stack III, the software developer who crashed his plane into the Austin,
Tex., IRS offices.
The left seized on a comment
<http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/steve-king-to-conserva\
tives-implode-irs-offices.php> by hard-line-conservative Rep. Steve
King (R-Iowa) reportedly expressing empathy for the pilot's anti-tax
views. Rush Limbaugh retorted that Stack "sounds like he's blaming
Bush and Reagan, asserting that he sounded "almost word-for-word for
Nancy Pelosi. Almost word-for-word for Rahm Emanuel and Barack
Obama."
DeLuca predicted that another "Bill Buckley moment" will only
occur when the political damage done by extremists outweighs the boost
the tea party movement has provided to conservatives generally and the
Republican Party specifically.
"My guess is their basic stance will be to try to juggle as long as
they can," he said.
That approach and its drawbacks was on display at last
week's Conservative Political Action Conference
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33105.html> , the annual
gathering of Washington's conservative establishment. It featured
the John Birch Society as a co-sponsor. And, while conference organizers
nixed a panel on Obama's citizenship, a birther contingent still
made its presence felt
<http://washingtonindependent.com/77156/the-original-birther-makes-the-r\
ounds-at-cpac> , as did the Oath Keepers, who co-sponsored the
conference.
After filming a brief segment
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0210/Maddow_stops_by_CPA\
C.html> at the conference, liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, a leading
tea party antagonist, concluded on her show
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35479436> that "the conservative
movement right now is really not afraid to let its freak flag fly
They`re happy to show off the `we want another revolutionary
war,' `we think the black president is arrogant,' `we
think the apocalypse is nice' side of themselves."
Liberal commentators similarly highlighted the extremism on display at
this month's National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, which
included a speech by WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah questioning
Obama's citizenship and one by Tancredo asserting Obama was elected
because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote
in this country."
A blogger on the liberal site Daily Kos
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/5/834119/-Tom-Tea-Party-Tancredo:-\
Bring-Back-Literacy-Tests-for-Voting> asserted Tancredo's speech
revealed the "REAL reason" tea partiers are upset: "A black
man is President and their White Privelege (sic) is fading."
Tancredo's speech was not widely condemned by conservative
intellectuals or media, but immediately after Farah delivered his, he
was confronted in a hallway outside the convention hall by conservative
media entrepreneur and fellow convention speaker Andrew Breitbart
<http://washingtonindependent.com/75949/birther-speaker-takes-heat-at-te\
a-party-convention> , who said it was disservice to the tea party
movement to infer its activists are "all obsessed with the birth
certificate, when it's not a winning issue."
Others cited the jeering of an anti-gay activist at CPAC who condemned
organizers for inviting gay Republican group GOProud to participate.
Conservative author and TownHall columnist Ashley Herzog said it
<http://townhall.com/columnists/AshleyHerzog/2010/02/22/cpac_is_for_love\
rs?page=full&comments=true> was proof that "CPAC, and the
conservative movement in general, isn't a haven for haters after
all," and urged the left to view a video of the incident, which she
said evidences "a lack of bigotry (that) must be painfully puzzling
to liberals."
Conservatives similarly pushed back
<http://bigjournalism.com/gbenson/2010/02/19/the-new-york-times-owes-jas\
on-mattera-an-apology/> against a New York Times blog post
<http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/cpac-speaker-bashes-obama\
-in-racial-tones/> that accused a CPAC speaker of ripping Obama "in
racial tones," partly by affecting a "Chris Rock voice" to mock the
president.
They noted that the speaker like the comedian Rock is from
Brooklyn and speaks with a regional accent, demanding an apology
<http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/18/cpac-interview-jason-mattera-resp\
onds-to-nyt-accusation-of-racism/> .
And in a clever web video that went viral
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33305.html> this week, the
Dallas Tea Party called out MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who had mocked
the mostly white make-up of the Nashville convention of what he called
the "Tea Klux Klan, comparing its racially diverse leadership to
MSNBC's mostly white host lineup.
Judson Phillips, the Nashville tea party activist who organized this
month's convention
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31816.html> , said it's
incumbent on local tea party leaders across the country "to control
the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being
hijacked."
In the run-up to a July tea party convention he's planning in Las
Vegas, Phillips said, he's planning on asking speakers "to stick
to our message, which is unity headed into the fall."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33621.html
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33621.html#ixzz0gksYyyUe>
