Washington Post
By Robert Costa
May 15, 2014
Although
many Republicans are optimistic about their chances in this year’s
elections, some of Washington’s leading conservatives gathered Thursday
to privately vent frustrations
about what kind of party they will be left with after November.
The
group, alarmed by a resurgence of the GOP establishment in recent
primaries and what activists view as a softened message, drafted demands
to be shared with senior
lawmakers calling on the party to “recommit” to bedrock principles.
Some
of those principles laid out in the new document — strict opposition to
illegal immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion — represent the
hot-button positions that
many Republican congressional candidates are trying to avoid as the
party attempts to broaden its appeal.
Several
attendees said they fear that elected Republicans, even if they succeed
in retaining control of the House and winning the Senate majority,
would cast aside the
core conservative base.
“Conservatives
ought not to delude themselves that if Republicans win the Senate
majority, it will somehow be a conservative majority,” said L. Brent
Bozell III, president
of the Media Research Center, which monitors perceived media bias. “We
should have no expectation whatsoever that they will listen. That’s why
we’re fighting.”
Others
worry that a toned-down campaign message by the party would dim GOP
turnout and undercut Republicans in competitive races.
“I’m
terrified that Republicans will blow this election if they are not
going to stand for something,” said Michael A. Needham, the chief
executive of Heritage Action,
a conservative group.
Thursday’s
gathering at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Va., was coordinated by
Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese III and former congressman
David McIntosh (Ind.)
as part of an initiative called the Conservative Action Project.
It
included dozens of leaders from across the conservative movement,
including tea party organizer Jenny Beth Martin and interest group
executives such as Grover Norquist
of Americans for Tax Reform and Tony Perkins of the Family Research
Council. The meeting, which featured speeches from Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.)
and Mike Lee (Utah), marked the first time this year that prominent
national conservatives have come together to candidly
assess the GOP and their strategy for shaping it.
The
day-long session underscored how simmering tensions between rival
factions in the Republican Party appear to be growing, even as polls
point to the potential for a
major GOP victory in midterm elections in the fall.
Congressional
Republicans have been grappling over whether to compromise on
immigration, some Republicans are calling for a smaller military, and
same-sex marriage is
fading as a top issue in this year’s campaigns.
Meanwhile,
mainstream GOP business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
have lifted establishment candidates to victory in a Senate primary in
North Carolina and
a special House election in Florida. Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (Ky.) is expected to easily defeat a tea party challenger in
his primary Tuesday.
Many
GOP strategists and party leaders think that tea party activists’
successes in recent years nominating ideological purists resulted in
weak candidates and crippling
general-election losses. They worry that efforts to revive the base
could threaten Republican hopes again.
“What’s
clear is that we ought to be focusing on economic security for the
future, not divisive social issues. That’s how we lost several key
Senate races last cycle and
plays into the Democrats’ hand,” said GOP consultant Brian Walsh, a
former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial
Committee.
As
conservative leaders mingled Thursday over coffee and deli sandwiches,
they sounded exasperated about the way the party appears to be siding
more with its cautious
leadership, rather than making an aggressive conservative pitch.
In
the 10-page pamphlet finalized Thursday, they called on party leaders
to champion lower taxes, a well-funded military, and the idea that
“married moms and dads are
best at raising kids.” The document warns Republicans against signing
on to an immigration overhaul unless the U.S. border is “fully secure,”
and it argues that support for school prayer, a balanced-budget
amendment and antiabortion legislation should remain
priorities.
But
even in the tightknit room, there was not universal agreement.
Norquist, for example, supports legalization for many illegal immigrants
and has pushed for more scrutiny
of the defense budget. In an interview, he said he attended Thursday’s
meeting to back the broad efforts on the right to unite, rather than
endorse the document line by line.
Most activists expressed dismay that they seemed to have a diminished voice in the party.
“What
we’re doing and saying is not resonating, so we are trying to come to
grips with that,” said Grace-Marie Turner, the president of the Galen
Institute, a conservative
research group. “We have to learn to relate our solutions to people’s
struggles.”
Some
said conservatives had not made their case effectively, and different
leaders offered their own visions for the right approach.
Wesley
Denton, a senior adviser to Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint,
led a panel called “Breaking Through With a Conservative Message,” and
Citizens United President
David Bossie spoke about the power of expressing conservatism through
films, of which he has produced several.
Perkins
led a panel on restoring the “traditional family” as a priority for the
party. Thomas J. Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which has
obtained documents related
to the 2012 attack on an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi,
Libya, talked up his group’s ability to pressure the White House through
Freedom of Information Act requests.
Alfred
S. Regnery, a conservative lawyer and former publisher, said the group
convened “to provide the substance to Republicans and guide them. That’s
the way this is
supposed to work — they should be listening to us.”
Cruz,
who has clashed with top Senate Republicans over budget issues and is
considering a presidential bid in 2016, told the crowd members that they
are still the party’s
most influential bloc.
"Some say, 'Yay, our team is winning,' " he said, referring to Republicans’ confidence about possibly taking
control of the Senate. “But we win when we stand for principle and we
lose when we give in to Washington’s status quo.”
Many
there likened the session to one that took place in 1960, when the late
National Review editor William F. Buckley Jr., Bozell’s uncle, met with
allies to craft a
statement of principles for a young conservative movement.
Bozell,
Meese and many of the same people at the Ritz-Carlton on Thursday had
held a similar session in 2010, ahead of the tea-party-led GOP sweep
that year.
To
guide them on Thursday, the 2010 principles, called the Mount Vernon
statement because it had been signed on the Alexandria estate once owned
by George Washington,
was displayed throughout the day next to the ballroom podium.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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