Marco Rubio To Give Keynote Speech For Koch Brothers' New John Birch Society

The Koch family spent a lot of money getting Marco Rubio into office and they're not about to throw it all away just because the teabaggers and Know Nothings they cultivate as their shock troops are upset over some issue-- immigration reform-- the Koch don't even care about. Papa Fred-- a gussied up, old line KKK redneck who struck it rich-- would have cared, but Charles and David only care about money. The Kochs are standing behind Rubio-- with a wall of cash funneled through all their high-flyin' front groups.

Fox News viewers in Florida will see a new commercial in the coming weeks urging them to call Senator Marco Rubio. “Thank him for keeping his promise, and fighting to secure the border,” a narrator says in the ad, which is paid for by the conservative American Action Network.

Another group, Americans for a Conservative Direction, led by former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and other top Republicans, has been running ads in Iowa lately that implore those watching to “stand with Marco Rubio to end de facto amnesty.”

And when the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Koch brothers’ political advocacy group, decided to move its signature annual conference outside Washington for the first time, it picked a spot right in Mr. Rubio’s political backyard: Orlando. The keynote speaker? Mr. Rubio. ... Rubio has been attacked at Tea Party rallies (his name elicits boos), on conservative radio (“a piece of garbage,” Glenn Beck called him) and in National Review (“Rubio’s Folly,” declared a recent cover).

Still, running interference on Mr. Rubio’s behalf is fraught with risk for conservative groups, who are going against many in their own base.

“We know that there’s a lot of folks on both sides,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. “But I think the vast majority of people appreciate the fact that Senator Rubio is doing what he thinks is best for the country. And that he’s doing it in an open and honest way.”

Mr. Phillips declined to discuss any implications for Mr. Rubio and 2016, but said, “We think that he’s got a bright future within the movement, and in whatever he chooses to do down the road.”

And, the Koch family's obsession with transforming America into a John Bircher hellhole is intergeneration and will never end. Investigative journalist Lee Fang has written extensively about the Kochs and their insidious right-wing operations in his new book, The Machine: A field Guide To The Resurgent Right. This is just a tiny portion of a treasure trove of information about one vile plutocratic family working effectively to overthrown democracy in America.

Obama, unlike Roosevelt with Du Pont, waited years before confronting the Koch brothers in the public arena. Rather than taking them on directly, Obama, for a short period during the midterm elections, mocked the Koch-financed group called Americans for Prosperity, saying the name was misleading. The Koch brothers were accused of rampant oil speculation, driving the price of gasoline up for consumers, and their allies in the banking sector of crashing the economy. However, Obama and the Democrats were slow to recognize the political threat, and for some reason, were too timid to explicitly denounce the Koch brothers. The circumstances, of course, were also different. America suffered through a housing market collapse, a financial crisis, and perpetual unemployment as Obama took office, but not an earth-shattering event like the Great Depression. Backlash against the rich never materialized in the same way as it had under Roosevelt, and Obama suffered from the right-wing charge, amplified on Fox News and talk radio, that he was a “socialist.” Maybe Obama thought a confrontation with the Koch brothers would only lend credibility to the belief that he practiced left-wing “class warfare.” In any event, the calculation to largely ignore the Koch brothers only helped them lurk in the shadows, exercising even greater influence.

And the Koch brothers were prepared for battle with Obama unlike any plutocrats of the past. The Du Ponts stumbled awkwardly into forays with Roosevelt and never learned to avoid the press and public scrutiny into their lobbying. More profoundly, the Koch brothers had developed a political strategy perfected by generations of right-wing tycoons-- including their father, the founder of the Koch family conglomerate, Koch Industries. For fifty years, the Koch family plotted, experimented, and financed groups to advance a very right-wing form of conservatism. The tactics employed against Obama had been concocted for many years prior.

The Koch brothers surpassed the influence of any other single wealthy individual or business group because of their holistic approach to, as Charles would say, “advancing liberty.” Organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would fund advertisements and pay insider lobbyists. The Coors family funded conservative think tanks and cultural institutions. John Allison, former CEO of BB&T bank, single-handedly financed an array of professors dedicated to the beliefs of Ayn Rand at major universities. Conservative activists like Grover Norquist convened regular meetings for ideological peers to collaborate. The Koch brothers incorporated all of these tactics, and more. They funded talent to come up with even better strategies and offered to lend money to anything-- movies, internships, ad campaigns, books, social networking websites-- that would “create value” to further the cause.

...As Obama prepared for his inauguration, the Koch family declared political war. In January after the presidential election, Charles proclaimed in a newsletter to his fifty thousand employees that America was quickly arriving at the “greatest loss of liberty and prosperity since the 1930s.” The somber warning noted what he saw as the parallels between Roosevelt’s Keynesian response to the Great Depression and Obama’s calls for fiscal stimulus in light of the financial crisis. He warned against “piling on even more regulations” and new “make-work” government programs modeled after the Roosevelt administration. Charles lectured, “it is markets, not government that can provide the strongest engine for growth, lifting us out of these troubling times.” Many of the programs Roosevelt had started in reaction to the Great Depression persisted for generations, Charles warned. In challenging the new president, Charles appeared to be anointing himself the heir to Irénée Du Pont’s crusade against Franklin Roosevelt, or his own father’s fight against John Kennedy and moderate Republicans. Only this time, Charles hoped to succeed.



And inflaming Charles’s worst fears, Obama gave a bold, progressive speech at his inauguration, making clear his intention to transition to a clean energy economy, to reform the nation’s health care system, and to remake the country’s sagging infrastructure. The financial crisis, Obama said, “reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control.” “The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” he added. Billionaires like the Koch brothers took note.

As Obama announced his promise to change America, it seems doubtful that he could have known that among the many entrenched business interests gearing up to lobby against reform, a single ultra-rich family was preparing to fight him across the board. He didn’t even have to look far from where he stood to see their reach. Ironically, INVISTA, a Koch Industries subsidiary, had won the government contract to provide the imperial blue and red carpeting for the inauguration ceremony. The second Obama became president, he was standing atop a Koch product.

Within two days of Obama’s swearing his oath of office, the Koch network sprung into action. A website called NoStimulus.com launched, along with a television advertising campaign, a petition, and a series of media events designed to defeat Obama’s first signature accomplishment, the $800 billion Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as simply the stimulus. In what later blossomed into the Tea Party movement, Koch-funded organizers fanned across the country organizing “Porkulus” rallies decrying government spending and regulations. Koch-supported groups, for instance the Competitive Enterprise Institute and state-based think tanks like the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy, fired off a volley of anti-stimulus press releases, op-eds, and joint events with Republican lawmakers. Koch operatives staged media events with the most vitriolic opponents of the stimulus, like Governor Mark Sanford and Senator Jim DeMint, both from South Carolina.

By early February, as the vote neared, Americans for Prosperity, one of the main Koch-financed front groups, sent a letter to congressional Republicans instructing them to oppose the stimulus, regardless of any amendments or adjustments made to the bill. Indeed, in a bid for bipartisanship, Democrats offered a slimmed-down version of Obama’s proposed stimulus. In order to gain the vote of three Senate Republicans, tax cuts comprised a third of the stimulus.

While the stimulus ultimately passed, the anti-stimulus hysteria helped conservatives shift the national debate from the causes of the financial crisis to issues like the national debt and government waste. More importantly, the right-wing echo chamber, comprised in no small part of dozens of Koch-funded nonprofits, provided cover for every Republican in the House and nearly every Republican in the Senate to vote against the bill.

Sporadic advertising from Koch groups attempted to spark populist outrage. One television spot, which began soon after Obama took office, featured a middle-aged man exclaiming loudly: “Congress should stop wasting our money and start focusing on real problems!” As the disheveled-looking man yelled about the government, text decrying global warming as a “hoax” flashed across the bottom of the screen. The ad didn’t propose an alternative or any solution for that matter; rather it seemed to be crafted simply to stir general outrage. Another Koch ad, which began airing around the same time, showed an actor who said his name was “Carlton, the wealthy eco-hypocrite.” The ad was not a large buy, but the script was a perfect specimen of Koch-funded fake populist outrage:

Hey there, I’m Carlton, the wealthy eco-hypocrite. I inherited my money and attended fancy schools. I own three homes and five cars, but always talk with my rich friends about saving the planet. And I want Congress to spend billions on programs in the name of global warming and green energy. Even if it causes massive unemployment, higher energy bills, and digs people like you even deeper into the recession. Who knows, maybe I’ll even make money off of it!

Of course, the Koch brothers inherited their money, attended elite private schools, and own an array of private jets and vacation homes. Their opposition to addressing global warming had nothing to do with energy prices. In fact, many of the serious plans from Democrats to tackle global warming would have lowered energy prices for the vast majority of Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Denying the threat of global warming only permits the Koch brothers to make vast amounts of money from their pollution-based empire. But the Koch brothers weren’t interested in an honest debate. They wanted to kill attempts to regulate their pollution, and were willing to say or do anything to provoke middle- and lower-income voters to turn against Obama.

Still... Rubio wanted to burnish his credentials with the far, far right before the Koch confab. So he announced this morning that he'd offer the same anti-Choice legislation nationally-- knowing full well it would never get out of committee-- that is tearing Texas, North Carolina and Ohio apart this week. Divisiveness is a win-win for the far right, since those people don't want anything to ever work anyway. Their strategy on the bill-- despite polls showing how unpopular it is-- is that it "might strengthen GOP candidates in the 2014 midterm election."

Rubio’s decision to play a major role in the abortion debate is bound to stir political speculation. He is viewed as a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

But he’s recently prompted serious criticism by Republicans over his support for the immigration reform bill that passed the Senate last week. His front-and-center role on a key anti-abortion measure is likely to ease concerns about him among GOP voters.

Here are part 2 and 3 of that BBC look at the Wall Plot fascist plot to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt that people fear Koch is emulating:

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Court And Spark

When I was 16 I hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Los Angeles so I could stow away on a ship to Tonga. In Brooklyn there had never been anything like the billboard campaigns along Route 66 in state after state in the middle of the country to impeach Earl Warren. Warren was a moderate Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, appointed by President Eisenhower, and Fred Koch, the money behind the virulently anti-American John Birch Society and the father of today's vile Koch brothers, made it his life's work to impeach Earl Warren (as well as Eisenhower and Kennedy). Fred Koch is the evidence that society should confiscate all the wealth of sociopathic individuals who use that wealth to undermine society itself. Lee Fang devotes a whole chapter of his new book, The Machine, to the evil Koch family.

The true story of the Koch family’s dedication to rightwing politics begins back one generation with the father. Fred C. Koch, a hardscrabble Texan of Dutch ancestry, founded the Koch Industries empire and pioneered a strategy for advancing conservatism that was pivotal in shaping the modern American right. He unapologetically attacked his enemies, branding them communists, or worse. He paid for groups to help whip up a grassroots army filled with populist rage against the united Nations, Justice Earl Warren, and President Kennedy. He helped begin the process of evicting moderates from the Republican Party. And he instilled in his sons a philosophy that a proper “American businessman” should “fight like a tiger” when someone tries to “take a few thousand dollars away from him.”

Fred, a racist who detested the civil rights movement, probably could have never imagined a black president of the United States. But Fred laid the groundwork for his sons to try to tear the first one down.

...Because Eisenhower allowed the Panamanian flag to fly over the Panama Canal, Fred surmised that the president was “beginning to surrender” to the “Communist conspiracy.” Fred wrote that “a former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs told me that certain members of the State Department helped put Castro in power and guide his every move.” Fred believed Democrats, as well as moderate Republicans, were actively enabling Castro, who he called the “Mao Tze-tung of the Western Hemisphere.”

In December of 1958, in the living room of a brick Tudor house in a quiet Indianapolis neighborhood, Fred was summoned for a meeting with eleven other staunch anticommunists who shared his fervent belief that Christian society and free markets were at grave risk of slipping away. Robert Welch, a candy manufacturer who had been financing and authoring a series of pamphlets articulating his anticommunist ideas for half a decade, presided over the special gathering. Welch bellowed that there had been an “800% expansion of Communist membership in [the] last 20 years” and that the recent surge in inflation and “collectivism” was part of a red plot to destroy American civilization. After two full days of nearly uninterrupted lecture, Welch presented his solution: a new organization to fight the left in every corner of America. Named after a Baptist missionary serving as an American soldier, who was reportedly killed by the Chinese in 1946, the John Birch Society was born. Welch wanted to make Birch a martyr and proclaimed him the first American death in the war against communism. The men at the meeting, many of them leaders of the powerful National Association of Manufacturers, agreed they would level the playing field with the communists and commit to “fight dirty.”

Welch parlayed his expertise in marketing candy into a multifaceted strategy for advancing his paranoid anticommunist beliefs. He recorded simple how-to videos, developed a door-to-door strategy for his organizers, and stressed the importance of advertising to his allies. Fred’s wife Mary later remarked that she had always been impressed with Welch and his approach to politics. Welch was a “very intelligent, sharp man, quite an intellectual,” she told the Wichita Eagle.

The Birchers, with plenty of seed money from Fred and his cohorts, spread quickly throughout the nation, hiring field operatives, hosting training sessions, and publishing hundreds of thousands of Welch’s Blue Book of anticommunist theory and monthly newsletters proclaiming new examples of communist infiltration. The Belmont, Massachusetts, headquarters of the Birchers initially hired twenty-eight employees, in addition to many volunteers who labored to fire off $4,000 worth of mail every week. As a founding member of the national John Birch Society Council, Fred served as a liaison to paid coordinators, who in turn worked with volunteer chapter leaders and ordinary members. Under the seemingly benign motto of “Less government, more responsibility,” the Birchers recruited upward of 50,000 people in a massive rollout campaign during the spring of 1961. In the wake of the Kennedy victory and a relatively liberal Republican Party, the Birchers filled a vacuum of conservative leadership.

Through monthly bulletins and taped lectures from Welch, individual members were asked to advance the cause in their local communities. Goals would include tasks such as attending meetings of “Communist fronts” like the ACLU to shout down “disloyal” speakers or to organize “spontaneous” petition gatherings to impeach Earl Warren. Despite their belief that every liberal group in America was truly a front group for communists, the Birchers themselves were obsessed with using dummy organizations to better achieve their agenda. Welch recommended that members assemble various fronts like: TACT (Truth About Civil Turmoil), which connected civil rights groups and African American organizations with communists; TRAIN (To Restore American Independence), a group to mock the united Nations and pacifists; SYLP (Support Your Local Police), a particularly effective recruiting tool after the Watts riots; and MOTOREDE (The Movement to Restore Decency), which lobbied against sex education, birth control, and abortion.

A Bircher-led red scare rekindled McCarthyism in towns across the country. In Amarillo, Texas, the local Bircher leaders, including the mayor and a retired brigadier general, led a campaign to purge a clergyman accused of being a communist sympathizer. They also rid the libraries of “communist” books, which included Pulitzer Prize–winning literature, and punished teachers who had been accused of disloyalty. According to historian Rick Perlstein, Centralia, Missouri, became a “virtual Birch fiefdom; the owner of the factory that employed half the town’s workforce made membership practically a condition for advancement.” In Fred’s hometown Wichita chapter, which included its own paid Birch Society organizer, Time observed that “student members of the society are trained to tell their cell leader of any ‘Communist’ influence noted in classroom lectures; by phone, parents belabor the offending teacher and his principal for apologies and admissions of guilt.”

The rapid rise of the Bircher movement sharply divided the GOP. In early 1961, the national press reported on Welch’s view that Dwight Eisenhower was guilty of “treason,” and that his brother Milton Eisenhower was probably his “boss within the Communist party.” This prompted a harsh rebuke from a group of Republican elders. “It is unbelievable that any sane person would make such accusations,” said North Dakota Republican Milton Young during a speech on the Senate floor. Liberal Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel complained he was being targeted by Birchers in his reelection bid.

However, a faction of Southern lawmakers and Republican politicians found strength in the Bircher brand of conservative populism. Dixiecrat Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina extolled the Birchers as a “nation-wide organization of patriotic Americans.” Congressmen John Rousselot and Edgar Hiestand, both California Republicans, were card-carrying Birch Society members. Life reported that Republican defenders of the group believed that the Birchers would serve as a vanguard for the “conservative renaissance in America whose main respectable apostle is Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.”

When I was a schoolboy, the giants on the Supreme Court appointed by FDR were beginning to retire-- Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas. Truman's, Eisenhower's and Kennedy's appointments weren't as profound, just kind of mainstream. LBJ's last appointment was Thurgood Marshall, a brilliant jurist who was also the first African-American to serve on the Court. Even 75% of Nixon's dreadful conservative appointments were kind of mainstream-- Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell-- and it wasn't until his final appointment, the hideous William Rehnquist, that the GOP decided to turn the Supreme Court into an ideological and highly partisan arm of the Republican Party. Rehnquist came to prominence as an Arizona attorney who would work on Election Day trying to prevent Blacks and Hispanics from voting. Reagan made him Chief Justice when Burger retired. The Court started transitioning from a conservative bastion to a reactionary one. Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito are dangerous far right ideologues and corporate whores who work every day of their lives against the interests of ordinary American families. Hopefully when Scalia and Kennedy, each 77 years old and fighting off senility, retire President Hillary Clinton will replace them with more mainstream justices. But, for now, the GOP and corporate America control the Supreme Court, just the way Fred Koch had planned long ago. E.J. Dionne:

We prefer to think of the Supreme Court as an institution apart from politics and above its struggles. In the wake of this week’s decision gutting the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, its actions must now be viewed through the prism of the conservative movement’s five-decade-long quest for power.

Liberals will still win occasional and sometimes partial victories, as they did Wednesday on same-sex marriage. But on issues directly related to political and economic influence, the court’s conservative majority is operating as a political faction, determined to shape a future in which progressives will find themselves at a disadvantage.

...The marriage rulings, however, should not distract from the arrogance of power displayed in the voting rights decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts. His opinion involved little Constitutional analysis. He simply substituted the court’s judgment for Congress’ in deciding which states should be covered under the Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required voting rules in states with a history of discrimination to be pre-cleared by the Justice Department.

The court instructed Congress to rewrite the law, even though these sophisticated conservatives certainly know how difficult this will be in the current political climate.

Whenever conservatives on the court have had the opportunity to tilt the playing field toward their own side, they have done so. And in other recent cases, the court has weakened the capacity of Americans to take on corporate power. The conservative majority seems determined to bring us back to the Gilded Age of the 1890s.

The voting rights decision should be seen as following a pattern set by the rulings in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Citizens United in 2010.

Bush v. Gore had the effect of installing the conservatives’ choice in the White House and allowed him to influence the court’s subsequent direction with his appointments of Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

Citizens United swept aside a tradition going back to the Progressive Era-- and to the Founders’ deep concern over political corruption-- by vastly increasing the power of corporate and monied interests in the electoral sphere.

Tuesday’s Shelby County v. Holder ruling will make it far more difficult for African-Americans to challenge unfair electoral and districting practices. For many states, it will be a Magna Carta to make voting more difficult if they wish to.

The Constitution, through the 14th and 15th Amendments, gives Congress a strong mandate to offer federal redress against discriminatory and regressive actions by state and local governments. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her scalding but very precise dissent, “a governing political coalition has an incentive to prevent changes in the existing balance of voting power.”

In less diplomatic language, existing majorities may try to fix election laws to make it far more difficult for their opponents to toss them from power in later elections. Republican legislatures around the country passed a spate of voter suppression laws disguised as efforts to guarantee electoral “integrity” for just this purpose.

Recall that when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they railed against “judicial activism.” Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the true meaning of the Constitution.

It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. This is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power. And, despite scattered liberal triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning.

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Threats Of Primaries By GOP Racists Make It Harder For Non-Southerners To Back Popular Mainstream Positions

As soon as Jim DeMint took over the already right-wing Heritage Foundation, he made sure it would be even more extreme and, especially, more racist. Their first big effort under his regime was to put out a phony "study" claiming immigration would cost American taxpayers gazillions of dollars-- or, to be more "exact," 6 trillion dollars. No doubt, South Carolina's former KKK senator brought the figure with him and asked the propagandists at Heritage to write a justification of it. The KKK senator from Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was so sold on the Heritage nonsense, he demanded the professional and nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirm it. The report, as we mentioned yesterday, didn't go the way Beauregard expected. Instead of DeMint's $6 trillion deficit, it "estimates that in the first decade after the immigration bill is carried out, the net effect of adding millions of additional taxpayers would decrease the federal budget deficit by $197 billion. Over the next decade, the report found, the deficit reduction would be even greater-- an estimated $700 billion, from 2024 to 2033."

This is bad news for Republicans who prefer to keep their racism and bigotry under cover. It's not going to matter for the real crazies-- mostly in the South-- whose overt appeal is racism anyway, your Steve Southerlands (R-FL), Patrick McHenrys (R-NC), Louie Gohmerts (R-TX), Tom Prices (R-GA), Alan Nunnelees (R-MS), Steve Stockmen (R-TX), Virginia Foxxes (R-NC), Rob Pittengers (R-NC), Steve Scalises (R-LA), Tom Rices (R-SC), Trey Gowdys (R-SC), John Micas (R-FL), or Bob Goodlattes (R-VA). But what happens to the Republicans who were looking for a legitimate fiscal excuse to vote against comprehensive immigration reform-- the ones who want to maintain a veneer of not being pawns to the racist yahoos who run their party?

It puts "mainstream" Republicans like Chris Gibson (R-NY), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Pat Meehan (R-PA), Tom Petri (R-WI), Jon Runyan (R-NJ), Mike Turner (R-OH), Tom Reed (R-NY), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Richard Hanna (R-NY), David Joyce (R-OH), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Dan Benichek (R-MI), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Jim Gerlach (R-PA)... in a bind. The immigration bill turns out to be a gigantic deficit-reduction plan-- both in the short term and in the long term! Their constituents are different from the die-hard racists in the backward parts of Texas, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The voters in these districts may not appreciate racism as a raison d'etre for refusing the solve a pressing national problem. Of course, on the other hand, there is an overt threat to these congressmen. Either vote NO on immigration reform, or face a well-financed primary.

And if you won't think primaries by radical extremists are real enough to scare the hell out of Republicans, look what's already happening to high profile Tea Party Senator Marco Rubio. During an interview the other night on WMAL, anti-Hispanic sociopath Allen West, who has the ability to raise millions of dollars from fellow extremists, said he will look into a primary challenge against Rubio.

"That's a pretty heavy lift, because you're talking about running against a sitting senator, and then, of course, that creates that schism that the other side would love to see happen," said West, who appeared as a guest co-host on WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Wednesday.  West was pressed further by WMAL's Larry O'Connor, who asked him directly if he would rule out a challenge against Rubio.

"Chirping... chirping... chirping...," replied West with a chuckle, before elaborating with a more direct response.

"If I see people that are not taking our country down the right path, if I see people that are not standing up for the right type of principles, and putting their own party politics before what is best for the United States of America," West indicated he might make a run.

Rubio, who rode a wave of Tea Party momentum to the Senate in 2010 in the same election that sent West to the House, has fallen out of favor with some Republicans because of his support for the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" immigration reform bill. West told WMAL he has a "lot of concerns" about the measure himself.

...But will he attempt to make that point as a Senate candidate against Rubio?

"We'll see what happens down the pike," said West. "God will set my feet on the right path."

And if you doubt Heritage and other far right extremist groups have the clout to mount effective primaries against mainstream Republicans you've probably never heard of Heritage's venal Conservative Action Project, which Lee Fang has exposed in his new book, The Machine.

The Heritage Foundation’s most audacious move to harness the conservative movement has been its role in crafting the Conservative Action Project-- a strategy committee that meets at the Wednesday morning breakfast hosted by the Family Research Council. This is the same meeting that rivals Norquist’s Wednesday morning planning meeting and is closely connected to the aggressively ideological Weyrich Lunch. The Conservative Action Project is actually part of a broader plan set forth by Heritage vice president Becky Norton Dunlop, a point person for Heritage’s sprawling external affairs program. Throughout her career, Dunlop had spun through the revolving door of working in various Republican administrations on both the state and federal level, a corporate PR firm, and multiple conservative nonprofits, including Heritage, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. A committed conservative, Dunlop was once asked how to spread conservative ideas at a panel discussion hosted by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. “How do you maintain liberty?” Dunlop replied, “Well, at the end it’s at the cartridge box if you can’t win at the ballot box.” She then smiled and said that her response was probably too “extreme” for her audience of international right-of-center donors.

As the Heritage Foundation’s “chief ambassador” to the movement, Dunlop helps the American Conservative Union plan its annual CPAC convention, the largest annual gathering of conservatives. Philanthropy Roundtable, Dunlop and her external affairs team also organize multiple events to bring corporate donors and conservative foundations together, and she organizes regional and President’s Club events. Dunlop sits on the boards of over half a dozen other organizations, from the Phillips Foundation, which disburses grants to young right-wing journalists, to the Family Foundation of Virginia, a religious right powerhouse in the state, to the American Conservative Union itself.

Despite Dunlop’s impressive set of official responsibilities, her most important duty is not revealed on her profile page on the Heritage Foundation website. Behind the scenes, Dunlop serves as the president of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive right-wing committee that has brought together key Republican officials, Christian right eaders, and wealthy right-wing donors to set the conservative agenda since 1981. Although she had been a director for the CNP for many years, according to tax disclosures filed with the IRS, Dunlop appeared to take the reins of the organization in 2008. Called the “most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of” by ABC News, the CNP is still critical to the conservative movement, and deeply entwined with Heritage and other prime players of the conservative movement.

Initially organized by fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind Rapture-genre series, the CNP is credited with cementing the role of the religious right within the modern Republican Party. The CNP initially hosted Pat Robertson, the televangelist owner of a network of different Christian media companies, Moral Majority Founder Jerry Falwell, LaHaye, and theologian Cleon Skousen, an influential thinker within the religious right who wrote that white slave masters were the real victims in the antebellum South. Some of the first wealthy businessmen included in CNP were Amway’s Richard DeVos and oilman Charles koch. Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese eagerly embraced the group and served as a direct link between the CNP and the Reagan White House. In addition to Republican Party officials, the religious right, and wealthy donors, CNP members include representatives from the conservative media infrastructure, libertarians, and many neoconservatives. Although the CNP has never allowed the press access to its events, it is widely known that the group hosts several meetings a year to allow Republican leaders to consult with movement conservative types. According to Bob Barr, the Republican lawmaker who spearheaded the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, Barr met with the CNP to hone “our message and focus” around the impeachment effort at a CNP meeting in 1997, well before Clinton made his claim that he did not have “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky. In his memoirs, Barr said the CNP members were in “near universal agreement” that impeachment was necessary because of Clinton’s “abuses of power” concerning “national security.” However, CNP continued to support the impeachment when it transformed into a crusade against Clinton’s claims about his sexual improprieties.

In 1999, George W. Bush reportedly gave a speech to the CNP promising to only appoint pro-life judges, which in turn helped guarantee the support of CNP members and solidify Bush’s nomination in the Republican primaries. Although little is known about the activities of CNP events, many have speculated about the degree to which CNP used its influence within the Bush administration. Salon’s Ben Van Heuvelen has noted that the rise of the private military contractor Blackwater, now known as Academi, might have stemmed from the fact that Blackwater CEO Erik Prince’s parents Edgar and Elsa Prince were prominent donors to the CNP and its affiliates, especially the Family Research Council. Prince family members met regularly with prominent Bush administration war planners, like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Bremer, through the CNP.

John McCain kowtowed to the CNP in a speech shortly after locking up the GOP nomination in 2008, but still struggled to gain their trust. “I want to look you in the eye and tell you that I won’t let you down,” pledged McCain to the group of evangelicals and donors in his March 2008 address to the group. According to the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick, several audience members in the CNP crowd said that McCain made “little impression” despite his pandering. James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and many social conservatives simply did not trust McCain, and viewed his acclaimed “maverick” streak as a liability to the movement. According to the New York Times and The Nation’s Max Blumenthal, CNP officials finally pledged their support to the McCain campaign-- and in turn the support of tens of thousands of evangelical churches organized by CNP members, various right-wing front groups owned by CNP members, and other conservative organizations-- only after McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Heritage can put a lot of resources behind targeting mainstream Republicans who are looking towards independent swing voters. The GOP base is still predominantly racist, bigoted and unable to think beyond the latest rants on Hate Talk Radio. But in many districts outside of the South, that's not enough to win elections. Look at the report from the new Iowa Poll for example. Steve King, one of the most viciously anti-Hispanic xenophobes in Congress spent Wednesday lying about immigrants and about the reform bill. The picture up top is from his rally yesterday. And King is backed by Iowa's increasingly senile Senator Chuck Grassley. But 54% of their state's voters approve of the Senate bill with a path to citizenship. 68% of Democrats approve and 54% of independents approve. True, just 44% of Republicans approve but only 48% of Republicans are opposed. The only demographic group that is against immigration reform are the elderly-- 65 years or older-- and even in that case, 48% approve but only 40% oppose. The rest are unsure.

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DeMint Is Ready To Go To War-- Against Conservative Republicans

It was bad enough for the GOP's Know Nothing base of bigots and racists when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions' filibuster of comprehensive immigration reform was shut down Tuesday with an overwhelming bipartisan 82-15 vote. But if the Hatred and Bigotry wing of the GOP didn't get the message clear enough, the Senate was back 2 hours later to vote on the motion to proceed with the debate and that one passed 84-15. It was sad and lonely to be a racist in the Senate on Tuesday. Ted Cruz was so frustrated that he almost cried. He admitted that the immigration reform bill would pass the Senate and prayed aloud that the crazy Republicans from gerrymandered Southern districts would somehow kill it in the House. The 15 proud racists:

• John Barrasso (R-WY)
• John Boozman (R-AR)
• Thad Cochran (R-MS)
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)
• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)
• Mike Lee (R-UT)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)
• Tim Scott (R-SC)
• Jefferson B Sessions III (R-AL)
• Richard Shelby (R-AL)
• David Vitter (R-LA)

DeMint is no longer in the Senate. He resigned to become a lobbyist for right-wing causes. But he still has his extremist PAC, the Senate Conservative Fund, and the twerp who runs it for him, Matt Hoskins, fired a shot over the bows of Miss McConnell, John Cornyn and the other 26 Republicans who voted to move forward. He singled out the half dozen running for reelection in 2014 for a special threat: Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY). Sounds like they'd be willing to contribute to primary challenges. Here's the letter they sent out to their donors:

Fellow Conservatives:

The bill will make the problem of illegal immigration worse, but that didn't stop 28 Republicans from voting to advance it. They either support amnesty or mistakenly believe they can work with Barack Obama and Harry Reid to fix it.

Here's the current list of "Amnesty Republicans" who need to hear from us. If this bill passes, they will be largely responsible because of their votes yesterday. They had a chance to stop it when 60 votes were required, but they chose not to. (The six highlighted senators are up for re-election in 2014.)

Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Blunt (R-MO), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Chiesa (R-NJ), Coats (R-IN), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Fischer (R-NE), Flake (R-AZ), Graham (R-SC), Hatch (R-UT), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (R-WI), McConnell (R-KY), Moran (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Rubio (R-FL), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Wicker (R-MS)

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY)-- the Republican Leader-- not only supported the bill, he also pressured his Republican colleagues to join him. This isn't surprising given that he supported the 1986 amnesty and likes GOP cover when he casts liberal votes.

As you may recall, Senator McConnell also voted for the Wall Street bailout, to raise the debt limit by $2.4 trillion, to raise taxes on 80% of American families, and to fund the implementation of Obamacare. Each time, he selfishly asked his colleagues to join him even though it could cost them their elections.

This debate is a test of his leadership and so far he's failing it.

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is also working behind closed doors to pass this bill. Senator Cornyn is peddling an amendment that is designed to give Republicans cover to support the final bill. He says the amendment will increase border security, but in truth it won't change the underlying bill that guarantees amnesty and only promises border security.

If this bill passes, Senators McConnell and Cornyn will bear the most responsibility. Even if they vote against the final bill, they are working the hardest to persuade their colleagues to walk over this policy cliff.

Please contact the senators who voted for amnesty yesterday and urge them to stop this bill before it's too late.

Call Senator McConnell at (202) 224-2541 and Senator Cornyn at (202) 224-2934.

Thank you for your support. We'll keep fighting.

Yesterday, the right-wing propaganda web site, Daily Caller, warned the fringe base that McConnell is getting ready to surrender. Meanwhile, as you know, DeMint runs the Heritage Foundation, a fascist institution at the heart of the Republican Party. In his great new book, The Machine, Lee Fang strips the operation bare of it's lofty pretensions.

The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 to lead the “New Right” revolution against liberalism, became the cornerstone of the conservative movement during the eighties when it structured many of President Reagan’s policies and appointments. Heritage expanded through the years, but continued the core goal of assisting congressional Republicans and Republican administrations. A People for the American Way report noted that Heritage officials declared that much of the second President Bush’s domestic policies were “straight out of the Heritage play book.” And indeed they were, from Bush’s faith-based initiatives to endless orders to deregulate business. Top conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have long referred to Heritage as the source for their research. The idea factory model of Heritage is streamlined by a Heritage website called Policy Expert, which allows hundreds of conservative scholars to be dispatched for media appearances, conferences, or to town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers, where they can provide academic cover for Republican policies. Additionally, Heritage’s “Candidates Briefing Book” is widely used among almost all Republican candidates for Congress, providing them talking points and statistics to campaign on. Heritage also maintains one of the largest job banks for the conservative movement, with full-time staffers organizing employment conferences for right-wing operatives at every stage of their careers. By supplying policy ideas, hosting an endless array of conservative experts to testify on behalf of legislation, as well as other services, Heritage has become what many correctly call the “most influential conservative think tank.”

Much of Heritage’s decisive influence, however, must be measured by its primary-- if underrecognized-- role in coordinating the conservative movement and thereby setting the strategy for advancing cohesive right-wing ideals. Heritage sets the agenda for state-level conservative think tanks through the State Policy Network umbrella group, and its affiliated “Resource Bank” conference, while also providing assistance for right-wing think tanks internationally through its partnership with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. During the Obama presidency, Heritage took an even more aggressive stance, pulling together the key elements of the conservative coalition to fight progressives at every opportunity.

Starting in 2006, Heritage began holding a weekly meeting called the Blogger Briefing in its offices to allow conservative voices from the blogosphere to meet top Republican strategists and politicians and hash out framing advice. In early 2012, the American Legislative Exchange Council faced a growing corporate boycott over its role in crafting the “Stand Your Ground” law that permitted a boy in Florida to be shot by a vigilante neighborhood patrolman. The public relations strategy to combat the criticism was crafted at the Heritage Bloggers Briefing. Attendees were asked to help design a “Stand with ALEC” social media campaign.

Flaunting their disregard for their status as a nonpartisan tax-exempt nonprofit, Heritage hosted officers from Republican campaign committees at blogger meetings where the Republican campaign officers suggested strategies for defeating Democrats or promoting Republicans. However, most of the Blogger Briefings are policy related, and have ranged from how to defeat health reform to how to extend the Bush tax cuts. Heritage’s Robert Bluey, the director for its Center for Media and Public Policy, worked to build a rapid response network of right-wing bloggers and journalists not just through the Blogger Briefing, but also through private listservs and collaborations with other online conservative news outlets. Townhall.com, an online portal to conservative opinion and radio-show hosts, was initially created by Heritage, but was later bought by Salem Communications. During the Obama presidency, Heritage spawned a new social networking website called Heritage for America. Organized under the 501c(4) tax code, which permits issuebased political advocacy, Heritage for America sought to connect grassroots activists with against Democrats.

To guide the movement, Heritage provides the practical service of connecting conservative scholars and strategists with active donors around the country. There are regional committee groups for Heritage in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Omaha, and several other cities. A typical regional committee event would bring a conservative celebrity such as karl Rove or radio host Herman Cain for a short speech, and afterward a cocktail party would provide a chance for donors to mingle with local Republican staffers and local conservative activists. For higher-level donors, there are “President’s Club” conferences, such as the President’s Club meeting in the cavernous Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 2009. More of a pep rally than an ideas conference, the President’s Club conference was essentially a day of speeches from right-wing Republicans on how the party would triumph over progressive reforms promised by Obama. At dinner, Rush Limbaugh regaled the crowd with a reprise of his radio routine, then began boasting about his $400 million contract with the radio conglomerate Clear Channel. “I’ve never had financially a down year. There’s supposedly a recession,” he said, grinning. He continued, “Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate!” The crowd of donors erupted in laughter. At the front-row dinner table, Thomas Saunders, a wealthy Wall Street investor and a top donor to Heritage and many other right-wing causes, was seated between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

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Lunch Anyone? How DC Works... At Least On The Right-Wing Fringe

Over the weekend, the L.A. Times reported on a Park City, Utah GOP big donor retreat hosted by Mitt Romney. The big donors are frustrated that their party has veered off the track-- keeping wealthy people's taxes low and undermining business regulations-- so gigantically into social issues. It's the old GOP tension between the Greed and Selfishness wing of the party and the Hatred and Bigotry wing of the party.

[N]o group is more frustrated by the party's slow march forward than the high-powered donors and business, technology and industry leaders who met for a three-day retreat here hosted by former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Looking ahead to the 2014 congressional races and the 2016 presidential contest, many Romney donors said they were concerned about the ease with which sharply conservative Republican candidates-- such as Todd Akin of Missouri, who churned up a firestorm with his controversial comments on rape-- had tainted the party's image.

A number of donors also said damage persisted from Romney's shift to the right on issues such as illegal immigration and his emphasis on his opposition to gay marriage.

"We have to open the tent to a broader constituency," said Anthony Scaramucci, a national finance co-chairman who helped lead Romney's fundraising operations in New York.

"The party needs to tie itself to social inclusion and fiscal responsibility. That means any race, any creed, any sexual orientation, any issue related to the reproductive power of women-- any of those groups need to feel at home in the Republican Party," Scaramucci said.

Susan Crown, a 2008 supporter of President Obama who became a key fundraiser for Romney, said that "the extremists-- the 2% on either end-- were the squeaky wheels that dictated the conversation."

The party, she said, "really has to reconcile its fundamental principle, of government staying out of the people's lives, with its recent history."

The views expressed by many donors in interviews this week about the direction the party should take stood in stark contrast to the current concerns of the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, who determine the party platform and its rules.

At an RNC gathering this spring in Hollywood, committee Chairman Reince Priebus had hoped to keep the focus on the party's rebuilding efforts after being vastly outmanned by Obama's campaign operation, including the Democrats' sophisticated voter identification systems and the strength of their ground organization in the key swing states.

Instead, many RNC members wanted to talk about how the party should not stray from its core principles on social issues, which remain singularly important to many party activists. During the meeting, RNC members unanimously pushed through a resolution affirming that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

If party leaders are skittish about having a messaging fight right now, that is not the case for many former Romney donors, who seemed eager to discuss how the party should alter its message attract more women and Latinos.

Romney famously advanced the idea of "self-deportation" in the primary, to his detriment among Latinos. But many of his donors said they were encouraged by movement on an immigration bill in the Senate.

The conversations last year about deporting more than 11 million illegal immigrants were harmful to Republican efforts, said Andrew Puzder, the California-based chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc. He noted that mass deportation would require an enormous expansion of government, which to him seemed antithetical to Republican views.

"We're losing for a policy that we couldn't even implement," Puzder said in an interview in Park City. "We have to be more careful with our selection of candidates."

(Even as the donors talked up the bipartisan bill last week, House GOP members sent a difference message, voting to de-fund Obama's effort to give legal status to immigrants brought to the country as children.)

As for the 2016 messaging, potential contenders who came to woo Romney donors in Park City all emphasized the need for the party to become more inclusive.

I suspect that not many of the folks at Romney's Park City gabfest are regular participants at the regular Wednesday lunch where the Republican Party's actual walking orders are written and implemented every week-- the Weyrich Lunch. In his new book, The Machine, Lee Fang, exposed the history and operations of the Wednesday Weyrich Lunch and how it took over from the more-Big Money-oriented Grover Norquist breakfasts as the Bush Administration faded. The Lunch was founded in 1983 to connect Republican politicians and their staffers to "key movers and shakers of the right."

[U]nlike Norquist’s breakfast meeting, the Weyrich Lunch is dominated by social conservatives and firebreathing reactionaries who place ideological purity over making the conservative “team bigger,” as Norquist would say. The lunch mirrors the sensibilities of its namesake, who was known as “the Robespierre of the right” for his eager purges of moderate Republicans. Sponsors of the lunch include the rabidly conservative 60 Plus Association, a front group posturing as a right-wing alternative to the AARP; Let Freedom Ring, a group funded partially by John Templeton Jr., a billionaire heir and promoter of evangelical causes; the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, an extremist Catholic organization; Judicial Watch, the Right to Work Committee, the powerful evangelical lobby; the Family Research Council, James Dobson’s political organization; and several other groups forming the traditional right-wing coalition. Republican lawmakers giving speeches at the Lunch have been dressed down and forced to explain any bipartisan votes or other moves perceived as violating right-wing values. A 2004 National Review article about the general atmosphere of the lunch described it as “more inquisitorial that at Norquist’s meeting”:

A congressman is hauled over the coals for pondering a run for the Senate and thereby losing a place on a key committee. Bullied about an upcoming vote on school vouchers in the District of Columbia, a senator promises to provide the names of his colleagues who might be “a little wobbly.”. . . Every piece of paper at the Weyrich meeting is also a call to arms. Two-thirds of all partial-birth abortions are committed in New Jersey! Half of all marriages end in divorce! Girls Gone Wild videos are for sale in supermarkets!

The lunch may seem like a throwback to the culture wars of the nineties, or for that matter, the sixties, but post-Bush, it has reemerged as the main get-together for crafting the conservative agenda.

After Weyrich’s death on December 18, 2008, the Leadership Institute’s Morton Blackwell and Let Freedom Ring leader Colin Hanna took over as the chairmen of the lunch. Before, Norquist commanded power because of his close relationship with Karl Rove and other key Bush administration political figures. During that period, operatives would focus on attending the Norquist breakfast and only later that day attend the Weyrich Lunch if they needed to work on an issue related to conservative social values, like marriage or abortion. However, more and more conservatives now flock every Wednesday to a small D.C. Christian coffeehouse called Ebeneezer’s, the venue for the Weyrich Lunch, as the prime destination for organizing opposition to Obama.

The growing prominence of the Weyrich Lunch has affected crucial political developments in the Obama era. Several groups closely associated with the lunch, including the 60 Plus Association, the Family Research Council, and the Susan B. Anthony List, ran millions of dollars’ worth of ads during the health reform fight-- using donor money that might have otherwise gone to Norquist-related organizations in the Bush era.

Republican elected leaders have also gravitated more and more to the lunch. During the first two years of the Obama administration, Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), then the third most powerful Republican in the House, promised to attend every single meeting of the lunch to update the members about the activity in the GOP caucus, legislative fights, and what to expect that week. If he could not attend, he also pledged that he would send either Representative John Boehner (R-OH), then the minority leader, or Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), the Republican whip, as his replacement. Indeed, after Republicans seized the House in 2010, GOP leadership sent a representative-- often a freshman lawmaker-- to the meeting every week.

...The influence of the Lunch has played out behind the scenes in Republican primary battles. When Congressman Pete Sessions, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), came to the Weyrich Lunch, Politico reported that he was angrily confronted by attendees for supporting Dede Scozzafava, a moderate Republican running in a special election in upstate New York. Sessions’s NRCC had donated well over $1 million to Scozzafava, a popular upstate New York assemblywoman. “There were some raised voices,” observed an anonymous source at the lunch. But unlike any ordinary band of hard right activists upset with the Republican establishment, the Weyrich Lunch members were prepared to back up their words with action. Groups associated with the lunch threatened to withhold money from the NRCC, and several of the regular lunch attendees launched a smear campaign attacking Scozzafava with an avalanche of ads and robo-calls in the district. The Susan B. Anthony List, for example, sent staffers into the district and attacked Scozzafava as an “abortion radical” and claimed her candidacy jeopardized the “lives of women and their unborn babies.” Scozzafava eventually suspended her campaign the weekend before the election and endorsed her opponent, Democrat Bill Owens. On election day, the longtime Republican district fell to Owens over the Weyrich Lunch and Tea Party favorite in the race, New York Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Nonetheless, Weyrich Lunch attendees celebrated the electoral defeat as a success. Scozzafava favored some abortion rights and was less antiunion than most Republicans. The election of a Democrat over such a moderate Republican kept the party, and the movement, more ideologically pure. A Washington Post account of the Conservative Action Project and the Weyrich Lunch noted that at the Redstate morning briefing, blogger Erick Erickson’s widely distributed daily e-mail newsletter of talking points helped ensure that the wider right-wing movement stuck to the argument that Scozzafava’s loss was actually a good thing for conservatives.

Before the Scozzafava campaign fiasco, Republican Party planners had pinned their 2010 midterm election prospects on a cadre of moderate, even liberal, Republicans who could appeal to independent voters and disaffected Democrats. Republican strategists for the Senate organized endorsements and support for Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, the only Republican governor to openly embrace President Obama’s stimulus, for his bid to the Senate. Similarly, the same establishment party strategists were openly building the campaign infrastructure for former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton, another moderate, to run for Senate. The planners, more focused on electoral victory than conservative purity, ignored non-mainstream candidates like Tea Party–backed Republican Marco Rubio, who vied for the Republican nomination in Florida, and Ken Buck, another far-right primary candidate in Colorado. But the Scozzafava effect sent shock waves through the GOP, and shortly after November 2009, Republican Party candidate committees pledged to stay neutral.

Rubio gained steam by directly addressing many of the Weyrich Lunch sponsors at a Council for National Policy summit in Naples, Florida, in March 2010. Maggie Gallagher, an audience member for Rubio’s speech and former president of the antigay National Organization for Marriage, gushed “when Rubio speaks, he is not spinning—he is weaving together from his life story, in his person as well as his words, the frayed threads of the old Reagan coalition.” Gallagher had been active in purging Scozzafava, and called for conservatives to rebuke the moderate Crist. Norton and dozens of other moderate GOP nominees for Congress would later go down in crushing primary election defeats to far more radical Republican candidates. Crist avoided the embarrassment of a loss to Rubio by bolting the party altogether and running as an independent. In the end, Rubio easily won his election. While many forces-- especially the influence of talk radio and Fox News-- affected the outcome of Republican primaries, the Weyrich Lunch–drawn line in the sand against moderate Republicans reverberated in campaigns across the country.

The most prominent, and underreported, example of Weyrich Lunch influence was its role in elevating radical right Senate candidates in Delaware and Alaska. Early in 2010, a parade of far-right challengers hoping to upset Republican establishment-ordained candidates for Senate visited D.C.-- and specifically the Weyrich Lunch-- to find support. In Delaware, the Republican establishment sought Representative Mike Castle (R-DE), one of the most moderate members of the entire Republican caucus, to run for Senate. Every poll showed him beating any leading Democrat in the state, including New Castle County Executive Chris Coons and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the son of the vice president. However, a local antiabortion activist named Christine O’Donnell-- known primarily for her status as a perennial fringe candidate-- went to the Weyrich Lunch for support.

O’Donnell had known the Weyrich Lunch leaders through her work leading the abstinence group The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, and the Weyrich Lunch supporters admired her staunch right-wing positions, particularly in contrast to Castle. Quietly, before any other national groups entered the race, the Family Research Council sent organizers into Delaware to reach out to local Tea Party groups and to build O’Donnell’s candidacy. In August of 2010, the bombastic Tea Party organizing group Tea Party Express endorsed O’Donnell and led a highly publicized primary effort to help her win the nomination. Similarly, attorney Joe Miller, a friend of Sarah Palin, visited the Weyrich Lunch early in 2010 to lock up support in his primary campaign against incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak). Again, after a friendly reception at the Weyrich Lunch, the Family Research Council dispatched organizers and resources to help Miller win his race. Family Research Council operatives worked with local evangelical groups to tie supporters of a ballot initiative requiring parent notification of teenage abortions to the candidate. Both O’Donnell and Miller won stunning upsets against their more moderate Republican primary opponents.

In both cases, the Tea Party Express claimed credit for the primary victories of newcomers like O’Donnell and Miller. But the true initial support came from the Weyrich Lunch. When Weyrich Lunch chairman Colin Hanna explained his strategy in September of 2010, he believed that both O’Donnell and Miller could win their general elections. He had personally recorded a radio ad mocking Murkowski as a “Queen” for not bowing out of the race after her primary loss (she continued to run as a write-in candidate). However, in the end both Miller and O’Donnell went down in spectacularly crushing defeats-- Murkowski won a historic write-in campaign, and Democrat Chris Coons sailed to victory in Delaware. The Weyrich Lunch could flex its muscle, but its strength also undermined Republican efforts to regain control of the Senate in 2010.

Extremely conservative Republican politicians, like Senator Jim Inhofe, Congressman Louie Gohmert, and Virginia attorney general ken Cuccinelli, are reportedly close to the Weyrich Lunch and the Conservative Action Project. Inhofe, on several occasions, has addressed the Weyrich meeting to explain issues ranging from judicial appointments to environmental issues. Inhofe takes a particularly hard-line conservative position on both subject areas. He announced that he would oppose Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan before hearings were even scheduled, and has earned a reputation for fighting tooth and nail against every attempt to address climate change. Several years before Obama’s presidency, Inhofe was alone in the Senate in asserting that climate change is a complete “hoax.” However, Inhofe’s views had become the conservative status quo by the end of 2009. A study compiled by climate activist and blogger Brad Johnson found that over half of the Republican class of 2010 did not believe in climate science.

The Weyrich Lunch and its affiliated meetings and groups provided a nexus for right-wing front groups organizing the Tea Parties to collaborate with other conservative groups and corporate fronts. FreedomWorks, one of the premier groups organizing Tea Parties, sent its vice president Matt Kibbe, campaign director Brendan Steinhauser, and New Media Director Tabitha Hale to different Weyrich Lunch meetings. Americans for Prosperity, the other major group dedicated to mobilizing Tea Party protests, had its director Tim Phillips attend many Conservative Action Project strategy breakfasts. Several other Tea Party groups, like Liberty Central, the “grassroots” conservative group founded by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas, were regular participants in the Weyrich-related sessions. Essentially every new conservative advocacy group relied on the Weyrich Lunch membership to branch out and coordinate its efforts.

Although there are billionaires who dictate policy within the Democratic Party-- particularly Wall Street billionaires-- there is no mechanism within the Democratic grassroots that has anything like the power of the Weyrich Lunch to keep corrupt Beltway Establishment groups-- in their case, say the RNC and the NRCC, the Democrats' the DNC and the DCCC-- in check. Watch how that plays out during the midterms next year, when the DCCC goes down in flames again.

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