STAR QUALITY
They may be the linchpins in Republican plans to take back the
Senate. But the Republican National Committee is grumbling over the
White House’s seeming uninterest in helping Rep. John
Thune of South Dakota, former Rep. James
Talent of Missouri and former St. Paul, Minn. Mayor
Norman Coleman, in their bids to unseat sitting
Democratic senators. While President Bush has helped raise more
than $40 million for Republicans in the past two weeks, and as veep
Cheney criss-crosses the country fundraising for Republicans, the
White House recently sent national economic adviser Larry
Lindsey to be the featured speaker at a private New York
fundraiser for Thune, Talent and Coleman.
Coleman is a former a Democrat who jumped parties, “and I don’t
think the DNC would treat Coleman this shabbily if he were critical
to the party’s success in the fall,” says a Coleman campaign aide
in Minneapolis. “I mean, really, Lindsey?”
The Thune and Talent camps weren’t complaining, though, nor was
Coleman seemingly put out by the Lindsey appearance in New York.
“Sure, it would have been nice to have Cheney,” says a Talent
staffer. “But for the donors we had, Lindsey wasn’t bad.”
The private event in midtown Manhattan netted the GOP threesome
more than a half million dollars from mostly Wall Street types who
paid for cocktails and dinner and to hear Lindsey speak on the
economy, with some forward-looking commentary on the markets.
“For the audience, Lawrence was the best guy to speak,” says a
White House aide involved in political outreach. “These were
finance types. You want to make the evening somewhat attractive to
them beyond just showing up with a check. And we’re certainly not
going to send someone like [Treasury Secretary] Paul
O’Neill for a fundraising event.”
The RNC doesn’t see it that way. “We would have preferred a
bigger name, a rock star,” says an RNC fundraiser. “We’re talking
billionaires sitting down to dinner with a national economic
adviser no one has heard of.”
But to those who paid $10,000 for a dinner seat Lindsey was a
well-known name, with a reputation in the room that made the
evening a success. As the White House source points out, who is
more interesting to a billionaire, a man who can make him more
money, or an official making a standard stump speech with nothing
much else to say? “All these people have met President Bush, Vice
President Cheney. They will meet them again. This was for Coleman,
Talent and Thune. They were the rock stars, as the RNC likes to
call them. This was their night.”
White House sources say that while RNC deputy chairman
Jack Oliver has successfully imparted the
Bush/Rove message for the GOP to many segments of the party
establishment, there are still pockets of opposition that resent
what they perceive as micro-managing from Pennsylvania Avenue.
“These are the people who complain about not having the
president at their disposal,” says an RNC advance staffer who
defended the White House use of Lindsey. “They don’t understand
that the president isn’t here just to win elections and raise
money. He has a job. It’s our job to use all of the tools to help
the president achieve his goals. If that means using Lindsey
instead of Cheney, so be it. That’s what we’ve determined the best
course of action is. It’s that kind of thinking — just use the
president — that is going to cost us elections in the fall.”
THE LAST FALLEN NETWORK
According to a producer for the Public Broadcasting System in New
York, the reason country singer Charlie Daniels
was barred from performing his hit single about 9-11, “The Last
Fallen Hero,” was that executives at PBS believe the songs are “too
Republican.”
Daniels was to appear on the popular “A Capitol Fourth,” which
PBS broadcasts from the Mall and Capitol in Washington every July
4th. Each year it’s one of the network’s most highly rated shows
(although ratings fell by half when the Arts and Entertainment
network began broadcasting the Boston Pops’ July 4th performance
about a decade ago). Now that Daniels has gone public about not
being allowed to appear, PBS is finding itself under major
fire.
“They see people like Lee Greenwood performing ‘Proud To Be an
American’ at the Republican National Convention and they equate all
of those kinds of songs with Republicans,” says the producer. “They
call them propaganda.”
As well, there is simply a discomfort with the patriotic nature
of the songs. “It’s one thing to have the Marine Corps band
playing, or having some second rate singer-dancer singing ‘It’s a
Grand Old Flag.’ It’s another for a deeply felt, emotional,
patriotic song,” says the PBS source. “There are those inside the
company that cringe when things like that are broadcast.”
The official PBS line is that Daniels’s song wasn’t “upbeat”
enough. But given the solemn nature of this July 4th, in light of
the September attacks and the numerous memorial celebrations that
are slated on that day, the “upbeat” excuse doesn’t make sense to
many. “These are the same people who trot out Ossie Davis to
pompously spout some crap about Paul Robeson or about slavery in
the middle of a Memorial Day or 4th show. They are always looking
for wet blankets to throw on top of the patriotic shows,” says the
producer. “They’ll do anything to avoid broadcasting an overt
display of true, emotional patriotism.”
