MISSING IN ACTION
Some
Democrats on Capitol Hill were caught off guard by the White
House announcement on Friday that placed former President
Bill Clinton and Obama Chief of Staff
Rahm Emanuel at the center of the Rep.
Joe Sestak job bribery
scandal.
“We expected at the end of the day that somehow Joe
Biden would be involved,” says one Democrat leadership
source. “He was much more involved in the Specter recruitment and
had more invested in getting Specter what he wanted.”
Indeed, Specter and several senior advisers, according to
Democrat Senate sources, went several times to Biden and his
staff complaining about Sestak and the fact that the field had
not been cleared for Specter as the “new Democrat” had hoped.
Specter advisers say that their candidate spoke several times
with frustration to Biden after the switch about Sestak’s
candidacy.
While Specter was
not promised a clear field, Democrats did
work to accomplish just that. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed
Rendell acolyte and former National Constitution Center
head Joe Torsella was the only Democrat in
the primary at the time of Specter’s switch in late April 2009,
and Rendell persuaded him to drop out rather quickly from the
race. After that, Rendell made it known that he was working
behind the scenes to cut off Sestak’s in-state fundraising
resources from major donors to the party.
“Sestak and the White House are now saying that the
conversation was brief and Sestak is a bit unclear on the offer
now,” says one Republican Senate leadership aide. “We think there
is more to this than what is out there, and the White House
explanation, if you look at it, simply doesn’t make sense. The
fact that the vice president, who usually has something to say
about anything, is not saying a word on all of this is very
interesting to a number of his former colleagues up here in the
Senate.”
A NEW McCARTHYISM
Some House Republicans are grumbling about deputy whip Rep.
Kevin McCarthy’s foray into “new media politics”
with his “America Speaking Out” website,
which has become a bit of an online embarrassment to him, and his
boss, Eric Cantor.
“I want to know how much our conference paid out to
political and new media consultants for a website that appears to
be nothing more than a thinly disguised effort to collect email
and mobile phone numbers, but sits there filled with Democrat and
left-wing trolls posting and voting on ideas like having white
people guard non-white people, support net neutrality and elect
more progressives,” says one House member from a Southern state.
“It’s amateurish and reinforces the impression that Republicans
aren’t very good at this kind of online politicking.”
For months, McCarthy has been meeting privately with groups
of House GOP members, discussing ways to rebottle the magic of
the 1994 “Contract with America.” But the real work appears to be
taking place elsewhere. Barry Jackson, House GOP
Leader John Boehner’ s chief of staff, is said
to be directing much of the effort in shaping a 1994-like
platform for Republicans to run on. Jackson, who spent time in
the Bush White House, was a Boehner aide in the runup to the 1994
Contract, and worked with the staffs of Rep. Dick
Armey and Newt Gingrich to develop the
Contract with America.
McCarthy’s effort is believed to be the curtain raiser on
several months worth of projects that will lead up to an early
fall campaign centered on a set of achievable policy objectives
and House operations proposals that Republican House candidates
can campaign on. “The sense here is that where 1994’s document
was quite a bit of House operations stuff, this one has to be a
bit broader on national policy objectives, like cutting spending.
Greater transparency of House operations is certainly going to be
a big theme, though,” says a House leadership aide.
But some House Republicans are wondering why money is being
poured into expensive projects like “Speaking Out” and consultant
contracts, when the American people and grassroots movements like
the Tea Parties and 9-12ers have laid out a fairly clear agenda
that can be adapted by Republicans.
“Cut the spending, cut the taxes, secure the border, defend
the nation, we’re talking about being able to communicate some
core conservative principles and American values that our
Democrat opponents have opposed or simply don’t believe in,” says
the House member. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel or create
something heavily influenced by pride of authorship and political
consultants and message gurus.”
McCarthy’s efforts are largely seen as an offshoot of
efforts by House GOP Whip Eric Cantor, whose track record with
building national, conservative outreach efforts is spotty, at
best. His 2009 National Council for a New America, which famously
held its first meeting with “real America” in the Democrat
bastion of Arlington, Virginia, an “Inside the Beltway” suburb of
Washington D.C., was
shut down last month.
Cantor, though has done a better job of helping to nurture
candidates running for the House this election cycle. Through the
House leadership’s “Young Guns” project, Cantor has recruited and
developed an interesting slate of candidates, including
Wisconsin’s Sean Duffy and Arkansas’s
Tim Griffin, who will be rising stars if elected
in the 2010 cycle.
