GOP consultant Mike Murphy has responded to my column from
yesterday, “The
Quisling Consultants.” He is not happy with me, to say the
least. In fairness, his response is re-printed here in its
entirety, with my response below that.
Jeffrey,
Saw your screed in the AmSpec.
I deeply resent the Nazi angle. A lazy, cheap shot of the
worst kind.
I have not worked at Navigators for two years. They list me
on web site as a strategic partner because we have a
deal where they refer potential issue advertising
clients to my real firm the Revolution agency. I never worked
on any of the NPR stuff, never took a dime for any of
it. Your should try at least a little fact checking
before you reprint a unsubstantiated clip off
the internet search engine like
that.
I’m a conservative, just not a paleo con. I’ve worked for
“moderates” like Gov Christine Todd Whitman, Arnold
(the recall) and Meg Whitman and for
movement conservatives like Sen Jeff Sessions, and
Ollie North, I’ve also worked for candidates in
between like Governors Jeb Bush, John Engler, Tommy
Thompson, Terry Branstad, Lamar Alexander, Larry
Pressler, Mitt Romney (Gov race), and a bunch more at
the House, Senate and Gubernatorial level. I’ve helped right
of center candidates beat the left in Canada. In the
28 years I spent running GOP campaigns, I had a
success rate of about 75%.
I did not work for any of the establishment GOP committees
or Super-pacs this cycle or last. The last time I was
invited into the WH to give my opinion was in 1991,
and I told them the polls were an illusion and I thought they were
on a road to defeat. I was never invited back. (You
can ask Bill Kristol, he was there.)
I live in Los Angeles CA, not DC. Whatever gilded
aristocracy of the Washington consultant/media
complex you carp about is not a place where I regularly
reside. I’m hardly an establishment GOP favorite. (In
fact the last time I had dinner in a hugely expensive
Georgetown five star restaurant, it was with your
beloved icon Rush Limbaugh. We had a good
time.)
But I have been in the fight for the conservative side for
nearly thirty years. Your piece was lazy, simplistic,
uniformed and lacked any reasonable standard
of fact-checking. And as I said, the traitor/Nazi
stuff was deeply offensive.
Mike Murphy
Here’s my response:
Mike.
Would you have preferred Benedict Arnold?
No conservative in his right mind goes onto a notoriously
liberal television show of a notoriously liberal network, sits next
to John Podesta and promptly turns on his own team. Which is
exactly what you did when you went on Meet the Press and
slammed Rush Limbaugh. It is passing strange that you tell me you
have broken bread with Rush, then go out there and clobber him on a
liberal TV show. Since any real conservative knows better than to
do what you did, and I know you are a smart guy, one can only
assume that your attack on Rush was quite deliberately
calculated.
This is not the first time you have gone after conservatives.
Your previous attacks on South Carolina’s Senator Jim DeMint and
Governor Sarah Palin are typical of how moderate Republicans play
this game.
You are at it again in
the current issue of Time magazine.
What you propose is anything but new.
In fact, this is the kind of nonsense that was preached all the
way back in 1950 by New York Governor Tom Dewey in his Princeton
lectures. Dewey, as you recall, lectured Republicans about the
“vociferous few” and the “impractical theorists” — meaning the
Reaganesque-Rush Limbaugh-style conservatives of the day — in the
GOP who were intent on driving out all the GOP moderates and
liberals and into the arms of Democrats. Concluded Dewey: “The
results would be neatly arranged, too. The Republicans would lose
every election and the Democrats would win.” Dewey said all of
this, of course, following his own two defeats against FDR and
Truman. In both of which elections he ran as the Great Moderate
Hope — and got clobbered. The second time, I might add, when
everybody in politics alive in the day expected him to trounce the
unpopular Harry Truman.
Surely you remember when former President Ford insisted to the
New York Times in 1980 — four years after he ran the
typical moderate losing campaign — that Reagan was too “extreme”
to win a national election.
When you note in your Time piece that “we still design
campaigns to prevail in the America of 25 years ago” you are
incorrect. Every single campaign beginning with the Bush 41
re-election campaign of 1992 - 20 years ago - has run head-long
from Ronald Reagan and conservatism. And the results are,
accordingly, dismal. Say again, dismal.
What you fail to note is that the campaigns of 1980 and 1984
were an overwhelming success — precisely because unlike all but
one that followed, not to mention the Ford disaster of 1976 that
preceded them — they were run with a presidential nominee who
fully embraced conservative principles. Even George H.W.Bush
realized he had to do this to get a win on Reagan’s coattails in
1988, and Lee Atwater saw to it. But notably, once on his own,
President Bush, as good a man as can exist but a thorough-going
moderate, wound up with a dismal 37% of the vote. The GOP has never
recovered from this Bush/moderate/”compassionate conservatism”
business.
You also skirt the obvious.
Anybody with any knowledge of the way the Washington world works
knows that your name on the Navigators web site is because you are
allowing them to benefit from their association with your name as a
high-profile GOP consultant. And it works like a charm.
Here’s NPR itself
reporting their decision to hire Navigators — and they
specifically mention you by name. The only reason to do so, in the
world of Washington, is to send a message to GOP lawmakers via your
name. A message that says, in essence, “Listen to us… we’re really
not that bad… hey… you know ole Mike Murphy, don’t you? Well Mike’s
firm… yada yada yada.”
There is a growing fury out there among conservatives with the
“consultant class” of which you are a card carrying member. The
idea is fast growing (and one doesn’t have to be a
“Paleo-Conservative” which neither you nor I claim to be, to
believe this) that none of you are serious about limited
government, much less willing to stand up against the Establishment
GOP that has brought us to this pass. And saying, in essence, that
Republicans should campaign for the dissolution of marriage and get
on with supporting the legalization of polygamy, polyamory, bigamy
etc. (the inevitable legal consequences of gay marriage, as Justice
Scalia has noted) is only the modern version of Dewey or Ford
saying conservatives of the day were too extreme and out of
touch.
The term “Quisling” as I documented, is in the vernacular
meaning someone who is a traitor of some sort… to principles in
this case. It has nothing to do with Nazis. Most assuredly you are
not a Nazi. I will be happy to Americanize and use the term
“Benedict Arnold.”
Mike, I wish you well. But what you did to Rush Limbaugh on
national television — particularly in this climate — was
disgraceful. If you haven’t apologized to him at this point you
should. Ditto with Senator DeMint and Governor Palin. Not to
mention conservatives all over the land.
Again, the reason you are provided these mainstream media
platforms is because you can be counted on to do exactly what you
did do. You know it, everybody knows it. But it plays well with
liberals — particularly in places like Los Angeles.
Thanks for your response.
Best wishes for continued dialogue from this Reagan
conservative,
Jeff
