(Editor’s note: This article has been corrected.)
Shocker. The GOP establishment has dropped the ball. Again. Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, has attracted to himself and his party the charge of racism. The charge is bogus. Yet the fact is that Mr. Scalise brought this on himself for hanging in the presence of Kenneth Knight, a top aide to the one-time Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Knight also contributing $1,000 to Scalise’s campaign.
Now making the news is a poll, featured over there at Heritage’s Daily Signal, that reveals a stunning lack of confidence by the GOP base in Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. That poll — and Scalise’s problem — are merely different sides of the same mess. Each man has illustrated vividly that he is, at the core, about wielding power and influence in Washington.
There’s an interesting story here. Last year the Republican Senate nominee for Virginia was former Republican National Chairman and ex-Bush 43 White House aide Ed Gillespie. Mr. Gillespie, as was well known, has been a lobbyist, specifically, the “G” in QGA Public Affairs — Quinn Gillespie & Associates. (He left the firm in 2007, as noted in a correction we posted on Jan. 12, 2015.) Last fall Mr. Gillespie — whom I knew a bit when we were, ah, younger — gave a very perceptive speech to the Republican Party of Virginia. He spoke of the dangers that came from the massive growth of Big Government, creating what he called the “influence economy” as opposed to the long American tradition of a free market economy. The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt in its December 8, 2014 “Notable & Quotable” section. In part, Gillespie said:
We can see an influence economy starting to take shape. CEO’s are becoming less concerned about inventing the right products, targeting the right markets and hiring the right people in hopes of making a respectable profit for investors — and more concerned about getting the right lobbyists, retaining the right lawyers and attending the right fundraisers in hopes of getting a hefty subsidy from taxpayers.
Making the right campaign contributions are becoming as important to a company as its research and development budget, and federal-compliance lawyers will soon outnumber patent lawyers.
Ed Gillespie is exactly right. Ironically, no better example of “the influence economy” at work is to be had than in the news stories concerning Congressman Scalise’s relationship with lobbyist John Feehery. Mr. Feehery is the president of the communications shop at — drumroll please — Ed Gillespie’s own firm, QGA. Over here at Politico last August the story, running under the headline “To pick staff, Scalise turns to lobbyist,” began this way:
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise got some help interviewing potential new hires for his press shop from an unlikely source: a federal lobbyist.
Quinn Gillespie & Associates’ John Feehery sat in on and participated in multiple official interviews with job candidates last month for the new majority whip’s press operation. Scalise has not yet announced who he will name as his communications director.
Sometimes lawmakers rely on lobbyists for strategic advice. But inviting a lobbyist into an interview is highly unusual. Several ethics lawyers and current and former leadership aides said they have never heard of a similar arrangement.
Scalise enjoys closer relationships with lobbyists than many House conservatives — a reality that is sometimes helpful but also adds to his reputation of being closer to the establishment wing of the party than some in the conference had wanted.
Feehery is registered to lobby on behalf of major corporations like AT&T, Sony Corp., Qualcomm, 21st Century Fox and others that have interests before Congress and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which Scalise is a member.
Scalise’s staff quickly found itself playing defense, denying the charge — sort of. As noted in the New York Daily News, Scalise spokesman T.J. Tatum said: “John Feehery is a well-respected former senior House leadership communications aide whom the office has previously contracted with to provide media training,” Tatum added. “The office has only ever sought his advice and opinion as a communications professional with many years of House leadership experience.”
All this tells a considerable amount about what passes for the unremarkable inside the Washington establishment. For Feehery spends his time continually attacking conservatives. There was this open letter attack on Rush Limbaugh in Politico in which he snarked:
Congratulations! You have been selected by the Obama administration, the mainstream media and 20 million of your most passionate followers to be the new head of the Republican Party.
As such, you are given all the rights and responsibilities that come with being a true political leader.
Your mission is simple: Restore the Republican Party to its former greatness by single-handedly helping Republicans to regain control of Congress and to offer a reasonable and viable alternative to President Barack Obama.
Ironically, snark aside, that mission has now been accomplished. With no small thanks to, yes, talk radio and conservatives in the media, the GOP in fact now has control of Congress.
In this jewel of a blog post Feehery opined in a headline that “The Tea Party Must Be Crushed.” So much for the Reaganite base of the party. Or another blog post here supporting “Amnesty for Amnesty.” And so it goes — there are more of these “Feehery Theories” out there. But Feehery personally isn’t the issue. The issue here is as Ed Gillespie nails it — the growing role of the “influence economy” of which Scalise’s ties to Feehery are merely but the latest representation. Over at Breitbart the story emerged that House conservatives were very concerned that Scalise was merely all about himself and his power.
Scalise may well hang on to his whip, and the idea that he is a racist is false. The reality is that Scalise is, as repeated stories have illustrated, merely another Washington power broker who — as noted in Newsmax — will “talk to anyone.”
There’s nothing wrong with a politician who will “talk to anyone.” Will he learn? Will the GOP establishment learn? Will John Boehner and Steve Scalise be replaced?
Don’t bet the ranch. The hard fact here is that the cultural mess in the Washington won’t be cleaned up as long as establishment insiders are in the saddle.
