RNC chair Michael Steele. Photo: WDCpix

WASHINGTON — The “suggested amount” portion of the donation form is crossed out. There isn’t a box to check for no donation, so the would-be donor has simply drawn and filled in a new bubble and scrawled “NO.”

“What the hell happened in NY District 23?” writes the anonymous donor to an unrewarded Republican National Committee. “You guys supporting Dede Scozzafava?”

The form is one of many collected by blogger, columnist and TV pundit Michelle Malkin since the RNC chipped in for the doomed congressional campaign of Scozzafava, a moderate Republican who eventually withdrew from a November 2009 special election and helped Rep. Bill Owens (D-NY) squeak past Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. In the wake of Monday’s Daily Caller story on the RNC’s lavish spending, including a $1,923 check to the Voyeur West Hollywood nightclub — an embarrassment to RNC Chairman Michael Steele for which the offender, Allison Meyers, was fired, and her upcoming events postponed — Malkin put up another batch of defiled RNC donation forms, with graffiti like “Fire Steele. Hire Cheney. (Dick or Liz.) Then Get Back to Me.”

The Voyeur story dogged the RNC all week, especially after the committee pointed to outsized Democratic National Committee expenses as a distraction (giving the DNC an opportunity to take another whack at the juicier RNC tale) and after Politico noticed that a typo on one solicitation form sent donors to a phone sex line. But for many conservative activists, it only accelerated and amplified a revolt against the RNC that had been brewing for months. It’s given the growing number of conservative PACs and projects a new selling point to potential donors. And it’s emboldened the sizable number of loose-lipped Republican activists who are working to create new institutions outside of Steele’s purview.

“This nightclub story is absolutely awful,” said Eric Odom, a Tea Party activist and the chairman of Liberty First PAC, “but the RNC just came off of a meeting in Hawaii, and that was even worse. I don’t think there are conservatives who are going to turn on the RNC just because of this story. I think it’s the nail in the coffin.”

According to Odom — who famously denied Steele a speaking slot at the April 15, 2009 anti-tax Tea Party in Chicago (Steele, at the time, denied that he had wanted to speak) — donors to Liberty First PAC have been submitting RNC-bashing notes along with their checks. One out of ten donations via Paypal, said Odom, came with a message along the lines of “2009 was the last year I’ll donate to a party.”

Mark Skoda, the leader of the Memphis TEA Party who launched the Ensuring Liberty PAC at February’s National Tea Party Convention, told TWI that the troubles that had beset the RNC would be impossible in his group — and potential donors knew it.

“We’re not going to be buying first-class tickets,” said Skoda, who is convening the first meeting of Ensuring Liberty’s board next week. “There’ll be no big parties. We’re operating like a business. I used to work for FedEx — these things like vast overcharges didn’t happen.”

Skoda, who said he “felt bad” for Steele after hearing the Voyeur news, emphasized that Ensuring Liberty would be “a complement,” not a competitor, to the RNC. It would back Republican candidates, albeit after making sure they fit the PAC’s exacting standards and didn’t just have an “R” next to their names on the ballot. But other conservatives are less diplomatic. On Wednesday night, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins sent a blunt message to supporters: “Don’t give money to the RNC.” On Thursday afternoon, the Leadership Institute — whose president, Morton Blackwell, is an RNC committeeman – posted a Facebook message commenting favorably on the Perkins news. (Blackwell is out of the country and did not respond to requests for comment.)

The evidence of conservative donors taking their money elsewhere is hard to track. In the final quarter of 2009, for example, the most prominent competitors for conservatives’ donations pulled in modest amounts of money. Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the group behind the Tea Party Express, had only $161,174 in receipts. The Senate Conservatives Fund, Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) PAC to aid his hand-picked candidates, raised $238,189. By comparison, the RNC raised $22,295,310. But activists point to the RNC’s low cash-on-hand numbers to make their case.

“The bottom line is that Michael Steele never should have gotten this job in the first place,” said one exasperated conservative fundraiser. “Nothing that’s happening now should surprise anyone.”

That criticism has surfaced again and again as conservatives court donors for their projects. On Thursday, Jonathan Strong — the reporter whose initial Voyeur story started the latest stampede against the RNC – cobbled together the last few years’ worth of negative stories about Steele’s managerial and financial problems. They hadn’t been enough to push conservatives away from Steele when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 or the RNC chairmanship in 2009. Indeed, in 2005, conservatives rallied around Steele when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hacked into the Senate candidate’s credit report to get the details on his personal bankruptcies.

Conservatives are no longer giving Steele a pass on those stories. The less faith small- and big-dollar donors have in the RNC, the more valuable they can be to other PACs, which are not being shy about soliciting their support.

“When I fly, I fly coach,” said David Bossie, the chairman of Citizens United and its political PAC, another competitor for small-dollar conservative donors. “We’re not lavish. If you donate to us, you know your money is going right back into the field to support conservative candidates, seeking out people who wouldn’t otherwise get support.”

The Susan B. Anthony List, the American Conservative Union’s PAC and Our Country Deserves Better can all point donors to their low-overheard campaigns in NY-23 or the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate, contrasting those with the performance of the RNC.

The party committee is well aware of its predicament. “The press shop’s about as busy now as it was during the days that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suspended his presidential campaign,” groused one conservative strategist who’s worked with the RNC.

The problem for conservatives is that dividing their efforts, and nurturing mistrust in the RNC, might damage the GOP’s 2010 strategy even if competing groups are well funded.

“You’re seeing a lot of small donors, who in other times would be discovering the party committee, going to these PACs instead,” said Anthony Corrallo, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies campaign finance. “Large amounts of potential money that the RNC may have been able to attract are now going elsewhere. And you’d rather see money located in the parties — the RNC can do much more coordinated GOTV [get out the vote] and advertising.”

RNC defenders could point the detractors to the left’s experience with divided effort. In 2003, a team of big liberal donors that included George Soros and Peter Lewis founded America Coming Together, spending more than $10 million for GOTV. Because ACT couldn’t coordinate with the Democratic Party or John Kerry’s presidential bid, some of its efforts were wasted. And in 2007, the disbanded group paid a $750,000 fine to the FEC for fundraising violations.

It remains to be seen whether conservatives can avoid a similar fate.

GOP candidates Charlie Crist, John McCain and Ed Lynch have all taken a hard stand for health care repeal. Photo: ZUMA

Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) agreed on one thing in their 40-minute debate on Fox News Sunday: Both of the Republican hopefuls for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat pledged to repeal the health care bill — at least, to whatever extent they could.

“What we need to do is go ahead and repeal this thing,” said Crist bluntly. “Let’s start over.”

“I think the first step is to repeal it,” said Rubio, “and we need to win a few elections before we can get there.”

Rubio has surged into a lead over Crist by promising to “stand up” to President Obama in a way the governor, who’s built a reputation as a moderate, hasn’t. Since the passage of health care reform, however, Crist has recast himself as a candidate ready to roll back health care reform — he immediately endorsed state Attorney General Bill McCollum’s lawsuit against the individual health insurance mandate. The whole exchange on Sunday revealed something that more Republican candidates are finding out: The GOP base is clamoring for its party to repeal health care reform — indeed, promising anything but full repeal can prompt a mini-revolt — but there’s plenty of wiggle room as to what exactly repeal would mean.

“You’ve got Rubio saying ‘repeal and start over,’” said Michael Connelly, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, the conservative group whose early support for Rubio was a factor in his rise. “You’ve got Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying ‘repeal and replace.’ Some kremlinologists will say there’s daylight between those statements, but as far as we’re concerned it doesn’t exist.”

If any organization can nudge Republicans toward a “repeal” pledge, and keep them honest after they take it, it’s the Club for Growth. It launched a one-paragraph “Repeal It” petition in February, when many considered health care reform a dead letter. And since the passage of reform, the number of signatories who hold or are running for electoral office has surged past 400. That number includes Senate candidates like New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, Kentucky’s Trey Grayson, Colorado’s Jane Norton and Illinois’s Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who are warily viewed by Tea Partiers and conservative voters, but who have been able to use the “repeal” message to prove their bona fides.

“It’s going to be repealed and replaced and it’s going to be done soon,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is facing a primary challenge from the right, in a Friday rally with Sarah Palin. “It will not stand.”

Republican members and candidates are reinforced by Republican governors who can complain about “ObamaCare” without tackling it legislatively. All are backed up by a steady stream of polls from Rasmussen Reports and others that seem to validate the wisdom of coming out for repeal.

“Newt Gingrich is saying we should ‘repeal and replace,’” wrote Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) in a weekend op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. “That works.” Jindal dealt with the purported impossibility of electing enough Republicans to repeal the legislation by saying his election in Louisiana had been unlikely, too. And would President Obama veto a repeal bill? “Yes, he sure would. Do it anyway. And do it again after he is gone. (By the way, President Clinton vetoed welfare reform twice before he signed it into law.)”

In the three ongoing special elections where Republicans hope to take seats once held by Democrats, “repeal” has become a rallying cry for local activists and national fundraisers. The next election on the calender will come April 13 in the 19th District of Florida, some of the safest Democratic terrain in the state. The Obama-Biden ticket won 65 percent of the vote there, while Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) won re-election with 66 percent. But Ed Lynch, the businessman running as a Republican to replace Wexler, has taken to the pages of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government to call his race “the first referendum on nationalized health care.”

“By contributing, 5, 10, or 20 dollars to our campaign,” wrote Lynch, “your donation will count towards a full and unequivocal REPEAL of the most dangerous legislation passed since this nation’s founding.”

In an interview, Lynch made it clear that he backed full repeal, and wouldn’t quibble about parts of the legislation that Republicans have occasionally endorsed, such as preventing coverage from being denied for pre-existing conditions. “This bill is going to kill our seniors,” said Lynch. “Making something less bad doesn’t mean making it good.” He would sign the “Repeal It” pledge, he said, and he’d also co-sponsor legislation Rep. Michele Bachmann has introduced to repeal the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act. “I’m a big supporter of Michele,” he said.

The other candidates who will face voters in the next two months have come around to the same argument. Tim Burns, a first-time candidate running for the seat of the late Rep. John Murtha (R-Pa.), has challenged his Democratic opponent to sign a pledge to repeal health care reform. Charles Djou, a Honolulu city councilman who’s running to replace Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), has threaded the needle a little differently, telling voters that he’d prefer a chance to fix the bill over outright repeal. He explained that he favors that approach because he views repeal as legislatively unlikely.

“Repeal isn’t going to happen unless Republicans capture a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override an Obama veto,” said Djou.

Former congressman Tim Walberg, who’s running for his old House seat in Michigan, said that a “repeal” message would work best if coupled with Republican promises to pass a better sort of health reform.

“I don’t mind the term repeal if that’s what we have to do,” Walberg said . “But I think there are some elements of the health care bill I introduced when I was in Congress that we can go back to. Reform is needed, just not this kind.”

The only political mistake Republicans can make on health care, so far, is to signal to the base that full repeal might not be a priority. Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) created an opening for a minor challenger in his U.S. Senate bid by arguing — accurately — that Barack Obama’s presence in the White House made repeal of health care reform unlikely until at least 2013. That was worrying to some Republicans, whose best-case scenario in 2011 is a Republican Congress that would be unable to override Obama’s vetos.

“I see where Republicans are with this,” said one GOP aide in the House, “but it drives me insane. What happens if you run, win, and don’t repeal?”

But for all the rhetoric, that might be where Republicans are headed. Before the health care vote, on March 9, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told a reporter that Republican voters would understand if the GOP couldn’t repeal health care reform right away. “Whether you want to call it repeal,” he said, “or whether you want to call it a referendum, I don’t think makes a dime’s worth of difference.” After the vote, on March 23, Cornyn appeared to support “non-controversial stuff” in the reform package. The blowback from the conservative base was immediate and immense. If it was a preview of what Republicans can expect before and after the midterms, it didn’t look good for Cornyn.

“Make no mistake about it,” clarified Cornyn. “I fully support repealing this Washington takeover of health care.”

Tea Party protesters in Washington. Photo: David Weigel

The moment that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill, 10 Republican state attorneys general were ready for it. Early Monday morning, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced plans to sue on the grounds that the federal government was abusing its “power to regulate interstate commerce” by passing a personal mandate for health care. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum agreed, calling the mandate an attempt “to fine or tax someone just for living.”

But beneath the headlines, press releases, petitions and donation drives that followed the historic vote, lawyers and legislators are less confident that health care reform can be repealed — much less that it can be repealed quickly. In Idaho and Tennessee, two states where state opt-outs of the federal mandate have passed (in Idaho, the legislation has even been signed by the governor), the people who will decide whether to challenge the bill are treading more carefully than the rhetoric suggests.

“Everybody needs to take a deep breath,” said Bob Cooper, a spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden. “This bill is a few thousand pages long. We need some time to review it. We need time to see whether or not it impinges on rights, how so, and whether we can bring a case that has merit. There are serious sanctions for attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits.”

Mae Beavers, a Republican state senator in Tennessee, was also cautious about how to proceed with a health care challenge. Her Tennessee Health Freedom Act sailed through the upper house, becoming a model for pre-emptive opt-out bills in other states. And while she expects a companion bill to move through the lower house, the possibility of an immediate challenge to the reform bill seemed remote.

“Our legislation says that whenever the national health care would start, our citizens will have a choice,” said Beavers. “I assume it would take a while to put together.”

The problem with a challenge, say conservatives, is that the mandate for health care — an idea with origins on the right that has become anathema ever since its implementation in Massachusetts — will not take effect until 2014. Whether attorneys general can successfully challenge the mandate until then is unclear. Thomas Woods, a conservative scholar who is putting the finishing touches on a book about nullification, suggested that challenges to the mandate will be fruitless, working their way through a legal system that has no great record of repealing major legislation.

“If states file legal challenges, who do they file them with?,” Woods asked. “The federal courts. I wouldn’t even go to the legal level. From my point of view nullification is a way to announce to the government that your state is ready to engage in civil disobedience. It boils down to this: We are confident that obeying the will of the people means not enforcing this mandate. So what are you going to do now?”

Nullification, however, is itself unconstitutional, according to U.S. Supreme Court historian and University of Texas law professor Lucas Powe.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution declares federal law the supreme law of the land, Powe told the Texas Tribune, and nullification is typically advocated by only two groups of people: “Nutcases, which is much more typical, and people who are losing at the federal level and resent the fact that they are losing,” Powe said, adding, “If you believe in nullification, you don’t believe in the constitution.”

Michael Boldin, the president of the Tenth Amendment Center — founded in 2009 to organize for such fights on behalf of state sovereignty — said in an interview that legal challenges of any kind were the “first step” to opposing health care reform. But he envisioned the resistance to the mandate taking a more low-key form: Simple, persistent disobedience.

“If I were to reduce this whole thing down to one word,” Boldin said, “I’d say: Marijuana. Look at medical marijuana in California. California passed a medical marijuana law and the federal government said it couldn’t do so, under the supremacy clause. But people continued to disobey laws and it cost more money to enforce them then to ignore them.”

As difficult as a repeal of health care reform would be, as realistic as the disobedience plan may sound to some, neither approach to the issue satisfies the high-level legal groups, pundits and politicians who have campaigned against reform. Prior to the health care vote, on the Friday episode of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck showed Sarah Palin a map of states with opt-out bills in the works — many of them dominated by Democrats, where the legislation has no chance of success.

“These are all the states that are saying, ‘No health care for us. Get your health care bill away from us,’” Beck said. “What do you think of this solution as a former governor?”

“Let’s be thankful for… those governors who want to lead their citizens to have their voice heard with this ObamaCare scheme coming down the pike,” said Palin. “That’s abhorrent. It’s unacceptable. And legal tools must be used.”

Beck and Palin were only slightly ahead of the curve — the final 72 hours of the debate saw surge in the number of Republican politicians promising constituents that health care reform could be stopped at the courts.At Saturday’s “Code Red” rally in front of the Capitol, Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., a candidate for governor of Tennessee, promised activists he’d meet federal regulators “at the state line” if elected. On Sunday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., a candidate for governor of Michigan, raised the possibility of blocking reform “at the ballot box” or “in the courts.” On Monday, Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio endorsed Attorney General McCollum’s potential lawsuit — on a mid-afternoon Fox News appearance, former Florida  Republica Gov. Jeb Bush praised Rubio and chided his rival, Florida’s current Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, for not backing the suit.

Conservative legal groups have taken much the same tack. Last week, the Landmark Legal Foundation — nominally run by conservative author and radio host Mark Levin — prepared a draft legal brief challenging any health care bill that the House “deemed passed” without a vote. Because the House held a full vote on the bill, the foundation scrapped that brief and, according to vice president Eric Christiansen, moved on to assisting attorneys general with whatever they decided to do.

Tea Partiers on Capitol Hill this weekend. Photo: David Weigel

The Tea Party activists huddled on the south lawn of the Capitol got the news of health care reform’s passage in the cruelest way. As their enthusiasm had flagged, a small group of pro-health care reform activists had nestled into space right next to the Capitol wall. Outnumbered ten to one, none of them looking a day under thirty, they learned via Twitter when the House crossed the 216 vote mark to pass the Senate version’s of health care reform. Bouncing up and down, waving faded and crumpled signs, they mugged for TV cameras. That prompted a few Tea Party activists to lower a massive American flag between the pro-”Obamacare” forces and the lights and lenses. The liberals cried foul. Park police broke the tension. And the Tea Partiers looked back at the Capitol and chanted “Na na na, hey hey, goodbye.” Just because the bill had passed didn’t mean they couldn’t kill it.

“The most important thing to remember,” said Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots, throwing her hoarse voice into a megaphone, “is that the fight for freedom, it never ends! In the next days, you’re going to find out what you can do to stop it in the Senate. If it becomes law, we’re going to fight to repeal it in the next Congress!”

The roughly 250 activists, some of them wiping away tears, cheered for Martin, then belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then recited the pledge of allegiance. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) slipped through their ranks unnoticed, then politely took the megaphone for himself.

“The American people lost today,” said Hoekstra, “but we’ve got some opportunities. We’ll fight this in the courts. We’ll fight this at the ballot box. Hopefully, in January, we’ll have enough votes to begin the process of repealing this bill.” The crowd cheered as Hoekstra — who is leaving Congress to run for governor of Michigan — walked out and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) walked in.

“I just came down here,” said King, “so I could say to you, God bless you.”

“God bless you!” shouted one activist.

“We’re here whenever you need us!” said another activist, patting King on the back.

“You are the awesome American people,” said King. “If I could start a country with a bunch of people, they’d be the folks who were standing with us the last few days. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that! Let’s beat that other side to a pulp! Let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning!” One by one, the people gathered outside the Capitol, who’d spent the day cheering and singing whenever Republicans appeared and egged them on, came to the realization that they’d been beaten in this round. They’d have to redouble their efforts.

As King spoke, FreedomWorks campaign director Brendan Steinhauser looked on, pondering over the last year of Tea Party activism — especially the last two months. On January 19, the Tea Parties helped elect Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to the seat of the late Ted Kennedy and — so they thought — put the stake in health care reform. “ObamaCare,” wrote The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes after the Brown victory, “is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.” A popular sign at the evening’s rally, spotted again at the Saturday rally that Steinhauser helped organize, portrayed President Obama as a vampire climbing out of a coffin marked “health care.” Opponents of health care reform, pondered Steinhauser, did not quite see the health care bill recovering and passing as it did.

“The media’s going to promote it as a victory for Democrats,” he said. “But I think enough people are out there — maybe they weren’t following it as closely today — who are going to pay attention now. We’re looking at what’s going to happen in the states, we’re possibly looking at legal challenges.”

Tea Party activists and Republicans were in total agreement after the call of the vote — they would go all-in on legal and legislative attacks on health care reform. But the lateness with which they considered a post-Brown Democratic victory on health care, and the speed with which they moved to a hardcore responses, mirrored the decision-making process of Democrats just a few months ago.

“We were roommates in Massachusetts, working for Brown,” said Mark Falzone, a New Jersey activist, pointing to his friend, Virginia activist David Morchek. “When we left there, we thought all this crap was over.”

Democrats had been slow to see the threat posed by Brown, a talented politician facing a creaky establishment and weak candidate, with the issues on his side. And once Brown won, Democratic leaders picked up the suggestion their left-leaning allies had been making all year — to break the logjam created by the GOP’s abuse of Senate procedure and pass a bill through the up-or-down reconciliation process. Similarly, Republicans and Tea Partiers saw Brown’s election as a game-changing event that would scare Democrats away from a comprehensive health care bill. When it became clear that Democrats would push forward, the Tea Partiers mobilized quickly.

For much of Saturday and Sunday, they hoped that their response would keep Democrats from cobbling together the votes they needed. But around 4 p.m., when news got out that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) would accept a compromise on abortion funding and swing his support to the bill, the mood outside the Capitol grew dark, and the activists who’d been talking all this time about Constitutional challenges, and the essential evil of President Obama, got vindication.

“We had a dream,” said Deborah Welch, who joined her husband Chris on an eight-hour drive to the rally from Dayton, Ohio. “All of the Democrats and all of the Republicans were on this teeter-totter, and they were falling off. Nancy Pelosi was hanging on to Barney Frank by his pants — his pants were coming down. And Obama was standing out in the grass, watching it. What that meant was that Obama doesn’t care what happens to Congress. He has an agenda. He wants to collapse America.”

Joe Chalmers, an unemployed activist who’d come to the rally in camouflage, said he wasn’t in the military — he “didn’t want to fight for oil.” But he won both criticism and nods of the head as he talked to protesters about the need for a real uprising against the Democrats. As a Democratic victory looked more and more likely, Tea Partiers got more ornery about the liberals who’d showed up to cheer for reform and take commemorative photos of what, to them, looked like the end of a year of agenda-slowing right-wing activism.

“Look at that idiot!” said Linda Cocsy, a New Yorker who’d spent the weekend in Washington for the protests, pointing at one of the young Democrats who’d infiltrated the protest, holding up a pro-reform sign provided by a pro-choice Catholic group. “This one, here with the stupid grin on his face! He looks likes he’s brainless. You look at these people and, they really look like jerks. You look at the other people, with the Don’t Tread on Me [flags], and they look like real people!” Cocsy stared off at another protester, waving a sign he’d picked up from a pro-immigration reform protest that had broken up around the time that Stupak announced his flip. “I just wanna kill them!” said Cocsy.

That rhetoric didn’t have too many takers. After passage, after King had finished talking, Rep. Michele Bachmann addressed the crowd and beseeched it to commit “no violence” as it fought for health care repeal. Instead, they needed to focus on the elections, and on holding Democrats accountable.

“Remember who caused this bill to pass!” said Bachmann. “Not only was it Nancy Pelosi, it was the so-called pro-life Democrats, who can no longer call themselves pro-life.”

I thought yesterday’s NRCC hit on Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) for the “coincidence” of voting for health care reform after his wife got to appear at a White House event promoting vegetables was sort of silly. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) did not. From her appearance on Bill Bennett’s radio show today:

BACHMANN: [T]o think what they’re flipping for. You know, Dennis Kucinich, a ride on Air Force One.

BENNETT: Yeah.

BACHMANN: And apparently the President also gave him, Dennis Kucinich’s wife and to be able to work with Michelle Obama on the next effort, which is if you eat vegan that you’ll lose weight. I think that’s the next, the next platform that Michelle Obama’s going to have. And what I understood yesterday is that Mrs. Kucinich will work together with Mrs. Obama on that effort.

BENNETT: It’s time to get the Cattleman’s Association back there.

BACHMANN: Oh my gosh, if this is what they’re selling out votes for on their side, they’re a bunch of weak sisters over there.

Can Bachmann really believe this, though? Wouldn’t the more explicable reason be that Kucinich realizes a sneaky plot to nationalize health care when he sees one? I think this is part of the pattern I’ve seen with Bachmann this week, focusing on “backroom deals” and “arm-twisting,” even when, as in this case, the allegation is awfully hard to take seriously. ]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/56490/bachmann-pushes-the-%e2%80%98kucinich-sold-out-for-veganism%e2%80%99-rumor/feed 9 http://minnesotaindependent.com/56446/nervous-tea-parties-see-possible-democratic-win-on-health-care http://minnesotaindependent.com/56446/nervous-tea-parties-see-possible-democratic-win-on-health-care#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:29:32 +0000 David Weigel http://minnesotaindependent.com/?p=56446

Demonstrators at Tuesday's rally on Capitol Hill. Photo: David Weigel

“Might as well not even be here,” grumbled Georgia Holliday. “I can’t believe that Dick Armey screwed up like this!”

Holliday was not alone. Having traveled into the city from the suburbs for the 10 a.m. “Code Red” rally on the Capitol grounds, she got more and more annoyed that she couldn’t hear any of the speakers. (She was also annoyed at the wrong Tea Party activist — the Code Red rally was sponsored by a coalition of Tea Party groups, while a different, 9 a.m. rally had been organized by Armey’s FreedomWorks.) As Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) waved a copy the massive Senate version health care bill — “I brought an abortion to show you!” — Holliday winced and chanted her disapproval.

“Kill the bill!” she said. “Kill the bill! And get us a PA system!”

The Code Red rally was small, drawing around 300 people into a noisy circle. So was the FreedomWorks “People’s Surge,” which sent Tea Party activists onto Capitol Hall to seek out one-on-one meetings with members of Congress whose votes could decide the fate of health care reform. Both events were mocked for their size, by Democrats and liberal groups that had grown used to explosive media coverage of the conservative movement. “I’ve been to birthday parties that drew more people,” sneered DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan in an email to Politico’s Ben Smith.If the relative fizzle fazed Tea Party organizers — FreedomWorks had hoped for closer to 2500 activists — they didn’t show it. Rob Jordan of FreedomWorks told smug Democrats to wait for election day: “You can count on people showing up.” Libertarian and conservative blogs reported on larger Tea Party protests happening in Michigan and San Diego.

But the smallish numbers of the March 16 Tea Party push amplified the new attitude coming from politicians and activists: pessimism. Slightly over a year since the start of the movement, Tea Party activists were, for the first time, contemplating a major legislative victory for President Barack Obama and the Democrats — the final passage of health care reform. While many held out hope that plans to pass the Senate’s version of reform in the House would stall out, others pondered their next steps. Some, like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), took a dark view of what might come.

“Right now, they’re civil, because they think they have a chance of stopping this bill,” said King to reporters, waving his arm at a pack of “People’s Surge” activists forming a line to enter the Cannon House Office Building. “The reason we don’t have violence in this country like they do in dictatorships is because we have votes, and our leaders listen to their constituents. Now we’re in a situation where the leaders are defying the people!” Later, King would expand on those remarks and speculate on a possible anti-Washington revolt in which Tea Parties would “fill the streets” of the capital.

Few Tea Party activists were as pessimistic as King. All agreed that the determination of Democrats to pass a bill — post-September 12, post-Massachusetts special election — was getting harder to overcome.

“Nothing they do surprises me!” said an exasperated Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express. “Nancy Pelosi has said, ‘If we can’t get through the fence, we’ll go over it; if we can’t go over the fence, we’ll catapult over it; if we can’t catapult over it, we’ll parachute over it.’ So, basically, they’ll do whatever it takes. Just a total disregard for what the American people want.”

Activists spent the day — they plan on spending most of this month — trying to convey just what it is they say Americans want. Those who arrived at the Hill on Tuesday morning were handed thick packets of advice on how to lobby members, and who needed their attention. Those who couldn’t make it there could pick up other guidelines at a small “war room” set up at a hotel a few blocks south of the Capitol. In all cases, activists were given advice on how to complement the phone calls and faxes that were coming to targeted representatives from, largely, Americans who didn’t live in their districts. A white sketchpad in the war room ran down a few possible responses to members who blanched at talking to the activists.

“If you are not a constituent and they don’t want to talk to you,” advised war room organizers, “ask — ‘If you won’t talk to someone from outside of your district are you ready or willing to pledge not to take money from donors outside of your district?’ Or — ‘If I gave you a donation, would you talk to me?’”

The lobbying had mixed results. A group of activists from Georgia told TWI that they were trying to lobby Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.), who has said he’d vote “no” on the Senate bill, after a difficult time lobbying Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), who has said he’d vote yes.

“We spent an hour with him,” grimaced Kathryn Jackson, a retired hospital worker from Fortson, Ga. She pointed to a lamppost. “It was about as useful as talking to that, right there.”

Kathy Ropte — like Jackson, a member of the Harris County, Ga. Tea Party, had started to move beyond lobbying. As cameras snapped away, she stood in front of the Cannon Building and announced the termination, “to take effect in November,” of pro-health care reform members. One activist chided her for the display, which included a massive sign reading “Waterboard Congress.” Jackson didn’t care. She was in the fight, whether or not health care reform passed.

“One day I turned off American Idol,” Ropte told TWI, “and I turned on Fox News. Before this year I’d never voted in my life.”

Of the activists who spoke to TWI, none were ready to give up on opposing health care reform if the bill passed. Some, however, were looking to other potential fights. Jane, a Montgomery County, Md. activist who declined to give her last name (”my kids don’t want to see it show up in the paper!”) suggested that a health care win would free up President Obama to give amnesty to undocumented immigrants, possibly by an executive order. Susan Clark, whose sign compared the health care bill to the notorious Tuskegee Experiment, suggested that passage would bring Democrats a step closer to enforcing a new “slavery” over Americans. But most activists who pondered the aftermath of health care reform’s passage said they would fight on, looking for ways to roll it back. Susan Birch, a Chester County, Penn. activist, sported a button for insurgent Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Sam Rohrer because he was pledging to make the governor’s office “the front line” against government expansion.

“Whatever Congress does,” said Birch, “you’re going to see the 10th Amendment invoked to stop it.”

The thought of a post-vote backlash — electoral and legal — was the cheeriest thought of the day.

“I’ve got a standing bet with [Rep.] Jason Altmire [D-Penn.],” said Henry Hill, a retired police officer and member of the Pittsburgh Tea Party. “A case of Yuengling says that the mandate will not go through the Supreme Court.”

Mitt Romney at a book signing in Huntington, N.Y., on Wednesday. Photo: William Regan-Globe Photos)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) effectively clinched the 2008 Republican presidential nomination in the 10 days between the South Carolina and Florida primaries. Up against a wall, with polls showing Mitt Romney moving up as Rudy Giuliani faded, McCain unleashed a new attack. Romney, he said, had given up on the Iraq War. Romney, said McCain, had wanted to “surrender and wave a white flag” and “set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster.” Thrown off his message, Romney stopped talking about the economy and tried — in vain — to get McCain to back off. Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) endorsed McCain, the senator won his state’s primary by 5 points, and within two weeks Romney would drop out of the race.

Romney won’t be caught in that position again. That’s at least some of the rationale for “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” a book he is launching with a national tour, a round of media sit-downs, and a series of speeches. The title — which Romney credits to an aide after he had spent “at least six months trying” to think of one — is a knock on President Barack Obama for purportedly conducting an “American Apology Tour” in other countries. For roughly 100 pages, Romney lays out a vision for American foreign policy defined against Obama’s “radical reworking of American and Western leadership” — and what Romney characterizes as Obama’s view that “America is in a state of inevitable decline.”

For a politician whose every action points at a 2012 White House bid, it’s a bold move. As unemployment hovers near 10 percent and health care reform trudges through Congress, support for Obama’s approach to foreign policy has been a source of strength. Polling released in January and February found approval of Obama’s handling of terrorism in the 50s, even after a thwarted airplane terror attack on Christmas Day 2009. A Gallup poll released last month found support for Obama on foreign policy at 51 percent, 15 points higher than support for the president’s domestic record. A Franklin & Marshall poll released last week found the same thing, with 57 percent of Americans backing the president’s approach to Afghanistan and a slight majority backing his overall foreign policy. The president and his party are more vulnerable on economic issues, which Romney, a self-made multimillionaire, has a unique ability to speak out on. Instead, he’s opted to challenge Obama on his foreign policy strength.

“It’s a good juxtaposition,” said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Republican Party in Romney’s first home state of Michigan. “Obama has said he kind of wants to create this new world order. It’s been a year since his worldwide tour, and we haven’t seen many successes — potential adversaries are taking advantage of our perceieved weaknesses.”

Romney’s focus takes advantage of several developments in Republican Party politics. Despite Obama’s popularity on national security, one of the surest ways to draw standing ovations in conservative crowds is to call the president out for weakness, apology, “abandoning our allies” or “giving civil rights to terrorists” — points Romney made in his speech to CPAC and makes again in “No Apology.” And as Republicans look toward possible presidential candidates for 2012, the current field lacks any contenders with the built-in national security credibility of McCain. Some Republican strategists and conservative activists say that opens the door for any candidate to win over veterans and national security-minded voters by speaking out first and taking a hammer to Barack Obama.

“There are really no divisions between Republicans on national security,” said Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain campaign strategist who now works with Liz Cheney’s Keep America Safe. “There will be events we can’t predict, so you’ll see the candidates take different positions. I think you saw that in 2008. Everybody’s for keeping Gitmo open, so Romney will say ‘double it.’”

During Romney’s 2008 run, tactics like that couldn’t quite win over the GOP’s national security voters. In exit polling of the Florida primary, for example, 44 percent of Republicans called McCain “most ready to be commander-in-chief.” The 27 percent of primary voters who’d served in the military backed McCain by seven points over Romney; those with no service record backed him by only three points.

But no candidate on the 2012 horizon has a record like McCain’s — or any military record to speak of. Among the dozen candidates seen as most likely to jump into the race, politicians whose names have appeared on straw polls or who have been invited to address GOP dinners, none served in the military.

“If you’re gonna run for president you just have to make clear what your foriegn policy stances are,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and a Fred Thompson backer in 2008 who eventually switched to Romney. “It may have more to do with views and ability than with whether you were a corporal or private in the military. Perhaps what [Romney] wants to do is check that box on his resume. Everybody has to check that box.”

The way that Romney checks that box in “No Apology” is illustrative, with positions inspired by neoconservative thinkers — Fred Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Thomas P. Barnett – cited throughout the text. America, argues Romney, is one of four competitors with “distinct strategies for twenty-first-century world leadership,” with the others being China, Russia, and “the jihadists.” Romney sees the first two rivals increasing their military power in a way that might cut America out of their spheres of influence. Were China, for example, to “become capable of declawing America’s military in Asia, they will gain freedom of action to do whatever they choose in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.’” The solution to this is more military spending: Romney calls it “inexplicable and inexcusable” that the 2009 stimulus package “devoted almost no funding” to defense. In other sections of the book, as in his speeches, Romney argues that President Obama is creating mounting crises by not dealing aggressively with critics of American power. “The day is coming,” he writes, “when [Venezuelan President] Chavez announces a ‘peaceful’ nuclear program organized and supported by the mullahs in Iran.”

These, said Republican strategists, are arguments that will build up Romney’s commander-in-chief credentials in the possible 2012 field. Possible candidates like Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), they said, hadn’t focused on national security to the same extent. Only supporters of Newt Gingrich suggested that their candidate could get a jump on Romney, pointing out that the former speaker of the House is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor at the National Defense University and a co-chair of the UN Task Force, and has held other educational or ceremonial defense positions. But no one argued that Romney was staking an early claim on the GOP’s national security vote.

“By articulating it early,” said Anuzis, “by making a strong case early, he establishes his credentials — even if they are theoretical and political.”

At the same time, liberals who look at the foreign policy polling data are skeptical that Republicans have so many openings on President Obama’s national security record.

“There is a large sub-group of the Republican base for whom this is absolutely a winning argument,” said Heather Hurlburt, a Clinton administration veteran who now leads the National Security Network. “There’s a larger swath of moderates/independents — maybe as much as a third of the electorate — for whom national security is a ‘threshold issue.’ They aren’t — consciously — voting on national security issues. But they can’t really take in a candidate’s pitch on jobs, healthcare, values, whatever, if they haven’t first been convinced that the candidate will keep them safe and shares a baseline understanding of the threats we face. The ‘06 and ‘08 elections — and Obama’s ratings on national security and foreign policy — show that these people can be quite receptive to international approaches that start with diplomacy, engagement, cooperation and persuasion — as long as they believe that strength will be used when necessary.”

Some conservatives agreed, saying that whether a candidate like Romney can ride this message to success in 2012 — not just primary victories, but the White House — depends on what Obama does. David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter who now runs the Frum Forum website, wondered whether Obama was benefiting from a “benefit of the doubt bump.” It would take a while to sort out whether Romney’s play for national security cred was working.

“He’s got a theme and a tone,” said Frum, “but not a message.”

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) Photo: EPA/ZUMApress.com

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) blockade on extending temporarily unemployment benefits put the Tea Party movement in an unfamiliar position. Instead of nudging the Republican Party to take a stand, activists watched a politician pick an anti-government fight they didn’t even know existed.

“We’ve just been so consumed with the health care issue,” said Jennifer Hulsey, a Georgia-based leader of the American Grassroots coalition. “People are only now starting to take a stand on this.”

After a slow weekend, said Hulsey, the group only developed a position on Bunning’s blockade during a Tuesday night conference call, shortly after Bunning relented. Other conservative activists and Tea Party groups also took their time in responding — but in the end, most of them got behind Bunning. What Democrats saw as a perfect opportunity to turn American opinion against Republican obstructionism in the Senate became, with only a few exceptions, an opportunity for conservatives to endorse a slowdown of Senate business. Late Tuesday, when Bunning announced a hold on all pending nominations, activists were confident that Democrats would blink first in a conflict that the majority party could have ended on day one, had they been honest about what they were doing and willing to invoke cloture.

“Senator Jim Bunning has taken a courageous stand, to hold the Democrats — in fact, all of us — accountable for the the things we say we believe,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). Bunning, argued DeMint, was making a point about Democratic hypocrisy on “pay-as-you-go” rules, and Democrats were spinning unfair scare stories about Americans left without unemployment benefits.

“I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who in his role leading the National Republican Senatorial Committee is tasked with electing a Republican to replace the retiring Bunning. “It’s not fun to be accused of having no compassion for the people who are out of work.”

The conservative enthusiasm for Bunning echoed in his state, where he was once so unpopular that Republicans not-so-quietly urged him to step aside. All three of the Republicans seeking to replace Bunning endorsed his stance, starting with frontrunner Rand Paul. At a rally in Lexington, pro-Bunning activists stood with Paul and chanted “Pay Go, Pay Go.” That chant revealed how, after a fitful start, Bunning’s explanation for his blockade — he is not opposing all aid, just that which would add to the deficit — had trickled down to the conservative base.

Like the Tea Party organizers, Democrats and liberal activists didn’t anticipate Bunning’s blockade. But unlike their opposites on the right, they had been looking for a fight to demonstrate how Republicans are gumming up their legislation. And in the search for a villain, Bunning seemed to come from central casting. Never a fan of political etiquitte, Bunning responded to a criticism from freshman Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) with a crisp insult: “Tough shit.” When ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl attempted to buttonhole Bunning with questions, the senator made a rude gesture and physically prevented him from entering an elevator.

“We need this to end,” wrote Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in a column for the Huffington Post. “Debate big differences. Disagree. Use the filibuster when big matters of principle hang in the balance — and sometimes they do. But at the end of the day, Washington has to function — people are counting on it.”

Conservative activists hesitated in responding to that spin. But by Tuesday, when the stunt was reaching an end after four days, the smart take was that Democrats were intentionally letting Bunning act out in order to make a political point. Conservatives like Erick Erickson of RedState took obvious delight in being pilloried by liberal organizations like Media Matters when they spoke out for Bunning. In a series of blog posts, Erickson argued that Democrats could have stopped Bunning’s filibuster on day one, but had instead sparked an ideological argument that conservatives should be happy to have.

“Reid is doing this for a photo op,” Erickson told TWI, arguing that the majority leader was misleading voters by letting Bunning’s stand be portrayed as a filibuster. “He has the votes. It’s just one senator [who] said he will not go along with unanimous consent without knowing where the money is coming from.”

By the time Bunning abandoned his quest, that was conventional wisdom among conservatives. “Liberals think they have discovered a winning issue – conservative obstructionism,” wrote conservative activist Gary Bauer in a daily e-mail message to supporters. “Today, all three major networks tuned in to the Senate’s proceedings to broadcast live coverage of Senator Bunning blocking the $10 billion ‘emergency’ spending bill. This one appropriation is not newsworthy, but the Left thinks Bunning is making its case as to why socialized medicine must be passed using budget reconciliation rules. This is a perfect example of how the media distort what conservatives in Washington are doing and how they manipulate the news.”

According to Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, the furor over Bunning was the latest in a line of liberal campaigns to make conservatives like Rush Limbaugh the face of obstructionism, and the reason that Democrats couldn’t get bills through the Senate.

“For all the talk of Obama as some kind of messiah, I see a bunch of guys trying to score junior high school tactical wins,” said Norquist. “They keep setting up cheap shots against these straw men. If setting up a phony fight with Limbaugh didn’t work, you think a fight with Jim Bunning will? Who’s Jim Bunning? You have to explain this to voters who haven’t even heard of him.”

Not everyone in the grassroots, given some time to watch the strategy, agreed with Bunning.

“He comes across as a hardass, don’t you think?” mused Robin Stublen, a Florida Tea Party activist who’s often critical of Republican efforts to court the movement. “Some of his argument was legitimate. Some of it was grandstanding.”

That kind of criticism, however, was a distinct minority.

“Some weak-willed Republicans don’t want the GOP to be cast as the heartless Scrooges taking away ‘temporary’ unemployment benefits that have become enshrined permanently,” wrote conservative blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin. “If Republicans can’t stand up and question the permanent Nanny State and can’t point out the unintended consequences of liberal intentions without folding like card tables, what good are they?”

“I’m glad someone up there is finally asking the question, how are we going to pay for this?” said Judson Phillips, whose Tea Party Nation group sponsored the National Tea Party Convention. “In my family, when our income is down, that is the first question we ask. I don’t care how important the spending is. That question must be answered.”

Rep. Ron Paul. Photo: Zuma Press

The news that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had won the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll — beating Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who only garnered six percent of the vote — was leaked early, to soften the blow. Before GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio had even begun to click through a Powerpoint presentation that shared the results, reporters were informed of Paul’s easy, 31 percent victory over nine Republicans tipped as serious 2012 contenders. Those reporters started to write stories on Paul’s surprise win, waiting for the official announcement — and an explosion of jeering and booing in the main ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Sighing with relief, press aides for the annual conservative conference made sure that the on-site media had heard that reaction.

Just as relieved were mainstream GOP activists and traditional conservative thinkers who were pondering ways to make the party electable again. “I think Mitt Romney’s 22 percent was impressive,” said Rob Willington, a Massachusetts Republican strategist who’d designed GOTV technology for now-Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). He was reflecting on the poll — not too significant, he said — in Murphy’s, a bar a few blocks from the hotel, late Saturday. Romney’s forces, he said, hadn’t lifted a finger; Paul’s had campaigned for the prize.

In another corner of the bar, conservative author David Frum, editor of Frum Forum (formerly New Majority), brushed off the result. “The Paul people all voted and the others didn’t,” said Frum. “I’m hoping it’s a matter of self-selection.”

The importance of minimizing Paul’s win united conservative activists like almost nothing else that came from the three-day conference. Even Brad Dayspring — who, as a spokesman for GOP whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), counts on Paul for “no” votes — fired off two tweets dismissing the result. But the 2,395 ballots cast were a CPAC record, up from the 1,757 cast in 2009, when Mitt Romney scored his third conservative win. And moments after the Paul results were booed, the crowd gave a roaring ovation to radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck, who rewarded it with a 56-minute lecture on “progressivism’s” war on American values with historical lessons — the evil of the Federal Reserve, the destructiveness of Woodrow Wilson, the folly of “spreading democracy” — that had featured prominently in Paul’s speech, too.

For as little attention as it got — for the first time in anyone’s memory, the news cycle-driving Drudge Report did not even run with the news — Paul’s victory in an unscientific straw poll revealed plenty about the state of conservatism. Narrowly,  More broadly, it provided a look at the ideological hardening going on within the conservative movement as it girds for the 2010 elections. According to some polls, the Republican Party is on track to recover control of Congress and have a voice again in how America is governed. At CPAC, there was far less attention on how the party would govern America than on the need to disavow its past, popular embraces of “big government” — and on the need to embrace a hardcore libertarian philosophy that views environmentalism and the progressive movement as fatal threats to freedom.

Paul’s youthful crusade of hopeful libertarians — its size and its enthusiasm — was one of the real surprises of the conference. Paul-inspired or affiliated groups occupied five booths in the event’s exhibit hall; the Campaign for Liberty (the organization he launched after folding his 2008 presidential bid), Young Americans for Liberty (the student group launched at the same time), Students for Liberty, the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, and the Future of Freedom Foundation. Libertarian CPAC attendees packed room after room for lectures by the likes of Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano and likely 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. They passed out a documentary about the Paul campaign, “For Liberty,” and copies of “Young American Revolution,” a magazine for college students with contributions ranging from an essay on economics by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to a Wake Forest University student’s tipsheet on how she organized a blockbuster speech by Paul on her campus.

The Paul-inspired groups were responsible for one of the pivotal moments of the three-day conference. On Friday, Students for Liberty president Alexander McCobin used his speech in the rapid-fire “Two-Minute Activist” line-up to “commend CPAC for inviting GOProud,” a gay Republican group. That got a rise out of Ryan Sobra, an anti-gay activist who followed McCobin and condemned the conference for inviting the group. When he was booed, Sobra confusingly attacked Jeff Frazee — the head of Young Americans for Liberty. But he was onto something — it was the presence of Paul fans, who had crowded into the room for his upcoming speech, that meant Sobra would get more boos than cheers.

“I was thanking my lucky stars that the Ron Paul fans were there,” said Jimmy LaSalva, the executive director of GOProud, in a Saturday interview with The Independent. “The Campaign for Liberty deserves a lot of credit for setting that tone.”

Paul’s influence surfaced in other ways that were less helpful for CPAC’s optics. The far-right John Birch Society, of which Paul has been a longtime supporter, made a showy return to the mainstream conservative fold with a co-sponsorship and booth at CPAC; because the organization helpfully offered free, spacious merchandise bags, plenty of CPAC attendees walked around sporting JBS logos. Oath Keepers, a year-old coalition of right-wing military veterans, helped distribute copies of the Paul documentary — a favor to Paul activist Michael Moresco, who had won the organization’s “citizen activist of the year” award for biking from the Statue of Liberty to Alcatraz Prison. “It’s the direction I think this country’s headed,” said Moresco — from freedom to imprisonment.

But far from being controversial, Paul’s critique of conservatism — that the GOP lost its way by growing government and must promise to slash and abolish as much as possible if it wins again — was a constant theme. It was present on Saturday when Ann Coulter, a CPAC star for whom the ballroom filled up an hour before her speech began, argued that conservatives needed to abolish the IRS and the CIA. When she ran out of jokes about John Edwards’s sexuality and Ted Kennedy’s drinking, she suggested that the GOP needed a no-to-everything philosophy similar to Paul’s. She paused and mugged when that inspired a chant of “End the Fed” — a Paul-divined slogan.

“I’m curious about this movement over there for eliminating the Fed,” said Coulter. “Yes, End the Fed.” She answered a Paul fan’s question by admitting that “if Ron Paul supports it and it’s not about foreign policy, I’m for it.”

On the surface, rhetoric like that contradicted a much-noticed CPAC theme — praise for George W. Bush. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told The Independent that Bush boosterism was a friendly show of support for “our guy” after eight years of drubbing by liberals. And that was it.

“For seven years he didn’t speak at CPAC,” said Norquist. “The eighth year we didn’t want him and he showed up because CPAC was one of the only places he could speak to without being booed. Here was a man who deliberately divorced himself from the movement.” Medicare Part D, the Department of Homeland Security, and all the rest of it hadn’t been forgotten.

Outside of the conference, some critics accused activists of a kind of nihilism that wouldn’t be productive for Republicans. “CPAC has becoming increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years,” grumbled Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show, “one of the reasons I didn’t go this year.”

Huckabee would only allow that the Paul win reflected “the anger and the mood” that was fueling Tea Party protests and Democratic losses in some key elections. In a separate straw poll question on activists’ opinions of conservative leaders, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) was found to be the most popular figure in Republican politics– 71 percent said they liked him. In the Senate, DeMint has worked to block and filibuster as many Democratic initiatives as possible while proposing government-slashing, entitlement-cutting, brazen bills of the kind Paul’s long discussed. At CPAC, he said he’d rather have a Senate with “30 Marco Rubios” — the Florida candidate for Senate who keynoted the conference — than “60 Arlen Specters.” When asked how that made sense in the era of constant filibusters, DeMint said a crisis would lead the way to more pure policy.

“In the short term, we can’t expect to get any of our ideas through,” DeMint told The Independent. “But at some point, we’re going to be forced to do something. It’s not going to be so much a matter of political philosophy if we can’t pay our debts and we’re facing default. At that point I think you’re going to see even liberals realize we don’t have any choice. We just need to be in a position where we have enough conservatives to come up with some functional policies to get us out of this.” DeMint shook his head. “I hope it won’t take a complete breakdown for us to come together.”

Paul wasn’t around to enjoy his triumph. On Saturday morning, he returned to his east Texas district to debate three opponents in his early March Republican primary. But before leaving on Friday night, he reflected on how and why his constant refrain for fiscal austerity and abolishing most 20th century government expansion had become Republican dogma.

“When I went back to Congress in 1996, Tom DeLay came out to a function in my district,” Paul told The Independent. “He came out of it and he said, ‘You know what? Ron said that 20 years ago! Now it’s the same message and 20 more years.’” Paul turned and stopped to talk with a gushing middle-aged fan, then turned back to The Independent.

“And with more credibility on the economics!”

Dick Cheney, with his daughter Liz, made a surprise CPAC appearance Thursday. Photo: UPPA/ZUMApress

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney has not spoken at any Tea Parties. He has largely avoided the messy debates over the 10th Amendment, nullification, Paul Ryan’s budget proposals, and whether TV stars should be punished for using the “R” word. But at CPAC, at his mid-afternoon address to an overflowing crowd of conservative activists, it was like he’d been waving a Gadsen Flag and a tea kettle from the start.

“God bless every American who said ‘No!’” said Romney. “It is right and praiseworthy to say no to bad things. It is right to say no to cap-and-trade, no to card check, no to government health care, and no to higher taxes.”

The audience at this annual conference — one where he has regularly won the presidential straw poll, but one where he’d never been quite adopted as a true son of the movement — roared with approval. Romney had been introduced by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), who never mentioned his party affiliation during his insurgent special election bid, but used it twice before the CPAC crowd. Romney, said Brown, was one of the “leading lights” of the GOP.

Brown had teed up the crowd for a jeremiad against “liberal neo-monarchists,” a “failing” president, and the threat of a “Godzilla-size government bureaucracy.” They cheered even louder when Romney pushed the envelope. He said the rebellion against Obama hinted that “history will judge President Bush far more kindly” than his successor for “pulling us from a deepening recession following the attack of 9/11″ and “[keeping] us safe.”

In one speech, the year-long journey of conservative activists had come full circle. The last time they gathered for CPAC, George W. Bush had handed the presidency to Barack Obama and Democrats had dramatically expanded their majorities in the House and Senate. Inside the hall, they accepted blame for Bush’s failures; outside the hall, the first Tea Party rallies saw conservative activists declaring independence from Bush’s TARP and Obama’s stimulus package.

On Thursday, the Tea Party and libertarian factions of the conservative base re-entered the fold and took center stage in packed-to-the-rafters educational panels. And at the same time, those mainstream conservative groups invited these activists to rejoin the Republican Party that had disappointed them. They’d learned their lessons. They’d closed the book on their failure. And in retrospect, didn’t Bush and Cheney seem pretty good?

“We owe you an apology,” said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) in a low-key speech delivered to a room that was quickly emptying out after Romney’s speech. “But more importantly, we owe you what we have been doing since January 2009.” Since Obama’s victory, argued McCotter — and most everyone else at CPAC — the essential goodness of the GOP and the rightness of its policies had been brought into relief.

“Oh my God!” said David Bossie, the president of Citizens United, who was manning his organization’s booth and accepting constant congratulations for its victory in the “Hillary the Movie” campaign finance reform case. “Barack Obama is the employee of the year for the conservative movement! Every conservative should keep a picture of Barack Obama in his office and — you know how when people go to Notre Dame games, they kiss the sign? Every conservative should kiss that picture.”

Jerry Doyle, a syndicated conservative radio host, says the crowd’s outlook for the midterms reminded him of the attitude of fans walking into the Superbowl — “Everybody’s been waiting for the big game, and here it is.” He’d spent years talking to conservative callers who were fed up with Bush, but he wasn’t surprised at the speed with which conservatives and independents turned on Obama, or the speed with which angry activists took another look at what the GOP could offer.

“I think people had said, ‘You know what, my government’s going to be there for me, take care of me.’ And they found out, no, it’s not.” When Americans grew sick of their government, “Obama just happened to be the figurehead.”

That was the attitude that united conservatives who’d remained faithful all along and conservatives who were returning to a post-Bush movement. The biggest surprise of Thursday’s schedule was a walk-on appearance by former Vice President Dick Cheney, following a speech by his daughter Liz that re-litigated arguments Republicans had made against Obama for years — at one point, she accused him of “calling small-town Americans ‘bitter.’” The ovation for Liz’s father rolled on for more than a minute; he drew more applause predicting that Obama would be a “one-term president.” And when he headed down to the exhibit hall for a brief radio interview, some members of his entourage sported “Draft Cheney 2012″ stickers handed out by GOProud, a gay Republican group whose booth was doling out reels of Draft Cheney stickers.

“This grew out of conversations we were having back in November,” said GOProud’s Jimmy LaSilvia, pointing to the group’s chairman of the board Chris Barron. “He kept saying, ‘Cheney’s the guy! Cheney’s the guy!’” As he talked, more activists grabbed stickers, wearing them in proud view of hovering media cameras, and few CPAC attendees were completely cold on the idea. Some suggested that a terrorist attack might boost Cheney’s political stock. The cause was popular enough to draw in activists less than 100 percent comfortable with a gay Republican group.

“I got it from GOProud,” said Colt Ables, a student at the University of Texas-Arlington, shrugging a little with embarrassment. “But I like Cheney, so I’m wearing it.”

Conservatives who winced at the Bush-Cheney record were out in force, but serious disagreement with the back-to-Bush conservatives was hard to find. Two years ago, Ron Paul’s presidential campaign was lacking a booth in the CPAC exhibit hall until Mitt Romney dramatically quit the presidential race and opened up space for their back-to-1776 brochures. This year, Paul’s Campaign for Liberty occupied a larger section of the exhibit hall than any group except the NRA, with reams of fliers, copies of Young American Revolution magazine (with an illustration of Paul taking the presidential oath on the cover). An intern, Sam Swedberg, donned a sumo suit, a grey wig, a Wal-Mart-bought gingham blouse, and a nametag identifying him as “Big Sis Janet” — Janet Napolitano — challenging passersby to wrestle him. Jeff Frazee, who runs Young Americans for Liberty, said his libertarian peers were making out just fine with the neoconservatives whom Paul opposed strongly enough to endorse a trio of third party candidates in the 2008 presidential race instead of the McCain-Palin ticket.

The once-extreme obsessions of Paul’s fans bled into the rest of the convention. They were present in speeches from mainstream figures like Romney, and they were present in lectures that filled large rooms to overflowing. Tom Woods, the author of “The Politically Incorrect History of the United States” and a sometime ghostwriter for Paul, spoke to a packed room on the subject of nullifying federal laws.

“[Nullification] has only been used by evil people who hate America and hate black people and want to oppress people,” said Woods, sarcastically characterizing  the arguments of critics. “Oh, yeah. Because the federal government would never oppress people!”

Republican politicians couldn’t really avoid the arguments of Paul acolytes and Tea Partiers. “Senator DeMint, great speech!” said one fan who grabbed the South Carolina Republican on the way to a book signing. “But why didn’t you talk about the Fed?” But the enthusiasm was welcomed. Not even the John Birch Society’s presence in the exhibit hall (their display included a rare CPAC sight, a book attacking Bircher critic William F. Buckley) was very controversial. Republicans argued that the base was speaking for America, that Democrats were really “the party of no” because they didn’t listen to Tea Partiers.

“The Republican Party should not attempt to co-opt the Tea Parties,” said Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), in a speech framed around his potential ascension to the Speaker’s chair if his party wins the House. “I think that’s the dumbest thing in the world. What the Republican Party will do is listen to them, talk to them, and walk among them. The other party can’t say the same.” And he beseeched activists to help the GOP out with a new Contract With America-style statement — it wouldn’t “come from the mountain,” said Boehner, but from the party’s rejuvenated base.