Palin PING!
Anyone on or off the Palin ping, write me.
...
Mistrust the ACU, which is a lot of things, but certainly not Conservative. The liberal moles are everywhere. A guy who supports SPECTER and ROMNEY is heading the ACU? LOL!
Posted on 07/09/2009 12:44:31 PM PDT by Antoninus
David Keene, the Chairman of the American Conservative Union trashed Sarah Palin publicly today on NewsMax. However, a quick search of Mr. Keene's recent political contribution history reveals the following:
David Keene, Managing Associate of the Carmen Group Lobbying Firm, and Head of ACU, Alexandria, VA.
Political contributions in 2008 election cycle:
KEENE, DAVID, ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC 5/1/07 $1,000 Specter, Arlen (R)
KEENE, DAVID, ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC 12/19/07 $800 Specter, Arlen (R)
KEENE, DAVID, ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC 12/19/07 $200 Specter, Arlen (R)
What I want to know is, how does a guy like this get to be the chairman of the ACU? Has the American Conservative Union turned into the American Liberal Republicans Who Are Now Democrats Union when we weren't looking? Apparently so.
That said, if I were Sarah Palin, I'd take this guy's advice and toss it in the bin with the rest of the fish guts.
-
Palin PING!
Anyone on or off the Palin ping, write me.
...
Mistrust the ACU, which is a lot of things, but certainly not Conservative. The liberal moles are everywhere. A guy who supports SPECTER and ROMNEY is heading the ACU? LOL!
THANK YOU FOR GIVING THIS ITS OWN THREAD!
Not guilty.
Hammer one more nail in the Mittbot coffin.
Agreed, he should be the poster boy for Liberals Posing as Conservative.
Doesn’t the ACU consistently give Specter low marks?
Wow.... There goes any respect I had for the ACU. I'm embarrassed at all the times I've quoted their ratings on this site. Oh well... Off I go to delete their bookmarks.
ACU leader??? With that track record!!! PPHHFFTT!!!
sphinters of a feather and all that...
Could be. They are probably playing both sides. It’s important to discredit and boycott them. I won’t ever look at the ACU rating again to evaluate a candidate. ACU has been exposed as a RINO tool.
Ramesh Ponnuru
May 28, 2003, 8:30 a.m.
Lobbyist Bites Dog
David Keene’s Pennsylvania surprise.
ou would expect David Keene to be on board for the Toomey campaign. Keene is the chairman of the American Conservative Union. Pat Toomey, a House Republican from Pennsylvania, has a 97-percent rating from the ACU. Toomey has been a leading advocate of personal accounts for Social Security. He sponsored a bill in 2001 to make President Bush’s tax cut larger. He has tried to force spending restraint on his colleagues in both parties.
Toomey is running for the Senate in a Republican primary against the incumbent, Arlen Specter. The latter is one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate. He voted to shrink Bush’s tax cut in 2001. He is a leading advocate of cloning. He wants to grill Bush’s judicial nominees to make them pledge their fealty to diversity. He voted against impeaching President Clinton. And so on. Specter has a lifetime rating from the ACU of 47 — a fact that Keene acknowledges.
Yet Keene has written a column in support of Specter.
Keene notes that Specter has sometimes been a useful ally of conservatives, as in the confirmation of Clarence Thomas. This is true, but it is not much of an argument for keeping a 47-percent conservative when you could have a 97-percenter. A conservative could nonetheless support Specter in good conscience on the theory that Toomey would be likely to lose the seat for the Republicans, and that in today’s circumstances that is not a risk that should be taken. I wouldn’t agree with this argument myself: Toomey has a pretty good track record in places you wouldn’t expect conservatives to do well. But in any case, Keene does not make this argument from pragmatism.
Instead, he claims that Specter is worth supporting for his personal qualities: “I’ve known and worked with Specter for more than a decade. . . . He is honest and decent, and, unlike many of his colleagues, his word is always good. When he’s with you, he’ll tell you, and when he’s against you, he’ll let you know that, too. . . . I may be going soft, but I like him. I like his honesty and his willingness to listen. . . . Arlen Specter is what we used to call a standup guy. He isn’t always with us, but when he is you can take his word to the bank. He’s willing to climb out of his foxhole and take on the opposition. . . . It may not count with many conservatives, but it counts with me.”
Well. It must be said that Keene’s view of Specter as a likable fellow is, um, not universally shared. But be that as it may. There are plenty of liberal Democrats in the Senate who are honest and affable as well. We would not, however, expect the chairman of the ACU to endorse them on that basis, or even to stay neutral in their races.
Thirty-three Republican congressmen have written to the ACU’s board of directors to express their “dismay” at Keene’s endorsement, which, they claim, “has brought discredit and embarrassment to your fine organization.” They acknowledge that Keene’s column was not written in his capacity as the head of the ACU — although the column did identify him as such — but say that it has “placed in doubt” the ACU’s “commitment to conservative principles.”
Some conservative activists are also raising the question of whether Keene has a conflict of interest. As The Hill also notes, Keene is “a managing associate with the Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental affairs firm.” In other words, a lobbyist. A brief review of the lobbying-disclosure reports reveals that Keene is frequently listed as doing lobbying work that concerns the Senate Appropriations Committee: for example, lobbying on the appropriations bill that funds the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services. No doubt all this lobbying activity is directed toward shrinking the federal government. But it is worth noting that the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Labor-HHS appropriations is — Arlen Specter.
Keene’s colleague Donald Devine recently wrote a memo arguing that conservatives, their movement having been taken over by imposters comfortable with big government, should start a new magazine. I disagreed with Devine’s analysis. But a new, less compromised version of the American Conservative Union may well be in order.
I always thought there was something weird with ACU; their rankings seemed meaningless to me, and always loose enough to protect RINOS!
July 22, 2003, 11:00 a.m.
Not So Keene
The ACU chairman sells out.
By James Justin Wilson
avid Keene is a man of many hats. He’s best known to conservatives as head of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which describes itself as the oldest conservative advocacy group in the nation. He’s also a columnist for The Hill newspaper. Finally, he’s a managing associate of the Carmen Group, a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm.
Recently he’s also been the target of a tough letter signed by 33 House Republicans, including Sue Myrick, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “The individual actions of Mr. Keene have placed in doubt the ACU’s commitment to” conservative principles, they wrote.
They were objecting to Keene’s endorsement of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a liberal Republican, over his conservative primary challenger, Rep. Pat Toomey. Keene called Specter a “standup guy” despite his “anemic” 47 percent rating from the ACU. Toomey received a “spectacular” 97 percent, which was still not good enough to garner Keene’s endorsement.
Specter just made that impossible case even harder for Keene to make when he announced his opposition to a bill that would offer $13 million dollars to Washington, D.C.’s public schools and another $13 million towards vouchers. Evidently Specter isn’t willing to stand up for the District’s struggling students (even though California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, among others, is).
The problem appears to stem from Keene’s work as a lobbyist. As Ramesh Ponnuru recently pointed out, Keene has business before Senate panels chaired by Specter.
This is not the first time Keene’s commitment to conservatism has been called into question. Since 1998, Keene has lobbied on behalf of Citizens for State Power (CSP), a coalition of interests opposed to federal energy deregulation. In the late 1990s, Keene and fellow ACU board members Craig Shirley and Grover Norquist lobbied against federal energy deregulation. With the help of Shirley’s public-relations firm, Citizens for State Power produced a number of anti-deregulation ads that claimed federal involvement violated the traditionally conservative notion of states’ rights.
With billions at stake, lobbyists of every persuasion wanted a piece of the pot. While Keene and Citizens for State Power were lobbying Republicans with their concern for states rights, the Electric Utility Shareholder’s Alliance (EUSA) used populist rhetoric to lobby Democrats against federal involvement. So much money changed hands during the debate that it led one lobbyist to remark in CQ Weekly that it was a “two-Lexus issue,” referring to the number of cars lobbyists could each afford for their efforts.
Most conservatives — including many Republican congressional leaders and experts from conservative think tanks — agreed that federal deregulation was necessary to resolve interstate issues and introduce competition into what many previously considered a “natural monopoly.” They agreed that only federal legislation would foster free market competition and lower energy prices for consumers while state efforts would preserve the utility monopolies. Keene, Shirley, and Norquist quickly found themselves siding with Ralph Nader and liberal organizations like People for the American Way and the Public Citizen.
Even stranger was the fact that Keene involved the ACU in the deregulation debate at all. With other controversial issues — like the compromise between free trade and protectionism — Keene has kept the ACU out of the fray.
“In years past, I did lobbying for The Limited, which is a free-trade company,” says Keene. “There was always the possibility that the ACU would be charged that I was coming down on one side because of my client. So the ACU just didn’t do anything about it.”
“This is not an issue of federal versus state regulation. It’s the government versus consumers,” says Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute. “Both sides are partially right on energy deregulation, but you quickly lose sight that the real enemy is government regulation on any level. What I’m more concerned about is when these groups make states-rights arguments and seem to have another agenda in mind.”
Months later, after deregulation efforts failed, the Washington Post reported that a secret coalition of nine state electric utilities funneled $17 million dollars into Citizens for State Power, and its liberal counterpart, the Electric Utility Shareholders Alliance. The campaign, which was known as “The Project,” created front groups in an effort to garner public opposition to deregulation.
At the height of the legislative battle, CSP ran radio ads attacking former Republican Representatives Steve Largent of Oklahoma and Rick White of Washington after they spearheaded the deregulation debate in the House. A memo obtained by the Post claimed that “For the first time in this debate there were palpable political consequences for appearing to support [deregulation]…In the case of Rick White, those consequences were direct and career threatening.” White, in fact, went on to lose his reelection bid.
“In my seven and a half years in Congress, that was the most unusual alignment I ever saw,” says Largent. “I saw people at the ACU, who are typically very conservative in their views, basically prostitute themselves to a monopoly. My experience is that there are few people in Washington that are pure, and David Keene is surely not one of them. To hide behind the moniker of the ACU and then hold some of the positions that he holds is wrong.”
While Citizens for State Power was attacking Republican legislators and opposing free market legislation, Keene used his position as chairman of the American Conservative Union to endorse the CSP agenda. Keene, who was actually working for CSP and the Carmen Group, signed a number of public letters as chairman of the ACU.
Keene explained that he was signing letters and lobbying as a private individual and that his role as chairman of the ACU was used only as a means of identification, not endorsement. But fellow ACU board member Steve Moore disagrees: “I think it’s impossible for him to have a separate political identity from the ACU.”
“Whatever issue you are on, there is a great deal of lobbying money on both sides,” says Keene. “The problem is that if you run an advocacy group, your greatest value is to someone you don’t agree with.”
That’s especially true when you’re willing to hire out your services. CSP paid Keene’s Carmen Group more than $160,000 in fees from 1998 to 2002, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. Keene denies that he received any of CSP’s money directly, but admits that he is a salaried employee of the Carmen Group.
Keene and the ACU’s opposition to deregulation is not confined to energy. On a number of occasions Keene has lobbied against federal telecommunications deregulation using the same states rights mantra. Most recently, he wrote a letter to FCC chairman Michael Powell — on ACU letterhead — pressuring him to preserve states rights in telecom deregulation. Keene’s employer, the Carmen Group, had a $100,000 contract with AT&T, the deregulation proposal’s principal opponent. It is almost a certainty that Keene doesn’t describe these activities to his grassroots donors.
Finally, regarding Specter, nearly half of Keene’s clients in 2002 — and over $900,000 in income for the Carmen Group — involved lobbying in front of Specter’s various Senate committees. Little wonder he chose to endorse the Pennsylvania liberal, even at the expense of a conservative.
Perhaps Keene really does agree with CSP and AT&T on deregulation. If so, he is virtually alone among conservatives who have studied the issue closely. The trouble is that Keene’s public identity as a prominent conservative who runs the ACU is not separable from his other life as a lobbyist. Whenever Keene advocates against conservative principles on behalf of a client, many assume he represents the views of the ACU as a whole rather than the for-profit interests of the Carmen Group. On numerous occasions he identified himself as the ACU’s chairman, not as a representative of the Carmen Group or CSP, when writing about an issue of interest to his clients. Even his column in The Hill hasn’t consistently mentioned his affiliation with the Carmen Group, which happens to be a frequent advertiser in The Hill.
Keene risks permanently tarnishing the reputation of the ACU. Perhaps he put it best in his own newspaper column when he described the problem Larry Klayman created for Judicial Watch when he began to attack fellow Republicans: “The question is whether [Klayman] can get conservatives or others to continue to write checks to his operation while he attacks DeLay rather than Clinton. Whether one likes him or agrees with him, Larry Klayman has now put his future and that of the organization he founded on the line.”
So has Keene.
— James Justin Wilson is an NR intern.
When I ran for public office in ‘04 I would routinely appear at functions also attended by Specter and he came to know me as “The guy who won't shake my hand and looks at me when he talks about phony Conservatives in his speeches.”
I just emailed David A. Keene telling him I'd never be associated with his organization as long as he's the head of it.
Oh yeah, that Specter...real conservative!
David A. Keene (born May 20, 1945) is the current chairman of the American Conservative Union, a position which he has held since 1984. Additionally, he is the managing associate at the Carmen Group Lobbying, a lobbying firm based in Washington, D.C. In December 2007, Keene endorsed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he served as the National Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, Keene has been involved in politics since the 1960s when he served as the Special Assistant to former Vice-President Spiro Agnew. He has also served as the Executive Assistant to former Senator James Buckley, Southern Regional Director for former President Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful 1976 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, National Political Director for George H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful 1980 presidential campaign, as well as an adviser to Senator Robert Dole’s 1988 and 1996 presidential campaigns.
David Keene has been named a John F. Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and was chosen as a First Amendment Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Freedom Forum. He also serves as a member of the Board of Visitors at Duke University’s Public Policy School, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association. In 2007, he co-founded the American Freedom Agenda, described as “a coalition established to restore checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the executive branch.”[1] Keene resigned his position with the American Freedom Agenda in 2007.[2] He is also the co-chairman of the Constitution Project’s Liberty and Security Committee, and has said that “The right to appeal one’s detention to an independent judge is a cornerstone of responsible, conservative governance.”[3][4]
Keene, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, writes a regular column for The Hill, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C. newspaper for whose online edition he also provides blogs.
ENOUGH WITH THE PALIN PICTURES!
I feel like such a hag looking at them.
I can’t wait to see the GOP “good old boy” establishment destroyed.
Message to Romney, message to the head of CPAC. Message to Steve Schmidt..
we are angry and we are going to take our rage out on you. Give us our party back.
This is not your father’s ACU.
So, Paige, how does it feel now to learn that your contributions to CPAC were probably used to bash Palin and back the RINO Romney and the ex-RINO Specter?
SW, brother (or sister?), you and jessduntno (and others) come up with some GREAT photos! Thanks for faithfully pinging.
Must be that “big tent” thing.
The RINOs and liberals have captured all the institutions and basically act as linebackers for the liberal GOP, playing the rest of us as boobs. No different than Jessy Jackson and Sharp-ton being the only designated voice, and money conduit to blacks for the Democrats.
Don’t worry, some will continue to pimp the debased, arbitrary neofraud inspired ACU ratings when it comes time to denigrate certain politicians, and to promote others.
I think Keene just put himself out of a job.
Opening himself up with his Palin bashing will
not last long with Conservtives.
He was running under the radar, but not now.
What a Schmuck.
Brother! (Or already father... LOL!)
Keene doesn't just sleep with the enemy--Keene double-Simonizes the enemy's Zil.
This deserved its own thread...
According to FEC individual searches, Keene gave $500 to Citizens for Arlen Specter in September 2002, another $1500 to the same group throughout 2003 and 2004, and another $500 in January 2006.
KEENE, DAVID
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22310
THE CARMEN GROUP
FUND FOR A FREE MARKET AMERICA
10/20/2000 250.00 20036543148
KEENE, DAVID
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
CARMEN GROUP/MANAGING ASSOCIATE
UPTON, FREDERICK STEPHEN
VIA UPTON FOR ALL OF US
06/30/2006 500.00 26930227161
KEENE, DAVID
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
COLLINS & COMPANY/EXECUTIVE
KOLBE, JAMES T
VIA KOLBE FOR CONGRESS
05/02/2004 500.00 24961814862
KEENE, DAVID
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
WEXLER & WALKER/LLOBYIST
PITTS, JOSEPH R.
VIA FRIENDS OF JOE PITTS
02/06/2007 250.00 27930748668
KEENE, DAVID
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION/CHAIR
TAYLOR, CHARLES H
VIA CHARLES TAYLOR FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE
01/12/2006 1000.00 26960078038
KEENE, DAVID
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC
SPECTER, ARLEN
VIA CITIZENS FOR ARLEN SPECTER
05/01/2007 1000.00 27020273673
12/19/2007 200.00 28020324150
12/19/2007 800.00 28020324149
KEENE, DAVID A
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
CARMEN GROUP INC
BURNS, CONRAD
VIA FRIENDS OF CONRAD BURNS - 2006
09/16/2005 500.00 25020492560
KEENE, DAVID A
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
THE CARMEN GROUP/GOVERNMENT AFFAI
SANDHILLS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
05/24/2004 1000.00 24971250809
KEENE, DAVID A MR.
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION/CHAIR
DAVIS, JO ANN S.
VIA JO ANN DAVIS FOR CONGRESS INC.
11/14/2005 500.00 26990215856
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22310
THE CARMEN GROUP
SPECTER, ARLEN
VIA CITIZENS FOR ARLEN SPECTER
09/20/2002 500.00 23020050622
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
CARMAN GROUP
HYDE, HENRY JOHN
VIA HENRY J. HYDE FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE
12/31/2003 250.00 24990045639
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
CARMEN GROUP INC./EXECUTIVE
AMERICANS FOR TRUTH IN POLITICS
12/10/2003 500.00 24990194041
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
THE CARMEN GROUP
SPECTER, ARLEN
VIA CITIZENS FOR ARLEN SPECTER
02/13/2003 250.00 23020161568
09/16/2003 250.00 23020383077
11/10/2003 250.00 24020052122
02/04/2004 250.00 24020220398
10/19/2004 500.00 24021050644
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR MR
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC
SPECTER, ARLEN
VIA CITIZENS FOR ARLEN SPECTER
01/12/2006 500.00 26020980273
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR MR.
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
THE CARMEN GROUP COMPANIES/MANAGI
KELLY, SUE W
VIA SUE KELLY FOR CONGRESS
09/27/2006 500.00 26960521635
KEENE, DAVID ARTHUR MR.
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
THE CARMEN GROUP/CONSULTANT
CRANE, PHILIP M
VIA CRANE FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE
10/20/2003 250.00 24990324747
KEENE, DAVID MR
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22311
THE CARMEN GROUP/GOVT RELATIONS
BURR, RICHARD M
VIA RICHARD BURR COMMITTEE; THE
09/21/2005 500.00 26020132450
Elitists - they’re who we’re truly against. Doesn’t matter what label they have after their name.
They believe in the concepts of elites who are morally and intellectually capable of substituting their goals and decisions in place of YOUR individual goals and decisions.
Unacceptable. Time for a purge.
Keane on Specter: “He is honest and decent, and, unlike many of his colleagues, his word is always good. When he’s with you, he’ll tell you, and when he’s against you, he’ll let you know that, too”
Well, except when push comes to shove and he’s losing big time in the GOP Primary. Just ask Sen. Cornyn.
Keene, like most inside-the-beltway types of any party or stripe, is a self-promoter. He’s figured out how to game the system and make himself fat from donors by simply using the language those donors want to hear. Ultimately, it’s all about HIM.
Guess we weren’t paying attention when we should have been...
bookmark
Only group to donate to is Heritage Foundation. They are the only "conservative" group that did NOT embrace open borders and other "liberal-lite" ideas and positions.
I used to donate and attend ACU yearly event but quit after having Keene treat a conservative Canadian at my table with disregard and a very snippy attitude.
Remember - it's how you treat the "little"' people when no one (except a small few) are watching, mirrors the genuine attitude of servitude and humility (same goes for Frank Luntz - a TOTAL JERK!)
Liberal leftist Republicans start and promote these groups to take money, members and air time away from real, authentic groups.
I’ll tell you about the GOP. NOTHING ON THE LEVEL.
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