http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1831372/posts
2004 - Log Cabin Congratulates Our Victorious Candidates (2004) (Note, McCain and Paul on the list)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1519618/posts
Republican Main Street Partnership (George Soros is funding the Moderates)
Jim Nicholson, former Republican National Committee Chair - meeting
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985970-2,00.html
Members of Team 100, an elite group of Republicans who have given more than $100,000 to the party, received an extraordinary letter this week from John Moran, finance chairman of Bob Dole’s presidential campaign and former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. As first reported in the Washington Post, Moran charges that the R.N.C. has been hijacked by the Christian Coalition “and others who are adamantly opposed to a moderate agenda”; that these forces (led by Coalition executive director Ralph Reed) engineered the election as R.N.C. chairman of Jim Nicholson, who “will now be beholden to the far right for their support”; and that as a result, the members of Team 100 ought to be “giving consideration to throwing our financial support to a committee or organization that has a more moderate Republican political philosophy.” Saying the Coalition is at a point where it is “exercising significant control” over the R.N.C., Moran suggests that the G.O.P.’s future “is in jeopardy.”
During this same timeframe, the Federal Election Commission was suing the Christian Coalition for illegally supporting the Republican party.
John Moran told the party’s wealthiest donors to give their money to someone else, because the Republican National Committee is under control by religious extremists.
Coburn co-chairs the Congressional Family Caucus and is an exemplar of Christian Coalition values: He scores 100 percent on the Pat Robertson-Ralph Reed machine’s voter guides. But is he anywhere near the American mainstream that decides national elections? Panicked GOP elders had to school him in the fact that nudity and violence were just plain unavoidable in the Holocaust before he retreated.
It’s religious-right poster boys like Coburn who make some Republican leaders fear that their party is doomed to drive away even more women and moderates, thereby continuing its losing streak in presidential elections and risking a bicoastal congressional meltdown. A post-election survey by American Viewpoint, a GOP pollster, for the Log Cabin Republicans found that Christian Coalition support made voters dramatically less likely to vote for Dole-Kemp everywhere except the South.
When Ralph Reed once again lorded his power over the party in January - bragging to the columnist David Broder that ``Christian conservatives were decisive’’ in electing James Nicholson to succeed Haley Barbour as GOP chairman - one party powerhouse got sore enough to take action. John Moran - the GOP and then Dole finance chairman in recent years - wrote a letter to 15 other Republican heavy-hitters saying that the Christian Coalition and far right had put the party ``in jeopardy.’’ He proposed that big donors give to a separate organization to promote a more moderate GOP.
In an interview, Moran, a 65-year-old retired investor and a self-described ``quiet’’ conservative, told me he’d rather be playing golf at home in Florida than fighting for his party. But once his letter leaked out to Dan Balz of The Washington Post, he was deluged with calls from others in the GOP ``donor base’’ tired of ``raising money to support a part of the party we don’t agree with.’’ Two weekends ago in Palm Beach Moran spoke to an executive meeting of Team 100 - the top, six-figure GOP contributors - and found that instead of having to defend himself he was ``really well received.’’
Moran says he is ``not trying to split the party.’’ He will meet with Reed and be hopeful about Nicholson (``I will give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being’’).
But what if the religious right’s intransigent litmus tests, especially about abortion, preclude a recentering of the GOP? Won’t the Christian Coalition’s tough grass-roots organization trump Moran’s big bucks?
``Yes, the moderates have the money and the hard right has the organization,’’ says Moran, ``but you can build all kinds of organizations with money.’’ Tanya Melich, the usually pessimistic author of The Republican War Against Women, says a Moran rebellion could succeed where others have failed because it involves ``white male establishment Republicans - a lot of them, not just a few - and not just Northeastern moderates but those living in areas where the party is basically strong.’’
Moran’s is not the only closeted post-election GOP insurgency. In Washington, 17 congressmen are organizing the Main Street Coalition - which one of its leaders, Amo Houghton, describes as a mirror image of the Democratic Leadership Council, the group instrumental in nudging the Democratic Party from the left to the Clintonian center. But Main Street is not only an effort to formulate centrist GOP policy. It is recruiting a ``star-studded cast’’ of civic leaders, says Rick Lazio, the Long Island congressman, among them top businessmen ready to write checks. ``It’s almost scary how easy it is to sell it,’’ he adds, which may be as good a poll as any of just how much Main Street and Wall Street Republicans alike are finally willing to challenge the far right. MEMO: Mr. Rich’s column is distributed by the New York Times Syndicate,
122 E. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10168.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E3D71230F933A15752C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
January 20, 1999
G.O.P. Urged to Quit Group Called Racist
The chairman of the Republican National Committee called on his fellow party members today to resign from the Council of Conservative Citizens, saying ‘’it appears that this group does hold racist views.’’
‘’A member of the party of Lincoln should not belong to such an organization,’’ said the chairman, Jim Nicholson.
He appealed directly to Buddy Witherspoon, one of the party’s national committee members from South Carolina, to resign from the council. Mr. Witherspoon told Mr. Nicholson that he would not.
Mr. Witherspoon insisted that the council’s South Carolina chapter held no racist views, but was simply an advocate for conservative causes, especially the right to display the Confederate flag in the South.
The council, based in St. Louis, has become a national embarrassment for the committee in recent weeks amid reports that two Republicans, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, and Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, spoke at its meetings. Both have distanced themselves from the group.
http://www.lcrga.com/archive/99021401.shtml
Log Cabin Republicans, Inc.
Excerpt:
RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson insisted there is “a cause for optimism” about GOP relations with minorities. He said their “shared legacy,” dating back to the party’s founding on an anti-slavery platform in 1854, is “a foundation on which to build” better relations.
In addition, the party’s next presidential nominee could help it overcome the legacy of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” with a more moderate message such as “compassionate conservatism,” a favorite term of Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.
But as long as candidates such as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, now campaigning for Congress in Louisiana, feel at home in the GOP, the “ party of Lincoln” is going to be viewed with suspicion by minorities.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1796766/posts
From the ORIGINAL Cache of the 2004 Republican National Convention
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Log_Cabin_Republicans
Log Cabin Republicans campaigned AGAINST Bush in 2004.
Log Cabin (Republicans) need to account for where they got the money to fund the $1M ad campaign against President Bush in 2004 in key battleground states. This is a Federally-regulated organization (IRS and FEC rules apply!), but they have never documented where this money came from.
Better late then never? Too little too late?
I’m leaning toward too little too late.