Yeah, hard to believe, huh? This is from the Chicago Tribune.
Posted on Fri, Jun. 06, 2003
ACLU membership among Republicans up since Sept. 11, 2001
BY NAFTALI BENDAVID
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Membership in the American Civil Liberties Union and similar groups has soared since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an increase that is especially noteworthy because the ACLU appears to be making significant headway among conservatives, who have traditionally despised the organization.
The ACLU has signed up such prominent conservatives as former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a firebrand whom liberals loved to hate when he was in Congress. It has formed lobbying alliances with right-leaning groups from the American Conservative Union to the Eagle Forum to Americans for Tax Reform.
"You name it, we've gone into bed with them," said ACLU spokeswoman Emily Whitfield.
While it is impossible to know for sure, ACLU leaders and conservatives believe a major portion of the 100,000 members who have joined since the Sept. 11 attacks have come from conservative ranks. The dramatic expansion has brought the ACLU's membership to 400,000, by far the largest in the group's 80-year history.
The increase suggests that despite the war on terrorism, many Americans remain deeply troubled by the potential for the federal government overreaching that is embodied in such antiterrorism measures as the USA PATRIOT Act, which expands eavesdropping powers. The ACLU has often served as a barometer of public anxiety about big government.
The ACLU's expansion is not unique; the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on Internet privacy, has nearly doubled from 5,000 members to 9,000. "It's a general sense of fear and distrust of government, and concern that police and the Department of Justice are getting more power than they should have," said Kevin McLaughlin, the foundation's membership director.
But it is the ACLU, the nation's premier civil liberties group, that has undergone the most striking transformation. The group, which has always claimed to be nonpartisan, is seizing on the attacks in an attempt to remake itself - polishing its image, aggressively reaching out to conservatives and launching new ads. The ACLU holds its first full membership meeting in Washington starting Wednesday, and it will include a day of lobbying on Capitol Hill.
"I think the ACLU is taking its reputation and its image more seriously," said Laura Murphy, who heads the group's Washington office. "What we are doing ... is repositioning the ACLU. And for some people, they're rediscovering us on a whole panoply of issues."
That is especially true of conservatives, who previously had little time for the ACLU but are deeply concerned about the Bush administration's antiterror initiatives. "It's scared a lot of conservatives," Barr said. "They now recognize that we do have common ground with the ACLU."
Many were startled when the ACLU signed up Barr, an outspoken prosecutor in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, as a consultant last January.
Of course, many conservatives have a libertarian streak, so the alliance may not be as strange as it first appears. "The Republican Party that I grew up in was a civil libertarian party," said Sheila Kennedy, author of "What's a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU?"
The ACLU and its new allies have held forums, written letters to lawmakers, button-holed members of Congress and otherwise argued that the Bush administration's push for expanded eavesdropping powers and enhanced information-gathering is dangerous.
The alliance is all the more striking because many on the right have distrusted the ACLU for years. Former President George Bush, the current president's father, famously accused Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign of being a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" - a crack calculated to please the conservative base.
Today, a Web site affiliated with the conservative Coral Ridge Ministries portrays the ACLU as virtually satanic. It features a snarling wolf with the legend, "The ACLU: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing."
Some conservatives seethe at the ACLU's opposition to school prayer and its support of gay rights and abortion rights. In addition, many on the right consider the ACLU to be hypocritical for paying scant attention to gun rights.
But as the government has accrued more power since the Sept. 11 attacks, many conservatives are increasingly concluding they are on the same side as the ACLU.
Shortly after the World Trade Center collapsed, Congress enacted the PATRIOT Act, expanding the FBI's wiretapping and search powers. Another government initiative, CAPPS II, would use databases to scrutinize every airline passenger and assign that person a threat level of red, yellow or green.
A Pentagon program called Total Information Awareness, which is now on hold, would monitor individuals' credit card purchases, bank records and so on in the hunt for terrorists.
The ACLU has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with conservatives to battle each of these proposals.
"On the right and left - for different reasons and coming from different places - there is concern about the government listening to everyone's phone conversations and reading people's mail," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "And when you share those kinds of concerns with other people, you damn sure better get together with them."
Added ACLU field organizer Matthew Bowles, "They're just beginning to see that we don't have horns and tails."
The two sides have not come together on every issue stemming from Sept. 11. The ACLU has been very concerned about the treatment of 762 immigrants who were detained after the attacks, while many conservatives have noted that all of them committed visa violations of some kind.
Republicans also now run Congress and the White House, and ACLU activists know their new conservative allies are more likely to get their calls returned in the corridors of power.
"I can count," Murphy said. "I know who's in charge."
This is not the first time the right and left have come together to fight what they see as a power grab by law enforcement. Both were appalled by the 1993 FBI raid on the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco, Texas, for example.
But rarely, if ever, have conservatives and civil libertarians teamed up to this extent. And that has done wonders for ACLU membership.
The organization was founded in 1920 as a response to the crackdown on dissent during World War I, and its membership stayed at 10,000 or less for years. But every time the public has perceived a threat to its liberties - during the McCarthy era or following revelations of President Richard Nixon's abuses of power, for instance - ACLU membership has spiked.
"We get letters from people saying, `I never thought I'd join the ACLU, but now I'm going to,'" said Whitfield, the group's spokeswoman.
The ACLU also has sought to increase its membership and clout over the past year and a half by actively promoting itself as the chief vehicle for those dismayed by the government's response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The group has launched a "Safe and Free" campaign designed to mobilize opposition to the antiterrorism legislation.
It has followed the cases of those detained after the attacks especially closely - sending videographers into the jails, interviewing the detainees after they were released, and filing lawsuits on their behalf.
The ACLU also has launched a television advertising campaign for the first time. An ad in the $3.5 million campaign features a narrator saying, "Look what (Attorney General) John Ashcroft is doing to our Constitution," and its shows hands crossing out and cutting up the Constitution and Bill of Rights.