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National GOP establishment lavishly funding liberal homosexual activist Richard Tisei for Congress in Massachusetts.Has long record of outrageous activity.Is this a warning where the Republican Party will go in the next few years?POSTED: October 14, 2012The Republican establishment in Washington is pouring enormous amounts of money -- over a million dollars -- into Massachusetts to elect an aggressive, anti-family homosexual activist to Congress. In Massachusetts, Richard Tisei is known as an openly "gay" liberal Republican politician who ran for Lt. Governor in 2010. Prior to that as a State Senator, among other things he worked to successfully block the people's right to vote on the Marriage Amendment. Tisei is the only Republican Congressional candidate in Massachusetts to receive such support from the national Republican Congressional campaign! Flood of expensive TV adsAnyone watching TV in Massachusetts has undoubtedly seen a flood of television ads which support just one particular Republican challenger, Richard Tisei, mostly through attacks on the Democratic incumbent, Rep. John Tierney (6th District). The ads are impossible to miss, and easily dwarf all the TV spending for Republicans in all the other Congressional districts in the state. The Republican National Congressional Committee (RNCC) has picked Tisei to be one of their so-called "Young Guns," an elite group of 30 US House challengers being touted as "the new generation of right-wing House Republicans who are looking to put their conservative stamp on Washington." (We're not making this up.) The RNCC and its super PAC Young Guns Action Fund have already spent nearly a million dollars for hundreds of 30-second ads on behalf of Tisei, and many more are planned. How radical is Richard Tisei?Tisei is both fiscally and socially liberal. His political views and record in the Massachusetts Legislature include:
Tisei believes that "gay marriage" is inevitable in America, and he plans to fight hard to make that happen sooner rather than later. He compares it to interracial marriage, and says that court decisions and laws are necessary -- that people should not be allowed to vote on it. In May, Tisei and national homosexual activist Jarrett Barrios were interviewed on Boston's National Public Radio affiliate. Here's what Tisei told NPR about gay marriage taking over America: "I look at this as more in a historical perspective. This is the same situation that popped up with interracial marriage in 1948 in California; a very controversial court decision there and California became the first state to legalize interracial marriage. It took a while for the rest of the country to catch up. State by state you saw a change, until finally the Supreme Court some 20-something years later with a decision that banning interracial marriage in the United States was unconstitutional.
You can be sure that Tisei will vote to repeal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) if he's elected to Congress. And the Republican establishment considers him a "conservative"? Most Republicans would see a Richard Tisei as the exact opposite of anyone they would support, much less someone the Republican establishment would spend enormous funds to elect to Congress. He does not appear to agree much with the Republican Party Platform, to say the least.
What is the Republican "Young Guns" program?The "Young Guns" program was by started by Congressman Paul Ryan (the current GOP VP Candidate) along with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Republican House Whip Kevin McCarthy of California. It was basically sold as a strategy to raise money to support a select group of aggressive, conservative challengers in winnable Congressional races, and nurture them to victory. In 2009 it became part of the National Republican Congressional Committee and helped in the 2010 GOP takeover of the House.
Their media image of the "Young Guns" has been well crafted. As pointed out above, the group is regularly described as "a new generation of right-wing House Republicans who are looking to put their conservative stamp on Washington." But behind the scenes, it's another picture entirely. As the Washington Post reports: Republican leaders are actively helping Tisei's campaign, and they promise that his sexual orientation and his liberal views on gay marriage and abortion rights would not make him an outcast in their conservative caucus. Super PAC is formedIn 2011, the Young Guns Action Fund super PAC (YG Action Fund) was formed to raise the big money for the 2012 election and take some of the burden off the RNCC. This past April, billionaire Sheldon Adelson (who had earlier given millions to the Gingrich campaign) gave $5 million to the YG Action Fund and they were off and running, and raising more money from other wealthy Republican donors. This year there are 30 "young gun" candidates selected for their hardcore support, including Tisei, who has already received over a million dollars from the YG Action Fund, and thus appears to be getting a particularly large share of the money.
Why are Congressional leaders supporting Tisei? Strange answers.Of all the Congressional races across the country (and across Massachusetts) why pick this one? And why Tisei of all candidates, who is loathed by the conservative base and is running against an entrenched incumbent? Why not pick a race like the 4th District that's an open seat (with Barney Frank retiring)? How did these decisions get made? It's very difficult to get any answers on this. Nobody at the RNCC would talk to us, despite numerous attempts by telephone and email.
We finally reached by Dayspring by phone this week. This was our conversation with him: We started out listing the multitude of problems with Tisei and asked Dayspring why they were supporting him. "He is the most conservative candidate running in the 6th District," he told us. But Tisei is the only Republican in that race, we said. Dayspring simply repeated: "He is the most conservative candidate running in the 6th District." But what about the other districts, we asked? What about the 4th District, with Sean Bielat. It's an open seat and Bielat got 45% last time against Barney Frank. What about the 5th District, with Jon Golnik polling very well against Nikki Tsongas? Why not support them? Dayspring simply repeated, "Tisei is the most conservative candidate running in the 6th District." Then he added, "There are no other competitive districts in Massachusetts." With the Obama voters coming out in force, he said, "to support anyone else in Massachusetts would be a fool's errand." When we started to rebut that, he interrupted, "Have you seen any Republican prognosticators that say any other races in Massachusetts are competitive?" We admitted we hadn't consulted prognosticators. "We are not in the business of throwing away money," Dayspring stated. And that was that. His attitude had become quite condescending. And it's a bit maddening to try to argue with that kind of logic, so we thanked him for his time and ended the call. Pushing hard for TiseiBesides the flood of lavish, expensive television ads, Tisei gets other red-carpet treatment from the "Young Guns" group. He gets lots of PR publicity, including TV interviews on major networks and media outlets. And in Tisei's case, it works like a charm. It's the only time you'll ever see ABC, CNN, and the Huffington Post gush over a Republican.
Also see: VIDEO: Richard Tisei on ABC News And of course, there have been various swank DC fundraising events. This past Tuesday, Oct. 9, House Speaker John Boehner personally spent the morning raising money for Tisei. The average GOP Congressional candidate can only dream of that.
The push for Tisei, of course, includes the cooperation of the Massachusetts State Republican Party, which cleared the way for him to get the early money without the distraction and delay of a primary. In 2010, Bill Hudak, a charismatic local attorney, ran in that district and got 43% of the vote against Tierney. Hudak planned to run again this time and thus would have been in a primary against Tisei. But the state party establishment pressured Hudak to drop out before the primary so Tisei could have a clear run. In our opinion, that was pretty low. (Finally, this is sadly not the first time this has happened. In 2010, Tisei was running for Lt. Governor as running mate to Charlie Baker, who described himself as "to the left of Obama on social issues." Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who claims to be a conservative, used his Republican Governor's Association group to pour over $2 million for attack ads against Baker and Tisei's opponents. It didn't work; Baker and Tisei still lost.) A gush of major "gay Republican" money for TiseiIf that's not enough, the Republican "gay money machine" is gearing up for Tisei. As the Washington Post reported on Sept. 29: The Tisei campaign has also become a rallying point for a cluster of wealthy Republican donors who support gay rights and would like to see the party move away from some of its recent harsh rhetoric on the issue. Tisei has the financial backing of some of the most prominent gay conservatives, including Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, and Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee chairman. Mehlman, now a private-equity executive, hosted a New York fundraiser for Tisei. A new super PAC supporting Republicans who approve of gay marriage — with financial backing from billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer — may enter the Tisei race in a few weeks. ConclusionLadies and gentlemen, this is your 2012 National Republican party. Diversity is much more important than conservative principles. Maybe they think that if unprincipled Republicans get elected, the liberals and the media (and their mushy RINO donors) will like them all better. The bottom line is that it's down to the same old thing: money and power. They can pretend to be conservative for the hoi polloi, but they're much too "refined" to actually hold to those principles. The YG Action Fund spokesman made that pretty clear to us. And this will only be exacerbated among the Republicans under a Romney administration, we fear. Unfortunately, in the long run everybody on the right suffers from this kind of strategy. It's very shortsighted. Without principles and real fortitude, nothing else in politics works for very long. That's pretty much what happened back in 2006, isn't it? As a Congressman, Tisei will do exactly what he did in the Massachusetts Legislature: be an aggressive fifth columnist for the radical homosexual and abortion movement, terrible on taxes, and work tirelessly to move the party to the left. None of that seems to matter to the establishment Republicans. We remember hearing how hard it was to get conservative principles into the National Republican Party Platform at the convention in Tampa this year. It was only through sheer perseverance by conservatives that it worked out. The RINOs there had tried to stack the deck, we were told, to create a much more watered down document. Tisei shows us exactly where the RINOs hope to take the party. But we'll say one thing for Richard Tisei. He doesn't hide what he believes or what his goals are. From that perspective, he's probably the only honest one in the whole bunch. Maybe the only one there with "principles." What you can doAlthough the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision has given much more influence to wealthy donors, the Party elite still cannot ignore the average person. We think it would be useful to contact the Republican National Congressional Committee either by phone or email and let them know why you will never give them a penny. We believe it's very important for them to hear that from a lot of angry people. Beyond that, give generously to individual CANDIDATES. But don't give any money the Republican Party or PACs connected with them. This is a widespread problem, trust us. In any case, you'll never be able to compete with the millionaires who seem to control things within the Party establishment. |
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