CLUB CFG 2

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see main for older</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12/17 age of trump</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see also tag</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>see WI CfG</b></font></p><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"> capt 716, 1217
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">tipping pt w/ CU?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">vs cpac</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><b>Across the river in Washington, D.C., a group of conservatives are holding an alternative to CPAC, called Principles First, </b>with its organizer noting that “When CPAC convenes this weekend, you’ll sooner find a golden statue of Trump than a conservative principle.” And in Florida, both DeSantis and Pence are set to attend a closed-door donor retreat held by <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2015/09/15/donald-trump-club-for-growth-ads-iowa-presidential-campaign/72306172/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">The Club for Growth</a>, a conservative anti-tax behemoth that spent<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/us/politics/club-for-growth-trump-desantis.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;"> $150 million</a> the last two election cycles. Noticeably absent from their invite list of potential GOP presidential candidates is Trump.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/03/16/right-wing-super-pac-runs-pro-sanders-ad-after-running-anti-sanders-ad/">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/03/16/right-wing-super-pac-runs-pro-sanders-ad-after-running-anti-sanders-ad/</a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">alex k</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">right-wing, billionaire-funded Club for Growth Action super PAC has a message for liberal voters: Billionaires behind <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joe_Biden" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Joe Biden</a> are helping the Democratic Party rig the presidential primary against <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bernie_Sanders" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Bernie Sanders</a>.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“After Mike [Bloomberg’s] $600 million couldn’t get it done, now the billionaires are propping up Joe Biden…because they own him,” says the narrator of the <a href="https://youtu.be/p8MLgSVdMIc" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">digital ad</a>. “Don’t let them steal it.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Just weeks ago, the same super PAC ran an ad attacking Sanders for his progressive positions on health care and climate change. </b>At the time, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/28/right-wing-business-billionaires-launch-attack-bernie-sanders/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a> that Club for Growth Action’s biggest donors included billionaires <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Uihlein" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Richard Uihlein</a>, owner and CEO of shipping supplies company ULINE, Jeff Yass, managing director and co-founder of financial firm Susquehanna International Group, and private equity owner John Childs.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A March 10 Club for Growth Action press release says the <b>group will spend five figures on the digital ad, which will run in the four states set to vote on Tuesday, March 17: Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio.</b></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Remember” is the fourth ad that Club for Growth Action has released in the Democratic presidential primary. The group has also run an ad attacking former candidate Beto O’Rourke and another criticizing Biden for working with “racist Dixiecrats” to oppose school busing integration. The super PAC has spent a total of nearly $180,000 on ads against Democratic presidential contenders Biden ($86,000), Sanders ($59,000), and O’Rourke ($35,000), according to Federal Election Commission data.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Club for Growth Action has made <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/recips.php?cmte=" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">over $5 million</a> worth of independent expenditures in the 2020 elections so far,</b> much of it going towards Republican congressional primaries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Other conservative super PACs have made independent expenditures opposing Biden and Sanders, as CMD recently <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/03/04/independent-spending-biden-warren-dwarfs-outside-support-sanders/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>. As of March 4, The Committee to Defend the President had spent nearly $900,000 against Biden, while the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund spent $69,000 against Sanders. Additional conservative groups have spent smaller amounts attacking both candidates.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-spacing: 3.6px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Club_for_Growth" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Club for Growth</a>, the 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit linked to Club for Growth Action, with an annual revenue of $6.7 million, is also reliant on conservative billionaires. For example, the Charles Koch-backed trade association now called The Seminar Network Chamber of Commerce donated <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/453732750/201813199349312776/IRS990ScheduleI" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">$175,000</a> to Club for Growth in 2017. A few years before, the group received <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/contrib.php?cmte=C90009945&cycle=2010" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">over $1 million</a> from the Koch-backed Center to Protect Patient Rights.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">aha wow omg:</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">cfg big lobbyist on climate vs CoC? enforcer drives polarization, RINO hunters</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><div style=""><header class="headline_block" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h1 class="headline " style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="">Climate science skeptics grasp for power in changing GOP</font></h1><section class="byline" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: 700;"><p class="authors" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.eenews.net/staff/Nick_Sobczyk" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Nick Sobczyk</a>, E&E News reporter</font></p><time datetime="2020-03-10 07:08:03 -0400" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: 400;"><font face="Times New Roman">Published: Tuesday, March 10, 2020</font></time></section></header><section class="login" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><section class="excerpt" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Skeptics of mainstream climate science and hard-line conservatives think they still have a hold on the GOP, despite a recent rhetorical evolution among congressional Republicans.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Climate science skeptics grasp for power in changing GOP</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">MARCH 10, 2020</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">As originally published in E&E News.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">By: Nick Sobczyk</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">March 10, 2020</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Skeptics of mainstream climate science and hard-line conservatives think they still have a hold on the GOP, despite a recent rhetorical evolution among congressional Republicans.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s part of a battle for the soul of the party between hard-right organizations, such as the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Club for Growth,</span> and the newfangled and well-funded ecosystem of conservative clean energy groups, led most prominently by ClearPath and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">There are abundant signs on Capitol Hill that people who question climate science are losing clout with Republicans. But they are insistent that not much has changed, particularly with President Trump still in the White House.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“I don’t think we’re losing much ground,” said Myron Ebell, a prominent energy advocate with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a longtime opponent of the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are warming the planet. Ebell helped lead Trump’s EPA transition team.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">“I do think that there’s been more hand waving,” he added, “but I don’t think Republican voters have been influenced very much by the hand waving and the shouting.”</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Party leadership on Capitol Hill would beg to differ. And even some Trump-loyal Republicans are happy to distance themselves from the climate science denial movement, even if they’re not willing to offer the kind of policies many experts say will be necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuels — the primary driver of climate change.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his top energy deputies rolled out a package of small-ball climate change bills last month, pointing to polls that show younger voters increasingly worried about the issu</b>e.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">None would reduce fossil fuel use, but they would aim to reduce emissions through carbon capture and sequestration (Greenwire, Feb. 12).</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, Republicans on powerful committees such as Energy and Commerce have largely dropped outright climate denial for the kind of “energy innovation” talking points favored by CRES and ClearPath.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Both sides now recognize climate is changing, temperature is increasing we need to do something about it,” said Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.). “We’re just speaking out and making our own views known better, and there is more evidence.”</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Policywise, what they’re doing is phenomenal and unbelievable and beyond anything we could have hoped. It truly is.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Marc Morano, director of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow]</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">The fact remains, however, that the Republican president frequently denies climate change and for a time employed a man — William Happer — tasked with performing a critical review of federal climate science.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">For skeptics and libertarian ideologues alike who want to see the federal regulatory regime torn down, that’s an important audience.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“Policywise, what Andrew Wheeler is doing is phenomenal. Policywise, what Donald Trump is doing is phenomenal,” said Marc Morano, director of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, who has questioned climate science for years.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">“Policywise, what they’re doing is phenomenal and unbelievable and beyond anything we could have hoped,” he said. “It truly is.”</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Fighting over the details</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">There’s no meaningful debate among climate scientists about whether temperatures are rising because of man’s industrial activity.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">A host of peer-reviewed studies warn of potentially catastrophic economic and environmental effects, many of which are readily apparent today, without dramatic changes to global greenhouse gas emissions. Most objections to the science have virtually zero credibility in the world’s scientific community.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Still, politically, Ebell doesn’t think it’s useful for conservatives to cede the debate because he said McCarthy’s efforts won’t convince voters who want the federal government to address climate change to vote Republican.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If local environmental groups or local media in their districts start looking into these bills and start giving them publicity in the local media, they’re going to have a hard time explaining themselves because we’ve conceded that global warming’s a problem, and we’ve got a plan which will do nothing to address it,” Ebell said.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“So I think it’s not a well-thought-out way to proceed on this issue, and I doubt that they’re going to get very much positive spin out of it with voters,” he said.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Prominent conservative organizations, meanwhile, are making similar arguments with more subtle references to the science of climate change.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">After McCarthy, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves and other Republicans came out with their package of bills last month, the Club for Growth promptly blasted it, threatening to withhold endorsements from supporters.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“When you give an inch on principle, you concede a negotiating posture that has also led to devastating bipartisan agreements on bailouts, spending and regulation,” Scott Parkinson, vice president of government affairs for the Club for Growth, wrote in a subsequent letter to the editor in The Washington Post last month.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“Club for Growth will continue to work with principled conservatives who reject climate alarmism and fight for energy and environmental policies based on sound economic principles,” he wrote.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Despite those disagreements, the Republican efforts on climate aren’t actually all that new, and they’re generally more focused on repackaging GOP-backed policies through a climate change lens.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>One of the bills they rolled out last month, for instance, would make permanent the 45Q tax break for carbon capture and sequestration, which a Republican-led Congress expanded in 2018.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Graves, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis’ ranking member, is also leading a letter to National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, to be sent in the coming weeks, urging the White House to <b>promote fossil fuel exports as a way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Top Republicans, including Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, are expected to sign.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration, of course, is already gung-ho about exporting fossil fuels, but Republicans argue that it can help the fight against climate change because U.S. exports have lower life-cycle emissions than sources in the developing world.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The current backdrop, however, is that U.S. emissions are increasing, undermining Republicans who point to emissions reductions during the last 15 years. EPA’s most recent numbers found that greenhouse gas emissions rose 3.1% in 2018 — during Trump’s second year in office — despite the continued decline of coa</span>l (Climatewire, Feb. 13).</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the party as a whole still roundly rejects carbon pricing and regulations, tools that most climate experts say will be necessary to deploy clean energy technology to the market and reduce emissions fast enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">“Looking back over the last several years there have been policies that are entirely consistent with Republican ideology that we can continue doing that achieve multiple goals,” Graves said. “My whole thing is let’s not sit here and fight over the details of the science.”</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Constituent services?</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Ebell and other skeptics dismiss conservative clean energy groups as empty vessels with money but no loyal supporters, but they’re having an impact.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">CRES alone spent nearly $500,000 lobbying on various energy issues in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to disclosure forms, including with several outside lobbying firms.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Much of the lobbying effort went toward getting clean energy priorities into the tax extenders package at the end of last year, according to CRES Executive Director Heather Reams, but CRES and ClearPath were enthusiastic about Republicans adopting their rhetoric in early 2020.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Still, Reams said she doesn’t see her group’s efforts as in direct conflict with those who question climate science. Rather, she believes she offers Republicans who want to talk about climate change a supportive landing pad.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">“They’re responding to voters,” Reams said. “So I think it’s a very unfair position that some groups are putting Republican members in. These are complex problems and deserve complex solutions, and keeping your head in the sand is not a solution.”</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">And in a sign that the climate skeptic wing’s influence could be petering out, the Heartland Institute — a conservative think tank that has long dispersed debunked theories about climate change — laid off some of its staff last week amid reported financial woes (Greenwire, March 9).</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Efforts to promote carbon taxes as a conservative solution to climate change have been less successful so far, however, showing the limits of the Republican transformation. Currently, the policy has only a small constituency.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman">Read the rest of the article here....e&e</font></p></section></section></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth">https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">koch wiki </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1;"><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">1. organization and Strategy</span></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Ties_to_the_American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Recent_Activities" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Recent Activities</span></a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Bundling_of_Insufficiently_Reported_Campaign_Cash" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Bundling of Insufficiently Reported Campaign Cash</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2015-2016_Spending_in_Wisconsin_and_Other_Senate_Races" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2015-2016 Spending in Wisconsin and Other Senate Races</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2011-2012_Spending_to_Defend_Walker_and_in_Recall_Races" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2011-2012 Spending to Defend Walker and in Recall Races</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2011-2012_Arizona_Senate_Races" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2011-2012 Arizona Senate Races</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2011-2012_Wisconsin_Senate_Races" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.5</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2011-2012 Wisconsin Senate Races</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2011-2012_Texas_Senate_Races" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.6</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2011-2012 Texas Senate Races</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2012_Attacks_on_Dick_Lugar_and_Other_Moderate_Republicans" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.7</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2012 Attacks on Dick Lugar and Other Moderate Republicans</span></a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Prior_Activities" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Prior Activities</span></a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2010_Midterm_Elections" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2010 Midterm Elections</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#.22Privatize_Social_Security.3F_Hell_Yeah.21.22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">"Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!"</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2006_Republican_primaries" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4.3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2006 Republican primaries</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2005_FEC_Lawsuit" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4.4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2005 FEC Lawsuit</span></a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-16" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#History_and_Background" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">History and Background</span></a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Club_for_Growth_PAC_Endorsed_Candidates" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Club for Growth PAC Endorsed Candidates</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-18" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#2010_Expenditures" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">2010 Expenditures</span></a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-19" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Independent_Expenditures" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5.2.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Independent Expenditures</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-20" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Club_for_Growth_Action_Expenditures" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5.2.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Club for Growth Action Expenditures</span></a></li></ul></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-21" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Core_Financials" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">6</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Core Financials</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-22" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Personnel" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Personnel</span></a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-23" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Board_of_Directors" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Board of Directors</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-24" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Staff" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Staff</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-25" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Leadership_Council" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Leadership Council</span></a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-26" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Contact_Information" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Contact Information</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-27" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Articles_and_References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">9</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Articles and References</span></a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-28" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#IRS_Form_990_Filings" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">9.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">IRS Form 990 Filings</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-29" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#Related_SourceWatch_Articles" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">9.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Related SourceWatch Articles</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-30" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#External_Articles" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">9.3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">External Articles</span></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-31" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">9.4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">References</span></a></li></ul></li></ul></div><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-family: " linux="Linux" libertine="Libertine" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" serif="serif" line-height="line-height"><span class="mw-headline" id="Organization_and_Strategy">Organization and Strategy...</span></h2><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">see daVID MCi, FEDSOC GANG OF 5</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">off bs</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="name entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; line-height: 1.36; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.01) 0px 0px 1px;">scott Parkinson</h1><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.01) 0px 0px 1px;">Vice President of Government Affairs | https://twitter.com/scotttparkinson?lang=en</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.01) 0px 0px 1px;">Scott Parkinson has worked in politics in Washington, DC for over 13 years. He has worked in the United States Senate for three Senators — John Ensign, Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio. Scott was the Executive Director of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest caucus in the House of Representatives – under Chairmen Bill Flores and Mark Walker. He also was Chief of Staff to Representative Ron DeSantis. Most recently, he served as the Deputy Executive Director to Governor-Elect Ron DeSantis’ transition team in Tallahassee, Florida.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.01) 0px 0px 1px;">Scott resides in Arlington, VA with his wife and two daughters.</p></div></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">TEAM</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">David McIntosh</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">David McIntosh</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">President</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Marissa Obradovich</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Marissa Obradovich</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Director of Development</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Sean Brislin</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Sean Brislin</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Deputy Finance Director</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Benjamin Decatur</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Benjamin Decatur</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Digital Communications Associate</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Andrew Follett</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Andrew Follett</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Senior Research Analyst</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Stacy French</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Stacy French</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Digital Director</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Joe Kildea</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Joe Kildea</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Vice President, Communications</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Jordan Kittleson</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Jordan Kittleson</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Field Director</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Glyn McKay</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Glyn McKay</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Field Director</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Scott Parkinson</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Scott Parkinson</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Vice President of Government Affairs</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Robert Pipkin</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Robert Pipkin</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Field Director</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">John Richardson</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">John Richardson</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Executive Vice President & COO</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Adam Rozansky</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Adam Rozansky</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Chief Financial Officer</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Tom Schultz</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Tom Schultz</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Vice President, Campaigns</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">James Selvey</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">James Selvey</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Research Analyst</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Debbie Tyler</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Debbie Tyler</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Executive Assistant</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Chris Vari</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Chris Vari</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Research Director</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Stefanie Williams</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Stefanie Williams</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Deputy Director of Development</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">omfg mercer cabal see textfire</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">After bringing someone like Robinson close to victory in 2010, the Mercers’ fresh taste for political power brought them the privileges and lifestyles of the rich & famous. They soon found themselves at a 2011 conference of the <b>Club For Growth</b>, a pro-business activist group for the conservative elite, which spent $6m of its own in support of 2010 GOP/Tea Party contenders. The Club is perhaps best known for being sued and fined by the FEC in 2005 for violating fair election laws. Its Executive Director <b>David Keating then formed SpeechNow, a group which sued the FEC and did even more damage to campaign finance regulations via their Ninth Circuit Court victory in the immediate wake of Citizens United v FEC, but right now we’re focused on the Club as the place where Mercer first met Andrew Breitbart.</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><b>...</b></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Header for Nigel Farage’s dozens of Breitbart essays (Source)]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WEREN’T THE FIRST TEA PARTIERS ANGRY AT THE BRITS..?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bannon became interested in United Kingdom politics in the early 2010s, seeing it as fertile ground for ideological manipulation. He began making friends with far right bloggers and politicians, particularly those tied in with <b>Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). </b>A hard right party commonly disparaged as fascist, UKIP sought to restore what it saw as true conservatism. Bannon was greatly invested in the USA Tea Party ‘movement’ at the time, as evidenced by his movie productions and speaking engagements, so he viewed UKIP as a natural comrade in arms.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">UKIP had been stagnating as a political force while known as a single platform party, focused almost entirely on immigration crackdown and demand for UK’s exit from the European Union. Co-founder Farage had returned to lead the party for a 2nd time in November 2010 — later in the same week as the first Tea Party Republicans were elected in the US midterms — after failing in his bid to become House of Commons Speaker earlier that year, and began to incorporate a wider variety of populist messaging with a focus on local elections to increase growth.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Soon after Bannon took over Breitbart in the summer of 2012, he brought Farage to the USA for a grand tour of New York and Washington, D.C. During this trip, Bannon introduced Farage to a number of movers & shakers, including the staff of <b>Jeff Sessions</b></span><b>, </b>the then-senator from Alabama who is now US Attorney General. This was certainly not the first connection between UK eurosceptics and US nativists, however.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Throughout the previous year, a <b>UK political activist ‘pressure group’ called Atlantic Bridge</b> was garnering a lot of press for all the wrong reasons. Fronted by then-<b>Defence Secretary Liam Fox,</b> after being founded in 1997 by Fox and Reagan BFF/ex-UK-PM Margaret Thatcher, its stated goal was to protect the 80's holdover concept of the US & UK’s military and cultural ‘special relationship’ from “the European integrationists who would like to pull Britain away from its relationship with the United States.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Louise Mensch (#TrumpRussia false idol, Tory ex-MP, and current News Corp employee) defending Liam Fox and a Brexit]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Atlantic Bridge fell into the sea in late 2011, after extensive investigations found Fox had been implementing a “shadow foreign policy” by internationally courting a variety of corporate lobbyists and military contractors via the dark money donated to Bridge as a falsely-labeled charity. Fox then resigned his Cabinet position, taking a few others down with him.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of those affected was yet another powerful hedge fund manager, ex-Goldman Sachs trader, climate-change denier & funder, and longtime Tory/Conservative donor named Michael Hintze who provided the majority of those donations and lent his private jet to <b>Fox for schmoozy jaunts to meet with D.C. defence contractors</b>.</span> With a strong interest in geopolitical wargames, a habit of supporting Defence Secretaries, and a predilection for hiring senior military officials at his powerful firm Convertible & Quantitative Strategies, it’s small wonder Hintze sought to establish a Western security superhighway before the Bridge collapsed.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Back in 2007, however, Atlantic Bridge was still in its prime, and it gained even more power when a giant among US political activist groups began an official partnership with it. The American Legislative Exchange Council — better known as <b>ALEC</b> — set up a stateside nonprofit called the Atlantic Bridge Project, in order to “foster positive relationships between conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, so they may further the ideals exemplified by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Atlantic Bridge’s Liam Fox thanking ALEC 2008]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ALEC’s decades-old modus operandi is to write complete versions of new legislation, which invariably benefits only its powerful corporate members, to be passed off to complicit politicians and introduced in Congress as original products. A<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">n official ALEC newsletter from Dec 2007 bragged of the Bridge Project’s new plans to enact “a series of events aimed at conservative leaders from the field of politics, media, business, and academia — exposing them to innovative conservative thinking from the U.S. and Great Britain and helping them forge new transatlantic relationships.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Catherine Bray is pictured in the newsletter as the Director of International Relations for Atlantic Bridge; she had previously worked for prominent UKIP member & climate change denier Roger Helmer and subsequently worked for Tory Daniel Hannan, “the man who brought you Brexit</span>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” In 2015, Bray married Wells Griffith, who became the battleground states director for Trump’s presidential campaign.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Managing the D.C. operations for the Project was <b>Gordon Cohen Strategies LLC, co-founded by Lee Cohen,</b> Atlantic Bridge’s Washington DC Director, and J.D. Gordon, a retired Pentagon spokesman and well-traveled defense lobbyist. Lee Cohen is now an ardent Trump supporter, publishing an IJR essay in November 2016 predicting Trump and new UK PM Theresa May will be the new Reagan & Thatcher.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Within a few days of Liam Fox’s 2011 resignation, J.D. Gordon took a job as communications director for<b> Herman Cain’s 2012 presidential campaign, in which Tea Partier Cain promised to reduce corporate taxes and install the Shell Oil CEO as head of the EPA. Cain began briefly leading Obama in the polls at that time and was the most reported-on GOP candidate in 2011, but quit the race less than 2 months later after sexual misconduct charges arose.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gordon was slightly controversial when he originally joined up as one of Cain’s foreign policy advisers, as he had recently left a fellowship position at the Washington-based <b>Center for Security Policy, a far-right think tank (or perhaps hate group) devoted to advancing founder and former Reagan official Frank Gaffney’s pet cause of extreme Islamophobia.</b> Cain’s campaign also absorbed the staff of Gordon’s own embryonic thinktank, the Center for Security and Democracy, which included a former Heritage Foundation manager.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">J.D. Gordon is most recently known for his work as a key foreign policy adviser to Cain clone Donald Trump, who counted Herman among his early campaign rally speakers/surrogates, and about whom Gordon wrote a pro-Trump Breitbart article in April 2016. Gordon was also Jeff Sessions’ deputy,</span> allegedly traveled to Budapest six times during the campaign, participated in the infamous July 2016 Republican National Convention meeting — hosted by the Heritage Foundation — involving co-adviser <b>Carter Page and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak</b>, and is said to have previously recommended that Page embark on his Congressionally-investigated trip to Moscow<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">. Gordon also claims he personally asked to water down the RNC platform with noncommittal language omitting lethal weapons support for Ukraine, and that Trump directly ordered him to do so.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">(L to R) Lee, Johnson, Toomey, DeMint, Rubio]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Atlantic Bridge’s leading light in the US Congress was South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, then frequently cited as one of the farthest-right sitting Senators</b>. An ardent tax reformer, Family member, and anti-immigration crusader, he was on board with the Tea Party from its inception in early 2009, setting the stage with the establishment of his <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Senate Conservatives Fund PAC in 2008. The Fund attacked Republicans for being too ‘moderate’ and then gave millions to the successful 2010 Senate campaigns of such first-time Tea Party candidates as Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Pat Toomey. Also in 2010, DeMint introduced the first bill intended to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Senator DeMint followed up that legislation a few months later with his first published article/op-ed on Breitbart News, dated 6 May 2010. Breitbart repeatedly showered him with glowing coverage,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> so he went on to publish another article there on 27 Jul 2012, in which he</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 153);"> endorsed Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz for Senate and lauded the aforementioned</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Club for Growth’s</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 153);"> monetary “air and ground support” for Cruz’s campaign.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>A large chunk of the money for that tactical assault was provided by Robert Mercer,</b> with other miniature morsels of Mercer Money going to DeMint, Toomey, and Rubio at various times. Unsurprisingly, Club for Growth rated Paul, Johnson, Lee and DeMint as 4 of the only 5 Senators to vote ‘correctly’ 100% of the time, with Lee and Demint tying for the Heritage Foundation’s top honor at 99% approval.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Breitbart Embassy” in DC, 2012 (Source)]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>DeMint resigned from the Senate less than two months after the 2012 election in order to become president of Heritage — a thinktank which shares an enormous number of historical, practical, and membership commonalities with ALEC — by which time Atlantic Bridge had been dead [in the UK] for over a year</b>. Even so, it’s easy to imagine DeMint, Liam Fox, J.D. Gordon, and/or any of the other Atlantic Bridge ambassadors still managed to make their way to any one of the legendary parties thrown at the “Breitbart Embassy”, a four-story townhouse rented (?) by Breitbart near the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As for the gregarious and cigar-chomping heavy drinker Nigel Farage, we don’t have to imagine anything. He was treated as the guest of honor at a Breitbart Embassy dinner & cocktail party in September 2014, where the stars of the new right rubbed shoulders with journalists from across the media spectrum. Other guests that night included LifeZette’s<b> Laura Ingraham,</b> a reporter from Rolling Stone, Jeff Sessions, and Sessions’ then-top aide Stephen Miller.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Steve Bannon had been partially living at the Embassy since at least 2011, when Breitbart staff and writers were first encouraged to work & sleep there, though it was initially expected to serve as a means to rub shoulders with the movers & shakers of the DC political elite. “Andrew [Breitbart] said that if you didn’t have a place within spitting distance of the Capitol, no one would come,” Bannon told The Washington Post at an Embassy blowout schmooze-and-boozefest CPAC rager in 2014. “He loved to throw big parties.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But regardless of the precise circumstances by which Bannon became enmeshed with the UK’s conservative elite prior to mid-2012, engrossing as the detailed story may be, his friendship with UKIP & Brexit’s Farage tells us all we need to know. As such, we should be unsurprised to learn it was <b>allegedly Steve Bannon who urged the Mercers to invest US$15m in big data research funds with the British defence contractor SCL Group.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">PSYOPS GOES MAINSTREAM</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/former-gop-lawmaker-admits-party-members-forced-to-agree-with-psychologically-unfit-trump-or-consider-retirement/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/former-gop-lawmaker-admits-party-members-forced-to-agree-with-psychologically-unfit-trump-or-consider-retirement/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Former GOP lawmaker admits party members forced to agree with ‘psychologically unfit’ Trump — or consider retirement</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump image via Today Show.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story December 22, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">In interviews with the New York Times, Republican lawmakers past and present admit that Donald Trump has such a hold on the party that there is little choice but to go along with his policies and defend him or face his wrath and consider retirement.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The report notes, “Just under four years after he began his takeover of a party to which he had little connection, Mr. Trump enters 2020 burdened with the ignominy of being the first sitting president to seek re-election after being impeached,” adding, “But he does so wearing a political coat of armor built on total loyalty from G.O.P. activists and their representatives in Congress. If he does not enjoy the broad admiration Republicans afforded Ronald Reagan, he is more feared by his party’s lawmakers than any occupant of the Oval Office since at least Lyndon Johnson.”According to one former GOP lawmaker from Michigan, he was faced with the dilemma of bucking the president in 2017, and knew what would happen if he did.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">“By the summer of 2017, Dave Trott, a two-term Republican congressman, was worried enough about President Trump’s erratic behavior and his flailing attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act that he criticized the president in a closed-door meeting with fellow G.O.P. lawmakers,” The Times reports.” The response was instantaneous — but had nothing to do with the substance of Mr. Trott’s concerns. ‘Dave, you need to know somebody has already told the White House what you said,’ he recalled a colleague telling him. ‘Be ready for a barrage of tweets.’”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">According to the ex-lawmaker he chose to not run for his seat again, “If I was still there and speaking out against the president, what would happen to me?”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Trott is not alone in expressing the hardships of being a Republican who doesn’t agree with the president.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Interviews with current and former Republican lawmakers as well as party strategists, many of whom requested anonymity so as not to publicly cross the president, suggest that many elected officials are effectively faced with two choices. They can vote with their feet by retiring — and a remarkable 40 percent of Republican members of Congress have done so or have been defeated at the ballot box since Mr. Trump took office,” the report notes. “Or they can mute their criticism of him. All the incentives that shape political behavior — with voters, donors and the news media — compel Republicans to bow to Mr. Trump if they want to survive.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Now out of office, Trott feels free to criticize the president in more explicit terms, stating, “Trump is emotionally, intellectually and psychologically unfit for office, and I’m sure a lot of Republicans feel the same way. But if they say that, the social media barrage will be overwhelming.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) agreed that Trump’s ire provides an opening for GOP challengers.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“The greatest fear any member of Congress has these days is losing a primary,” he explained. “That’s the foremost motivator.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to the report, “The incentive to show fealty to Mr. Trump has become evident to the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Club for Growth</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> a fiscal conservative group that was made famous for its willingness to tangle with Republican leaders and was hostile to Mr. Trump in 2016,” with group President David McIntosh admitting, “Poll after poll showed us that Republican primary voters wanted their nominees to support President Trump, so in order to make sure they were viable and would get re-elected, they ended up being supporters of his.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Retiring GOP lawmaker Francis Rooney of Florida has joined the exodus fleeing Trump and told the Times, “Public officials need to be held accountable, and I don’t think any governmental system works well with blind loyalty without reason.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">You can read more here.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">ALL IN ON TRUMP</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">hmm redstate: hit vuln dems: tv ad, dark post; rad left witchunt: acu schalpp, heritage action, fredomworks, presidential coalition, am 1st pol, cfg; censure schiff, text msg dirty 30--> 75K calls to congress; </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">textfire</font></p><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After bringing someone like Robinson close to victory in 2010, the Mercers’ fresh taste for political power brought them the privileges and lifestyles of the rich & famous. They soon found themselves at a</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> 2011 conference of the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Club For Growth,</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">a pro-business activist group for the conservative elite, which spent $6m of its own in support of 2010 GOP/Tea Party contenders. The Club is perhaps best known for being sued and fined by the FEC in 2005 for violating fair election laws. Its Executive Director </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">David Keating then formed SpeechNow</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, a group which sued the FEC and did even more damage to campaign finance regulations via their Ninth Circuit Court victory in the immediate wake of Citizens United v FEC, but right now we’re focused on the Club as the place where Mercer first met Andrew Breitbart.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BREITBART OUT, BANNON & MERCER IN</div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">update </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">D</font>avid McIntosh, the Club for Growth’s president, said on Tuesday the organization is planning a seven-figure-plus offensive targeting O’Rourke. McIntosh was speaking from Texas, where he is meeting with pro-Cruz donors who could help fund the effort.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;">“In the last five weeks, it’s become clear that the race has tightened,” said McIntosh.</p><font face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style=""><div class="main-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; width: 1280px;"><div class="field-item even first" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="body-copy-inner" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 410px 0px 250px; border: 0px; line-height: 28px; width: 1280px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Only 100 U.S. senators — not the general public — will vote to approve President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">But that’s not stopping several conservative organizations from launching ad blitzes promoting Trump’s Cabinet picks — most notably Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, who critics have <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/02/06/513752308/senate-democrats-plan-all-night-push-to-rally-against-trumps-education-pick" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">panned</a> as a wealthy partisan hack with no practical experience in public education.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Two conservative nonprofit groups in particular, the <a href="http://www.clubforgrowth.org/school-choice/club-for-growth-launches-tv-ads-supporting-devos-nomination-in-north-dakota-and-west-virginia/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Club for Growth</a> and <a href="http://americanxt.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">America Next</a>, are pushing back hard, producing broadcast television ads supporting confirmation of DeVos, a GOP megadonor and staunch advocate for charter schools and school vouchers.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Both Club for Growth and America Next are nonprofit groups organized under <b>Section 501(c)(4)</b> of the federal tax code.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> That means their primary mission has to be social welfare, a category that includes issue advocacy ads that don’t specifically seek to influence a political election.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Such groups aren’t required to reveal their donors, which means the public has no way of knowing who is paying for the pro-DeVos ads.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The lion’s share of those TV ads came from America Next, which aired nearly 300 spots nationally through Feb. 5,</b> according to data provided to the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Center for Public Integrity</a> by <a href="http://www.kantarmedia.com/us/our-solutions/advertising-monitoring-and-evaluation/political" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Kantar Media/CMAG</a>, which tracks television advertising.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/bobby-jindal-announces-conservative-policy-group-america-next/article/763655" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">created</a> America Next in 2013.</span></font></p></div></div></div><div class="container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; width: 1280px;"><div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="body-copy-inner" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 410px 0px 250px; border: 0px; line-height: 28px; width: 1280px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“Why is the radical left so full of rage and hate?” asks the off-camera narration for one spot, called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do9AfzUQGtY" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Angry Liberals</a>.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It continues: “They still can’t accept that Trump won and they lost. Now extreme liberals like Elizabeth Warren are trying to stop Betsy DeVos from becoming secretary of education. Why? DeVos angers the extreme left because she exposes their hypocrisy. DeVos wants low income kids to have the same choices that liberal elitists have for their families. DeVos wants equal opportunity in education for all kids and that makes angry liberals even angrier.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The Club for Growth</b>, meanwhile, aired a handful of spots targeting Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both Democrats. In both cases, the ad said the senator could be the deciding vote on DeVos and urged viewers to call their senator and tell them to “support President Trump and vote to confirm Betsy DeVos for secretary of education.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The ads serve several purposes. They certainly put added pressure on senators such as Manchin and Heitkamp at a time when DeVos opponents have swamped senators’ <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316321-anti-devos-calls-jam-senate-phone-lines" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">phone lines</a>, <a href="http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/02/04/betsy-devos-cory-gardner-colorado-denver/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">organized</a> <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-protest-trumps-nomination-of-betsy-devos-for-education-secretary-photos-20170131-photogallery.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">protests</a> and lobbied against her. The ads simultaneously endear their sponsors to Trump and his administration. They also serve as fundraising tools — particularly the digital ads, which are a couple of clicks away from <a href="https://www.clubforgrowth.org/donate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">donation pages</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have said they will not support DeVos, suggesting her confirmation could result in a 50-50 Senate vote. In case of a tie, Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tiebreaking vote.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The advertising around Trump’s Cabinet nominees is “quite unique,”</b> said Mitchell West, a senior analyst for Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks political advertising. “This is likely the beginning of a very active and unpredictable year for advocacy advertising.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Club for Growth and America Next both didn’t respond to a request for comment from the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Center for Public Integrity</a>. Club for Growth is also running digital ads on Twitter and on websites such as <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3455403-Nationalreview.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">National Review</em></a>. The <b>45Committee, another conservative nonprofit whose sister super PAC <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/12/09/18948/financial-titans-behind-hillary-clinton-slam" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">supported</a> <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/12/09/20516/donald-trump-rewarding-million-dollar-donors-plum-postings" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump</a> during the 2016 election</b>, has also released a pro-DeVos <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsZOtGYTgsU" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">web promotion</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">In addition to the advertising effort, dozens of news stories on the DeVos nomination have included quotes from Ed Patru, a spokesman for a group called “Friends of Betsy DeVos.” The group isn’t officially incorporated anywhere, according to Patru, and doesn’t seem to have left a paper trail.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Patru, a vice president at Washington public affairs firm DCI Group, </b>said the group is “an independent effort. It’s a loose coalition of her friends, supporters, allies.”
</font></p></div></div></div><div class="container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; width: 1280px;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="body-copy-inner" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 410px 0px 250px; border: 0px; line-height: 28px; width: 1280px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">He declined to give the names of anyone involved with the group or the size of it, though he said it’s larger than just him.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“You’ve got a situation where you’ve got really scores of people who are interested in helping out and supporting her but in order to kind of avoid a situation where we have total chaos … I’m sort of the designated spokesman for the effort,” he said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Patru, a former Republican political operative who knows DeVos from his days with the Michigan Republican Party, said he is working pro bono</b>. “I haven’t taken a dime directly or indirectly from Betsy or any of her interests,”<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> said Patru, whose previous work includes <a href="http://www.prweek.com/article/1265306/dci-group-hires-spencer-patru" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">serving as communications director</a> for the failed U.S. Senate campaign of Linda McMahon, a top Trump bankroller and the president’s pick to <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/317149-senate-panel-approves-trump-pick-to-lead-sba" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">lead</a> the Small Business Administration.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Patru said the group is operating <b>independently</b> of DeVos herself.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conservative groups have also run ads to support Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price and Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">But DeVos’ nomination has proven <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/us/politics/betsy-devos-nominee-education-secretary.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">unusually polarizing</a>. Opponents have swamped senators’ <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316321-anti-devos-calls-jam-senate-phone-lines" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">phone lines</a>, <a href="http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/02/04/betsy-devos-cory-gardner-colorado-denver/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">organized</a> <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-protest-trumps-nomination-of-betsy-devos-for-education-secretary-photos-20170131-photogallery.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">protests</a> and lobbied against her.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“This has never happened before with an education secretary nominee,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in an emailed statement.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We’ve never seen someone tapped for this job who is so ill informed, who is so overtly hostile to public education, and who would give such preferential treatment to for-profit schools, vouchers and other strategies that actively drain funding from public schools.”</font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">off bs</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Washington, DC</b> – Today, the </span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Club for Growth released a report based on its 2011 Congressional Scorecard</b></span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"> focusing on the voting records of the so-called “Tea Party” freshmen Republican class of 2010. After a careful review to see if their records match their rhetoric, the Club for Growth has found that for many of the freshmen Republicans, promises of fiscal responsibility have proven to be empty.</span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><o:p xmlns:o="o" /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">A Club for Growth review of the voting records of freshmen Republicans on economic issues found:</span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><o:p xmlns:o="o" /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span>In 2011, freshmen Republicans received an average score of 71% on the Club for Growth’s Congressional Scorecard. The average veteran received a 69%. This means the freshmen Republicans voted, on average, about the same as the Republicans who were already in Congress.
</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;">A majority of freshmen Republicans voted against the conservative Republican Study Committee budget.
</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span>Only 14 freshmen Republicans signed a pledge promising never to raise the debt ceiling until “Cut, Cap, and Balance” had passed.
</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;">“Tea Party star” Rep. Allen West received an anemic 64% for voting to raise the debt ceiling and by repeatedly voting against spending cuts.
</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span>The two freshmen in the Republican Leadership received vastly different scores, with Rep. Tim Scott receiving a 92% and Rep. Kristi Noem receiving a 60%.
</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span>Charlie Bass ran for the seat he lost in 2006 by declaring that the agenda of the tea party “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;"><a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/politics-politico/for-failed-candidates-tea-partys-the-ticket-264333/?print=1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">is exactly the same as mine</span></a><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">.” He received a pathetic 48% in 2011.
</span></span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">·</span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">       </span></span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Ten Highest scoring freshmen Republicans were Reps. Amash (100%), Huelskamp (100%), Labrador (100%), Mulvaney (99%), Walsh (99%), Stutzman (99%), Quayle (98%), Duncan (97%), Gowdy (97%) and Ross (96%).
</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">        </span></span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: -0.25in;">The Ten Lowest scoring freshmen Republicans were Reps. Rivera (47%), Grimm (46%), Stivers (45%), Runyan (45%), Gibson (44%), Hanna (44%), Fitzpatrick (43%), Dold (42%), Meehan (42%) and McKinley (37%).</span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The entire report can be viewed by visiting </span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.clubforgrowth.org/freshmanvotestudy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.clubforgrowth.org/freshmanvotestudy/</span></a></span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>or by </span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.clubforgrowth.org/freshmanvotestudy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">clicking here</span></a></span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><o:p xmlns:o="o" /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">“The Club for Growth holds members of Congress accountable for their actions, not their rhetoric,”  <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola.</b> “The liberal media likes to pretend that these Republicans have fought for fiscally conservative policies, but the facts don’t support their thesis. Just because the Republicans have a majority does not mean that more pro-growth policies have been passed. For example, a majority of Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling, against spending cuts, and for wasteful subsidies. Republicans rail against the National Labor Relations Board, but some voted to keep funding it. By distributing this report to Club members and the public, we hope to raise awareness about the records of the Republican freshmen and believe their constituents will ask what’s happened since they went to Washington.”</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style=""></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/us/politics/in-gop-a-campaign-takes-aim-at-tea-party.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/us/politics/in-gop-a-campaign-takes-aim-at-tea-party.html</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="">no link</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><b>
</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><b>In G.O.P., a Campaign Takes Aim at Tea Party</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">By ERIC LIPTONNOV. 5, 2013</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">WASHINGTON — Open warfare is breaking out among rival Republican groups, with one, Main Street Advocacy, set to start an ad campaign on Wednesday that blames conservative groups like the Tea Party for the recent series of political losses in critical elections across the United States.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">The ad cites what it calls a “Hall of Shame,” including Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, who lost his bid for the Senate last year, despite a Tea Party endorsement, after he said a “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><b>It also pokes fun at conservative groups like the Club for Growth and Freedom Works — stamping the word “Defund” over their names — because they recently pushed Congress to shut down the federal government in an effort to block financing for President Obama’s health care program.</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">“We want our party back,” said former Representative Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio, who is leading Main Street Advocacy. “And we are going to do what it takes to accomplish that.”</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">The ad was previewed Tuesday during a fund-raiser in New York City hosted by Mr. LaTourette. Main Street Advocacy is trying to raise $8 million to help eight Republican moderates either defend their congressional seats in the 2014 midterm elections or to oust Tea Party-endorsed candidates already in office, like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The 14-year-old Club for Growth has become an increasing force in Republican races. It spent $17 million in the last election cycle to help select extremely conservative candidates — including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — in congressional races that Republicans were likely to win.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Club for Growth opened the offensive against moderate Republicans earlier this year with a website it calls Primary My Congressman! The site lists 10 House Republicans it calls RINOs (Republican in Name Only) that it wants to see replaced by more conservative party members. Some are the same Republicans, like Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, that Main Street Advocacy is preparing to defend.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Barney Keller, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, said that Mr. LaTourette’s group was wasting its money going after a rival political action committee. Mr. LaTourette, he added, has been working as a lobbyist since he left Congress and so now is trying to help corporate America reassert its control over Congress.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">“They can attack the Club all they want, and I hope they spend their money doing so,” Mr. Keller said. “We look forward to adding to the ranks of pro-growth conservatives in Congress next year.” He added that the Club had not endorsed all the candidates featured in the ad.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">The challenge for Main Street Advocacy, the group’s organizers said, is to build a network of moderate Republicans who are as motivated and politically active as Tea Party enthusiasts have been since Mr. Obama was elected to his first term.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">Party primary results are often difficult for pollsters to predict because the outcomes largely depend on who turns out to vote, and Mr. LaTourette acknowledged that the most conservative candidates had traditionally had much more reliable supporters.</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We are behind the curve with our more conservative counterparts,” Mr. LaTourette said. “They have built grass-roots networks and databases of conservative voters. That is part of this project.”</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. LaTourette stepped down this year, declaring he was fed up with the confrontational tone of his party and at how partisan Congress had become.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Main Street Advocacy has not yet formally picked the eight or so Republican candidates it will spend its money on next year. Besides Mr. Kinzinger and a Republican challenger to Mr. Amash, other possibilities include Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho and Representative Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is vying for a Senate seat.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">
</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2013, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: In G.O.P., A Campaign Takes Aim At Tea Party. </p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" /></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" style=""><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-15/club-for-growth-tea-party-patriots-support-pence-pick">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-15/club-for-growth-tea-party-patriots-support-pence-pick</a></font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" color="color" rgb="rgb"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">“Mike Pence would be an outstanding vice president,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh says in release.</font></font></p><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" list-style="list-style" none="none" color="color" rgb="rgb"><li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 28px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund also praises Donald Trump’s choice of Ind. governor as his GOP running mate</font></font><ul style="margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" /></font><li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 28px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Trump-Pence ticket could “unite the party,” Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund Chairman Jenny Beth Martin says</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></li></ul></li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 28px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;"><font face="Times New Roman">Earlier: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-07-15/trump-picks-indiana-governor-as-vice-president" target="_blank" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(92, 66, 171); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump Names Indiana Governor Mike Pence as Running-Mate Pick</a></font></li></ul><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Jeff Duncan (R-SC)Tom Graves (R-GA)Joe Miller (R-AK)Kevin Calvey (R-OK)Doug Hoffman (3-NY)Ken Buck (R-CO)Marco Rubio (R-FL)Sharron E Angle (R-NV)</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" /></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Pat Toomey (R-PA deMint</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122017/lamar-smith-congress-climate-change-fossil-fuel-industry-house-science-committee" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122017/lamar-smith-congress-climate-change-fossil-fuel-industry-house-science-committee</a></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">no link pix grafic</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" /></font></font><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">FREDERICKSBURG, Texas—It's midway through fall, and cold has yet to settle over the Eckhardt family orchard. So, Diane Eckhardt waits with rising apprehension.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Cold is the switch that triggers the growing sequence that by summer has limbs sagging with ripe, juicy peaches. The reliable chill season in Texas Hill Country allowed Eckhardt's grandfather, Otto, to start the family business here in the 1930s.</div><div>
</div><div>But last year, with temperatures the warmest since 1939, Eckhardt's trees produced just 10 percent of their usual yield. And the year before, warm weather reduced production between 60 and 70 percent. Now, Eckhardt worries not only about the next crop, but about the future of a business she hopes will be passed on to her niece and nephews.</div><div>
</div><div>"We know climate change is happening," she said.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>But while the Eckhardts face that certainty, their congressman sows uncertainty, casting doubt on the consensus science that greenhouse gases are the dominant cause of rising global temperatures, and opposing government action to curb them.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Sixteen-term Republican Lamar Smith has used his power as chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee for the past five years to do battle on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. </b>Embracing the arguments of a small group of climate contrarians, Smith acknowledges that warming is happening but says more research is needed to determine the amount and causes, and whether it does more good than harm.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Smith's critics say he misrepresents facts, cleverly casts doubt on legitimate studies by claiming they are based on "secret data" and uses his subpoena power to help industry battle state and federal regulators and environmental groups. The result is that a panel with vast jurisdiction over all government non-military science, research and development has become an instrument of attack on mainstream climate science.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Anyone stating what the climate will be in 500 years or even at the end of the century is not credible," Smith said at a hearing he chaired in March. "In the field of climate science, there is legitimate concern that scientists are biased in favor of reaching predetermined conclusions. This invariably leads to alarmist findings that are wrongly reported as facts."</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Things weren't always this way. Under both Democratic and moderate Republican leadership, the science committee since the late 1970s had educated lawmakers and the public about the threats posed by rising temperatures caused by human activity and the need for decisive action.</span></div><div>
</div><div>But in a case study of the power of fossil fuel interests to shape government policy, the industry's money and alliances with conservative think tanks and advocacy groups transformed the committee's membership and supported the <b>rise of Smith, son of an old oil and ranching family in South Texas.  </b></div><div>
</div><div>Choke Hold: House Science</div><div>
</div><div>Today, "we're in total denial," says the highest-ranking Democrat on the panel, fellow Texan Eddie Bernice Johnson. Instead of looking at the evidence and making policy recommendations on climate—as once happened—the committee is "pretending to be oblivious."</div><div>
</div><div>"When you look at the [campaign] contribution list, it becomes very clear" that the forces that oppose regulation are calling the shots, she said.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Smith, 70, has announced he will retire after his term as chairman ends next year. But many believe his legacy will be lasting. </b>The committee under Smith has "contributed to the sort of diminishment of science in public policy," said Andrew Rosenberg, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization that has been one of Smith's targets. "It has reinforced the view that everything must be partisan, and you've got to choose sides. It sends a message that science is partisan, too."</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>The Science Committee Transformed</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The House Science Committee held Congress' first hearings on climate science in 1976, and it resulted in passage of bipartisan legislation to establish a National Climate Program Office. Five years later, Al Gore, then a congressman and committee member, co-chaired another set of hearings on "Carbon Dioxide and Climate: The Greenhouse Effect."  </span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With fidelity to its nonpartisan tradition, the committee championed scientists who found themselves under fire during President George W. Bush's administration. The Republican chairman at the time, Sherwood Boehlert of New York, faced off against Bush officials and GOP colleagues on Capitol Hill, armed, he says now, with what he learned about global warming during 24 years on the committee. "I [witnessed] a parade of some of the most distinguished scientists...from around the world testify that climate change is for real, it has serious and negative consequences, and we damn well better do something about it," Boehlert said.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>But by 2013, Republican moderates like Boehlert who accepted climate science were eliminated. Redistricting by both parties—to make red districts redder and blue districts bluer—was partly to blame. But much of the change was due to a systematic effort by conservatives, with significant help from fossil fuel interests that were seeking to stave off policies that might cut into their profits.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div><b>The Senate Science Committee's Disappearing Center</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Helping the effort was the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission</b>, which opened the door to unlimited political spending. The decision empowered hugely wealthy donors like the oil billionaire Koch brothers seeking to shape politics in America. Between 2010 and 2012 alone, individuals and companies in the fossil fuel industry spent an unprecedented $90.5 million to elect friendly Republicans, an increase of 66 percent over the previous two election cycles (compared with $15.7 million they gave to Democrats), according to Center for Responsive Politics data.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Sherwood Boehlert</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the end, nearly a third of the Republicans who sat on the committee in 2006—seven of 24, including Boehlert—were defeated or retired over the next six years in the wake of primary challenges from the right.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The conservative advocacy group, the <b>Club for Growth, </b>financed many of the challenges. The group has a broad low-tax, less-government agenda, but its victims saw the hand of fossil fuel interests at work.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"My most enduring heresy was saying that climate change was real," said Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who became convinced of climate reality on a science committee trip to Antarctica. He lost in <b>2010</b> to <b>Rep. Trey Gowdy, who was endorsed by the Club for Growth</b>. "It had appeared that I had crossed to the other side and had become unfaithful to the tribe."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>
</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Wayne Gilchrest </b>of Maryland, a science committee Republican defeated in the 2008 primary, believed the conservative activists had a deeper objection than his stand on climate issues. "The foundation upon which their enterprise was built was to select members of Congress that could be told what to do," Gilchrest said. "They wanted a puppet."</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Club for Growth, which spent between $6 million and $22 million each election cycle between 2004 and 2016, did not have to disclose its donors until it established a Super PAC in 2010. But at least<b> $3 million came into the club from the labyrinth Koch </b>network between 2009 and 2015, according to the tax returns of their various nonprofit advocacy groups. And the club's Super PAC disclosures show that its <b>wealthy donors include some heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry and connected to the Koch brothers, like hedge fund manager Paul Singer of Elliott Management, and Quantum Energy,</b> a Houston private equity and venture capital firm specializing in oil and gas.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry became the biggest contributor to science committee members, according to Center for Responsive Politics data. </div><div>
</div><div><b>House Science Committee: Follow the Money</b></div></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="">=</font></p></div>