THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.

It goes like this. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the RNC reminds us (three times!) once said that he voted for $87 billion in Iraq War funding before he voted against it. This, says the RNC, is exactly what Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) would be doing if he failed to join a Republican filibuster of health care reform and instead voted to move the bill to the floor–where everyone expects him to vote against it.

One problem with this is that it’s not technically true. In 2003, Kerry voted for a bill that would have appropriated the $87 billion in funding for Iraq while repealing some Bush tax cuts. He voted against the final bill which didn’t repeal the tax cuts. In this case, the GOP is defining “moving a bill to the floor” as “supporting it.” If that’s flip-flopping, then every Republican member of the Senate has flip-flopped–they allow bills to go to the floor, then vote against them, all the time.

Again, this is largely an academic discussion, as this video won’t be widely viewed outside a base of political junkies and partisan activists. But it demonstrates real progress for this myth of the Senate as a supermajority-driven institution, instead of one where the filibuster has been wildly, flagrantly abused beyond all recogniition.

“So candidates who live in moderate to slightly liberal districts have got to walk a little bit carefully here, because you do not want to put yourself in a position where you’re crossing that line on conservative principles, fiscal principles, because we’ll come after you,” Steele continued.

“You’re gonna find yourself in a very tough hole if you’re arguing for the president’s stimulus plan or Nancy Pelosi’s health plan. There’s no justification for growing the size of government the way this administration and this Congress wants to do it.”

It’s not surprising that Steele and the Republican Party would try to harness the Tea Party movement for an electoral advantage, but the events in the NY-23 special election should make clear that’s a risky proposition. In a moderate Republican district in upstate New York that had not elected a Democrat since the 1870s, a Tea Party-backed, Club for Growth-funded conservative succeeded in forcing a moderate Republican out of the race, only to lose to a moderate Democrat.

It’s no secret that Republicans representing “moderate to slightly liberal districts” tend to be moderate because in many cases a hard-line conservative running in the district would lose to a moderate Democrat. And once elected, moderates in these districts need to continue to appeal to moderate voters in order to get reelected, often by occasionally working with the other party. Granted, the number of moderate Republicans in Congress who Steele is talking about “coming after” — presumably through primary challenges from the right — is small. But the effect of a strategy like the one Steele is threatening would very likely be to drive remaining moderates out of the party — either through primary losses or party-switching à la Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) — and thereby shrink the GOP caucus even further in the name of ideological purity.

It’s particularly noteworthy since TWI asked Steele about this very issue yesterday, and he responded that winning is more important than maintaining ideological purity. “I don’t see a victory in losing seats,” he said. “I’m not in the business of division and subtraction. I’m in the business of multiplication and addition. I want more Republicans going to Congress.”

(Via Ben Smith)

First, Steele proclaims a “Republican renaissance”:

Steele says the elections were not a referendum on Obama:

Steele argues there should have been a primary in NY-23:

Steele responds to my questions about the future implications of the NY-23 contest:

He praised the volunteer efforts to get Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie elected as governors in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, saying, “Our folks are fired up.” Yet he expressed some misgivings about the process that led to Democrat Bill Owens’ victory in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

“There should have been, in New York 23, a primary process,” he said.

I asked him about the view among some conservatives that the NY-23 result was a victory, since it emboldened the conservative wing of the Republican party.

“I don’t see a victory in losing seats,” he responded, adding, “Winning’s a lot sweeter, and if you don’t think last night was sweet, you need to see a doctor.”

He also disputed the notion that the results were a referendum on President Obama, saying, “I don’t think this is so much a referendum on the president. I think it’s a checkpoint on the policies.”

We’ll have video of the event shortly.

Update: Watch video of the Michael Steele press conference here.

In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for Web development. (The Democrats, which did not completely overhaul their site during that time period, spent $45,000 on Web development.)

Also, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele hasn’t blogged in 10 days. On the plus side, for conservatives, that’s $1.4 million that didn’t go to NY-23 GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava.

Doug Hoffman, Michelle Malkin and Dick Armey (doughoffmanforcongress.com, michellemalkin.com, house.gov)

Asked what he’d do if he got to Congress, Doug Hoffman hesitates. He has a few ideas, such as revisiting the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, putting the breaks on cap-and-trade legislation. But the idea of winning the Nov. 3 election and becoming the only non-Republican, non-Democrat in the House is a bit much. The national media would descend on him, right away. And that still takes Hoffman by surprise.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“I’m not in this to get the splash and the notoriety,” said Hoffman, “I’m only in this, as an average American, standing up and saying it’s time we take our country back. But, certainly, if it does encourage other people to get up and do that, then so be it.”

In July, Hoffman bid to become the Republican Party’s nominee for a special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. The nominee would be chosen by party leaders in the district’s 11 counties; few people were surprised when they chose Deirdre “Dede” Scozzafava, a five-term assemblywoman who’d voted with Democrats on abortion and labor issues, factors that could help the party hold a historically conservative district that had voted for the Obama-Biden ticket last year. Hoffman, a 59-year-old accountant making his first run for office, forged ahead and grabbed the nomination of the venerable Conservative Party.

Since then, Hoffman’s campaign has become this election cycle’s great conservative crusade. On Sept. 5, the candidate was endorsed by 9-12 Candidates, an offshoot of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project, and a reflection of the support he was getting on conservative blogs. On Sept. 28, both Fred Thompson and the Club for Growth put their weight behind Hoffman, with the Club putting $250,000 into TV ads attacking Scozzafava and Democratic candidate Bill Owens. Those endorsements, coupled with reports that Scozzafava was struggling, brought the American Conservative Union and the anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony List into the fray to back Hoffman. On Monday afternoon, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey announced that he’d campaign for Hoffman, putting the Tea Party movement’s seal of approval on the upstart campaign.

Two weeks out from the election, the battle in upstate New York is being portrayed in the press as a “civil war” between Republican factions. That might understate how much support for Hoffman, and how little for Scozzafava, there is in the conservative movement. As far as the roiling Republican base is concerned, support for Hoffman has become a test of whether a conservative leader can be trusted. Conservative media, from magazines to blogs, are using the low-stakes special election to test their ability to drive news cycles and raise money.

“This is not a tea party hangover,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony list. “It is every piece of the conservative base–the Club for Growth, social conservatives, right to work, pro-lifers, everyone–coming together.’

The timeline of Hoffman’s surge could become a guide for other conservative rebellions. On Sept. 14, The Weekly Standard ran a glowing profile of Hoffman by conservative journalist Kenneth Tomlinson (”he joined the Army reserves, got married, started a family, and went to work for Price Waterhouse”), that made the case for a “Buckley scenario” in NY-23. Tomlinson’s reference was the 1970 campaign in which the Conservative Party’s Jim Buckley, brother of the late National Review Editor-in-Chief William F. Buckley, blew past a liberal Republican and Democrat to win a Senate seat from New York with 38 percent of the vote.

Tomlinson’s scenario was less eccentric than it may have looked. Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s campaign manager, cut his teeth on Buckley’s unsuccessful 1976 re-election bid; he came on board after a conversation with John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who was one of the first to rule Scozzafava out as a credible candidate.

The campaign set about working conservative blogs, conservative media and Tea Party groups who were plugged into both to drive home the message that Scozzafava was a liberal, backed by unions, who would say anything to anyone. The Republicans who’ve endorsed her, said Ryan, have “fallen for a scam.”

“I’ve long said that she’s the Bernie Madoff of New York Republican politics,” said Ryan.

“If you’re talking face-to-face to Assemblywoman Scozzafava,” said Hoffman, “she’ll tell you what you want to hear and it sounds great. And then she’ll talk to another group of people and tell them what they want to hear.”

Conservative media outlets pushed Scozzafava harder than the candidate could have expected. A reporter for Human Events got her campaign to say that Scozzafava opposed “card check,” labor reform that would make it easier for workers to start unions, while she’d said the opposite of that in a union questionnaire. The Weekly Standard asked the campaign whether Scozzafava would promise not to switch to the Democratic Party if she got to Congress; her noncommittal answer sparked the rumor that she might actually consider bolting the GOP. Conservative muckraker Michael Patrick Leahy conducted interviews for his TCOT Report web site that pieced together a “breach of trust” in the process that selected Scozzafava.

Stories like these motivated the conservative “netroots” to jump into the race for Hoffman. The key mover was Patrick Ruffini, a veteran of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign who had programmed fundraising drives that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republican candidates in previous special elections. But on Oct. 17, Ruffini endorsed Hoffman, arguing that “the RNC and NRCC are doubling down on a flawed candidate with little chance of generating any significant momentum in the last 16 days.” Coming from a consultant who drove crucial funds to Jim Tedisco, the failed Republican candidate in the June NY-20 special election, this was an indictment of the GOP.

“What’s noteworthy about the comparison between NY-20 and NY-23 is that Jim Tedisco was not a textbook conservative either,” Ruffini told TWI. “In fact, his reluctance to oppose the stimulus early on was a factor in his defeat. Yet the conservative grassroots went all out for Tedisco because he agreed with us on most issues and was a good fit for a district we had a real chance of picking up. Scozzafava, on the other hand, appears to agree with us on nothing.”

None of the conservative activists that TWI spoke to were particularly worried about being seen as “spoilers” if Owens wins NY-23 for the Democrats. David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, said that Scozzafava had no chance of winning anyway, and that nothing could be spoiled. The Susan B. Anthony List’s Dannenfelser suggested that a Scozzafava victory might be the worst possible outcome.

“We’ve seen this with Olympia Snowe,” said Dannenfelser. “We don’t need another Olympia Snowe. We will be dealing with her for the rest of our days.”

As the campaign draws to a close, Republicans who’ve endorsed Scozzafava have been scorched by Hoffman supporters. Conservative blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin, who used her syndicated column last week to label Scozzafava “An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing,” blasted the RNC and Newt Gingrich for endorsing the candidate. “If you have given to the NRCC, RNC, or Newt Gingrich under the impression that they are using the money to support conservatism,” wrote Malkin, “you might want to ask for your money back.” Later, Malkin posted an RNC mail survey defaced by a Hoffman supporter, and let Hoffman write a guest post on her site.

If the conservative base pulls off the NY-23 upset, it would get a congressman who backs every one of their key priorities. In an interview with TWI, conducted while he drove to speak at the opening of his fourth campaign office–one fewer than Owens, three more than Scozzafava–Hoffman sounded conservative notes on taxes, climate change legislation, the stimulus, abortion rights, and gay marriage.

“The jury’s out on what’s really going on and whether we have global warming or not,” said Hoffman, explaining why he’d oppose cap-and-trade legislation, “but we all want to protect our environment.” Unlike Scozzafava, he opposed and opposes the economic stimulus package and further bailouts, and said he’d use whatever clout he had in Congress to stop funds that hadn’t been appropriated yet, making an exception for “infrastructure” spending.

No, no, look, the reality of it is when I ran for the United States Senate and I was called an Uncle Tom by leading Democrats in the country, when I was called a slave by Steny Hoyer who is now the majority leader in the House, no one came running to my defense, and no one seemed to think that that was racist at the time. I don’t play the race card, I don’t play the race game, the way some tend to want to do.

There are a number of slippery allegations here. The first is the charge that “leading Democrats” called Steele an “Uncle Tom,” which is just false, unless the term is extended to cover liberal bloggers. The second, more directly false charge is that Steele was “called a slave by Steny Hoyer,” that “no one came running” to defend him. What happened was that Hoyer, in the final month of the campaign, characterized Steele’s record as “a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party.” Steele, at the time, was running uphill in a deep blue state by declaring his independence from the parties. He pounced on Hoyer.

It goes to just the sheer craziness of some in the Democratic Party who think they can use racist terms and infer things about me just because I’m an African American Republican.

Then he got back-up from Rev. Anthony Evans of the National Black Church Initiative.

If I did not know Rep. Steny Hoyer, I would say that he is a racist.

Rather quickly, Hoyer apologized.

I shouldn’t have used those words. If Mr. Steele did in fact take offense let me assure him that none was intended.

The affair became a national news story. The Washington Times did a follow-up in which the paper asked black leaders whether they’d denounce Hoyer.

So, to recap: Hoyer said that Steele “slavishly” supported the Republican Party, and Steele called this a racist comment while Republicans rounded up spokesmen to call Hoyer a racist. Three years later, Steele claims that he was “called a slave” by Hoyer, and that “no one seemed to think that that was racist at the time.”

Email after the jump:

The text:

Dear Fellow Conservative,

We do need health care reform in America, but there is a right way — and a wrong way — to go about it.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats want a government-run health care system that puts a Washington bureaucrat between American families and their doctors.

Their first thought was to try to rush a bill to the White House before Congress left Washington for August recess, and now we know why.

The American people have had a chance to read for themselves what President Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress intend for our health care and have been letting them know, loud and clear, in townhall meetings and national polls, that they don’t like it at all.

But the Obama Democrats have circled the wagons, stung and angry that the people dare presume to tell them what kind of health care they want. So Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid will be coming back to Washington to show the American people they won’t let a little thing like public outrage get between them and their desire for socialist control over our lives.

Barack Obama and congressional Democrats think government is the solution to every problem. They’re wrong.

The government already runs car companies, banks and mortgage companies. Republicans believe that the last thing the American people want is government telling them when and where — or even whether — they can get medical treatment for their families.

That’s why we need you to help us keep the heat on the Democrats, and keep them accountable to the American people.

The RNC believes your voice should be heard before the Obama Democrats nationalize almost one fifth of our economy, incur trillions of dollars in new spending and debt, and begin rationing health care to the American people.

Your opinion on the many domestic and foreign policy issues that America faces has been vital. The future of health care in America is so important — especially as Obama Democrats are moving swiftly to bring European-style socialized medicine here — that I am asking for more of your grassroots insight today.

That’s why I hope you will take a moment right now to fill out online our Future of American Health Care survey. Your input will help Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. and across America know where you stand on the Obama Democrats’ nationalized health care plans and the Republican alternative.

And, after you complete your survey, please take this opportunity to make a secure online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $25 to help support our efforts to combat the Democrats’ attempt to impose “Obamacare” on all of us.

You and the RNC are all that stand between our sensible Republican plan for real health care reform and the Democrats’ scheme to take more of your hard-earned income to pay for other people’s health care while limiting yours.

So please complete your Future of American Health Care survey online right now and support our efforts to ensure our health care freedoms by making a special RNC contribution if you can. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Michael Steele
Chairman, Republican National Committee

P.S. GOP leaders in Congress are counting on the input of grassroots Republicans like you to help in the fight for sensible, responsive health care reform. Please fill out your Future of American Health Care survey online right now and make a special contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $25 to help us stop “Obamacare” before it’s too late. Thank you.