Clockwise from top left: Byron York, Michael Barone, David Freddoso and J.P. Freire (YouTube screenshots)

For the first few years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Mark Tapscott was a journalist without a newsroom, shouting from the sidelines about his industry’s swift decline. Tapscott ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and trained reporters in the use of technology for research and crunching numbers. When he considered how few conservatives, libertarians, or real skeptics of federal power were working in newsrooms, he saw a problem that was making the growth of government possible.

“The [Freedom of Information Act],” Tapscott wrote in a 2004 commentary, “has been subverted from its original intent – shining light in all corners of the federal establishment – and used instead by the bureaucrats, special interests and politicians who live off the Nanny State, especially those hiding behind closed doors in places like Health and Human Services, the Education Department and Housing and Urban Development.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Sitting up straight in his office at the Washington Examiner, where Tapscott has been the editorial page editor for three years, he repeats the point. “There are 57 people in the Freedom of Information Hall of Fame,” he says. “Three of them are conservatives — two of them, if you don’t count me. Now, that’s a problem.”

Since its launch in 2005, the second daily metro newspaper owned by conservative billionaire Phillip Anschutz (the first was the San Francisco Examiner) has struggled for an identity in a city crawling with political journalists. But since the November 2008 election, the Examiner has beefed up its staff and pulled prominent right-leaning reporters and pundits away from publications like The American Spectator and National Review. Tapscott and a growing staff of political and opinion writers are carving out an identity as the conservative version of the left-leaning opinion and investigative journalism sites that — in the view of many conservatives — have used reporting to embarrass conservatives and the Republican Party.

It wasn’t always this way. In 2004, Tapscott and many other conservatives looked at the reporting and fallout of a badly flawed CBS News report on President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard as a watershed moment, the arrival of a form of citizen journalism that could do distributed research and bring down media titans. Tapscott was awed by the “reporting power demonstrated by the blog leaders in Rathergate such as Littlegreenfootballs.com and [Powerlineblog.com],” he wrote at the time. And in 2006, Tapscott joined forces with conservative and liberal bloggers to uncover the identity of a senator who put a hold on anti-earmark legislation. But conservatives point to that period as the tipping point when liberal-leaning sites like Talking Points Memo, whose Muckraker blog chased the “secret hold” story, overtook conservative sites. By the time that voters went to the polls to elect Barack Obama, conservatives saw sites such as TPM, The Huffington Post, Media Matters, Pro Publica, and the Center for American Progress as part of a new left-wing conspiracy. The Examiner has beaten other outlets to the punch in putting together a right-leaning answer to that.

“I don’t think TPM has any special claim to the type of reporting we do,” said Josh Marshall, the editor of TPM. “If the Examiner wants to get reporters down into the weeds holding the administration and Congress to account with tough, by-the-books reporting, I think that’s not only possible but a great thing.”

If a number of other conservative publishers have their way, the Examiner will get more competition. PajamasMedia, the blog conglomerate that grew out of the “Rathergate” story, is talking to potential reporters for an investigative journalism site. Jennifer Rubin, the site’s Washington editor, declined to discuss the plans but pointed to the site’s coverage of anti-tax “Tea Parties” as proof that “the old model of elite journalists peddling liberal opinion as ‘objective reporting’ is dying.” NewMajority.com, an opinion-heavy site launched by conservative writer David Frum on Inauguration Day, employed former Republican National Committee staffer Moira Bagley as an investigative reporter, but published only 11 of her stories before letting her move on in mid-February. Journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson is currently interviewing conservative journalists for a new site tentatively called The Daily Caller, although he declined to discuss it with TWI, explaining that he had “launched too many ventures that were heavily publicized before they were prepared for scrutiny.”

But Tapscott’s paper has gotten there first. After Anschutz’s Baltimore Examiner newspaper was closed in February, more resources were allocated to the Washington paper. They’ve been used to scoop up talent from other conservative media. Tim Carney wrote a column about the lobbying industry while still editing the Evans-Novak Political Report; when founder Robert Novak decided to shutter it in January, Carney moved to the Examiner full-time. One week later, the paper hired Byron York away from a nine-year stint National Review, where he’d been the magazine’s lead political reporter. At the start of June it poached David Freddoso also of National Review, the reporter who’d written the bestselling “The Case Against Barack Obama” for Regnery, and it hired J.P. Freire, who had recently left The American Spectator, to be the managing editor of the editorial pages.

In his modest office, a short walk away from the Examiner’s newsroom, Tapscott can’t pour enough praise on the new hires or on the columnists that have been added to the paper’s lineup, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, and political encyclopedia Michael Barone, hired away from U.S. News and World Report. Scott Ott, a political satirist who won fame in the conservative blogosphere for his site “Scrappleface,” now puts his satire in a weekly column. In a 2004 blog post, Tapscott had mulled over what could happen if a newspaper grabbed fresh political commentary and put it in one place. “If The Washington Post were to sign on Powerline not merely for weekly op-eds and/or the reprint rights but as members of the reporting team,” he speculated, “the Posties would have the collective talents, experience and insight of Hindrocket, The Big Trunk and Deacon to help shape the paper’s reporting agenda, assist in developing major stories and generate new sources for the reporting staff.” Five years later, he’s doing just that.

According to Chris Stirewalt, the paper’s bow-tie-wearing political editor, that lineup has brought attention to the paper that’s also boosted the political coverage. “Two years ago,” says Stirewalt, “people were saying ‘Gosh, if only if there was a vertically integrated place where I could get all this stuff.’ I promise you that two years ago, nobody said ‘You know, if you have Barone and York and Carney and this kid in a bow tie writing columns in a newspaper it would be really cool. That was serendipity. Sometimes if the people are available and the money is there, things come together.”

The results so far: increased Web traffic (up 300 percent since January, according to Web editor Matthew Sheffield) and more attempts to shame federal agencies, members of Congress, and the White House. Some of it has gone largely unnoticed so far. The editorial page’s Kevin Mooney reports a feature called “Dirty Money,” in which he digs through databases to find out which officers or members of unions have been convicted of crimes and how much those unions have given to members of Congress, then calls up the members’ office to ask whether they’ll give the money back. To date, none of them have even given Mooney an on-the-record response; Tapscott hopes to tie that up into a scolding editorial.

York’s political reporting has had a greater calculable impact. In his columns and in his blog, York is given space to hound the White House about embarrassing stories that interest conservatives more than other newsroom’s editors. York wrote multiple pieces on a somewhat obscure complication that preceded Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) turning down an appointment as Commerce Secretary — whether or not the Census would be run from the Commerce Department or from the White House. Since last week, York has filed piece after piece on the firing of Gerald Walpin, an Americorps inspector general who has asked whether his investigation of the Democratic mayor of Sacramento was ended because the target is an ally of the president. Since the paper ran those first stories last week, the controversy has gone up the food chain to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

Over the next few months, Sheffield wants to update the Examiner’s site to “integrate social media” and build on what’s already bringing links to the site from RealClearPolitics, Fox Nation, and conservative blogs. And this week’s purchase of The Weekly Standard by Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group was welcomed by Tapscott, who might have an even larger pool of conservative talent to draw on for his long-term project. “I am ecstatic about the move,” he said, “and the prospect of working with Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes.”

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and Pat Buchanan (Getty Images)

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

After this, say Epstein’s friends, the then-24-year-old conservative activist radically changed his life. He swore off drinking and started attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. He started treating the bipolar depression that had gone undiagnosed until that run-in with the law. In January 2008 Epstein plea bargained to a charge of simple assault, as part of a settlement that included a letter of apology to his victim and a $1,000 donation to the United Negro College Fund. He will be in court again July 8, but because he met the terms of his settlement, Epstein’s employers expect the ordeal to end then and there. Epstein could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Epstein was, and still is, one of the utility players in the immigration restrictionist fringe of the conservative movement, the executive director of both Pat Buchanan’s American Cause and former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-Colo.) Team America PAC. Before and after the 2007 incident, Epstein worked (in an unofficial capacity) with Tancredo on his immigration-focused presidential campaign. He organized policy debates between conservative writers and leaders, including one with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) that was broadcast on C-SPAN. Epstein built coalitions and hobnobbed at Washington parties without much trouble, despite a record of controversial race- and immigration-focused writings and awareness that something bad — the details weren’t clear — had happened in 2007 that convinced him to go on the wagon.

“In college you have this culture of drinking all the time, and he kicked it cold,” said Kevin DeAnna, a friend of Epstein and the founder of Youth for Western Civilization, a student group founded in 2008 of which Tancredo is the honorary chairman. “It’s unfortunate that he’s getting hit from this now, years after he stopped doing this kind of thing.”

Since May 19, when the watchdog group One People’s Project released the legal documents detailing Epstein’s arrest, the activist and his employers have come under fire. By late Monday, the University of Virginia Law School was telling reporters that Epstein would not be joining the class of 2012, even though he had planned to retire from his jobs at the end of June and “more or less suspend my political activities” to attend the school. But Epstein’s career up through yesterday was marked by controversial articles and speeches, happy feuds with politically correct organizations like the One People’s Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and no serious blowback from the mainstream conservative movement. (In 2008, Epstein contributed to the Southern Poverty Law Center in order to win a place on its “Wall of Tolerance” and to warn the group that it was “just one degree of separation away” from him.) Epstein’s past only became an issue after his patrons, Tancredo and Buchanan, spent a week bashing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a “racist” and an an “affirmative action” candidate.

“It’s a huge breakthrough,” said Darrell Jenkins, a co-founder of the nine-year-old One People’s Project. “This game that keeps being played on the right, the way that their leaders will say anything and claim that they’re not racist — that got knocked out the window. Now we have proof that someone of that stature is running around like an idiot in the streets. Why would a Tom Tancredo associate himself with a Marcus Epstein? If he’s going to go after Sotomayor for an out-of-context quote from 2001, he’s got to answer for this.” Jenkins added that he would “be in the courtroom” when Epstein is sentenced.

Marcus Epstein (left) at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 1, 2007 (Photo by: Dave Weigel)

Epstein, who turned 26 in May, has spent his entire adult life courting controversy. In 2003, as the president of College Libertarians and the editor of the conservative newspaper at the College of William and Mary, he argued that conservatives erred by appropriating the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr. instead of remembering his “philandering and plagiarism.” Before and after graduation Epstein carved out an online identity as an old-line, nativist conservative, contributing to the immigration restrictionist web site VDare.com. When he began working for American Cause, Epstein became a young and energetic proponent of ideas that were often attributed to angry, aging white men. “Pat graciously gave me an audio CD version of the book,” Epstein wrote in an article criticizing National Review for not reviewing Buchanan’s “State of Emergency,” an anti-immigration jeremiad. “The facts that he laid out in the book, made me so impassioned, upset, and often angry, that on more than one occasion, I literally had to pull over to a rest stop to compose myself for fear that I would get in a road rage incident.”

In 2006, Epstein co-founded a new paleoconservative group, the Robert Taft Club, with DeAnna; the leadership circle later expanded to include conservative writer Richard Spencer. The group easily drew in thinkers and activists from the mainstream and extreme right. Fox News pundit Jim Pinkerton and National Review writer John Derbyshire appeared, as did Belgian extremist politician Filip Dewinter and Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a race-conscious conservative magazine which invited British extremist politician Nick Griffin to its 2006 conference. None of this was secretive — the events were on the record and included panelists who vehemently disagreed with one another. None of it backfired on the attendees, despite SPLC reports and other exposes. (Note: The writer of this story attended several Robert Taft Club events as a journalist.) The club’s best-attended events were organized after Epstein’s 2007 arrest, the details of which did not become known until this week. Now, some of the people Epstein had brought out for public debates worry about the effects of the One People’s Project’s revelations and the increased scrutiny that has come with Tancredo and Buchanan’s Sotomayor statements.

“It’s the sort of thing the left typically does,” Taylor told TWI. “The One People’s Project published my home phone number and home address, more or less inviting somebody to pitch a brick through my window. The Southern Poverty Law Center will be crowing and whooping about this. It’s typical of the other side and it’s an ungentlemanly way to conduct politics.”

On Monday, Bay Buchanan — the co-chairman of Team America PAC and the president of American Cause — defended Epstein and castigated the One People’s Project for dredging up the arrest details. Buchanan managed Tancredo’s presidential campaign, and Epstein did some volunteer speechwriting for the campaign before and after the arrest. Buchanan said he has worked through his problems, making it all the more mysterious that he should be targeted for them now.

“This is something that happened two years ago that Marcus has paid a price for,” said Buchanan. “Are people allowed a second chance in this life when they realize their mistakes and their errors? I think so.”

Tancredo and Pat Buchanan have not commented on the news of Epstein’s 2007 arrest, but DeAnna’s Youth for Western Civilization got out ahead of the story with a May 29 statement that Epstein had no affiliation with the group apart from scheduling Tancredo’s speeches on college campuses. Pinkerton chose not to address the charges against Epstein, but he wondered what effect the rush by Tancredo and Buchanan to accuse Sotomayor of racism was having on the Supreme Court debate and on the conservative movement in particular.

“The ‘R’ word is a tough word,” said Pinkerton. “My immediate reaction to Sotomayor’s ‘wise Latina’ comment was ‘tell that to the people whose faces are on Mount Rushmore. They were pretty wise and they weren’t Latina females.’ That being the case, we all are blessed with the vocabularies to choose different words. In our culture, ‘racist’ is really up there in the Richter scale of words.”

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee of Justice, has been optimistic about the right’s fight against Sotomayor, but he admitted to TWI that he “underestimated the degree to which a few conservatives would say a few extreme things, and that would be characterized as what all conservatives think.”

For Epstein’s friends, this aspect of the Supreme Court debate has simply been surprising and sad. “I hope he can live it down,” said Taylor of American Renaissance. “I would have thought Dick Morris would never live down his $150 an hour hooker. I would never have thought Bill Clinton would live down what happened between him and Monica Lewinsky. In the end, those people were welcomed back into the fold. It’s just that liberals tend to be very unforgiving about things of this kind.”

[UPDATE: This article originally misstated the name of one of the Robert Taft Club's leaders. It was Richard Spencer, not Robert Spencer.]

1.) Karl Rove, “President Bush Tried to Rein In Fan and Fred” (The Wall Street Journal, 1/8/08)
Bush’s Brain argues/spins that Democrats are “myth-making” when they say that the president’s ballyhooed housing programs caused the economic crisis. It was their fault, for not “grant[ing] the Bush administration the regulatory powers it sought.”

2.) Michael Brendan Dougherty, “Fight of Their Lives” (The American Conservative, 1/12/09 issue)
Leaders of the pro-life movement angst about the agenda of a pro-death president.

3.) Jon Henke, “The Republican Strategy on Fiscal Stimulus” (The Next Right, 1/6/09)
A critique of the GOP’s nonexistent game plan on Obama’s economic package.

4.) Gov. Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina), “Bad Beltway Medicine” (National Review, 1/9/09)
The libertarian-leaning possible 2012 candidate continues his campaign to be the voice of anti-Washington, anti-bailout conservatives.

5.) Oliver North, “One President?” (Human Events, 1/9/09)
A terrifically unhinged argument that Joe Biden is endangering national security from a man most famous for endangering national security.

6.) Peter Ferrara, “Tax Cut Mirage” (The American Spectator, 1/7/09)
The best-travelled (on talk radio) and most data-driven attack on Barack Obama’s stimulus plans.

7.) Fred Barnes, “The End of the Line” (The Weekly Standard, 1/5/09)
Perhaps the last on-the-record, soft-focus features that Barnes, the semi-official sympathetic scribe of the Bush administration, will conduct with the president.

8.) Andrew Breitbart, “A Million Stories to Tell” (The Washington Times, 1/5/09)
The former quarterback of the Drudge Report launches “Big Hollywood,” a new site geared toward making the film industry patriotic again.

9.) David Brady, Douglas Rivers and Laurel Harbridge, “The 2008 Democratic Shift” (Policy Review, Dec/Jan)
A statistical study of the McCain defeat that concludes that Republicans are in for a “long, dry” period.

Candidates for the RNC chairmanship held a debate on Monday. (David Weigel)

Chip Saltsman has put the “magic negro” story behind him. The news that the ex-Mike Huckabee campaign manager and candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee had sent RNC members a CD of parody songs that included “Barack the Magic Negro” lit up the political press during the slow Christmas week.

But the aftermath of those first frenzied days was not so hard on Saltsman. According to the Politico’s Andy Barr, RNC members were angry at the media for exploiting the story, and some of them considered supporting him because of it. “I would say that’s about right,” Saltsman told The Washington Independent, confirming the Politico’s take.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Monday’s debate between Saltsman and the five other candidates for RNC chair — including Mike Duncan, the incumbent chairman crushed under the Obama wave — provided yet more evidence that the obsessions of the “MSM” will have nothing to say about who leads the opposition party. Ken Blackwell, the black RNC chairman contender from Ohio, trumpeted his support of Saltsman during the “magic negro” flap on a leaflet handed out to reporters and spectators. You couldn’t find a better example of the Republican Party’s internal wisdom about what its political problems are right now, or what it needs to do to correct them. According to all but one candidate for the job, the GOP’s fortunes will reverse just as soon as it gets better at messaging and networking with activists. Fix that and they’ve fixed the party.

The debate — the first televised RNC slugfest ever, organizer and moderator Grover Norquist crowed — provided plenty of flashbacks to the debates of the 2007-2008 Republican presidential primaries. George W. Bush was only mentioned when Norquist brought him up. Chances to critique the party were judo-flipped into chances to attack the Democrats, who, in power, were sure to cause a voter backlash.

“The Obama administration has promised tremendous increasing in spending,” said Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, “which they’re either going to pay for with higher taxes or higher deficits. That’s going to create tremendous opportunities for us as a party and as a movement.”

Mike Duncan, the incumbent who won the job two years ago, made everyone understand why he’d initially had to share the role with Florida Sen. Mel Martinez (R) — he spoke as if a sudden burst of charisma could poison him. “We’ve got to get our candidates using the technology,” Duncan said, explaining how the RNC already had the tools and the philosophy it needed to win. “We did that in Georgia for Saxby Chambliss,” he said. “We sent 79 million ad impressions to 600,000 Republicans.” According to Duncan, the GOP only lost in 2008 because of the Bush-damaged brand and tricks by wily Democratic technocrats. “We won the election on Election Day, 2008,” he explained in a glossy handbook (”Leadership You Can Trust”) handed out in the audience. “Early voting, however, resulted in our defeat.”

Blackwell, leaning back in his chair and speaking slowly, was as grim and confident. “When Ken Blackwell speaks,” commented American Spectator managing editor J.P. Freire, “I feel like I’m in trouble for something.” Blackwell framed the GOP’s problems as those of an ossified organization unable to reap the benefits of its good ideas.

“We have to reinvigorate the base and push our resources back to state and county parties,” Blackwell said. “It is only when you decentralize power that you get serious accountability at the local level.” He suggested a “40 under 40 strategy” that would make sure four out of 10 local GOP officials were still looking down the road at middle age.

Saul Anuzis — by one measure the frontrunner for chairmanship, with 12 public commitments from RNC members — used the word “network” as often as Blackwell invoked the name of Ronald Reagan. “It’s nice to talk about technology,” said Anuzis, “but we need to make this part of everything we do.” When Norquist got around to asking the candidates whether they used Twitter, the gleam in Anuzis’s eyes could be seen from the Mall — he has more than 4,000 Facebook friends and nearly 3,000 followers on Twitter, where he types whatever’s on his mind and preaches the gospel of high-tech outreach. At a post-debate reception, Anuzis kept tweeting: “Ken Blackwell seemed to be very proud he had more Facebook friends than me…send more my way ”.

Saltsman picked up the high-tech banner and flew it high. “The magic of the Obama campaign,” he argued, “was that they had open box solutions that their supporters could use to work better in the communities, with their voters.” Katon Dawson pledged to run more candidates and to talk to more members of minority groups, such as the Hispanics who abandoned the party in 2008. “We are more consistent with that community,” said Dawson, “with their family values and the school choice. But did they listen to us in the last election cycle?”

When Republican consultant Patrick Ruffini asked what issues could galvanize the Republican base, the candidates were back in their comfort zones. Republicans, said Duncan, could oppose the “billion-dollar gamble” that President-elect Obama thinks will stimulate the economy. And Duncan was “willing to put resources in immediately to strike down any attempt to bring back the fairness doctrine in this country.” Saltsman expected the Obama administration to “give us a gift of an overreaching, overpowering government that will limit our freedoms” and, in turn, make more voters into Republicans.

The lone RNC candidate who used the forum to critique the party, not just its messaging, was Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and current chair of GOPAC. He entered the race nine days after Sen. John McCain’s defeat, announcing on the friendly turf of Hannity and Colmes. Conservative activists were thrilled. But Steele is running behind the pack in public commitments from RNC members, although Steele campaign aide Kevin Igoe chalked that up to “a different strategy” of not trumpeting every new endorsement.

“I represent a threat to the system,” Steele explained after the debate. “I want to change it bottom up to top down.”

But Steele’s criticisms of the party have not helped him among conservative activists and RNC members who don’t thrill at being told what they’ve done wrong. “He looks like he knows he’s losing,” whispered one conservative blogger who’d been reading Steele’s body language.

It’s a strange situation for Steele, whom activists consider one of the most charismatic figures in the party, regularly requested to stump for Republicans in close races. The problem is that “change” he’s talking about. While his five rivals for the RNC post discussed the party’s failures in terms of messaging, of technological gaps, and of poor outreach, Steele would launch into existential questions about what the party stood for, who it talked to, and who it had alienated.

“We can Twitter, we can YouTube all you want to,” Steele said, answering a question about reaching out to young voters, “but we need to put young people in the game and let them play. Not just sticking them on committees and rolling them out to see ‘Gee, look who we got,’ like we do with black folks and a whole lot of other folks.”

The not-so-secret truth that’s hurt Steele, and reportedly helped Saltsman, is that Republicans don’t want (or believe they need) a candidate who’ll bring change as dramatic as their 2006 and 2008 election losses. Why do that if the Democrats will overreach and anger voters anyway? After the debate, Steele could be heard grousing about “this ideological stuff” that opponents were using against him — specifically, the claim that he’s soft on abortion and his association with the Republican Leadership Council proves that. A just-for-fun lightning round question about the candidates’ firearms proved, again, how hard Steele’s task would be if the party was looking for cultural validation from its next chief.

“Four handguns and two rifles,” said Duncan.

“Too many to count,” said Dawson.

“Seven,” said Blackwell. “And I’m good.”

“Two,” said Anuzis, “but they wouldn’t let me carry them in Washington, D.C.”

“In my closet at home,” said Saltsman, “I’ve got two 12-gauges, a 20-gauge, three handguns, and a 30.6. And I’ll take you on any time, Ken.”

“None,” said Steele.