RNC Chairman Steele: We Will Fight Dems On Opposing McCain Feingold Repeal

A little over a week after the November 4th elections, the Republican National Committee filed federal lawsuits to repeal McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations. A day before the RNC elected it’s new chairman, Michael Steele, the Democratic National Committee attempted to block the RNC’s lawsuits to repeal McCain-Feingold.

A recent press release from the DNC said the following:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today the Democratic National Committee announced that it filed a motion to intervene in the case of the Republican National Committee v. FEC, in which the RNC is seeking to dismantle the soft money provisions of the bi-partisan McCain Feingold campaign reform act (BCRA) of 2002. After a bruising defeat in November 2008, the RNC filed suit in the District of Columbia, challenging the constitutionality of the central tenet of BCRA – the ban on national party soft money. In its suit, the RNC relies on the same arguments that it made and that the Supreme Court previously rejected in McConnell v. FEC in 2003.

“Cloaked in the veil of a constitutional challenge, the RNC is callously attempting to dismantle needed reforms to make up for their fundraising deficiencies,” said DNC General Counsel Robert F. Bauer.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said DNC Executive Director Jen O’Malley Dillon. “Having failed to connect with ordinary Americans, the Republican Party is trying to change the rules to suit their political objectives, rather than work harder within the law to reach the American people.”

The evening before Michael Steele became the new RNC Chairman, I asked the former Lieutenant governor of Maryland how the RNC should respond to the DNC’s recent attempt to block the RNC from repealing McCain-Feingold and lifting the soft money ban on national parties. Steele responded,

“I’ve said from day one McCain-Feingold is bad law. It has done more damage to the Republican National Committee and its state parties in its efforts to fundraise…in it’s efforts to put in place the strategies with those dollars…hard dollars, soft dollars to be competitive in races. We don’t have the unions. We don’t have the associations and organizations. We don’t have the George Soros’ writing the kinds of checks they’re writing for those independent organizations. So it does matter and the impact makes a difference. So… yeah and we’re going to stand back, and I think it’s interesting that first the president then as a candidate says he’s going to do one thing to honor good campaign finance reform then he starts making a little bit of money and throws it out the window and now you have the Democrats trying to block our efforts to preup this process tells me all I need to know. So we’ll be engaged at the right time to get this turned around for us.”

Plans for 2010 mid-term elections are already in motion, so this fight could very well be one of Steele’s first formidable tasks to take on as RNC Chair.

Nancy ‘Bart Simpson’ Cartwright Pitches Scientology

Rush Limbaugh Defends His Bi-Partisan Stimulus Plan on CNBC

Harkin Votes Down Geithner

Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa voted down Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary. Harkin gave his reasoning on the senate floor today.

‘Purple Tunnel of Doom’ Has Yet to Reach Liberal Talking Heads

While the media talking heads are still gabbing about the greatness of President Obama’s inauguration, few, if any, are mentioning the purple inauguration ticket holders, who were stuffed thru Washington D.C.’s 3rd street tunnel hoping to see the Obama inauguration.

A Facebook group titled “Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom” is for individuals who attempted to attend the inauguration with purple tickets and their January 20th horror stories (h/t American Thinker Larrey Anderson). Here are a few from this morning. (my emphasis throughout:)

A poster at 1:32am wrote:

Perhaps what infuriates me most is the ongoing denial of the scale of the problem. My personal estimate is that as many as 40,000 ticket holders were trapped in the tunnel (I was one of them). My brother-in-law and I are both Californians, and Feinstein will be hearing from us.

Being a lefty Facebook group, some are holding on to the notion that the Bush admininstration made them suffer in the "Purple Tunnel of Doom"

A poster at 7:36am wrote:

Sorry, this was such a disaster and it so could have been prevented I don’t believe it was an accident. Call me a cynic, but it looks to me like it was one last parting shot from the Bush Administration and his minions to make it look like fewer people attended the ceremony!

However, another poster at 9:07am seems to disagree with this assessment.

i think all the people blaming Bush are being willfully ignorant. The inauguration was handled by the following agencies: Presidential Inaugural Committee, (Obama), JCCIC (Dianne Feinstein, D-CA), US Capitol Police (I believe under CAO, which is under Nancy Pelosi), and the DC Metro Police (under Adrian Fenty, Democrat and big Obama supporter).

A poster at 6:38am wrote:

Waited forever..what a mess from 3am I should have stayed home but I wanted to be part of history. I def got what a wanted in more ways then one.

A poster wrote at 5:56 am:

like most of the thousands of loyal supporters turned away from the gates on the morning of Jan. 20, what we had hoped would be the most exciting day of our lives, the culmination of a year of hard work and great expense, became the most frustrating . We spent 5 hours in the idiots/honest folks BLUE LINE to NOWHERE. Our Inauguration experience was watching the gates slam closed in our face, neither seeing nor hearing the ceremony. We met not a single figure of authority to reign in the thousands of gate crashers, nor a volunteer who could have explained what we learned hours later: the security machine quit working for more than 90 minutes, so there was no possibility we’d get in. If we had known, we could have made it to the Mall and at least watched on tv. The ultimate irony was seeing pictures of all the celebs comfortably sitting in the front rows watching the proceedings we never got to see, while we, the people who put Barack in office, were on the sidelines!!!!!!!

A poster at 3:38 am had an epiphany for a moment and realized the wonders of the private sector. This individual wrote:

In the next Inauguration, why don’t we make sure that this gets outsourced to a professional company that knows what they are doing. Congress, the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police could be replaced with a professional management team and renta cops. It would be a great improvement. And you could do it at a much less expensive cost.

The Washington Post has a poll up as to how purple ticket holders should be compensated as well as information on souvenir packages that Sen.Dianne Feinstein has just promised to blue and purple ticket holders.

A Facebook poster wrote at 6:31am dissatisfaction with the compensation.

a packet with pictures?…this is supposed to be a compensation?…no thank you.

A post from Free Republic commenter “bert” mentioned that in 2005, he was also turned away from the Bush inauguration. However, the reason involved liberals too.

I am one of those folks except I was unable to enter the ticketed area for the second Bush Inaugural. The reason was a very large [crowd] of outraged moonbats that blocked sidewalks and severely retarded walking traffic flow.

A 2005 AP report corroborates this Freeper’s post:

Police said at least 10 people were arrested during the inaugural ceremonies. Sgt. Scott Fear of the U.S. Park Police said four women who were protesting the wearing of furs were arrested after they disrobed in the near-freezing temperatures.

District of Columbia police said they had to use pepper spray to break up a "push and shoving match" between officers and protesters near the start of the parade. A police spokesman said at least one officer was slightly injured.

Police and witnesses said a security checkpoint near the White House was briefly shut down after being blocked by protesters.

“The purple tunnel of doom” could very well be a metaphor for Obama’s America. Excited, hopeful, energetic people who were promised something wonderful and sacrificed their time, treasure, and energy to join him in D.C. on January 20th. Unfortunately, they were stuck in D.C.’s purple tunnel of doom instead.

***UPDATE: Facebook Administrators of the group, "Purple Tunnel of Doom" are already deleting some of the posts that I have listed here.

Sal The Stockbroker Goes To Harlem -Part 2

Tell Jamie Foxx The Obama-messiah can be made fun of.

Flashback – Bush 2005 Inauguration protesters – Video

*Warning-Explicit Language*

I wonder whatever happened to these guys? I seriously doubt they are hanging around Obama’s inauguration day activities.

Obama Supporters Ski During The National Day of Service

Eric Holder Confronted With His Own Views On Media And ‘Fairness’-VIDEO

When the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Eric Holder, the media ignored his personal ideological activism. NewBusters Tim Graham recently wrote about how differently the media treated John Ashcroft’s confirmation as opposed to Holder’s.

Silence and the media are going hand in hand with the Holder confirmation. The mainstream media is not going after Holder in regards to his involvement with the Marc Rich and FALN pardons, for example.

The mainstream media also claimed that Ashcroft would put ideology over his duties at the Department of Justice. Here are some clips from columnists at a PBS Online Newshour segment during Ashcroft’s 2001 confirmation hearing:

TERENCE SMITH(PBS): Cynthia Tucker, do you object to John Ashcroft’s ideology, his record or what you think or fear he might do as Attorney General?

CYNTHIA TUCKER (Atlanta Constitution): All of the above. Although I would like to be clear that I have not suggested that John Ashcroft should not be confirmed. I am deeply troubled by his nomination. I think he will be dangerous for the country and trouble for the Bush administration but I also, like Lee Cullum, believe that a President has the right to choose his own nominees. I just think that President-elect Bush would have done better to choose someone else. Nor have I said that John Ashcroft is racist. I don’t know whether the man’s racist or not. But I am certainly troubled with some of his positions on issues that are important to African Americans.

(snip)

TUCKER: Absolutely, absolutely, and different Attorneys General have had different levels of influence with the President. But given John Ashcroft’s record, his history, his ideology and those are important considerations here, there is every reason to believe that he will try to persuade President Bush to appoint jurists to the Supreme Court who are at best skeptical of "Roe v. Wade," at worst committed to overturning it.

The mainstream media, however, has been mum on Holder’s leftist ideology. During Holder’s confirmation hearing yesterday, it took tough questioning from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) about a speech the former deputy attorney general gave in 2004 to examine Holder’s liberal beliefs:

SESSIONS: In an April 2004 speech at American Constitution society a liberal group, you asked the audience what it could do to bring about a liberal renaissance, which is a legitimate political effort to promote your beliefs, and you single out the media and criticize them for impeding liberal views and said, “In the short term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media somewhat cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of people is not easily accessible.”

So we do have this discussion of the fairness doctrine. Do you think the government has the ability to interject itself in the free market of ideas and direct somehow that there be a balance between one view and another view on the airwaves?

HOLDER: Well the views I was expressing there were views that I had, as a private citizen would not reflect what I would do, if I were confirmed as attorney general. What I said …in response to the question that had been raised earlier about the fairness doctrine was that I just needed to know more about it before I could intelligently respond to the question, but I did not mean to implicate the fairness doctrine in that speech.

How convenient. The mainstream media will not question if “private citizen” Holder’s political activism will just disappear after he is confirmed as attorney general. However, they held steadfast in their belief that Ashcroft would inject his own political activism into the job if he were confirmed as attorney general in 2001.

It is becoming increasingly concerning that President-elect Obama’s cabinet picks have voiced strong aversions to conservative media. These now include most recently his Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis and now Eric Holder.

Conservatives should not only look closely at the Federal Communications Commission as a vehicle to push media censorship but also other areas of the Obama administration, because the media will not do it for them.

Holder : Make Assault Weapons Ban Permanent-VIDEO

During his senate confirmation hearing, Eric Holder reaffirmed several of his anti-gun stances.