The Republican family feud was laid bare in public last week at the Conservative Political Action Committee's annual confab. CPAC activists are a notoriously cranky bunch, quick to pounce on politician friends who stray toward the center. But this year the spears aimed at George W. Bush were especially sharp.
It can't be a good sign for a White House hoping to maintain control of Congress next November when its one-time allies lump in the president with two of their perpetual bogeymen: John McCain and Ted Kennedy.
Bush's budget-busting spending was a big reason for the foul mood. But two other issues captured the growing split between the president and a powerful conservative movement that twice helped him capture the Oval Office: immigration and the Medicare prescription drug plan.
Bush's decision to use his State of the Union address to reiterate his support for a guest worker program -- despite objections from the right -- infuriated this crowd, who applauded talk of building a wall along the Mexican border and wore red stickers reading, ''STOP GUEST WORKER AMNESTY."
Representative Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican famous for his calls to stop illegal immigration, lashed out at another critical Republican constituency involved in the issue: the business community.
''I do take offense," said Randel Johnson, a Chamber of Commerce vice president and lifelong Republican, of Tancredo's speech. ''I'm perplexed at how the business community that creates the wealth of this country all of a sudden becomes the bad guy in this debate." Like Bush, the chamber supports plans to enable the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States to work their way toward legal status.
The audience for Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly roared its approval as she argued that guest worker programs produce ''a subservient underclass of people who will not assimilate, will not speak our language, and will cause trouble. America wants immigrants who want to be 100 percent American."
Tancredo also drew big applause when he called for repealing the administration's costly prescription drug plan, which the president extolled in his Saturday radio address as ''a good deal for seniors."
Return of the K Street crowd
The K Street Project, brainchild of anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the dethroned House majority leader, was launched to pressure Washington lobbying firms and trade associations to hire like-minded Republicans.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has called the project a scandal and asked a Senate committee to investigate.
And with the Jack Abramoff case rocking Capitol Hill and DeLay under investigation, Republican lawmakers also are distancing themselves.
John Boehner of Ohio, who won the race to succeed DeLay, campaigned on a promise that if elected, ''there will no longer be a K Street project or anything else like it."
But at CPAC, activists at a booth for Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform were handing out flyers for the K Street Project as if they were nothing more than menus for Chinese takeout. ''Find out Where lobbyists are working," the fliers read, ''and Who they give money to! GREAT JOB OPENINGS!"
And in an especially creative use of language, the handouts describe the K Street Project as a purveyor of ''non partisan" research.
A PC coffee connection
For all you rightists who are sick of watching liberals market rain forest-friendly ice cream and cosmetics that haven't been tested on animals, there's now a product to match with your own ideological bent: ''Contra Café."
For just $10, customers can buy a pound of rich Nicaraguan coffee and support former Contras -- the country's antisocialist militias supported by the Reagan administration -- at the same time.
The Contras, which President Reagan dubbed ''freedom fighters," became heroes to the American right in the 1980s with their guerrilla war against the leftist Sandinista government.
Now, their sponsors say, Contra farmers ''grow some of the best coffee in the world in the same mountains where they once battled Sandinista troops. The high-altitude volcanic soil and the close attention of these small-scale farmers create a coffee with uniquely vibrant flavor and richness."
Winners in the fund-raising race
Last week The Briefing understated Senator John Kerry's campaign war chest. In addition to nearly $800,000 in his PAC and Senate committee, Kerry has $9.1 million left over from his 2004 primary campaign account.
Aides say that since the 2004 campaign, the once and perhaps future presidential candidate has doled out $3 million to Democratic candidates and organizations.
On the Romney '08 front, a new Strategic Vision poll shows the Massachusetts governor tied for third with Newt Gingrich and George Allen among Michigan Republican voters asked to consider prospective presidential candidates.
The winners: John McCain, at 37 percent, and Rudolph Giuliani, at 25 percent. Michigan -- Mitt Romney's childhood home and the state his father governed -- is considered key to a potential presidential run.
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