ACU Shows Conservatives Can Be Bought - and Rented
As it turns out, free market conservatives can be bought - and rented. Four years after disgraced Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham pled guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractor MZM, the venerable American Conservative Union sought millions from FedEx before backing rival UPS in a pay-to-play scheme that came to light this week. Following the scandals over the Bush administration's paid-for pundits Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, the ACU showed right-wingers can apparently also be purchased wholesale.
As Politico revealed on Friday:
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group's support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group's chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: "Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU's Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU's board of directors.
When FexEx balked at the scheme, ACU's Keene instead joined other conservative leaders in penning a letter which absolutely, positively supported UPS. Interestingly, among the co-signers was Grover Norquist, suggesting his objective towards the government to "drown it in the bathtub" could be a contract killing.
As recent history shows, conservative opinion leaders willing to sell their principles can be purchased in groups or just one at a time. As I noted in 2005 ("The Potemkin President"):
In "The Message Machine", the New York Times detailed the range of strategies and tactics the Bush administration uses to ensure favorable press coverage. The easiest way to get good ink, of course, is just to buy it. Accordingly, the Department of Education paid conservative shill Armstrong Williams $240,000 to whore Bush's No Child Left Behind law. Maggie Gallagher collected from $41,500 from Tommy Thompson at HHS to push his marriage initiatives. The main drawback of paid-for-punditry is getting caught; President Bush may need to hire additional journalists to spin the GAO investigations now underway.
(As president of the National Organization for Marriage and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Maggie Gallagher continues her war against marriage equality, just not on American taxpayers' dime.)
For its part, the American Conservative Union is the force behind CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. And among its favorite columnists the ACU web site lists the ever execrable Michelle Malkin.
Which, for one day at least, is unfortunate for the ACU. Malkin, who despite the never-ending rap sheet of the Banana Republicans ejected from the White House and Congress in recent years, has a new book coming out on the supposed "culture of corruption" of Team Obama. And on Friday, even she took the "rotten" American Conservative Union to task in a piece titled, "Republicans: Clean your own house."
Back in 2005, the now-disgraced David Keene insisted Republicans should distance themselves from the even-more-disgraced GOP uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff:
"If someone within your family is doing something that's certainly wrong, if not illegal, you have a duty to say, That's not us."
As it turns out, for the conservative movement, it is "us." And David Keene and his American Conservative Union, like so many corrupt Republicans before, decided to cash in.
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