RNC Fund-raising Scandal And Conservatism's True "Code Red" Colors

As prominent Republicans continue to distance themselves from an internal Republican National Committee fund-raising presentation that emphasized "fear" as a primary motivator of "reactionary" potential donors, it pays to reexamine the evidence that for today's conservative movement, the only thing it has to offer is fear itself.

One example is the National Republican Congressional Committee "Code Red" project, which according to its website is devoted to "alerting Americans to the Democrats' health care takeover." That site contains the hyperbolic attack lines that the right has been relentlessly pounding and that were echoed by Republican lawmakers at the recent health-care summit at the White House.

The site asserts several falsehoods about the health-care legislation: that it would:

* Radically Increase Government Spending
* Raise Taxes on Families and Small Businesses
* Destroy Jobs
* Cut Medicare for Seniors
* Force You Out of Coverage You Like
* Allow for Taxpayer Funding of Abortion

These statements have been rebutted time and time again, yet conservatives in the GOP keep uttering them. And, as the Republican party ramps up for the 2010 congressional races, they are not hesitating to plunk down the fear card to rile up the "reactionary" masses.

The Baltimore Sun reported March 4 that the GOP is targeting Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil with attack-ad robocalls, even though Kratovil has voted against health care reform in the past and has said he is likely to do so again.

The Sun published a transcript of the robocall, which says in part:

Hello I’m calling from the NRCC with a Code Red alert about an impending health care vote in Congress. Even though a majority of the country wants them to scrap it, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama are planning to ram their dangerous, out-of-control health care spending bill through Congress anyway. What’s worse, Congressman Frank Kratovil might vote for it. Frank Kratovil votes with Nancy Pelosi 84% of the time and may follow her orders on this bill, too. Frank Kratovil might vote for a bill that will kill jobs, raise the costs of health care, and increase taxes. Frank Kratovil should be focusing on creating jobs, yet he might be the deciding vote that causes this massive new spending bill to pass.

This page from the conservative campaign book is old. Back in 2006, FactCheck.org compared political campaign ads from the two parties and concluded that while Democrats "generally attack Republican candidates on policy issues or their performance in office," Republican ads "are much more likely to demean an opponent's character. That's the very definition of political mudslinging."

The demeaning campaign fund-raising document from the RNC—with its caricatures of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Pelosi and its absence of any positive policy agenda—merely reflects a long-standing characteristic of the conservative movement. Now that the bankruptcy of its fundamental ideas are clear for the public to see, its only clear route to power is not through the strength of its solutions to the country's problems but the extent to which they can create a fog of fear and deception. Conservative elected officials today are denying that's the case, but we'll see in the coming weeks their true colors.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future