A2 Politics & The Nation
Chamber of Commerce spending millions to back Republicans ........A3 Blagojevich defense rests its case, stunning prosecution ...................A4 Lawsuits target Nebraska’s ordinance on immigrants.........................A4 No charges in Bush-era attorney firings ................................................A5 RNC aide accused of obstruction............................................................A5 U.S. suspends deep-water oil drilling, others move ahead ..................A6 Oil firms to create spill response plan ...................................................A6
The World
Tighter restrictions imposed on North Korea.....................................A10 Foreign companies in sound off on China’s business policies............A11 Russia accuses U.S. of kidnapping pilot in Liberia .............................A11 Bombings kill 15 at mosque in Iraq ......................................................A12
on
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R
ep. Michele Bachmann is the leader of the Tea Party —literally.
Wednesday morning, with the blessing of House GOP leaders, the Minnesota Republican convened the inaugural meeting of her Tea Party Caucus, where two dozen GOP members of Congress sat down with a similar number of Tea Party activists behind closed doors in an Armed Services Committee room. Then it was Bachmann’s job to lead the group across the street to the Capitol for an appearance before TV cameras. “Okay, we can just go down the
stairs,” she called out. “You’re doing great, everybody. Okay, guys, this way!” She accepted a tube of lipstick from a male aide and applied it as she strode through the hallways of the Rayburn Building. “The press has been following us,” she explained. She continued her march down
CORRECTIONS
The MisFits column in the July 15 Local Living section included a photograph in which the subjects were cropped out because of a production error. The photo is re- printed in today’s Local Living.
A July 14 Sports article about Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis and the outlook for the team misstated the day of an NBA Summer League game that Leon- sis attended in Las Vegas. The
·· E-mail
corrections@washpost.com.
game described was the preced- ing Monday, July 12, not the pre- ceding Tuesday.
The June 27 Outlook review of Connie Mariano’s book “The White House Doctor” incorrectly described Mariano as the first female White House physician. Janet Travell, who served Presi- dents John F. Kennedy and Lyn- don B. Johnson, was the first female White House doctor.
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the Rayburn driveway (“Sorry about this long trip; I know it’s warm”) and across Independence Avenue (“Okay, let’s cross when we can!”) and finally mustered them a few steps from the TV cameras. “Ready to roll?” she asked. There and then — on the Capitol grounds 104 days before the midterm elections — Tea Party activists and Republican officeholders set aside any pretense about the two groups being separate. They essentially consummated a merger: The activists allowed themselves to be co-opted by a political party, and the Republican leaders allowed themselves to become the faces of the movement. Naturally, both protested that nothing of the sort was occurring. “I am not the head of the Tea Party,” Bachmann announced as she stood in front of a phalanx of Tea Party leaders. “We are also not here to vouch for the Tea Party.” With a dozen House
Republicans surrounding her, Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, announced that her group “wanted to make sure the people in Congress don’t become amouthpiece for the movement.” Sorry, ladies. When Tea Party leaders join Republican lawmakers for a private strategy session followed by a campaign rally in the shadow of the Capitol, each has essentially endorsed the other. “We have to turn the tide around now in 2010 by electing conservative candidates such as Mrs. Bachmann here,” activist
ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS “I am not the head of the Tea Party,” says Michele Bachmann, the head of the Tea Party . . . Caucus.
DANA MILBANK Washington Sketch
Ana Puig proclaimed during her turn at the microphones. “Let’s lean into the fight, and
let’s take this country back in November,” agreed Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.). Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.) forecast a Tea Party “tsunami that will sweep out these extremists who are governing the Congress in November.” A questioner asked Bachmann
whether she was “putting your Republican colleagues in a spot” where they had to embrace the Tea Party. Bachmann said that three House Republican leaders have joined (the head of the House Republicans’ 2010 campaign and the chairman of the House Republican Conference are members) and that “another member who is in the leadership told me he’s very supportive of what we’re doing and this is complementary” to other Republican efforts to seize the House in November. Bachmann added, incongruously, that she is still “hoping to be bipartisan” in her Tea Party Caucus. Embracing the Tea Party brings some peril to the Republican
Party, because it could create the perception that GOP leaders are endorsing the more extreme elements of the movement, such as the Nazi imagery and racist words. That may be why House Minority Leader John Boehner has kept his distance. Participants in Wednesday’s rally were sensitive to the problem; after Bachmann’s introduction, a black woman (with a baby), two Latinos and four more women spoke before the first white male was heard from. “We are not racists,” said Danielle Hollars, an African American mother of five. “Racism is not an issue of the
Tea Party, nor will it ever be,” asserted Katrina Pierson, a member of the Dallas Tea Party who is of mixed race and has called for Texas to secede. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) then
said that the presence of people from various “ethnic groups” should dispel “rumors about racism.” But the very next speaker, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), revived the issue by disparaging Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and another black
lawmaker, who were met with racial taunts as they walked to the Capitol during the health-care debate. “I got cussed,” too, Gohmert said, but “I didn’t come running to the media and whining and crying.” The race problem returned
when Fox News’s Carl Cameron asked about the “dissent and criticism” within the Tea Party movement. Mark Meckler, a leader of the Tea Party Patriots, used that as an opening to denounce Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express for writing a “racist, offensive and vile” essay mocking the NAACP. Meckler attributed such “vile racism” to a “fringe” movement. But where does that fringe
end?
At the rally Wednesday, Republican lawmakers listened as Puig accused the Democrats of “21st-century Marxism” and said that “what I see going on is exactly what has taken place throughout Latin America under dictators such as . . . Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.” They listened as Tito Muñoz railed against the “socialist polices” of the Democrats. They listened as Keli Carender spoke of people “anonymously smearing” her and complained that “we’re not supposed to fly places, but the presidential dog gets his own jet to fly somewhere.” They are the House Republicans, and they approved this message.
danamilbank@washpost.com Surprises in Colorado governor’s race dim GOP’s hopes by Dan Balz
denver — When the 2010 elec- tion cycle began last year, national Republicans viewed Colorado as one of their best opportunities to take a governor’s office from the Democrats. Today they wonder whether they’ll even have a viable candidate for November. The transformation in Repub- lican fortunes in the gubernatorial race here underscores one of the realities of this election year. No matter how positive the political environment, candidates say and do dumb things. In Colorado, Scott McInnis is Exhibit A. McInnis, a former House mem-
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ber, has gone from leading candi- date for the Republican guberna- torial nomination to virtual pariah within his party in a matter of days, thanks to a plagiarism scan- dal brought to light by the Denver Post and the candidate’s initial ef- forts to duck responsibility. Two newspapers — the Denver
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Post and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, which is from McInnis’s home territory — have called for him to quit the race. Jane Norton, one of the party’s top candidates for the Senate nomination, has publicly rebuked him. “I think he’s still got a lot of questions that still need to be answered,” she said. Meanwhile, top strategists pri-
vately lament that McInnis’s pres- ence on the GOP ticket this fall would be a drag on candidates in other races — when prospects for significant gains are bright. Although still favored in the pri-
mary Aug. 10, McInnis likely will face further scrutiny and pressure from within his party, especially if post-primary polls show him trail- ing Denver Mayor John Hicken- looper, the expected Democratic nominee. McInnis has brushed aside calls for him to get out of the race and has been back on the campaign trail in recent days. But specula- tion about possible replacements continues and party officials, in the state and nationally, have stud- ied the legal options available to them to make a change.
“The acid period is between the
10th and after Labor Day,” said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based poll- ster and analyst. For now, Republicans are stuck with a series of bad options. Forc- ing McInnis out before the pri- mary would leave Republicans with only one other candidate, businessman Dan Maes, on the gubernatorial ballots, which were sent out to voters this week. Maes has attracted some sup-
port from “tea party” activists, but is widely seen by others in his par- ty as a weak general election can- didate. He recently was fined for campaign finance irregularities, including paying himself $42,000 for mileage costs. Maes, in a tele- phone interview, called the charg- es “politically motivated” and said that his were “honest mistakes.” The Denver Post reported
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Wednesday that Maes, who touts his business experience as his ma- jor asset to be governor, has been a struggling small-business man whose income in recent years has been at or below the federal pover- ty level. For those reasons, GOP leaders were not eager to force McInnis out of the race before the primary. As one top strategist, who declined to speak on the record in order to provide a candid assessment, said: If Maes wins the primary, “we’re stuck with him.” The McInnis scandal grew out of a relationship with the Colorado-based Hasan Family Foundation. The foundation brought McInnis on as a fellow, with a $300,000 contract, to speak and write about water issues. But essays he produced turned out to
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have been lifted in part from work done a quarter-century ago by a man who is now a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court. The foundation chairwoman, Seeme Hasan, issued a statement saying she was “shocked, angry and disappointed” with McInnis, who she said had submitted the work as original. She said the foundation would demand that McInnis repay the money if the charges proved accurate. McInnis initially blamed a re-
spected water engineer, Rolly Fischer, for the error, saying he had taken Fischer’s research with- out question. McInnis’s campaign also tried to get Fischer to sign a letter conceding that he was at fault, Fischer said. Fischer refused. McInnis has since taken respon-
sibility for the plagiarism and has said he will pay back the money he received from the foundation. An aide said McInnis’s schedule precluded an interview for this ar- ticle. On Monday, campaigning in southern Colorado, McInnis told reporters he would continue his bid for the nomination. Party strategists worry that, if
McInnis wins the primary, he will stay in the race, regardless of what the polls project for November. They fear his money will dry up, giving Hickenlooper a big advan- tage.
If McInnis were to step aside af- ter the primary, the 24-member state executive committee could then name a replacement candi- date. Names of possible replace- ments have been floated in GOP circles in the past week. But replacing McInnis after the
primary would be a messy solu- tion that would leave the party open to charges of backroom deal- ing in a year when voters have shown their anger at the political establishment in both parties. A replacement candidate would face obstacles assembling a campaign operation on such short notice. Republican Governors Associa-
tion officials have offered no pub- lic comment on the McInnis con- troversy, other than to say they are still working to capture the gover- norship in November. Dick Wadhams, the Colorado Republican chairman, said his party remains determined to win the governor’s race in November.
balzd@washpost.com
R
KLMNO A message that fits the GOP to a T
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010
Illustrations by, Jackie Steward
WP
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