Justin's Political Corner

ST. LOUIS (KSDK) - Could Todd Akin be the new comeback kid? 

The 65-year-old former congressman says don’t rule him out. Nearly six months after losing the Senate race he continues to be attacked from all sides of the political spectrum. But the greatest barbs are thrown by fellow Republicans. 

In an exclusive interview with KSDK-TV, the former Missouri congressman said, “I’m not going to try to get even with anybody. If you start to blame everyone else for something that happened you didn’t like, it will destroy you. It will eat you alive.” 

After 12 years representing Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, this infamous quote, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” derailed his campaign and his reputation. 

Would he take those six seconds back? 

Akin said, “Oh, of course I would! I’ve relived them too many times. But that is not reality.” 

In the past, Akin said he regrets those remarks but does he believe they are true? Does he believe in his heart that the female body can stop a pregnancy in the case of a rape? 

Akin said, “No, no and I apologized for that. All of us are fallible, we make mistakes, and we say things the wrong way. I really lived that moment many, many times.” 

KSDK asked, “Do you regret it?” 

“Of course. You think what would it have been like if I hadn’t done that.” 

Within a few days, after the “legitimate rape” quote went viral, mainstream Republican Party bosses lobbied hard for him to get of the race. The behind-the-scenes back room pressure was immense according to one Akin insider. 

he former congressman reflected, “Republican leadership was strong that you have to step down. But there was a very strong grass roots element saying don’t you give in to those party bosses. You stay in there and you keep fighting.” 

That divide between the Republican establishment and Akin’s grassroots supporters percolates today on a national level. 

Akin explained, “Really what it goes back to is whether the Republican Party is going to be run by the insiders, or run by the grassroots organization. That’s a question still to be determined.” 

Republican strategist Karl Rove recently started a new Pac aimed at opposing candidates like Akin. 

Rove argued, “Some people think the best we can do is Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock - they’re wrong. We need to do better if we hope to take over the United States Senate. We need to get better conservative candidates and win.” 

Critics on the far right say they won’t allow Rove or anyone else on the “inside” to exclude them. 

Akin does think the Republican Party is at dangerous crossroads. 

“I believe the party will either stand on principled positions or its going to be replaced by some other party,” he said. 

As for the next chapter, Akin says he’s ready for a comeback, but isn’t sure what form that comeback will take. He’s considering academia, public speaking, and even politics. 

We asked, “Would you ever consider putting your hat back in the political ring again?” 

“It’s one of those things that depends on the circumstances really.  I don’t rule anything out,” he said. “ I consider it a bright new future and I’m interested to see what the possibilities are.”

h/t: KSDK

In the annals of Fox News, October 2012 will likely stand out as a shining moment. Buoyed by a wave of Republican optimism about Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, the network seemed tantalizingly close to realizing one of its key ideological goals: ousting President Obama from the White House. Renewed enthusiasm among conservatives was, in turn, triggering record-high ratings for much of the network’s programming and helping it to beat not just rival news competitors MSNBC and CNN during prime time, but every other TV channel on the cable dial. What’s more, the prospect of an ascendant GOP come January meant Fox News might soon return to the era of access and prestige it enjoyed in Washington during the presidency of George W. Bush. The future looked so bright that News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch signed Fox News president Roger Ailes to a lucrative four-year contract extension, even though the 72-year-old Ailes’s existing contract wasn’t due to expire until 2013.

Then November arrived, and with it reality. 

Fox News’s shellshocked election night coverage, punctuated by Karl Rove’s surreal meltdown upon hearing of Obama’s victory in Ohio and, thus, the election, capped off a historic day of reckoning for the network and conservatives alike. Chastened by defeat, Republican politicians and right-wing pundits have subsequently been grappling with the repercussions of the caustic tone and incendiary rhetoric their movement has adopted. This ongoing debate about whether broadening conservatism’s appeal requires new messages or just new messaging has ignored the 800-pound gorilla in the room, however. Noticeably absent from all the right wing’s public self-criticism is any interest in confronting the potent role played by the Republican Party’s single most important messenger, Fox News.

Standing at the epicenter of the network—and any new Republican Party groundswell—is Ailes. A former political operative of President Richard Nixon, Ailes has inextricably intertwined his professional and political pursuits since founding Fox News in 1996. Indeed, the network chief functions as a kind of proxy kingmaker within the party, frequently meeting with Republican politicians to offer strategic advice. He is a regular confidant of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, and at various times, he (or a network emissary of his) has counseled 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Gen. David Petraeus on their potential future. “Ailes,” says former Reagan White House economic adviser Bruce Bartlett, “is quite open about offering his free advice to Republicans…. If you visit New York City, you go see Roger Ailes and kiss his ring. It’s like visiting the Vatican. My guess is that there’s a lot of back-and-forth between Ailes and whoever is at the pinnacle of power in the Republican Party.” 

To keep relying on a shrinking number of elderly, white and male subsets of the public, whether to win elections or win ratings, has become a strategy of diminishing returns, however. “I think that you can’t separate the problem at Fox [News] from the problem that the Republicans are going through,” Bartlett says. He can speak firsthand to this incestuous relationship, as his 2006 book, Impostor—which broke with party orthodoxy over the Bush administration’s deficit spending—quickly made him persona non grata at Fox News, he says. (Fox News did not respond to questions about his comment.) “The Republicans are trying to retool to win. That’s all they care about, and they’re trying to decide, ‘How can we be more pragmatic? How can we shave off the rough edges? How can we get rid of the whack jobs who are embarrassing us, costing us Senate seats? But at the same time, we can’t do this in such a way that it alienates our base.’” Fox News faces a similar dilemma, Bartlett contends: “It’s ‘How do we modernize? How do we attract new audiences without losing the old audience? How do we remain relevant without abandoning our traditions?’” 

These are fundamental questions, and lately Fox News’s 
fundamentals—audience, ratings and public trust—have faltered. A 2010 study by Steve Sternberg found the network’s viewership to be the oldest (with an average age of 65) among an already elderly cable news audience. (CNN’s was 63 and MSNBC’s was 59.) By comparison, lifestyle cable channels Oxygen, Bravo and TLC were among the youngest, with an average viewer age of 42. And with MSNBC’s recent decision to plug 34-year-old rising star Chris Hayes into the coveted 
8 pm slot, the average age of that network’s prime-time hosts will now be 45, while Fox News’s rotation, anchored by 63-year-old Bill O’Reilly, has an average age of 57. 

Having cable news’s oldest average age for both prime-time hosts and audiences represents something of a double-edged sword for Fox in the cutthroat world of cable TV. One advantage is that older audiences are traditionally more loyal, which is why several industry experts say that Fox News is unlikely to be dislodged from its perch atop overall cable TV news ratings anytime soon. This age-loyalty effect redounds to the benefit of Fox News’s best-known prime-time hosts, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, as roughly two-thirds of their viewers are age 50 or older, according to a recent Pew State of the News Media survey. 

But at the same time, there is an undeniable actuarial reality at work—or as Bartlett bluntly puts it, “Their viewership is quite literally dying.” The most lucrative advertising dollars flow to TV shows that attract viewers “in the demo,” short for “demographic”—industry parlance for people ages 25 to 54. By contrast, Fox News’s prime-time commercial breaks are blanketed with pitches for cheap medical devices and insurance companies aimed at retirees and the elderly. Perhaps not surprisingly, the network’s advertising rates have grown at a much more modest pace in recent years, according to the Pew survey. Similarly, the growth of its ad revenues has diminished every year since 2008. 

Because of the relatively older age and smaller size of the cable news audience, viewership tends to be relatively stable, says Columbia University Journalism School professor and former NBC News president Richard Wald. “Its [ratings] move in very small increments.” To understand why viewers come and go, he compares a TV network’s audience to a target with concentric rings. The core audience—those who are loyal to your channel and watch frequently (and, for partisan media outlets, those who are most ideologically compatible)—is the bull’s-eye. Each concentric ring outward represents a segment of the audience that is less likely to watch because of diminished interest or less enthusiastic partisan sympathies. Dramatic ratings shifts can occur, but they tend to be driven by external events, like elections, rather than programming and thus affect all of the networks simultaneously. Most ratings fluctuations are statistical noise, Wald says, resulting from people in the outermost rings tuning in or out based on varying interest. “I would guess that [Fox News’s] numbers could change by 5, 6, 7, 8 percent and not reflect a change in the loyalty of the audience.” 

But here, too, the news does not bode well. Though the network did retain its status as the top-rated cable news network in 2012—its eleventh consecutive year at number one—the steep drop in ratings that its shows have experienced since Election Day has raised eyebrows, precisely because corresponding shows on MSNBC and CNN have not experienced the same precipitous decline. 

Just how much of a drop are we talking about? According to Nielsen data, Fox News’s prime-time monthly audience fell to its lowest level in twelve years in January among the 25-to-54 demographic. Daytime Fox News programming likewise saw its lowest monthly ratings in this age cohort since June 2008. Even the network’s two biggest stars, O’Reilly and Hannity, have not been immune from viewer desertion: Hannity lost close to 50 percent of his pre-election audience in the final weeks of 2012, and O’Reilly more than a quarter. The slide hasn’t stopped in 2013, either. Compared with a year ago, O’Reilly’s February prime-time ratings dropped 
26 percent in the coveted 25-to-54 demographic, his worst performance since July 2008. Hannity’s sank even further, to the lowest point in his show’s history. 

As Wald points out, short-term ratings snapshots can be deceptive. But in the weeks following Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Fox News’s viewership actually surged, averaging 539,000 prime-time demo viewers versus 388,000 and 357,000 for CNN and MSNBC, respectively. This past January, however, Fox could only muster 267,000 average nightly viewers—a 50 percent drop from that 2009 level, and not much more than MSNBC’s 235,000 or CNN’s 200,000. 

So why are all these Fox News viewers tuning out? Some of the decline may be due to a broader cultural trend of people deciding to avoid cable TV news altogether. However, a recent Public Policy Polling survey of news media trustworthiness suggests there’s more going on than public apathy. In February, PPP found a marked drop in Fox News’s credibility. A record-high
46 percent of Americans say they put no trust in the network, a nine-point increase over 2010. What’s more, 39 percent name Fox News as their least-trusted news source, dwarfing all other news channels. (MSNBC came in second, at 14 percent.)

As might be expected, Fox News’s credibility barely budged among liberals and moderates (roughly three-quarters of whom still distrust the network) and very conservative viewers (three-quarters of whom still trust it). However, among those who identified themselves as “somewhat conservative,” the level of trust fell by an eye-opening 27 percentage points during the previous twelve months (from a net plus–47 percent  ”trust” rating in 2012 to plus–20 percent now). Only a bare majority of center-right conservatives surveyed by PPP say that Fox News is trustworthy. 

“The people who are among the moderate-rights are actually the ones tuning out most,” says Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University who specializes in studying partisan psychology. Last May, Cassino conducted a survey that found Fox News’s viewers were less informed about current political issues than those who watched no news at all. In response, the network’s public relations team mocked FDU’s college ranking in Forbes and belittled its student body as “ill-informed.” This kind of ad hominem attack symbolizes the over-the-top, pugilistic messaging style of Ailes, whose no-holds-barred political instincts have dictated the network’s direction since day one. 

Ailes’s foundational idea for Fox News, explains Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple, was to package this bias under the guise of “fair and balanced” news. “It is indeed the artifice of neutrality that makes so much of what they do objectionable, or not just objectionable but noteworthy,” Wemple says. And it is effective, he adds: at a recent Value Voters conference, rock-ribbed conservatives almost involuntarily spouted the network’s motto back at him when he asked them about Fox’s coverage. It’s a maddeningly clever bit of misdirection—the network whose branding is most identified with objectivity and accuracy is, in fact, anything but.

Thanks to its loyal conservative audience and its cozy relationship with the GOP leadership, Fox News has long been insulated from the consequences of its serial misinforming. “If your job is to say the most outrageous thing you possibly can and be rewarded for it, why shouldn’t you?” Cassino points out. “As long as you get ratings, you’re going to keep on doing it.” But the recent erosion in ratings and cracks in the network’s reputation, Cassino says, have created external pressure to make changes inside the network. (Neither Ailes nor anyone else at Fox News would comment when contacted for this story.)

Most notable among these post-election changes involved Fox News ridding itself of contributors Sarah Palin and Dick Morris and replacing them with former Congressman and left-wing gadfly Dennis Kucinich, former GOP Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and RedState.com editor in chief Erick Erickson. To some, this personnel turnover confirmed that Fox News was embracing a more intellectually honest, ideologically diverse worldview. 

But there’s less here than meets the eye. First of all, the impact an individual contributor can have on the network’s overall nature is minimal; permanent hosts like O’Reilly and Hannity drive its day-to-day brand. And in the midst of the 2012 campaign, Ailes locked up O’Reilly and Hannity as well as news host Bret Baier—the Fox News lineup from 7 through 10 pm—all the way to 2016. What’s more, one shouldn’t read too much into the cashiering of Palin and Morris, since, by all accounts, they were terrible at their jobs: the former was criticized internally for being uncooperative with programming suggestions and personally disloyal to Ailes, while the latter was guilty of humiliating the network with his ridiculous election predictions (as well as auctioning off an unauthorized personal tour of Fox News’ studios at a GOP fund-
raiser). “They were only interested in promoting themselves or perhaps promoting an ideology that may not win,” says Bartlett, who singles out Palin’s lack of substance for his harshest criticism. “Totally and professionally, she’s the Lindsay Lohan of cable news.” 

Indeed, Ailes’s new hires are little more than new faces plugged into a well-worn programming strategy. Kucinich fills the slot of house liberal formerly occupied by Alan Colmes, serving as a handy foil for conservatives to shout at or over. The telegenic Brown, a blue-state Republican, endorses textbook anti-woman Republican policies, but does so without giving off an overtly extremist vibe. And die-hard conservative Erickson is there to reassure the Tea Partiers and the netroots—some of whom inexplicably believe that Fox News is drifting left—that they still have a voice on the network. 

Whether these recent, road-to-Damascus conversions are genuine or artificial may not matter much at this point, though. Hannity and many of his Fox News colleagues have invested so much time inciting animosity toward “illegals” and excoriating legislative attempts at “amnesty” that the network has acquired a reputation of harboring anti-Hispanic tendencies. In the aforementioned PPP poll on media trustworthiness, Hispanics ranked Fox News as their least credible news source, with a net four-point negative rating. (Broadcast news networks all enjoyed double-digit positive ratings.) Likewise, a National Hispanic Media Coalition survey from last fall found that Fox News hosts were more likely than those from any other network to negatively stereotype Latinos. It also noted that the network’s audience had the highest percentage of viewers with negative feelings about Hispanics and undocumented immigrants. 

h/t: Reed Richardson at AlterNet, via The Nation

Perpetually fuming about President Obama, Sean Hannity widened his rant Wednesday night on Fox News and condemned the “lapdog, kiss ass media” that allegedly lets Obama have his way. Echoing the same attack, Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week that ”Mr. Obama is a once-in-a-generation demagogue with a compliant press corps,” while the anti-Obama Daily Caller pushed the headline,  ”Lapdog Media Seeking Lap To Lie In.”

Complaining about the “liberal media,” has been a running, four-decade story for conservative activists. But what we’re hearing more of lately is the specific allegation that the press has purposefully laid down for the Democratic president, and that it’s all part of a master media plan to help Democrats foil Republicans.

The rolling accusation caught my attention since I wrote a book called Lapdogs, which documented the Beltway media’s chronic timidity during the previous Republican administration, and particularly with regards to the Iraq War. I found it curious that Hannity and friends are now trying to turn the rhetorical tables with a Democrat in the White House, and I was interested in what proof they had to lodge that accusation against today’s press.

It turns out the evidence is quite thin. For instance, onenever-ending partisan cry has been the press has “ignored” the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last year; that they’re protecting Obama. Yet theNew York Times and Washington Post have published nearly 800 articles and columns mentioning Benghazi since last September, according to Nexis.  

What the lapdog allegation really seems to revolve around is the fact that conservatives are angry that Obama remains popular with the public. Rather than acknowledge that reality, partisans increasingly blame the press and insist if only reporters and pundits would tell ‘the truth’ about Obama, then voters would truly understand how he’s out to destroy liberty and freedom and capitalism.

Sorry, but that’s not what constitutes a lapdog press corps. And to confuse chronic partisan whining with authentic media criticism is a mistake. The Hannity-led claim also isn’t accurate. Studies have shown that during long stretches of his first term, Obama was  hammered with “unrelentingly negative” press coverage.

By contrast, the lapdog era of the Bush years represented nothing short of an institutional collapse of the American newsroom. And it was one that, given the media’s integral role in helping to sell the Iraq War, did grave damage to our democracy.

Looking back at his tenure as Washington Post ombudsman, Michael Getler wrote in 2005 that the mainstream media’s performance in 2002 and 2003 likely represented the industry’s worst failing in nearly half a century. “How did a country on the leading edge of the information age get this so wrong and express so little skepticism and challenge?” Getler asked.

Meanwhile, given its current primetime lineup, sometimes it’s hard to recall that in 2003 MSNBC was so nervous about employing a liberal host who opposed Bush’s ordered invasion that it fired Phil Donahue preemptively, just weeks before war began. An internal memo warned that Donahue presented “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” (He was MSNBC’s highest rated host at the time of his firing.)

Months worth of chronic timidity and newsroom bowing-down to the White House’s war culture clearly helped pave the way to war.  

Laying out the reasons for an unprecedented invasion during his final, pre-war invasion press conference on March 6, 2003, Bush mentioned al-Qaida and the terrorist attacks of September 11 thirteen times in less than an hour. Not a single journalist that night challenged the presumed connection Bush was making between al-Qaida and Iraq, despite the fact that intelligence sources had publicly questioned any such association.

The egregious, look-the-other-way coverage continued long after the invasion. The U.S. media’s collective disinterest in Britain’s Downing Street Memo represented a perfect example of dogged lapdog behavior.

Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, previewing Sen. Marco Rubio’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, Fox News political analyst Karl Rove labeled Rubio “the American experience” and declared him “probably one of the best communicators since Ronald Reagan.”

Over-the-top praise of Rubio on the network is nothing new. Rubio’s increasingly prominent role in the national political conversation is thanks, in part, to the help of Fox News, which has served as his primary cheerleader since his 2010 Senate campaign. 

In recent weeks, Rove in particular has showered praise on Rubio and his role in the debate over immigration reform. His comparison of Rubio to Reagan on The O’Reilly Factor wasn’t even the first time he had done so on Fox’s airwaves this month; he made similar comments during a February 4 appearance on Special Report. 

Rove isn’t alone in his adoration of the Florida senator. Fox personalities have fawned over Rubio on-air for years, boosted his 2010 Florida Senate run (including helping him fundraise on-air), hosted him for dozens of primetime appearances on the network, and repeatedly touted him as an ideal vice presidential pick for former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

When Marco Rubio declared his intention to run for the Florida Senate seat left open by Mel Martinez, he trailed Gov. Charlie Crist — then still a Republican — by a huge margin and seemed like a longshot candidate.

Less than a year and a half later, Rubio was elected comfortably. According to Rubio, his meteoric rise in the race is thanks in no small part to Fox News political analyst Karl Rove.

Appearing at a fundraising breakfast for Rove’s Crossroads political groups at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Rubio claimed it was “big news” when Rove personally donated money to his Senate campaign because it meant that ”someone of his stature would actually take a bet on someone who was such a long shot.”

Rove’s help for Rubio extended well beyond sending personal checks; the Crossroads groups poured nearly $3 million (by Rove’s accounting) into the race. During his fundraising pitch for Crossroads at the RNC, Rubio specifically praised the ads Rove’s groups ran in his favor, saying “you would turn on the TV and there were ads that created a clear distinction, and did so in ways that were meaningful.”

Rove wasn’t the only Fox personality that helped Rubio’s Senate run — the network practically went all-in for him.

During his Senate run, Rubio was also formally endorsed — in addition to being praised on-air — by several Fox personalities, including former contributors Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Rick Santorum. In addition to endorsing Rubio, Fox host Mike Huckabee gave material support to his campaign in the form of a $5,000 donation from his political group, Huck PAC.

h/t: MMFA

Fox News political analyst Dick Morris, who has been absent from the network for nearly three months following a directive that any segments with him would have to be cleared by a top network executive — will appear on CNN February 6. 

Morris announced the appearance — his first on CNN since 2002, according to a search of the Nexis database — on his website, writing, “You read it right! I will be a guest on The Piers Morgan Show on CNN, yes CNN, this Wednesday night at 9 PM EST.”

After appearing dozens of times to provide political analysis in the weeks leading up to the 2012 election, Morris has not appeared on Fox News since a November 12 interview on Hannity, according to a Media Matters review of the Nexis and TVEyes.com databases. By contrast, following the 2008 presidential election, he appeared 19 times on Fox’s primetime alone from November 13, 2008, through February 5, 2009, making regular appearances to discuss the political news of the day on The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes/Hannity, and On the Record. 

UPDATE: A CNN spokesperson confirmed to Media Matters that Morris will appear as a guest on the February 6 edition of Piers Morgan Tonight.

UPDATE 2: CNN’s Howard Kurtz and Politico’s Mike Allen are reporting that Fox News has allowed Morris’ contract to expire and will not renew it.

Looks like America’s #1 toe-sucker is off of Fixed News.

h/t: MMFA

The latest filings from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads show a last minute contribution of $1 million received just days before the election (10/29/12) from Gary Heavin — the co-founder of Curves International Inc., which calls itself “the world’s leader in women’s fitness.”

Curves, a chain of women-only fitness center franchises, claims nearly 10,000 locations in more than 85 countries. Heavin and his fellow co-founder, his wife Diane, sold Curves International to an private equity firm in October, but they remain prominently featured on the company’s website. The Heavins say they “share a passion for and commitment to women’s health and fitness.” But his massive donation to the right-wing super PAC is only the latest in a long pattern of their efforts
in support of policies that undermine women’s equality in the workplace and restrict women’s access to health care services.

American Crossroads spent $91 million to elect Mitt Romney over President Obama. Romney refused to endorse key pro-women legislation including the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, but backed reinstating the “global gag rule” on even discussing abortion as a family planning option and supported the infamous Blunt Amendment to allow employers to deny health benefits that go against their personal views. Crossroads also worked to help far-right extremists like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and George Allen. Much of the American Crossroads attack strategy focused on criticizing Obamacare and those who backed the effort to expand health insurance access to all Americans.

And this past election isn’t the only time that Curves and the Heavins have worked against women’s reproductive rights. Gary Heavin pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars for controversial “pregnancy crisis centers” that try to talk women out of abortions and have been accused to providing false information. They also made large donations to abstinence-only education programs — programs which often misinform and make teens more likely to engage in risky behavior and become pregnant. Curves also pulled its funding for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation over its objection to the charity’s funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening services. In a 2004 editorial, Mr. Heavin attacked Planned Parenthood’s sex education literature, writing “I have a 10-year-old daughter. I would absolutely not allow her to be exposed to this material. I don’t want her being taught masturbation and told that homosexuality is normal.”

That anti-choice and anti-LGBT stance was further demonstrated when Curves partnered with the American Family Association — a group that has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group.” 

Gary Heavin has also been an outspoken enthusiast for televangelist Pat Robertson, who has blamed natural disasters on same-sex marriage equality and blamed 9/11 on abortion, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties groups.

H/T: Josh Israel at Think Progress Health

After two disappointing election cycles, Republican leaders demanded that conservative groups end their war on electable primary candidates or risk handing the Senate to the Democrats in 2014. This week, the groups delivered their reply: “Nuts!”

Activists on the right launched a volley of criticism at 2014’s first major Senate hopeful on Monday, Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV). Capito is considered a strong contender for the seat held by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), especially if he decides to retire, but her conservative detractors are demanding a purer candidate.

It’s all very reminiscent of the kind of primary fight a lot of Republicans are desperate to avoid after 2012’s Senate shellacking. But the groups who helped get candidates like Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin on the ballot this year say they’re ready to fight it out with the establishment again in 2014. West Virginia is just the first battlefield of what could be many.

“Congresswoman Capito has a long record of support of bailouts, pork, and bigger government,” Club For Growth president Chris Chocola wrote in a press release. “She voted to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for massive expansions of government-run health insurance, giveaways to big labor, and repeatedly voted to continue funding for wasteful earmarks like an Exploratorium in San Francisco and an Aquarium in South Carolina. That’s not the formula for GOP success in U.S. Senate races.”

Chocola made clear that he would ignore Republican whining about his previous primary interventions in states like like Indiana, where Club-backed Richard Mourdock defeated incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) only to collapse in the general election. He noted that more mainstream candidates “the Republican establishment cheered” like Denny Rehberg in Montana, Rick Berg in North Dakota, and Heather Wilson in New Mexico, also lost in 2012.

The same day, Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund announced it wouldn’t endorse the “too liberal” Capito. DeMint threw his weight behind a number of candidates in the 2010 primaries that made national GOP strategists uncomfortable. While some, like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, ended up becoming stars, others, like Christine O’Donnell, were embarrassing losers who helped tarnish the party’s national brand.

The West Virginia race is exactly the kind of juicy pickup opportunity that Republicans blew in recent cycles by nominating subpar candidates. Already some in the party are feeling deja vu.

Tea Party Express has a history of upsetting the Republican establishment. The group backedO’Donnell’s Delaware Senate run in 2010 and got behind Mourdock’s primary challenge against Lugar this year. Kremer said it was “way too early to make any decisions on what races we will be involved in during the 2014 cycle,” and declined to weigh in on Capito other than to say she was “aware” Capito had launched her campaign.

Social conservatives say they’re ready to fight Republican attempts to ostracize them after the 2012 cycle as well. Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the latest top Republican to express concerns over the social issue debate, saying the GOP should “leave the issue alone” when it comes to abortion rights.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, told TPM her side isn’t going to take talk like McCain’s sitting down. If social conservatives need to fight off the Republican establishment in a brutal primary, so be it. Dannenfelser blames the problems the GOP had with its social message on fear among Republican candidates when it came to talking about abortion and other topics. Had Republicans been more proactive on social issues, they never would have been stuck “on the defensive,” she said. Dannenfelser said her group will go to war with Republicans who try to back candidates unwilling to engage on social issues.

h/t: Benjy Sarlin at TPM

Drop the anti-immigrant rhetoric! Focus on the “family values”that Latinos supposedly share with the party! But that magic solution to Republicans’ demographic problem that some conservatives are touting — which conveniently allows the party to resist moderating on so-called social issues like gay marriage and abortion — is unlikely to pan out.

Two days after Latino voters broadly rejected the Republican Party, Charles Krauthammer saw reason for optimism. Latinos, he said, “should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example.)”  George W. Bush and Karl Rove found a way to approach 40 percent of the Latino vote; Romney barely netted half that. So Republicans, facing a demographic time bomb as their base of white men ages, have comforted themselves by thinking all they really need to do is perform as well as Bush did among Latinos to get near the White House again.

Whether or not Republicans have any chance of capturing more than a tiny fraction of the Latino vote, Krauthammer (and the straw-grasping Republicans who echoed him) shouldn’t take Latinos’ conservatism, including their views on abortion, for granted.

First of all, being religious doesn’t mean you vote according to the dictates of your church, and Latino voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t. Last December, a Latino Decisions poll found that 53 percent of Latinos said religion would have no impact at all on their vote. And only 14 percent agreed that “politics is more about moral issues such as abortion, family values, and same-sex marriage.” In fact, exit polling from the election this month showed that Latinos were more likely than other voters to support same-sex marriage recognition.

Polling on abortion rights is notoriously hard to characterize and can fluctuate  depending on how the question is asked — from framing it in terms of legality to asking about the fuzzy labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” Some polls have shownless support for abortion rights from Latinos, especially foreign-born Latinos, than from the general population. In a Pew survey last year, 58 percent of immigrant Latinos said abortion should be mainly illegal, compared with 40 percent of second-generation Latinos. In another poll conducted by Univision around the same time, only 38 percent of Latinossaid they believed abortion should be legal in most cases, compared with 49 percent of the general population.

But then came the actual election. Not only did Latinos broadly go for pro-choice candidates, according to ABC’s exit polling, but 66 percent of Latino voters across the country also said abortion should be legal. That’s higher than the general population, 59 percent of whom said abortion should be legal. There was no gender gap in the exit polling of Latinos on abortion, but Latinas were even more likely to support Obama than their male counterparts: 76 percent of Latina women voted for Obama; 65 percent of Latino men did. In other words, female support helped secure the overwhelming support of Latinos for the president.

She also credited growing support for gay marriage among Latinos to advocacy and outreach that focused on support for families under the slogan “familia es familia” (family is family). It turns out “family values” doesn’t have to mean economically enforced patriarchy.

h/t: Irvin Carmon at Salon

The non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints Thursday with both the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleging that Karl Rove and his secretive Crossroads GPS violated election law and may have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to do so.

Under campaign finance law and FEC regulations, 501(c)(4) groups, like Crossroads GPS, can raise unlimited funds from wealthy individuals and corporations without having to disclose their donors. The only time donors to these secretive groups must be disclosed is when donors give more than $200 explicitly “for the purpose of furthering an independent expenditure.”

CREW also notes that, in a 2011 letter to the FEC, Crossroads GPS said that it “understands the applicable reporting regulations” and that, should it receive “any contributions that are required to be reported,” it would do so as required. Given this, CREW argues, the violations “were deliberate” and “are subject to criminal as well as civil penalties.”

Crossroads GPS may also be in hot water for its apparent failure to register as a charity in Virginia, as required by law.

When Karl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (GPS) formed in 2010, it established its official address in Warrenton, VA, and registered with the Internal Revenue Service a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization.” It apparently did not, however, register as a charitable organization with the Commonwealth of Virginia, as appears was legally required.

According to state code, non-profit groups that intend to solicit contributions must first register with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs. Groups must pay an annual fee ($325 for groups raising over $1 million annually), provide basic information about their operations, and must sign statements affirming that no funds “have been or will knowingly be used, directly or indirectly, to benefit or provide support, in cash or in kind, to terrorists, terrorist organizations, terrorist activities, or the family members of any terrorist.”

The Virginia law explicitly exempts political campaign committees that are “required by state or federal law to file a report or statement of contributions and expenditures.” Crossroads GPS has consistently kept its contributors secret as it has raised and spent tens of millions of dollars against Democratic candidates.

h/t: Josh Israel at Think Progress Justice