Conservative activist Brent Bozell says it’s time for Republican leaders in Congress to step aside. His organization, ForAmerica, announced “an aggressive, six-figure social media and digital ad campaign” on Tuesday against top Republicans in the House and Senate between now and the midterm elections in November.
“It’s a simple proposition,” Bozell tells National Review Online. “The Republican leadership that has been championing conservative principles and promising action has just failed miserably. A day doesn’t go by where they’re not surrendering on something, and it is the sense of conservatives around the country that they have to step down, that it’s time for them to go.”
Conservatives are “openly disgusted” with the Republican party, Bozell says, pointing to leadership’s failed promise to “put an end” to Obamacare and its tendency to “cave on everything,” such as the debt ceiling. “The Republican leadership said over their dead body would they go for debt increases, and they just did a preemptive surrender on it,” he says. “You just shake you head and wonder what in the world they are thinking making commitments to conservatives only to [break them].”
House leadership’s push for immigration reform is another example Bozell cites as motivation for the new campaign, which will target Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) on the House side, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Minority Whip John Cornyn (R., Texas) on the Senate side.
“I am tired of conservatives being asked for money, being asked for votes, being asked for our work, and then being asked to sit in the back of the bus as soon as these people are elected, because they really had no intention of doing what they promised to do,” Bozell says.
ForAmerica, which describes itself as “an online army of over 4.5 million people,” is hardly the only conservative organization to actively challenge Republican leadership. Groups such as Heritage Action, Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and the Senate Conservatives Fund have engaged in similar campaigns.
“We’re not the only ones,” Bozell says. “But this is not a triangulated venture, or a coordinated conspiracy. These betrayals have gone to the point where we’ve just said ‘no more.’”
UPDATE: A House-leadership aide e-mails in response: “It’s disappointing that Brent Bozell’s main goal is to see his name repeatedly mentioned in the liberal media for attacking fellow conservatives. I’m sure his donors would rather see their resources spent on defeating liberals and electing more conservatives.”