Ginni Thomas, Allen West, and a crew of conservative activists and journalists have formed a hush-hush coalition to battle progressives—and Karl Rove.

| Thu Jul. 25, 2013 9:53 AM PDT

From left: Frank Gaffney; Ginni Thomas; Allen West

Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by Mother Jones.

MoJo's full coverage of Groundswell.

Groundswell's Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove

Is Ginni Thomas' Expanding Activism a Problem for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

PHOTOS: Meet Groundswell's Major Players

Groundswell: A Secret Tape Reveals How It Lobbied Boehner and Issa on Benghazi

Dubbed Groundswell, this coalition convenes weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group. During these hush-hush sessions and through a Google group, the members of Groundswell—including aides to congressional Republicans—cook up battle plans for their ongoing fights against the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, progressive outfits, and the Republican establishment and "clueless" GOP congressional leaders. They devise strategies for killing immigration reform, hyping the Benghazi controversy, and countering the impression that the GOP exploits racism. And the Groundswell gang is mounting a behind-the-scenes organized effort to eradicate the outsize influence of GOP über-strategist/pundit Karl Rove within Republican and conservative ranks. (For more on Groundswell's "two front war" against Rove—a major clash on the right—click here.)

One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influentialShirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Among the conveners listed in an invitation to a May 8 meeting of Groundswell were Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network; Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who resoundingly lost a Maryland Senate race last year (and is now running for a House seat); Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society; Sandy Rios, a Fox News contributor; Lori Roman, a former executive director of the American Legislative Exchange Council; and Austin Ruse, the head of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. Conservative journalists and commentators participating in Groundswell have included Breitbart News reporters Matthew Boyle and Mike Flynn, Washington Examiner executive editor Mark Tapscott, andNational Review contributor Michael James Barton.

MEET THE PARTICIPANTS IN GROUNDSWELL

Ginni Thomas

Wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and maker of at least one unsolicited early morning phone call. (Photo: Rex Curry/Zuma)
Allen West

Former Florida congressman. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Diana Banister

Vice president and partner of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, a powerful right-wing public relations firm. (Photo: Viguerie Marketing Institute)
Steve Bannon

Executive at Breitbart News Network. (Photo:Stephen Bannon/Twitter)
Michael James Barton

National Review contributor. (Photo: Michael James Barton/LinkedIn)
Ken Blackwell

Former Ohio secretary of state, treasurer, and Cincinnatti mayor. Currently a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. Rose to prominence during the 2004 presidential election after accusations of vote suppression in Ohio as secretary of state. (Photo: Family Research Council)
Dan Bongino

Former New York City police officer, Secret Service agent, and failed 2012 Maryland US senatorial candidate. (Photo: Bongino for Congress)
John Bolton

US ambassador to the United Nations (2005-06), senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted war hawk. (Photo: American Enterprise Institute)
Jerry Boykin

Executive vice president of the Family Research Council, longtime military commander, and one of the original US Army Delta Force members. (Photo: Family Research Council)
Matthew Boyle

Reporter for Breitbart News Network. (Photo:Breitbart)
Catherine Engelbrecht

Founder of True the Vote, a tea-party-backed poll-watching group that has risen to national prominence since 2010. (Photo: Karl Heubaum/Flickr)
Tom Fitton

President of Judicial Watch, an organization dedicated to exposing (mostly) left-wing government malfeasance. (Photo: LNI/Zuma)
Mike Flynn

Editor for Breitbart News Network. (Photo:Breitbart)
Frank Gaffney

President of the Center for Security Policy, fervent advocate of the idea that Shariah law is the preeminent threat of our time. (Photo: LNI/Zuma)
Leonard Leo

Executive vice president of the Federalist Society. (Photo: Federalist Society)
Anita MonCrief

One-time ACORN whistleblower who now works closely with True the Vote. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Sue Myrick

Former North Carolina congresswoman, champion in the fight against the "stealth jihad" waged by Islamist interns. (Photo:WikiCommons)
Max Pappas

A top aide for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and formerly of Freedom Works, one of the original power tea party groups. (Photo:Facebook)
Sandy Rios

Vice president of Family PAC Federal (a conservative political action group) and Fox News contributor. (Photo:www.sandyrios.com)
Lori Roman

Founder of Libertas Global Partners, a political consultancy. Former executive director of the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council. (Photo: Libertas Global Partners)
Austin Ruse

Head of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. (Photo: Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute)
Mark Tapscott

Executive editor of the Washington Examiner (Photo: Washington Examiner)
Gayle Trotter

Fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum; famous for saying that gun control was sexist. (Photo: Independent Women's Forum)

Back

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Groundswell has collaborated with conservative GOPers on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Cruz and Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), a leading tea partier. At its weekly meetings, the group aims to strengthen the right's messaging by crafting Twitter hashtags; plotting strategy on in-the-headlines issues such as voter ID, immigration reform, and the sequester; promoting politically useful scandals; and developing "action items."

A certain amount of secrecy cloaks Groundswell's efforts. Though members have been encouraged to zap out tweets with a #GSW hashtag, a message circulated to members of its Google group noted that the role of certain advocates should be kept "off of the Google group for OPSEC [operational security] reasons." This "will avoid any potential for bad press for someone if a communication item is leaked," the message explained. (The Groundswell documents were provided to Mother Jones by a source who had access to its Google group page and who has asked not to be identified.)

"We want to protect the strategic collaboration occurring at Groundswell and build on it. Please be careful about bringing guests and clear them ahead of time."

Washington is full of coalitions that meet to coordinate messaging and strategy. For two decades, conservative strategist Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform, has held his now-famous Wednesday morning meetings for a broad spectrum of Republicans, including conservatives opposed to gay rights and abortion rights and those who favor them, as well as GOPers on different sides of the immigration reform debate. Groundswell, which meets at the same time as Norquist's group, appears to be a more ideologically pure version of the Norquist confab, and its emergence—given the prominent role of Ginni Thomas and the participation of journalists—prompts several intriguing questions.

Critics have contended that Thomas' work as a lobbyist opposing Obamacare posed a conflict of interest for her husband, who would rule on the constitutionality of the health care reform initiative. (Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court minority that favored striking down the law.) And Common Cause has maintained that Justice Thomas had a conflict of interest when he participated in the Citizens United case because his wife at the time was running a conservative nonprofit fighting the "tyranny" of President Barack Obama that would benefit from removing limits on such groups' spending and fundraising. With her involvement in Groundswell—which zeroes in on contentious issues that come before the high court, including voting rights, abortion, and gay marriage—Ginni Thomas continues to be intricately associated with matters on which her husband may have to render a decision. Ginni Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

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The participation of journalists in coordinating messaging with ideological advocates and political partisans raises another set of issues. Conservatives expressed outrage when news broke in 2009 about Journolist, a private email list where several hundred progressive-minded reporters, commentators, and academics exchanged ideas and sometimes bickered. (I was on Journolist, mainly as a lurker.) The late Andrew Breitbart once offered $100,000 for the full Journolist archives and denounced it as "the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism." The Groundswell documents show conservative journalists, including several with Breitbart News, colluding on high-level messaging with leading partisans of the conservative movement.

How Groundswellers Win "Brownie Points"
Notes prepared after a Groundswell meeting held on March 27 detailed the group's mission and origins:

Groundswell evolved out of conversations among conservative leaders after the November elections. This is the eighth meeting. Now others are asking to be included. Growth needs to be strategic; it should be made up of senior level people willing to collaborate. It is important to keep a balance of social conservatives, national security conservatives, and constitutional conservatives. Outreach has occurred to incorporate groups with extensive reach: Heritage, Heritage Action, FreedomWorks, AFP [Americans for Prosperity], FRC [Family Research Council] and the NRA, among others…Our country is in peril. This is a critical moment needing critical leadership. We want to protect the strategic collaboration occurring at Groundswell and build on it. Please be careful about bringing guests and clear them ahead of time.

The memo declared that the goal was not to merely ponder, but to be proactive:

What Groundswell is not is a room of note takers. The goal of Groundswell is to sync messages and develop action from reports and information exchanged. Going forward there should be an action item accompanying each report.

At the March 27 meeting, Groundswell participants discussed one multipurpose theme they had been deploying for weeks to bash the president on a variety of fronts, including immigration reform and the sequester: Obama places "politics over public safety." In a display of Groundswell's message-syncing, members of the group repeatedly flogged this phrase in public. Frank Gaffney penned a Washington Timesop-ed titled "Putting Politics Over Public Safety." Tom Fitton headlined a Judicial Watch weekly update "Politics over Public Safety: More Illegal Alien Criminals Released by Obama Administration." Peter List, editor of LaborUnionReport.com, authored a RedState.com post called "Obama's Machiavellian Sequestration Pain Game: Putting Politics Over Public Safety." Matthew Boyle used the phrase in an immigration-related article for Breitbart. And Dan Bongino promoted Boyle's story on Twitter by tweeting, "Politics over public safety?" In a message to Groundswellers, Ginni Thomas awarded "brownie points" to Fitton, Gaffney, and other members for promoting the "politics over public safety" riff.

"If we lose on immigration, we lose on every other issue. They key to defeating this bill is Sen. Rubio."

There was much more on the agenda for the March 27 meeting than a single talking point. The group routinely addresses an ambitious to-do list for its campaign against the left. At that session, Groundswellers discussed several immigration-related "action items." These included attempting to link the pending reform bill to Obamacare and collecting health care reform horror stories to provide to Cruz, a leading opponent of the Senate immigration reform bill. (Cruz has repeatedly compared the legislation to the health care reform law.)

Groundswell members saw immigration as a life-or-death issue. "If we lose on immigration," the post-meeting memo noted, "we lose on every other issue. The key to defeating this bill is Sen. Rubio. He can gracefully remove himself from the 'gang of 8' and still save face…The messaging on this issue has to be 'we can't trust Obama' to enforce immigration laws after the amnesty."

The group also reviewed how best to oppose the confirmation of Tom Perez, Obama's nominee for labor secretary. Groundswellers claimed that Perez, then a senior Justice Department official, supported "Muslim Brotherhood organizations and Shariah." (One Groundswell memo maintained that Perez "is extremely antagonistic toward whites.") A third agenda item that Wednesday morning was beating back the effort to end the Boy Scouts of America's ban on gay Scouts. And there was yet another issue for the Groundswell members to stoke: "John Kerry has family ties to Iran that opens the doors to blackmail and other national security risks. Kerry's son in law is an Iranian American with extensive family still in Iran." The post-meeting memo suggested Twitter hashtags to push: #CantTrustObama, #PoliticsOverPublicSafety, #SequesterLies.

976

The GOP is just eating itself up again. - sm.

[ In Reply To ..]

Funny! The TP is strongest in the South, which means - this used to be the Democrats' problem. Hard

[ In Reply To ..]
to imagine now, but I remember. The GOP was able to be wonderfully cohesive and disciplined because over a majority of the nation's hard conservatives and white supremacists were Southern Democrats. The Democratic Party? WE were the circus. Strom Thurmond, David Duke, Hubert Humphrey, Sam Rayburn, Pat Roberson, Joe McCarthy all pulling different directions at the party conventions. :)

But with the extremists split, the more moderate leaderships of the two parties could and did routinely work together. They lunched together, golfed together, drank together, worked on committees together, wrote legislation together, and made deals.

Strange that it's harder now that one party is virtually all left and the other's virtually all right, meaning the hard right's ardent passion and hatemongering is concentrated in one Grand Old Party it's currently in danger of destroying.

Democrats still are the circus - to us right wing - nut jobs, as you like to call us.(sm)

[ In Reply To ..]
I know you amuse the H out of me.

Ooooh, I love it when you talk dirty to me - baby! nm

[ In Reply To ..]
.

she didn't call anyone a RW nut job or anything of the kind - payback, therefore...

[ In Reply To ..]
is unnecessary. Is it really so necessary to lash out that you make it all up in your head?

nevermind... - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
Looks like I answered my own question. Based on the board deletions, I guess payback works after all. Enjoy the entitlements.

Is the right getting deleted? I was just yesterday for - being too direct about offensive clownishness. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
x

not at all - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
some posters are entitled to be rude to anyone "the H" they please. It's the posters who suggest translations like "hummus" and "hasenpfeffer" who get deleted.

H, evidently, is more germane to political discussion than hummus. Who knew?

oh it's a circus alright - sm

[ In Reply To ..]

I wouldn't laugh so hard just yet, left wing radical progressives. - (sm)

[ In Reply To ..]
There is hope for those of us who still believe in the Constitution.
Link - The Liberty Amendments.

On its first day of release, it's #1 on Amazon. - nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

But -- ZERO chance this giant right wing social - experiment could come to pass. sm

[ In Reply To ..]
Look up how constitutional amendments are passed. Proponents would have to be a solid majority in both houses of congress AND across the country, not a far-right minority that's been losing members for 15 years.

3/4 of the states would have to ratify this amendment--after intense national dialog about the massive changes this hard-conservative shift would require and the giant social and economic experimentation it would usher in. Any chance of rebuilding the middle class the proven way we did it over the last century would become forbidden by law.

Proponents would have a better chance attempting a military putsch.

BTW, I like the concept of stronger states' rights, yet disagree 100% with the typical states' right proponents. Their reasons when you dig into them are ALWAYS to allow people in those states more freedom to exploit and abuse others. Business doesn't want to pay tax for schools and wants to do away with labor and consumer protection laws.

Individuals, no matter how they dress it up in noble claims of religion, morality, the Constitution, always really want to gain power over others they don't like--and there are ALWAYS many, many they don't like. Whether it's refusing to educate the children of others, disenfranchising voters, bringing back segregation and antimiscegenation laws, or imposing their own religion on the people of their states, it always comes down to abusing the rights of others.

Without the need to protect the people of our 50 states from those who do not respect and will not protect the rights of all citizens, moving toward stronger states' rights would be doable. I'd like it.

Poll: Many Southern Conservatives Feel - Interracial Marriage Should Be Illegal

[ In Reply To ..]
WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – Primary elections in the conservative swing states of Alabama and Mississippi are already underway. And recent surveys taken by Public Policy Polling reveal that close races are anticipated in both states.

But that isn’t all the polls revealed.

Data from both states shows that significant portions of right-leaning voters do not believe in the validity of either interracial marriage or evolution.

Of some 600 likely Republican primary voters asked, 60 percent of those responding in Alabama said they do not believe in evolution, and 21 percent from the same state said they feel interracial marriage should be illegal.

In Mississippi, a reported 29 percent said interracial couples should not be legally permitted to marry, and 66 percent do not believe in evolution.

Since 1967 [ONLY 1967!], interracial marriage has been recognized as legal, after a Supreme Court decision in the Loving v. Virginia case that ruled laws prohibiting it to be unconstitutional.

Like interracial marriage, evolution was not accepted socially – or as part of a secondary biology curriculum – for the first part of the 20th century in the United States. In 1968, the Supreme Court ruling on Epperson v. Arkansas gave evolution legal protection, while simultaneously disallowing creationism as an alternative theory.

The public study of creationism and campaigns for legal definitions of marriage have been significant conservative rallying points during the past few elections.

Are you calling me a radical progressive? - From that comic I posted?

[ In Reply To ..]
LMAO. What a lark!

I was thinking the same thing - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
the poster who responded to you is the only poster calling names in this thread, you crazy, mixed-up left wing radical progressive.

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New hard-right group going after Karl Rove and other

Inside Groundswell: Read the Memos of the New Right-Wing Strategy Group Planning a "30 Front War"

Ginni Thomas, Allen West, and a crew of conservative activists and journalists have formed a hush-hush coalition to battle progressives—and Karl Rove.

MEET THE PARTICIPANTS IN GROUNDSWELL

Ginni Thomas

Allen West

Diana Banister

Steve Bannon

Michael James Barton

Ken Blackwell

Dan Bongino

John Bolton

Jerry Boykin

Matthew Boyle

Catherine Engelbrecht

Tom Fitton

Mike Flynn

Frank Gaffney

Leonard Leo

Anita MonCrief

Sue Myrick

Max Pappas

Sandy Rios

Lori Roman

Austin Ruse

Mark Tapscott

Gayle Trotter