RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting 'to restructure American society along socialist ideals.' Brand Dems socialists says RNC bloc

A conservative faction of the Republican National Committee is urging the GOP to take a harder line against both Democrats and wayward Republicans, drafting a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Party” and moving to rebuke the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package.

In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the 168 voting members of the committee, RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting “to restructure American society along socialist ideals.”


“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party,” wrote Bopp, the Republican committeeman from Indiana. “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism.”

The resolution, proposed by a committeeman from Washington state, was agreed upon by 16 RNC members from 16 different states and is part of a petition asking RNC Chairman Michael Steele to set a special committee meeting next month when the state chairs meet in Washington, D.C.

An RNC member said that Bopp, one of the most conservative and outspoken individuals on the committee, had pulled together a group of his fellow conservatives to agree to the resolution.

In an interview, Bopp said he thought Steele would set the special meeting.

“He has always told us that he was supportive of and agreed with the substance of these resolutions,” said Bopp, a lawyer known for his advocacy against campaign finance reform.

An RNC official said Steele would prefer to see the matter taken up at the committee’s regular summer meeting in July. This official declined to elaborate on where the chairman stands on the resolution.

But an April 8 memo from Steele to the RNC indicates that while he shares the view of the hard-liners that Obama is leading the country toward socialism, he’s not inclined to support making it party policy.

“The Democrats are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism, and I will continue to criticize their dangerous policies in that regard,” Steele wrote. “But I believe these proposed resolutions will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

The paper resolutions of a minority party have little consequence on actual elections or policies, but the push by Bopp is a reflection of the deep concern many grass-roots Republicans have for the policies of Obama and their unhappiness toward those GOP elected officials they see as capitulating to his agenda.

"There is nothing more important for our party than bringing the truth to bear on the Democrats' march to socialism,” said Jeff Kent, the Washington state committeeman who proposed the resolution. “Just like Ronald Reagan identifying the U.S.S.R. as the evil empire was the beginning of the end to Soviet domination, we believe the American people will reject socialism when they hear the truth about how the Democrats are bankrupting our country and destroying our freedom and liberties."

The “socialist” label was frequently thrown around during last year’s campaign, and its usage has become increasingly commonplace among GOP activists. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) even said recently that there were 17 socialists in Congress.

At stake, wrote Bopp in the e-mail, is nothing less than “the preservation of our Constitutional Republic and our way of life.”

In addition to the effort to refer to Democrats as "Socialists," the conservative RNC members are also proposing resolutions urging Republican members of Congress to stop accepting earmarks and praising those in the party who have opposed the bailouts and Obama’s spending plans.

The latter resolution is something of a compromise, only coming about after a heated conference call earlier this month between the conservatives and some of the more pragmatic members of the committee.

Bopp’s members wanted a resolution that would have specifically criticized the three centrist Republican senators who supported Obama’s stimulus plan earlier this year, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

Specter and another wayward Republican, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have already drawn conservative primary opponents — and more challenges from the right may be on the way.

Two GOP sources familiar with the conference call said that Pennsylvania Republican Chairman Robert A. Gleason Jr. made it clear that he was not pleased about fellow committee members trying to meddle in other states’ politics.

Gleason pointed out, according to one source, that he didn’t have any plans to go into Indiana and tell them how to run their party, and he didn’t expect Republicans to come into Pennsylvania to tell him how to run his.

Bopp confirmed Gleason’s intervention and the fact that the original resolution, as drafted, singled out individual senators.

While he and his fellow conservatives ultimately deferred, choosing to praise the widespread GOP opposition to Obama’s spending rather than criticize the Senate trio, Bopp said he still disagrees with Gleason.

“It’s a national party,” Bopp said. “And their being the critical votes to pass the stimulus bill could not be more contrary to the Republican platform. It made a mockery that any of them were fiscal conservatives.”

The intra-party squabbling and push to paint Democrats as Socialists comes as Steele has begun to tamp down criticism about his early performance. The party posted solid fundraising numbers for the first quarter, and Steele has largely avoided the foot-in-mouth gaffes that plagued his first weeks at the helm.

To make the “Socialist” designation something approximating official party policy is plainly not the direction preferred by Steele or other top Republican officials — and it’s spurring grumbling toward Bopp’s band of conservatives.

“This was engineered by a bunch of people who ought to be involved in College Republicans, not the RNC,” complained a well-connected Republican sympathetic to Steele. “It’s not that they’re not well-intentioned, but it’s just juvenile.”

Bopp, in response, said: “What they are doing is socialism. Why should we not describe it that way?”

As for Democrats, they didn’t exactly embrace the label, either.

"I'm going to pass on marketing advice from folks who hadn't fully thought out the implications of using tea bags as a brand," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan. "But what's clear is that when you're devoid of leadership, devoid of ideas and your only answer is to say 'no' to change, it's not surprising that angry, fringe elements take center stage at the Republican Party."