Wed. Update:Fascinating. Charlie Bass who now heads the Main Street Partnership (basically the opposite of the CFG) is willing to join forces with them. I don't see how this does anything but sully them both, but it's an interesting development and an acknowldegement that Republican dominance is waning with the need to team up. End Update.
I've said all along that Johnny is a free market radical extremist, and the Club for Growth's ringing endorsement, their first of the season, cements that position. After all, he scored a solid 100% on their "no one should pay taxes for anything ever" 2005 Scorecard.
As the Hill reports, this is "unusual" for the group, since they typically target incumbents, not support them. I take this to mean that they are wise to the fact that Sununu is in deep doo-doo for '08, and they will try to play up his libertarian side in a state friendly to that. Personally, though, I don't see how that will help him against either Marchand (who is pro-business) and Hirshberg (who is business).
Been awhile since you last heard of the "Club"? Well, here's a refresher. The CFG spent a million dollars trying to replace Arlen Specter with Pat Toomey, who ultimately lost and is now the head of the Club. They've also run ads against Snowe and Voinovich and Chafee.
In other words, they are the definition of an anti-RINO group.
Ergo, through their very endorsement, they utterly destroy any semblance of Sununu's "moderate" persona.
But CFG does not simply target moderate Republicans; they also attack Democrats, including the party's presidential candidates who CFG refers to as "liberal losers." They have been particularly obsessed with former Vermont governor Howard Dean. CFG has run a series of negative ads about him in several primary states, including one in which an elderly couple angrily tells Dean to "take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading . . .body piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs."
Expect more of the same well-funded pap to be heading our way from this malign entity.
