Republicans Ousted for Selling Family Values to K-Street Feminists

The Republican landslide of 1994 was powered by the “Contract for America”, which contained a clear “family values” agenda designed to end welfare and restore marriage as being the “normal” socioeconomic institution in America. Articles such as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s pre-eminent article “Dan Quayle Was Right” were the cutting edge of the Contract for America.

After the elections in 1994, pundits said the victory came about because Republicans took the majority of both male and female votes. Mainstream voters of both sexes realized that marriage was better than big anti-family government, and sent Republicans to Washington to fix the system.

The original “Contract For America” contained two major social elements: The “Personal Responsibility Act”, which was generally intended to end welfare dependence and encourage women to look for a husband instead of marrying Uncle Sam, and the “Family Reinforcement Act”, which was intended to strengthen marital privacy and encourage child support compliance.

I was horrified to see how this legislation strangely transmogrified into an expansion of the feminist “Great Society” imperium as it progressed to passage. What was a pro-marriage template became a massive machine hiding the welfare state behind a self-entitling “child support state” with incredible powers to impute “taxes”, mete out criminal punishments without due process, and seize assets in ways the old IRS never dreamed imaginable.

Republicans mysteriously did this while turning a deaf ear to the vociferous complaints of grassroots activists who saw exactly what Republicans were doing. Conservatives justified their actions by spouting evangelical feminist epithets about men (who are largely the victims of the welfare state). We were horrified and mystified: how could Republicans outdo Democrats in executing anti-family agenda of the Radical Left?

Social data proves decisively that Republican welfare reform is a complete failure: a record 37% of children are now born to single mothers, and married families are now in the minority. This week, one major Republican leader finally admitted privately (but with some exasperation) that my conclusion is correct.

Scandal: RNC Attempts to Destroy Pro-Family Reformers

When VAWA was up for Reauthorization in 2005, Republicans went one step further washing their hands of family values: they placed Democrat Senator Joe Biden in charge of the VAWA Reauthorization hearing held July 19, 2005. Senator Biden then refused to permit Professor Murray Straus, a pre-eminent authority on domestic violence to testify against VAWA.

This outraged Terri Lynn Tersak, president of True Equality Network and the Center for Children’s Justice (CCJ). Along with Mrs. Tersak, the thousands of women whom comprise True Equality Network, worked very hard to contest and correct this.

That effort included a massive email/letter/fax campaign and running a full page ad in the The Washington Times National Weekly Edition calling for the Republicans to support having women victims of domestic violence who opposed VAWA be heard at the hearing. But the Republican leadership refused to override Senator Biden and did far worse than just ignore Terri Lynn Tersak.

This rubber stamping of VAWA by the Republicans infuriated the women of True Equality Network and especially Terri Lynn Tersak who was a strong, party line voting Republican supporter and had made substantial personal contributions to GOP candidates over the years.

In response to GOP’s complete lack of action or response, Mrs. Tersak sent an email to the RNC’s Membership Services on Jun 11, 2005 demanding a refund of all contributions she had ever made to the party.

What happened next is a scandal. The GOP demonstrated its opposition to family values by attempting to destroy one of the leading proponents to equal parenting custody laws and a driving force behind the legislative template, Uniform Parental Rights Enforcement and Protection Act (UPREPA), which is currently the foundation of the equal parenting legislation in four states.

On July 22, 2005, an email emanated from the GOPNWEB2 mail server from a GOP workstation LAN IP address of 192.168.10.202, forging Terri Lynn Tersak’s CCJ email address as the source, attempting to phish the CCJ discussion list in an attempt to find out who is involved with CCJ.

Forged emails began emanating from the same GOP workstation to members of Congress in an attempt to make Congress dislike the Mrs. Tersak. Two of them were captured due to the security setup on Mrs. Tersak’s email account, one to Senator Allard, the other to Representative DeGette.

Mrs. Tersak then sent an email to Ken Mehlman immediately, asking him to look into this. No response was ever received.

At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in March, 2006, Ken Mehlman said that he doesn’t know enough about social issues such as child support abuses to even make a comment. There is at least one thing he knows: Mr. Mehlman, please tell us who was using the GOP LAN IP address of 192.168.10.202 on Friday, July 22 at 10:44:23 EDT to abuse pro-family reformers via means that may constitute identity theft or wire fraud. I suspect there is much more he is aware of than this.

Pro-Family Protestor Assaulted by Rick Santorum’s Campaign Staff

On November 10^th, 2006, Senator Santorum held a political event in Lancaster, PA. Members of DaddyJustice.com drove around the event in an SUV, at slow speeds, with a large sign protesting Judge Hummer, who is known for making anti-father court rulings. Two of Santorum’s staff, Joel and Crystal Hess came up to the truck, pretending to be “security personnel”. A YouTube video shows Joel Hess coming up to the van aggressively and physically assaulting the driver while he was driving down the street. No apology has been received from Senator Santorum, and police have failed to make an arrest.

“Family Values” was an electoral façade

For over thirteen years, Conservatives waxed eloquently about the importance of marriage, complained about the lack of it, and wrote extensively about the damage feminism did to society. These three elements point decisively to the answer: stop giving feminists control over social policy and giving them billions to destroy marriage.

But a strange thing happened on the way to the Forum. “Responsible Fatherhood” mysteriously replaced “family values” as the political motto in the post-1994 era. Suddenly, it didn’t matter who was irresponsible to a marriage, or who decided to get pregnant out of wedlock, or who secretly did not take birth control pills. Magically, marriage became completely unimportant. The only thing that mattered was to build out the welfare state while blaming men for being in the position Congress placed them.

The truth is this: irresponsible Republicans blamed the vast majority of single men for situations they neither wanted nor created. Irresponsible Republicans socio-economically assaulted pariahed fathers in ways Democrats never even dreamed of. In fact, it is my opinion that Marriage would be in better shape had Republicans lost in 1994.

To this day, Republicans have not admitted any fault for doing the wrong thing. Leaders I have worked with suggested that Republicans still “need more education”. If the election losses of November 7^th were not an education, the GOP might as well merge with the Democratic Party before Libertarians eat them for breakfast.

Given the fact that Republicans have intentionally ignored thirteen years of education provided by myself and many others, I conclude their actions were intentional.

The American Family sold to Feminists on K-Street?

We do not have a financial trail to prove that Republicans sold out family values to feminists on K Street. However, every action the GOP has taken since assuming power in 1994 indicates this is what happened. There is no other way to explain why Republicans would do precisely the opposite of what they said they would do.

GAO reports indicate that the vast majority of federal funds for VAWO grants, totaling approximately 1-billion annually, cannot be accounted for. One GAO Report[i] found that:

A substantial number of Byrne and VAWO files did not contain progress and financial reports sufficient to cover the entire grant period. For example, an estimated 70 percent of Byrne and 66 percent of VAWO files did not have progress reports to cover the complete grant period, and an estimated 41 percent of Byrne and 36 percent of VAWO grant files did not contain financial reports covering the full grant period.

According to the GAO report “Problems with Grant Monitoring and Concerns About Evaluation Studies”[ii]:

“VAWO grant files did not always contain requisite grant monitoring Plans … VAWO grant files did not always contain the required closeout documents—key documents by which OJP ensures that, among other things, the final accounting of federal funds have been received.”

The GAO report “One Byrne Evaluation Was Rigorous; All Reviewed Violence Against Women Office Evaluations Were Problematic”[iii], summarizes the findings of the report without quoting the details.

And, Congress does not even know where the money went. In 2005, the GAO was charged with providing a full report to Congress on how well VAWA is working. This report was never done.

Where an estimated $600-million is missing annually, directly attributed to the unwillingness of grantees to report how the money was spent, it is difficult to believe it was not misused – funneled into back-alley contributions to key Republicans. VAWA grants are often handled and manipulated by attorneys. As we all know, attorneys are very good at moving money in untraceable ways (some even specialize in it).

It is reasonable to conclude that all the talk about family values was not to address the problems, but to raise the street price that feminists, the Bar Association, and others who profit from the divorce industry had to pay to buy Republicans off and shut them up. By all accounts, this is exactly the result we see today.

An Apology to My Readers

I owe my readers an apology. I once firmly believed that the GOP intended to do the right thing, but were just short on knowledge and policy ideas. The GOP has subsequently proven it never had any sincere interest in family values or marriage. If it did, it would not have turned family values over to Democrats and feminists immediately after assuming the mantle of control. There are many who worked for and donated to federal level candidates, who wasted a lot of time and money.

From this past twelve years, I learned one big lesson in politics: never let the lips of a politician distract you from what the feet are doing. The American voters just took a hard kick to the groin, because we weren’t watching the feet as we should have been doing all along.

To Succeed, the “Third Force” Must Make Marriage a Central Issue

Republicans are in grave trouble for failing to fulfill many promises, including tax reform, health care and Medicare reform, immigration control, family values reform, and campaign finance reform. They are well known for using abusing K Street in ways never before imagined. In addition, Republicans looked the other way while bank investment funds ballooned prices on the oil spot market, driving gasoline prices to record levels, just like Enron did to the state of California.

We have witnessed the looting of America and a trampling of good grassroots organizations by the GOP in many ways. The word “traitorous” appears a reasonable description in this historical perspective. Maybe Terri Lynn Tersak had the right idea when she demanded a refund from the RNC. Perhaps others should do so as well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character”. Emerson points to the real Republican problem: Save a handful of federal legislators consistently denied party leadership roles, the “party of character” never had any to begin with. Without ethical leadership, no reform of law or responsible legislative behavior is remotely possible.

The GOP will succeed in the future only if it tightly incorporates the principled work of the “Third Force”, consisting of thousands of credible grassroots organizations, such as the Free Congress Foundation, that monitor Congress closely and to whom voters easily look to for reliable recommendations in the internet age.

However, many of the conventional “Third Force” players have not yet recognized the hierarchical importance of “marriage values” and truly conservative social policy reforms sought by the legitimate marriage movement. Many of the items the Third Force wants to achieve are simply not economically or politically feasible until federal policy is restructured to be marriage-positive, and entitlement of irresponsible divorce and childbirth is ended, which could reduce Federal expenditures by thirty to forty billion dollars annually.

Those who believe otherwise will see continued electoral disappointments in the future. Marriage is very important to the mainstream. What could have been a Republican victory in 2006 was lost because of the added downward weight of many voters who know they were sold out, and who punished Republicans for it on November 7^th.

For Republicans, the future ain’t what it used to be. This will remain the case until they accept the truth and do the right things to restore marriage, family, a vibrant workforce and resulting economy — all possible via limited government more finely crafted than what even Ronald Reagan envisioned.

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David R. Usher is Senior Policy Analyst for the True Equality Network and President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Family, Feminism, Politics, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 6 views | Trackback | Print this page |

Mr. Usher is the Senior Policy Analyst for the True Equality Network, and a co-founder and former Secretary of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (5 years). He served as Secretary of the National Congress for Fathers and Children for five years. He was quoted in the October, 10 1996 issue of Time Magazine as an editor of "The Liberator", the oldest Men's Movement publication founded by Richard Doyle. Mr. Usher organized the three largest protests in the history of the men's movement, including the First Wives Club protests (1996 - 25 cities across America), and the "Bridges for Children" protest (2001 - 225 cities around the world). He drove many legislative reforms, including the first state law requiring downward support modifications for military reservists called into active duty [MO-1991], and the nation's toughest move-away law [MO-1998]. His slogan, "We must now grant to fathers the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace", has become an often-quoted standard of the pro-marriage reform movement. | More from David R. Usher