When Jeb Bush and Eric Cantor launched the National Council for a New America in a pizza joint called Pie-Tanza, most of us laughed derisively. When they announced a "listening tour", other Republicans laughed derisively.
And today, when I had a look at their website, I laughed derisively.
When you open their website, you get a head shot of Cantor looking really bad. Suddenly, he starts talking to you in a stutter-stop fashion because the video takes so long to load even on a high-speed connection. Then the audio and video part ways, turning Cantor into a bad Godzilla movie character whose mouth moves one way and whose words go another.
And, according to Politico, a totally FAIL website is the least of their worries.
In an article yesterday called "GOP rebranding effort flames out", Politico reports that the group is struggling because Cantor opened it in his federal office. This puts them in a sticky situation.
The National Council for a New America was supposed to be modeled after a congressional caucus, just like the Blue Dog Coalition, the Republican Study Committee or the Congressional Black Caucus. So before the launch, Cantor aides conferred with veteran Washington ethics lawyer Jan Baran, of Wiley Rein, to make sure they didn’t break any laws through the establishment of this group.
Under those rules, lawmakers can pay for certain events out of their campaign accounts, so Cantor paid for the first event through his personal campaign account.
But that spawned more criticism from watchdog groups than it deflected.
Last month, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Office of Congressional Ethics, an outside advisory board, to investigate whether Cantor violated House ethics rules by establishing the group through his leadership office.
"The use of taxpayer funds to support partisan political activities is prohibited by House rules," CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan argued in her complaint. "Therefore, the Office of Congressional Ethics should investigate to determine if Rep. Cantor violated House rules by using official resources to support NCNA. If he did, this matter should be forwarded to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for further review and appropriate sanctions."
Whoops.
The website's main goal appears to be to have people nominate their city to host future NCNA forums. Since its inception, according to Politico, it has received more than 5,000 invitations. And how many has it accepted? How many events have they held?
None. Nada. Zip.
So let's tally this up:
- National launch in a absurdly-named pizza place: FAIL
- Getting laughed at publicly by Mike Huckabee and other Republicans: FAIL
- Not being able to actually do anything because you run your group out of the Minority Whip's office: FAIL
- Totally lame website with Japanese monster movie "special effects": FAIL
Well, done Eric and Jeb. You guys are really providing that solid leadership that the GOP needs right to lead itself out of the darkness and back into the light of day and the political majority.
Keep up the good work.
I'm just sayin'...
P.S. Politico says you're trying to "establish partnerships with other Beltway media organizations, including Politico." Seems to me if you want to get in bed with the media, you should at least have your game on. Otherwise...oh, nevermind...