James O'Keefe Cronies Unveiled in Attempted Sting on CMD

[Judi Lynn]

James O'Keefe Cronies Unveiled in Attempted Sting on CMD
Friday, 12 September 2014 10:57
By Jonas Persson, PR Watch | Report

As Tea Party sentiment swept the country a few years ago, the media saw a new brood of young Republicans. Smooth and confident but also prone to anger and aggression, these budding "rock stars" of the movement held prominent positions in campus organizations bankrolled by the GOP. But it was an uneasy relationship. Their frat boy hijinks were often excused by party officials. After all, they were the future of the Republican Party. As for any misogynistic or xenophobic pranks, well, boys will be boys.

Sometimes, however, they went too far.

Rubbing shoulders with white supremacists was treated as not a big deal, but when rising rightwing star James O'Keefe III placed "prank" calls to Planned Parenthood offices explaining his willingness to make donations as long as the money was earmarked to abort African American fetuses, he had overstepped a line. In 2007, he was given the pink slip by the Leadership Institute, which has received some funding for years from the Koch family fortune and other rightwing funders. The Institute, whose mission is "political technology" and training of the next generation of rightwing activists and leaders, had previously taken O'Keefe under its wing. But his racist stunt (performed under the guise of exposing racism) – and other attacks on Planned Parenthood – turned him into a liability. O'Keefe's stunts, says the New York Times, threatened the thin "veneer of nonpartisanship" on which the tax-exempt status of the Institute hinged.

O'Keefe's long-time ally Ryan Sorba is another case in point. He has frequently made enemies of more moderate Republicans. At a 2010 CPAC conference, his rabid anti-gay rant ("I'd like to condemn CPAC for bringing GOPride to this event … you just made an enemy out of me&quot proved too much even for the most conservative "pro-family" delegates. He was booed off the stage, and called "intrinsically evil." Yet, he has suggested his stand led to the resignation of CPAC's David Keene, who now takes a more active role defending the NRA's position on guns.

In 2009, Sorba worked in cahoots with O'Keefe on the attack on ACORN. The organization, with a 30-year track record of helping the poor, registering people to vote, and bettering public schools, was later cleared of any wrongdoing. But the media frenzy (O'Keefe III showed up in a pimp outfit on Fox News) caused it to lose federal funding, and it was later disbanded.

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26144-james-okeefe-cronies-unveiled-in-attempted-sting-on-the-center-for-media-and-democracy

[riversedge]

1. O'Keefe name is well known in Wisconsin

He is evil through and through!

.....There might also be a more local connection. The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley foundation has given more than $3 million to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and $875,000 to the Leadership Institute, two groups which groomed O'Keefe to become a conservative activist while in college. In a 2010 interview with Politico, the Bradley Foundation's president Michael Grebe, who was also Campaign Chairman for Governor Scott Walker in 2010, expressed his admiration for O'Keefe's brand of "citizen journalism," and his hatchet job on ACORN.

Grebe and friends are likely not happy about CMD's relentless reporting on the Scott Walker dark money criminal probe and the right-wing effort to stop it.

However, who really bankrolled Sorba and White, their travels, hotel and fees, to target CMD, remains to be seen.

[packman]

2. O'Keefe is the clown of the Republican Party

he is the crazy uncle that dresses in strange clothing at family reunions, they can't get rid of him but still have to acknowledge his existence.

[elzenmahn]

3. The Keefey O'Freak became a self-parody...

...when he did his recent stunt on the border.

And how his ACORN attack (complete with the fur stoll he wore that he probably peeled off of the dashboard of the car he drives) was able to get any traction at all, rather than be seen as the unintentionally hilarious joke that is was, is a testament to how persistent and well-oiled the Republican media machine is.

Don't take him lightly, however. He may be a freak, and prone to shooting himself in the foot. But he's well-funded, well-connected, and crazy like a fox (he got us to talk about him, so...)

[DavidG_WI]

4. It would have been hilarious

if one of those racist border nuts would have put a bullet in him as he crossed the border. Doesn't even need to be lethal.