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Tom Campbell Speaks to Planned Parenthood About the Threat of the “Radical Right.”

By: Leon H. Wolf (Diary) | January 26th, 2010 at 03:54 PM |

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UPDATE: According to one of our commenters, the event is real but Campbell declined to attend based on the fact that it was only sponsored by the county Dems. I encourage you to read the comment and his full explanation. I have no access to the 1994 news article referenced by our commenter, so cannot comment upon its accuracy either.

So I’ve run across a document (image attached above) which has popped up on twitter and purports to be a flyer from an event at which California GOP Senate hopeful Tom Campbell spoke. Beyond what I have just stated, I cannot vouch for either the source or authenticity of this document, and I have not yet seen Campbell comment upon whether it is genuine. Based upon these factors, take this with as many grains of salt as you prefer.

Provided this document is genuine, it certainly raises some important questions, beginning with why Tom Campbell accepted an invitation to speak at a group called the Santa Clara County Planned Parenthood Advocates, or at an event co-sponsored by local chapters of NOW, the National Lawyers Guild, P-FLAG, the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, and Democratic Activists for Women Now. This list of prominent sponsors is of course so shocking to mainstream Republican sensibilities that one is almost left to wonder whether this flyer is some sort of prank, and whether the pranksters who generated it sat around debating whether adding the Santa Clara County chapter of NAMBLA would push it one step too far.

Of course, if Tom Campbell really DID attend such a conference, he of course has much to answer for, quite apart from the content of his purported speech itself (which cannot have been encouraging to GOP activists, being presumably titled ‘The Threat of the Radical Right’.) And if the truth is as bad as this flyer suggests, Tom Campbell has no business even running for the CA GOP’s nomination for a legitimately vulnerable Senate seat.

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Repair_Man_Jack

But the times and dates on the folder allow a resourceful individual to check the truth of this out.

Was the conference a real event? Is there film footage that proves/disproves Sen. Campbell’s presence? I see no year on the flyer. This is a possible red bs flag.

yoyo

Is Tom Campbell such a threat as to garner someone on the left to fabricate this?

Just a question…..

interesting, nonetheless.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

yoyo

inasmuch as I was wondering IF he posed the threat.

Researching it a bit, I now realize he does – but more so to the entitled GOP than to the Box-ites.

Hmmph.

So, gut says Lie/Fabrication, but we all know that if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough, it becomes reality.

And speaking of which, I haven’t seen where this has been picked up by anyone else, however. Are all the journalists in CA/MSNBC that incompetent?

Never mind, don’t answer that…. I think I already know.

If this were a fabrication and were to be tied to one of the GOP’ers, it would be suicide, and I am not sure it would be limited only to the political type.

…..grrrrrrrrr.

zbigreddogz

He instantly jumped to the front of the Senate primary race, and he’s probably the best candidate. He’s got a mixed win-loss ratio, but he did get elected to a very liberal house district 5 times, from ’89-’93 and again from ’95 (special election) to ’01 (the guy who currently holds this seat, Mike Honda (D) won re-election with 75 or so % of the vote last time. He also won a D leaning state Senate seat in a special election in ’93, so he would have had to attend this between his terms in Congress. His losses were both for Senate. He, barely, lost a Senate primary in ’92, and then got crushed by Feinstein in the general election in ’00. But he’s still won very difficult races, and ’00 will not be ’10 and Boxer is not Feinstein.

He’s liberal on social issues, so it’s not TOTALLY out of bounds that he might have gone to this, but it strikes me as unlikely. He may not have been a social conservative, but I doubt he would have went out of his way to antagonize them.

Dirt Winston

Sorry, but Campbell is a liberal on fiscal issues too. This guy is a two-horned Rino!

Leon H. Wolf

Wouldn’t include the year as long as it was for an event occurring in that year.

Third Street

This is being circulated because somebody really does think Campbell is this much of a threat. The question is whether it’s coming from Democrats, or the Fiorina campaign.

zbigreddogz

And he subsequently was re-elected to Congress, was re-elected twice and ran for Senate against Dianne Feinstein.

Are you telling me that in all these campaigns nobody ever noticed this? Impossible.

joayn

pro-choice Republicans because they weren’t upholding the ideals of the party. But the state GOP let it slide. They went with the “who can win” vs “who’s the best candidate” route.

joayn

They were palling around with Planned Parenthood and groups like that.

louisiana

Leon H. Wolf

So don’t post it here.

revolutionary

What is OT?

muffin

Also, welcome!

revolutionary

Thanks muffin…glad to be here among rational thinkers. I am surrounded daily by liberals. It’s maddening.

http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

joayn

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Not all ex-Democrats are created equal, though. Some continue to pal around with the radical left. Others stopped.

joayn

I see Campbell as an oportunist, like Spector. Campbell changed parties in 1970, I believe, when the winds of change were blowing Reagan’s way.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

I was just pre-emptively answering Campbell’s defenders who like to compare him with Ronald Reagan.
joayn

http://erickbrockway.wordpress.com/ Erick Brockway

…but dang, that event if authenticated puts him barely right of Boxer in my book.

zbigreddogz

I mean, if he attended and basically said, “I don’t agree with so-and-so on the right, but I don’t think that the radical right poses any sort of a threat, that’s silly, etc.” and was basically there to defend them from attacks from the others.

Anyhow, I honestly don’t know. I do know I’d vote for Hillary Clinton if I had to in order to get Barbara Boxer out of office.
Third Street

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

The man openly campaigned as the “pro-choice” candidate in his last Senate primary.

He openly wrote in Reason against Proposition 8.

He’s with the radical left on key issues.

Third Street

…maybe it is time for me to go trade in my current tin foil for something more reliable. That doesn’t sound good for Campbell at all, provided the book is legit.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Since the flyer has been confirmed as legitimate and not the product of a vast left wing conspiracy.

He just flaked out at the last minute.

dwarfmama

Found this:
http://www.crossroad.to/Books/BraveNewSchools/7-Silencing_Opposition.htm

The book Brave New Schools, published in 1995, contains a reproduction of the flyer shown above, about 3/4 of the way down the page. None of the footnotes appear to apply to it.
oldphart

at a private dinner about a year ago. While I don’t know much about Campbell I can assure you that tossing him into the same slop-bin as “Dr. Ignacio” has to be an attempt to discredit him.

I don’t believe I’ve ever met anybody so in love with himself as “”Dr. Ignacio” was. He made an otherwise excellent dinner an exercise in verbal torture. I finally left after pointing out that he had two good reasons for his brown eyes: only one of which was heredity.
GT350

… and he didn’t attend.

From San Jose Mercury News, oct 23 1994:

REGRETS ONLY: AN EMPTY CHAIR
The Insider is compiled by Mercury News reporters.

Did state Sen. Tom Campbell duck a political bullet a week ago Friday in Sunnyvale? Or was he the victim of what smelled like a set-up? The moderate Republican had been listed as one of the speakers for a conference entitled “The threat of the radical right,” put on by the Santa Clara County Planned Parenthood Advocates. The forum at the Silicon Valley Conference Center was designed to talk about right-wingers — among them Christian abortion protesters — who have attempted to infiltrate local government. A week before the conference took place, the pro-choice Campbell canceled out, saying he was not aware that one of the sponsors was the Santa Clara County Democratic Party. “Had the conference been sponsored by party organizations of both Republicans and Democrats, I would have gone ahead,” Campbell wrote to explain his decision. “Had it been sponsored by no political party organizations, I would have gone ahead.”

Campbell’s aide, Casey Beyer, said Campbell had agreed to a debate in a “non-partisan arena” — and had not been shown the flyers that described the event. But not everybody was buying the senator’s statement as a profile in courage. The organizer of the conference, Planned Parenthood’s Jana Cunningham, said she in fact tried to get the Republicans to sponsor the event. And she characterized the Democrats’ help as “real informal.” “He (Campbell) tries to paint a picture of the Republican Party as a moderate, pro-choice organization that doesn’t want to be associated with the radical right,” added Steve Preminger, the chair of the county’s Democratic Party. “I’m disappointed that he doesn’t walk the talk.”

mcg

n/t

revolutionary

Since when do “right wingers” infiltrate? Wow…we sound like a terrorist group that was trying to strong arm the local gov’t there. Hilarious!

E Pluribus Unum

At least, if you’re a Republican.

muffin

http://www.veronicaestrada.com/ Veronica Estrada

i fault him, regardless.

he should have stayed away.

ppl need to be careful w/ whom they associate & debate.

if need be, get your ppl to produce the fliers.
Tbone

research assistant.
Third Street

So what I’m taking away from this is that his only problem with the event was that a chapter of the Democrat Party co-sponsored it? P-FLAG, NOW, a speaker for People for the American Way, some lady who wrote a bigoted book about the “Christian Right”, and the general theme of the “threat” to American posed by conservatives; all no big deal?

Not good, Tom; not good at all…

Aaron Gardner

zbigreddogz

He was going to essentially argue that the Republican party was not radical right. And when he found out what was up, he bailed.

This is a non-story. And obviously this came from Fiorina, frankly. Or DeVore.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

So honestly, do you deny that Campbell is pro-abortion and anti-marriage?

zbigreddogz

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call a pro-gay marriage position “anti-marriage” even though I see where you are coming from.

Anyhow, I don’t particularly care. He’s great on economic matters and on regulatory matters and I’d vote for a just about anybody if I thought they’d get Barbara Boxer out of the senate. And frankly, anybody who thinks Chuck DeVore can do that isn’t facing reality. Even Eric Erickson doesn’t really deny he can’t win, he just doesn’t think anybody can. I think Campbell can.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

If you consider a 20 cent gas tax, and a refusal to pledge his opposition to federal tax hikes, “great on economic matters,” then you’re way to my left.
http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Every single time he had the opportunity in Washington to vote for a Constitutional Amendment requiring a supermajority to raise taxes, he voted no.

Every time he had a chance to support a conservative budget alternative with greater spending cuts, he voted no.

The man is a fiscal moderate and social loony.
joayn

How’s that exactly? Explain please?
joayn

“Liberal Repub Joins Race for Nomination Against Boxer” by John Gizzi.

“In losing nomination for the same Senate seat he now seeks to conservative Bruce Herschensohn in 1992, Campbell took decidedly liberal stands on abortion (his television spots almost always underscored he was the ?pro-choice Republican?), gay rights, gun control, and the environment. He also was for abolishing the Strategic Defense Initiative and was for the quota-laden Civil Rights Act of 1991.”

American Conservative Union rating: 55%

“… and his support of Schwarzenegger?s attempt to raise state taxes last year are further proofs that he is just not going to win a primary limited to registered Republicans and ?declined to state? voters (those who don?t list a party preference). There just aren?t enough liberals in that group to give Campbell a plurality against DeVore and Fiorina.”

There’s lots more in the article. Enjoy!

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35325&page=1&viewID=1296962

GT350

FYI – I emailed the archived news story to contact@redstate.com.

mrbill

He is a big leftist and is a friend and supporter of Sami Al Arian. He is an Islamist supporter and hanger oner.

He runs with MSA, CAIR, ISNA all the usual suspects.

Debbie has the goods on him at:

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/16005/stop-tom-campbell-pan-jihadist-in-california-u-s-senate-race/

Have a go at it.
http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

Which makes this rather old news.

Here are some facts:

Friday October 14 is a rare calendar date in recent years, last occurring in 2005, previous year is 1994, and then 1988, 1983, etc..

2) Referring to Campbell as “senator” would almost certainly date this to when he was state Senator, According to Wikipedia, the only time he was in the California state senate was following a special election in November 2, 1993 – which would have made him a sitting senator in 1994. He moved to the U.S. House following his win in a special election in 1995, where he stayed until he left the seat to run for U.S. Senate in 2000, which he lost, and has not held elected office since.

Thus, calling him “senator” would be totally out of wack in 2005. Similarly, 1988 and earlier would also be impossible.

Hence, this narrows down to 1994 or falsehood.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

Well, at least I was able to demonstrate that the event had to have been in 2004, which made this a rather cold trail to start with.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Are you suggesting his opinions have changed?

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

…which means, as I wrote below, that we have much more contemporary actions and statements to work with and challenge. We don’t need to go back 15 years to identify his social liberalism. And voters don’t want to go back 15 years either.

That is, how would this poster help defeat Campbell? – it seems more likely to be spun as a smear by Campbell’s supporters and evoke commentary about the desperate right, etc. Why invite trouble when it’s not necessary.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Look where they are now.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

McCain didn’t just ignore past associations, he ignored Obama’s present associations too.

And when other pointed out these associations and their lengthy history, Obama tried to disassociate himself from his history – and McCain gave him a pass on that historical revisionism.

That’s not what I see myself as advocating here.

Now if Campbell were trying to disassociate himself from his liberal record and recreate history, then documents like this are useful to impeach his attempt to revise history by demonstrating that he has a long history of social liberalism.

But I’m not aware that he is trying to recant his social liberalism. If I’m wrong and he’s trying to create a new persona, then fire away at his past.

That is, this is a rebuttal document should Campbell want to run away from his history.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

Tom Campbell has long been know as a social liberal; his record seems quite clear on that – and if he stays in the primary for U.S. senator, then he will need to explain his position and voters can decide.

Given that record, to pull out a 15-year-old poster of an event he didn’t attend – especially one that doesn’t identify the year – seems both unnecessary and self-defeating because it open up the counterattack of sleazy politics and therefore tends to impeach his detractors – and worse, stains the integrity of the pro-life movement.

So can we agree to send this back to the memory dump and keep focused on more recent facts, of which there are an abundance.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Flaking out at the last minute doesn’t represent a repudiation of the content.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

I’m dealing with tactics.

Why focus on a 15-year old event where there’s plausible deniability or at least some ambiguity and need to rely on old memories. Who in this now-oriented video culture will base their vote on an ancient event which he didn’t attend anyway (whatever the reason).

If this is the worst that we can throw at Campbell – if he’s never indicated support for these groups since, then we’ve got a really uphill battle to prove his too far left for the Republican party.

And if we do have more recent data (which I’m sure we must), then why gild the lily with something like this?

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

That implies falsehood.

There’s no falsehood in Leon’s post.

http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

I was making no implication of falsehood on Leon’s part. First, he expressed a proper level of skepticism as to whether the poster was genuine. And then he said that if genuine, Campbell would have to do some explaining, which is a statement I would agree with.

My phrase “trying to frame the right guy” is my somewhat flippant commentary on the LA police investigation of OJ Simpson: OJ (I believe) was guilty, but by trying to “improve” on the evidence, they gave OJ an opening to slip out of their fingers.

My issue here is that as Leon wrote, the person who distributed this poster was identifying it as “purports to be a flyer from an event at which California GOP Senate hopeful Tom Campbell spoke”.

Some internet detectives have traced this down, but they show that 1) this is 15 years old; and 2) that Campbell didn’t attend the event for unclear reasons.

So we have nebulous circumstances and limited contemporary commentary – so it’s going to be hard to determine what Campbell knew when about the sponsors, with a lot of room for plausible deniability.

So to promote this as a great scandal comes across as trying to “improve” on the evidence, hence my perhaps inartful analogy.

And, correct me if I’m wrong – but apart from the Democratic party organizations, Campbell still would identify himself as a supporter of the other groups there, such as Planned Parenthood, etc, wouldn’t he?

So I just don’t see much traction from this – unless Campbell is trying to completely rewrite his political history and deny his history of social liberalism. Which I’m not aware that he is trying to do so.
http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

zbigreddogz

He was there to defend the Republican party as having a place for moderates. That’s quite clear. How is that objectionable?

BTW, I’m pro-life and don’t favor gay marriage, although I, like Fred Thompson, think it should be a state issue.

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Well do note that when the state of California grappled the issue, in a proper federal way, he fell on the wrong side.

zbigreddogz

To be perfectly honest, I don’t give a rat’s behind who dispatches of Barbara Boxer. I’d vote for just about anybody over her. I want that arrogant, ignorant #$($ (and a lot of other words I can’t use here) out of office. If the person is even a marginal improvement, I’ll take it. If Hillary Clinton ran against her, I’d vote for Hillary. In a second.

So far, it seems to me the strongest candidate is Campbell. I do not think any claim that DeVore is most electable are credible, nor does Eric Erickson. If someone could make a credible case to me why Fiorina or DeVore is more electable, I’d support them.

jkeys

After a few minutes with Google, I found the following link: http://bit.ly/aP7iOd which contains an HTML version of the flyer. The link is to an online version of a book published in 1995 called Brave New Schools, http://bit.ly/97yG1O

There only two years since 1993, when that whole thing came to a head, where October 14 falls on a Friday: 1994 and 2005. Since the meeting is discussed in a 1995 book, I conclude that the meeting occurred in 1994, is not faked, and Campbell was indeed the featured speaker.
Vannek

Found this on the UC Berkeley web. Campbell has an interesting take on Reagan.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/08_campbell.shtml

[snip]
“How do modern conservatives reconcile Reagan’s domestic legacy as California’s governor, such as legalizing abortion and radically increasing welfare spending in the state?

They don’t. Largely they ignore it.

Because he abandoned these positions when he became president?

Not really. For example, he said he was against Roe v. Wade, but he never once in eight years spoke to the annual meeting in Washington of the Right to Life Coalition. Never once. He would send a message. So I think one must look at his practice, both as governor and as president, as not hard line – certainly not as hard line as some in the religious right would have wished him to be.

That’s an important part of why he was able to govern so effectively. He took what might be perceived as the rough edge off of conservatism, but at the same time he certainly did capture the support of the social conservatives, largely by running against President Gerald Ford [in 1976, for the GOP presidential nomination].

What do you mean by the “rough edge”?

The sense that if you’re not with us, you’re against us. That we cannot reasonably reach an accommodation, which is of course the nature of compromise and the nature of the American political system. For some, the issue of abortion does not admit compromise. But President Reagan never seemed to have that view, no doubt dating from his days as governor. So people ignore it. The social conservative wing tends to make Reagan more of an absolutist on the social issues than he really was. “

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Claiming Reagan as pro-abort is really going toh elp his cause.

But no, I’m not going to help a guy who drags the dead into his support for mass infanticide, when the man conveniently can’t defend himself.

Leon H. Wolf

with his abortion postition in order to put this silly debate to rest.

http://www.amazon.com/Abortion-Conscience-Nation-New-issue/dp/0964112531/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_9

http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
zbigreddogz

The point wasn’t that Reagan was pro-choice, he clearly was pro-life, it was that he accepted pro-choice Republicans under certain conditions as necessary to achieve his ends because realistically, you can’t have a pro-life candidate in every district and/or state and expect to win.
Finrod

.

joayn

Campbell came up with the idea that if you gave drug addicts the drugs they wanted, you could stop the gang wars and other crimes associated with drug abuse. Not even Methadone. But the actual drugs of their choice. All under government supervision, of course.

The response? Lots of laughter along with outrage. Feinstein slaughtered him.

Ahhh, memories. Believe me, this guy is a whack-job.

zbigreddogz

It’s a wonderful thing.

I don’t agree with drug legalization, but it’s a consistent libertarian position.
jayburd

Anthony

“None of the above – Tom Campbell and the Republican Majority Coalition”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n7_v45/ai_13699776/

jrnlz

I have to wonder if he’d be much of an improvement over Boxer. I’d like to see his current response to that article.

thinktank

Yes, I am a current supporter of Mr.Campbell, but these 1994 revelations did not annoy me. However Debbie Schlussel’s blog posts about how Tom has ties to Islamic radicals and their apologists does not make me feel comfortable voting for Tom.

I would like to see Tom defending the posts Debbie made about his friends and acquaintances more than this spat from 1994.

Tom’s support of inclusion to the LGBT community draw me into to supporting him, but if he doesn’t like Israel and loves Islamic terrorists he does not deserve my support.

Since I am not a full blooded conservative, I am likely going to jump to Carly.
However if DeVore becomes the nominee I will likely support him in the general like how I supported Mountjoy in the 2006 general election.

I hope DeVore uses this issue against Tom to make him quit the race.

RS

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Tom Campbell Speaks to Planned Parenthood About the Threat of the “Radical Right.”

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