Blog’s campaign against Calvert to intensify

A popular conservative blog will step up its efforts this week to force Republican leaders to pull Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) from the powerful Appropriations Committee. In addition, the website will begin a coordinated effort to target members of the GOP Steering Committee in order to save the party from electoral disaster in 2008, the editor in chief of the site said Sunday.

“This party of ours must be pruned and it must be pruned by those of us who care about it before meeting the butchers sheers in the hands of the voters again in 2008," Erick Erickson, editor in chief of www.redstate.com wrote to The Hill.  “If they refuse to hear that change is needed, we will wipe them out and replace them with new blood that recognizes that a corrupt party rejected by the voters will not be embraced again by the voters until the corruption is purged.”

{mosads}On the blog, Erickson on Friday had declared “war” on the GOP leadership because it backed Calvert to join the committee. Erickson objects to the choice, saying Calvert was involved in “several questionable land deals…”

Erickson described a several pronged “battle plan” that includes encouraging users of the blog to flood lawmakers with calls in their district and Washington offices and eventually contacting   lawmakers’ key campaign contributors and the media in order to emphasize their commitment to change.

“We will call each member, one a day, flooding lines in district and in D.C.,” Erickson wrote. “We will compile a list of every member who either admits to voting for Calvert or refuses to answer.”

Once the list is complied, it will be published and sent to lawmakers’ top contributors with a list of the allegations against Calvert enclosed.

Erickson said the group will also zero in on the 29 members of the Republican Steering Committee, who chose Calvert May 9 to temporarily replace Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), a day before the decision was ratified by the full Republican Conference. Votes held in the Steering Committee are considered extremely confidential.

“We will target the Steering Committee members in order of most vulnerable to defeat to least vulnerable to defeat,” Erickson said. “We will provide one way out for each member of the Steering Committee: publicly announce a desire to have Ken Calvert step down before we get to a particular member of the Steering Committee.”

He added, “Once we’ve started, we won’t stop.”

Calvert defended his record in Congress and again denied allegations of ethical impropriety after www.redstate.com launched attacks against him on Friday.

“This week my colleagues gave me a welcome opportunity to refute the allegations made against me in a scurrilous 2006 Los Angeles Times story,” Calvert said in his own entry on the blog. “I’m proud to have done so in an open and thorough fashion, and I write today to do the same for Red State readers.”

Calvert described the deal in question as “a transportation project I supported for the betterment of my district.”

“The project is part of a larger, regional plan, was requested by local transportation officials and is currently three years away from construction,” Calvert wrote on the blog. “But rather than reporting the facts and the benefits this project would deliver for Californians, the Los Angeles Times ran a sensational story that falsely created an appearance of impropriety.”

A GOP leadership aide defended the Steering Committee’s decision Friday.

“It doesn’t take much to concoct an allegation of impropriety against an elected official in Washington — any idiot can do that,” the aide said. “But it takes guts to look at the facts, draw a conclusion that is contrary to the crap printed in one major newspaper, and stand firmly behind a decision. Frankly, that’s exactly what the Steering Committee has done.”

Erickson was unconvinced by the explanation.

“The House GOP Steering Committee will either embrace reform or reject it,” he wrote. “And we will encourage them to embrace it.”