Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, is furious over a campaign finance rider moderate Republicans attached to the government's $1.1 trillion spending bill, which he believes is intended to pull the rug out from under the GOP's tea party faction.
"One of the riders they were willing to go to bat for was one to give groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which did so many awful things in this election cycle, more donor power compared to groups like mine, the Senate Conservatives Fund," Cuccinelli said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
"They get more First Amendment free speech rights than we do and that was already the case. They've made it 10 times worse in this bill.
"So [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell is willing to fight for more disproportionate money to attack conservatives with — but he wasn't willing to fight the funding for the president's unconstitutional executive amnesty."
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The provision increases how much a single donor can contribute annually to national party committees from $97,200 to as much as $777,600 by letting them set up different funds.
This week, Senate Conservative Action — the political-action arm of the Senate Conservatives Fund — is airing ads attacking Republican leaders for failing to challenge President Barack Obama's immigration action by voting to finance the government in an omnibus spending bill.
The group released three radio spots in the home districts of House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
The ads accuse the three GOP leaders of failing to stop Obama’s "unlawful executive amnesty" of some 5 million illegal immigrants.
The ads are titled: "Betrayal," "Not Listening," and "Cave."
Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia, is perplexed at ongoing arguments that Republicans are to blame for threats of a government shutdown, when it is the president who is to blame.
"The notion that you're shutting the government down when you pass a bill is, well, foolish. It's illogical. If you pass a bill that doesn't fund executive amnesty, you have funded government," he said.
"If the president vetoes that, it is the president then who has shut down government and if these folks are going to curl up in the fetal position automatically because somebody looks at them mean, we're not going to advance conservative principles, we're not going to limit government.
"More fundamentally, it's in question as to whether some of the Republican leadership even wants to limit the federal government."
He said the liberal media has fanned the flames of faulting the GOP.
"The liberal media blames Republicans for every shutdown no matter what and so last year when I was running for governor [of Virginia]," Cuccinelli said.
"We were actually hurt by all that because of just the liberal dumping on Republicans."
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