Who's Agenda Will ACU Push?

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The American Conservative Union (ACU) was once a proud organization fighting on the front lines against progressive socialism. Its ratings of members of Congress were the gold standard on whether someone was a liberal or a conservative. Unfortunately, those days have long since passed and the group has effectively been taken over by K-Street lobbyists who often put the interests of their clients ahead of their principles the group was founded upon. 

There is little doubt the ACU has become a shill for corporate interests.  Its past chairman Al Cardenas served as chairman of the group while he was worked as a partner at the lobbying firm of Tew Cardenas. He was named as one of Washington D.C.’s top lobbyists by The Hill newspaper.  There were clear conflicts of interests between his role as a lobbyist and his role as an advocate for conservatives. On a number of occasions, Cardenas managed to get the ACU to support anti-conservative positions that favored corporate interests, and perhaps, the interests of corporate donors. 

 

It was no accident that the group endorsed a provision pushed by the Florida sugar industry to keep government protections on the sugar industry in place. While free market groups were pushing for eliminating protectionist and anti-free trade sugar laws, the ACU took the opposite position endorsing the protectionism sought by big sugar.

The New York Times blew the lid off of another Cardenas attempt to squeeze money from road builders and defense industry executives.  The group proposed to establish “The American Strength Program” to lobby for more federal funding for road construction and defense spending.  The group promised to include votes on military and infrastructure spending into its widely cited congressional voting scorecard, “the ‘gold standard’ for elected officials,” according to the proposal.  K-Street observer Tim Carney noted, “At least some of the money for this program will come, no surprise, from the businesses that get the contracts funded by the federal infrastructure budget. The American Road and Transportation Builders Association is a Washington-based lobby for construction companies, paving companies, concrete suppliers, engineering firms, and others in the business of building roads and bridges.”

Rather than hiding its head in shame, the departure of Cardenas has led the group to replace one lobbyist with another.  

 

A former aide to Karl Rove, Matt Schlapp, a registered lobbyist for Hollywood, has now taken the reigns of the organization.  Schlapp represents the liberal Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the driving force behind the effort to regulate the Internet with their infamous SOPA bill.  While SOPA remains dead and buried, the MPAA continues with its efforts to revive the measure.  

 

How long will it be before the ACU puts its formerly gold stamp of approval a series of measures shafting the American people but helping the organization raise money and assisting the new Chairman get an “attaboy” from his current clients?  Serving two masters is impossible.  We will be watching to see what master reigns.