Cantor Policy Group Fades Away

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Cantor aides explained that the group (National Council for a New America) has been “suspended” one year after its splashy launch in part because of the intense negative attention it received from the Democratic campaign committees and other groups after its introduction.
The NCNA was intended to be a traveling forum of Republican leaders who could engage the public in a broad-ranging discussion of hot-button issues.

Cantor spokesman John Murray said despite 5,000 positive news hits, the “relentless attacks from the left” became overwhelming to the whip office soon after its launch.

“I think now, we are in a suspended state,” Murray said.
“It’s very simple,” said Rob Collins, president of the American Action Network and Cantor’s former deputy chief of staff. “The NCNA dominated the national media so effectively that liberals in and out of Congress — including (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) — attacked it.”

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When the NCNA launched on April 30, 2009, following President Barack Obama ’s speech marking his first 100 days in office, Cantor said the group of national Republican leaders would hold town halls around the country to allow average Americans to contribute to the conversation in Washington.
They got as far as Arlington, Va., where on May 2, 2009, Republican former Govs. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Jeb Bush of Florida joined Cantor inside a packed pizza parlor to discuss policy and answer questions from the crush of audience members and press assembled there.

Democrats dismissed the event as an exercise in politics and ridiculed the NCNA as an effort to rebrand the GOP with the same party leaders at the helm.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Crider wrote in an e-mail that the group’s demise was due to a lack of credibility.

“Congressman Cantor’s Republican rebranding effort quickly died because Republicans across the country didn’t find it credible, it was plagued by ethics problems, and Cantor was unable to do an event outside the Beltway,” Crider said. “It takes more than a press release from Eric Cantor to rebrand a Republican party dedicated to protecting the big banks, Wall Street, the oil companies and the insurance companies, at the expense of the middle class.”

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Roll Call raised questions about the group’s funding at the time, but then-Cantor aide Collins and a Wiley Rein attorney said the NCNA was structured to comply with House rules, allowing it to use both campaign dollars and official House resources, despite rules prohibiting the mixing of these funding streams.

In July, the ethics watchdog group CREW filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics seeking an investigation into whether Cantor and the organization violated House rules regarding funding for political organizations.