Bill Berkowitz
July 17, 2006

Senator George Allen on the hot seat

Facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Jim Webb in the Virginia Senate race, Sen. Allen hires Scott Howell, the hardball playing 'Hitler' media guy, to craft his campaign advertising

It is no deep secret that Virginia's junior Republican Senator George Allen -- who is up for re-election this November -- is interested in the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination. Over the past several months, Allen has been out raising money, boosting his public profile through a number of appearances on television's talking head programs, courted the GOP's base -- which included an appearance at a gathering sponsored by the ultra-conservative and ultra-secretive Council for National Policy, and put together a hardball playing dream team of political advisors, strategists, and media consultants.

However, before Allen can make waves nationally, he must take care of business at home. Once considered a shoo-in for re-election, Allen is instead facing a formidable challenge from Democratic Party candidate James Webb. A Republican-turned-Democrat, Webb is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran whose record of public service includes serving Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan.

Over the past several weeks, spokespersons for Sen. Allen have been sticking close to Karl Rove's Democrats-are-vulnerable-on-the-war-on-terrorism playbook. To punch home that theme, Allen's campaign has hired Scott Howell, who according to the Washington Times, "is credited with being the mastermind of the happy, family-guy political ads that helped John Thune unseat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004, but also is responsible for the so-called 'Hitler' ads that were a factor in the gubernatorial loss last year of death-penalty advocate Jerry W. Kilgore."

Questioning Webb's patriotism

During the recently concluded congressional debate over a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning, Allen spokesperson Dick Wadhams was quick to point out that Webb, who opposed the amendment, was "totally beholden to the liberal Washington senators who dragged him across the line in the Democratic primary," the Washington Times reported. "By announcing his opposition to the Flag Protection Amendment, James H. Webb, Jr. puts himself firmly on the side of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer," Wadhams said.

Wadhams, who is running Allen's campaign, "is one of the country's most talented political pros," The Hotline, the National Journal's "daily briefing on politics, pointed out. "His specialty: hard-knuckle contrast politics, dethroning incumbents (think Daschle), engineering come-from-behind victories for other incumbents (think Sen. Wayne Allard and Conrad Burns)."

Unlike Sen. John Kerry's slow and ineffective response to being Swift-Boated during the 2004 presidential campaign, Webb's camp responded immediately to Wadhams' charges, claiming that the Allen campaign was essentially attacking Webb's patriotism.

"George Felix Allen Jr. and his Bush-league lapdog, Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb's position on free speech and flag burning," Webb spokesman Steve Jarding said. "Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run. While Jim Webb and others of George Felix Allen Jr.'s generation were fighting for our freedoms and for our symbols of freedoms in Vietnam, George Felix Allen Jr. was playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada. People who live in glass dude ranches should not question the patriotism of real soldiers who fought and bled for this country on a real battlefield."

The Hotline summed up the flurry of memos from Allen's Wadhams and Jarding: "Webb's campaign is sending a message here: we won't be swift-boated, we won't dare let Allen get away with questioning our patriotism. Allen's campaign is also sending a message: we know what Jim Webb's buttons are, and we're gonna push them.

Also doing some rapid-fire button pushing is Allen's senior strategist Chris LaCivita, a decorated veteran who, according to The Hotline, "brought the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT - website) to the national stage." According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, LaCivita heads Progress for America (PFA - website), a 501c4 organization founded in 2001 by Republican consultant, Tony Feather. He also works for the DCI Group, a Republican lobbying firm.

"While Allen has a great squad around him, with ... Wadhams, Mary Matalin, and Ed Gillespie; its LaCivita that might be the most important of the group," the blog The Mason Conservative recently pointed out. "Gillespie brings in the money, Matalin brings deep national experience and connections, and Wadhams is the strategy mind and chief antagonist of the left. But its LaCivita, of all, who has served and can keep Allen's message and attacks on point, and can help prevent the rest of the crew from the candidate on down from falling into the only trap that will do Webb in--attacking his war record or his patriotism."

Bringing out a major league media hit man

Although Allen claims to disavow negative campaigning, nevertheless his campaign recently hired Scott Howell, the president of Dallas-based Republican media firm Scott Howell and Co. (website). Howell "has been called one of the most impressive political consultants of this decade," the Washington Times recently pointed out. "Democrats detest him for his role in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts in 2004, as well as for ads that helped defeat Sen. Max Cleland, Georgia Democrat, in 2002."

While his hiring doesn't automatically signal that the Swift-Boating of Webb will reach the boiling point anytime soon, critics of Howell acknowledge that he is a hardball-playing media guy who is cut from the same cloth as the legendary Lee Atwater. In fact, Atwater, a fellow South Carolinian, recruited Howell to come to Washington in the late 1980s and work with the Republican National Committee.

Howell has also been tutored by Karl Rove. According to a profile in the Washington Post, Howell started up his company in Alabama in 1993, a few years after working for the RNC and after meeting Karl Rove, "who was then running a direct-mail firm out of Austin." Howell told the Post's Chris Cillizza that "Karl forced you to think better on your feet. He showed me how a political consulting business would run."

The Washington Times also reported that "Howell said he crafts campaign messages specifically for each candidate, state and political environment. 'I don't like to commit to any kind of strategy because every campaign brings a different set of circumstances.'

"The body of my work has been largely positive," Howell told the Washington Times. "There are isolated campaigns that people would like to sit there and highlight, but the bottom line is we try to be very hopeful and forward-thinking and positive and try to tell the story, and draw contrasts where they are appropriate."

Howell's "body" of work includes having devised the media strategy for Saxy Chambliss' notorious campaign against Georgia incumbent Senator Max Cleland. In November 2002, USA Today's Andrea Stone wrote: "Few believed Republican Saxby Chambliss could paint Sen. Max Cleland, a veteran who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, as soft on national security. But that's just what the conservative congressman did to score a surprising victory over the one-term Democrat...Chambliss even ran a TV ad picturing Cleland with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden."

Last fall, Howell crafted a series of advertisements for GOP gubernatorial candidate Jerry W. Kilgore. According to the Washington Times, "the ads featured crime victims declaring that Timothy M. Kaine [Kilgore's Democratic opponent] would oppose the death penalty even for Adolf Hitler. Kaine ... won that election after many voters said they were disgusted by those ads."

Council for National Policy

In May, after Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, the current frontrunner for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, made his highly-publicized pilgrimage to the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Allen had bigger fish to fry.

According to The Hotline Allen was a featured speaker at the Council for National Policy's recent 25th anniversary celebration in Tyson's Corner, Virginia.

The Council for National Policy is a highly secretive group of top-shelf religious and secular conservative leaders who meet three times a year. Joining Allen was a host of major conservative leaders including Sandra Froman, president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Edwin Fuelner, Jr., the president of the Heritage Foundation, Phyllis Schlafly, Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the United Nations.

The CNP has a history of keeping the press out of their affairs and insists that all speeches and conversations are "off the record," The Hotline reported. The secrecy policy was most in evidence when during the 2000 presidential campaign then-candidate George W. Bush spoke to the CNP and refused to release a transcript of his remarks to the press.

There's no doubt that Iraq will be a huge issue in the campaign. On Sunday, July 9, both Sen. Allen and James Webb appeared -- in separate interviews knitted together -- on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Allen, a loyal Bush ally on Iraq, maintained that after U.S. combat duties in Iraq were over, the United States should consider keeping military bases in Iraq if the Iraqi government wants it. Webb, who suggested that U.S. troops could be out of the country in two years, contended that construction of U.S. military bases in Iraq made it seem like the Bush administration sees a decades-long occupation.