Bozell: GOP risks 'soul' in compromise tax deal

Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser, said Tuesday the Republican Party would lose its soul if House lawmakers vote for Senate legislation raising taxes on the wealthy.

Bozell blasted the Senate bill for raising taxes on family income over $450,000 along with rates for capital gains and dividend income tax while doing little to cut spending. It passed by a vote of 89-8 early Tuesday with the support of 40 Republicans.

“The bill passed by the Senate last night is not a ‘deal,’ it’s a surrender,” Bozell, the chairman of ForAmerica, said in a statement. “The problem our nation faces is over-spending, and spending is ignored: the perfect Washington, D.C., ‘solution.’

“If the House passes this bill, the GOP loses its soul and co-owns the resulting fiscal disaster with President Obama,” he said. “Conservatives should want nothing to do with any Republicans, no matter how ‘conservative’ they tell us they are, if they support this monstrosity.”

Bozell sent a letter to Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus in November pledging to make it his mission to counsel conservative donors to shun the party if Republican leaders agree to raise taxes.

“I will make it my mission to ensure that every conservative donor to the Republican Party that I have worked with for the last three decades — and there are many, and they have given tens of millions to Republican causes — gives not one penny more to the Republican Party or any member of Congress that votes for tax increases,” he warned.

Bozell has been active in conservative political circles for three decades and estimates he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for “an alphabet soup of conservative causes.”

He sent another letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) that month urging them to reject Obama’s call to raise taxes on the wealthy.

“Conservatives have one question to ask: 'If you now claim a tax increase on small business is the correct course of action, were you lying all along when you claimed this tax increase would decimate the economy?' " he wrote. “Because if you were not lying, you will now be willing participants in the destruction of American jobs in a time of economic crisis.”

---