Has Barney Frank Met His Match?
By Samuel Blumenfeld (06/26/04)
If you are one of the millions of conservatives who would like to see ultra-liberal Barney Frank out of Congress, you now have a good chance of achieving that – by supporting Chuck Morse who has obtained official ballot status in his campaign against Barney Frank.
While Morse calls himself a "Romney-Bush Republican," he registered too late to formally become the Republican candidate and thus is running as an Independent. The Massachusetts Republican Party has given no indication that it intends to put up its own candidate to oppose Frank this year, which means Morse is essentially the de-facto Republican nominee. Republicans seem satisfied with Morse's candidacy and most will no doubt vote for and financially support him.
Morse believes he has earned the support of the Republicans in his district.
"I've been meeting with Republican groups during the past few months and will continue to do so as I organize for the election," he said. Morse also expects to broaden his base by appealing to Independents and fed-up Democrats. The number of unenrolled voters in Massachusetts has been increasing with each election and now stands at over 50 percent of the electorate. "If elected," Morse says, "I will caucus with the Republicans."
Although this fight is over the seat in the House of Representatives for the Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts, the campaign has national repercussions. Barney Frank is the darling of the far left, a supporter of abortion on demand and an important spokesperson for gay marriage. Therefore, he will receive substantial financial support from these powerful national constituencies of the left.
Morse, who hosted a conservative radio talk show on Boston's Salem Radio affiliate WROL, is raising funds both in the state and nationally. He hopes to raise enough money to launch a TV campaign in the final weeks of the race. He intends to use that campaign to illustrate in graphic detail the effects of the "Frank Amendment," which made it easier for terrorists to enter the U.S. legally.
In a press release on the subject, Morse called on Frank to resign from the House Homeland Security Committee.
"Barney Frank unwittingly served as an enabler of the 9-11 terrorists by his meddling in immigration policy in the 1980s," stated Morse. The Frank Amendment opened the "turnstiles of terrorism in America," Morse charged.
Morse also quoted Gerald Posner's New York Times best seller "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11." Posner wrote:
Senior CIA officers complained to the president's national security team about their frustration with the FBI and warned that America was vulnerable to Islamic terrorists entering on legal visas and setting up sleeper cells.
Reagan responded in September 1986 by forming an interagency task force, the Alien Border Control Committee (ABCC), whose purpose was to block entry of suspected terrorists and to deport militants who either had come into the country illegally or had overstayed their visas. The CIA and the FBI joined the ABCC effort.
Six months after its formation, the ABCC had its first notable success. The CIA tipped off the FBI to a group of suspected Palestinian terrorists in Los Angeles. The Bureau arrested eight men. But instead of being lauded, the bureau and the agency came under harsh attack from civil-liberties groups who argued that ABCC should be banned from using any information the CIA had gained from the government's routine processing of visa requests.
Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was a strong advocate of protecting civil liberties, led a successful effort to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act so that membership in a terrorist group was no longer sufficient to deny a visa.
Under Frank's amendment, which seems unthinkable post-9/11, a visa could only be denied if the government could prove that the applicant had committed an act of terrorism.
Rendered toothless by the Frank Amendment, the Reagan administration had virtually no way to block visas even when there was information linking the individuals to terrorist groups.
Besides challenging Frank on national security and important social issues, Morse is also challenging Frank on his economic policies. Washington Post columnist David Broder, in a piece entitled "One Bold Thinker Among the Democrats" (March 14), wrote that Frank complained in a speech to an economic group that the government was too small. He called for tax increases and a re-launching of FDR's New Deal. Morse says Frank advocates the "old, discredited and regressive ideas of big government and high taxes."
This is one of those crucial elections that can potentially change the political fault lines in the country. A Frank defeat would be a political and psychological disaster for the left. Either way, the voters of the Fourth District of Massachusetts will have a real choice in November. They will have another chance to consider Frank, who has agreed to a series of debates with Morse, in what promises to be an exciting political event.
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