Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by Mother Jones.

Dubbed Groundswell, this coalition convenes weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group. During these hush-hush sessions and through a Google group, the members of Groundswell—including aides to congressional Republicans—cook up battle plans for their ongoing fights against the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, progressive outfits, and the Republican establishment and "clueless" GOP congressional leaders. They devise strategies for killing immigration reform, hyping the Benghazi controversy, and countering the impression that the GOP exploits racism. And the Groundswell gang is mounting a behind-the-scenes organized effort to eradicate the outsize influence of GOP über-strategist/pundit Karl Rove within Republican and conservative ranks. (For more on Groundswell's "two front war" against Rove—a major clash on the right—click here.)

At the March 27 meeting, Groundswell participants discussed one multipurpose theme they had been deploying for weeks to bash the president on a variety of fronts, including immigration reform and the sequester: Obama places "politics over public safety." In a display of Groundswell's message-syncing, members of the group repeatedly flogged this phrase in public. Frank Gaffney penned a Washington Times op-ed titled "Putting Politics Over Public Safety." Tom Fitton headlined a Judicial Watch weekly update "Politics over Public Safety: More Illegal Alien Criminals Released by Obama Administration." Peter List, editor of LaborUnionReport.com, authored a RedState.com post called "Obama's Machiavellian Sequestration Pain Game: Putting Politics Over Public Safety." Matthew Boyle used the phrase in an immigration-related article for Breitbart. And Dan Bongino promoted Boyle's story on Twitter by tweeting, "Politics over public safety?" In a message to Groundswellers, Ginni Thomas awarded "brownie points" to Fitton, Gaffney, and other members for promoting the "politics over public safety" riff.

1. “At its weekly meetings, the group aims to strengthen the right’s messaging by crafting Twitter hashtags.”
   
   
2. Defeat the nomination of Labor Secretary nominee Thomas Perez by convincing people that he is “is extremely antagonistic toward whites.”
   
   
3. Convince Americans that John Kerry cannot be trusted as Secretary of State because “Kerry’s son in law is an Iranian American with extensive family still in Iran.”
   
   
4. “If we were all gay illegal aliens, the party likes (sic) us.”
   
   
5. Re-brand efforts to restrict access to the polls through voter ID programs and strict scrutiny of minority voters as a “Voter Rights” campaign.
   
   
6. Win the hearts and minds of “minorities” by re-positioning themselves as “Fredrick Douglas(sic) Republican(s),” instead of tea partiers or conservatives.
   
   
7. Refer to immigration reform as “OBAMAGRATION”
   
   
8. Hype the “Fast and the Furious” controversy and the Benghazi embassy attack some more.
   
   
9. “A 15 sec internet (YouTube ad) featuring ethnically diverse children on a merry-go-round (soft music)… Nuclear explosion.”
   
   
10. “Write articles on (sic) 4th grade level!”