LF: Powerful Hollywood conservative group whose secret members include Clint Eastwood and Jon Voight forced to disband due to constant infighting over Donald Trump

Title: Powerful Hollywood conservative group whose secret members include Clint Eastwood and Jon Voight forced to disband due to constant infighting over Donald Trump
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... t-infighting-Donald-Trump.html
Published: Apr 22, 2016
Author: Chris Spargo
Post Date: 2016-04-22 18:58:26 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 2292
Comments: 5

A secret conservative group whose members have included some of Hollywood's biggest stars is dissolving due to increased tensions caused by a 'vocal minority' in the group who are supporting Donald Trump in the Republican primary.

After weeks of infighting among individuals in the group, the approximately 2,000 members of Friends of Abe received an email Thursday in which they were told that the organization was being disbanded.

Clint Eastwood, Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Jon Voight, Dennis Miller, Jerry Bruckheimer and writer David Mamet are just a few of the Hollywood heavyweights who have been a part of the group over the years, which was founded in 2004 by Forrest Gump actor Gary Sinise.

The email sent to members on Thursday did not say the exact reason behind the sudden move, but in a post on the Friends of Abe Facebook page later that day it was revealed that there had been a growing divide among the group's members which was brought on by the heated Republican primary.

The email sent out to Friends of Abe members was first released by Truth Dig, who obtained the letter from David Stein, a former member of the group.

'Effective immediately, we are going to begin to wind down the 501 c 3 organization, bring the Sustaining Membership dues to an end, and do away with the costly infrastructure and the abespal.com website,' read the email.

The letter then went on to say that this move meant 'an end to the standing organization, but not an end to the mission or the fellowship.'

The mailing list would still be maintained members were told and there would still be events.

Stein was able to provide some insight as to the lines that are being drawn inside the group, saying that at the start of the primary it was Marco Rubio who had most of the group's support after being favored by Eastwood, who he referred to as the 'paterfamilias' of Friends of Abe.

When Rubio dropped out of the race members were left to choose between Trump and Ted Cruz, with most choosing Cruz according to Stein.

And while the Trump supporters inside the organization may be in the minority they have at least one powerful member of the organization on their side in Voight, who publicly announced his support for The Donald in early March.

Voight said of Trump in an interview with Breitbart at the time; 'He’s an answer to our problems. We need to get behind him. The Republicans need to unite behind this man. We need somebody to go in and reconstruct us in a sort of way, get us back to where we were, who we need to be.'

The actor's endorsement of Trump also came while Rubio, Eastwood's pick in the primary, was still in the race.

The Florida senator dropped out six days after Voight's call for Republicans to get behind Trump.

It is not clear who Eastwood is now supporting, but he said last year that he believed Trump would be a better president than Obama.

Cruz meanwhile endeared himself to the group back in early 2014 when he helped them in their efforts to become recognized as a nonprofit organization by the IRS.

Stein claims that Sinise had been telling members since as early as 2010 that they had been approved for nonprofit status, but they kept running into problems.

It was later revealed that part of the delay in getting the approval came from the fact that the organization would not submit a list of their members to the agency, with Sinise saying that members of the group valued their privacy.

Cruz then stepped in to help, getting vocal about the delay in February of 2014 and telling The Hollywood Reporter that the IRS asking for a list of members was akin to a 'McCarthyite request for information.'

A month later Friends of Abe was approved for nonprofit status.

And now, two years after clearing that hurdle, the organization is no more.

Lionel Chetwynd, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who helped Sinise while he was founding the organization, almost seemed to predict the collapse in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month.

When asked about Trump and the Republican primary he said; 'It’s a civil war in slow motion.

'It’s too volatile. I’ve never known an election to be so personal. People don’t really sit around any more and talk about their preferences because it’s a time of inflamed passions.

'Now I don’t talk much to my Republican friends.'

There's no pro-American candidate in either wing of the D&R Party, so they're disbanding and looking at second party possibilities. Castle/Bradley (Constitution party), Libertarian party, write-ins?

I am getting strange emails from secret 'former conservative' group members wanting to know the background of my dead dawg Scruffy. Many suggest that Scruffy may become a a serious contender at the 2015 GOP Convention. When I got an email from someone called "theBern" that the Dem convention is going to be rattled by his endorsement of Scruffy ... let me say this ... I knew it, all along.