Out of the Club: why a conservative powerhouse booted its founder.

• Author: Cillizza, Chris
• Position: 10 MILES SQUARE - Club for Growth

If they ever make a political "Behind the Music"--and at this point, anything is possible at the networks--the Club for Growth is a sure candidate for one of the first episodes. That may surprise many liberals, who often think of the entire conservative movement as a disciplined unit that brooks no dissent and therefore suffers no internal disputes. But then they probably missed the news earlier this year that the Club for Growth, the leading national fundraising group for fiscally conservative candidates, had parted ways with Stephen Moore, the Club's chief executive, public face, and, in recent years, perhaps the Beltway's most influential right-wing power broker. Although the move took place with little fanfare and practiced civility, both sides have quickly turned on each other, revealing a long-running fight between Moore and several members of the Club's board over how best to use its ever-increasing power.

It had started out so well. The Political Club for Growth was formed in the early 1980s by a group of roughly two dozen New York businessmen who interviewed candidates for office, testing their conservative bona tides on fiscal issues and rewarding acceptable political hopefuls with a pocketful of checks. It was an effective, but relatively small effort, and Moore had been involved peripherally from the beginning--coming to meetings and giving counsel. By the late 1990s, Moore--then a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute--began to push for a full-time role, arguing that, under his leadership, the Club could become a key player in conservative Washington.

He was right. Moore convinced the group's founders to allow him to remake the Club with a harder edge--exacting a political pound of flesh from politicians who did not share their fiscal policy of tax cuts, balanced budgets, and more tax cuts. In 1999, Moore (along with his partners, the conservative financier Richard Gilder and National Review publisher Thomas "Dusty" Rhodes) rechristened the group the Club for Growth and immediately started spending their cash funding primary campaigns against Republican fiscal doves. (Moore coined the term RINO--"Republicans In Name Only"--to describe his targets.) Driven by the fundraising technique of "bundling," a process whereby the Club serves as a conduit for donations that are then directed to candidates, the Club took off. By 2002, the organization had contributed $3 million to candidates around the country; in the 2004 election...