O.C.’s Young Right Wing Raises Big Flap : Politics: Impudent, gonzo Republicans light into anyone to their left via Illuminare newsletter.

If that emissary of gonzo journalism, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, had grown up a right-wing Republican lad in Orange County, this might have been how he got his start.

Eager to inject a fresh voice into the region’s political discourse, a squad of twentysomething conservatives have launched a semi-regular newsletter they’ve christened Illuminare.

Although the name sounds like some new condo project in North Tustin, the publication is anything but pedestrian. The tone is irreverent and impudent, a desktop Mother Jones gone skittering off to the fringes of the political right. All things moderate to liberal are summarily skewered in each of the 12-page issues, which are mailed to about 200 local Republican Party stalwarts, county lawmakers--and a growing list of victims.

One recent edition proclaimed Democrat Assemblyman Tom Umberg of Orange County the winner of the “I’d Sell My Mother Into White Slavery to Win This Election” award for his “excellence in mudslinging” during last year’s election.

The publication regularly blasts anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh. Favorite targets are moderates such as GOP consultant Eileen Padberg and Clinton Republican Kathryn Thompson; they’re routinely castigated as “the squish wing.” Gays, abortion rights activists, tax-spending liberals and Big Government also feel the heat of Illuminare, which unabashedly labels itself “Orange County’s favorite conservative journal of opinion.”

County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder is also regularly victimized. Hot off the laser printer is a new column called “The Wieder Watch” featuring a caricature of the Republican supervisor and two venomous paragraphs fileting her for introducing California’s “ultra-liberal” Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a recent conference.

You get the picture.

The newsletter--there have been four issues distributed since its premiere last summer--is an outgrowth of the Conservative Round Table of Orange County, a year-old band of youthful Republicans. Formed amid the tumult of last year’s presidential race and the intraparty feuding that tugged at the seams of Orange County’s traditional conservatism, the Round Table sponsors monthly meetings and periodic debates for Republican regulars to talk over ideas and ideology.

But by far its most public soapbox is Illuminare, which in Latin means “to light up.”

“There are many talented, intelligent conservatives in Orange County, and Illuminare gives them a platform,” said Matthew Cunningham, co-founder of the publication and legislative aide to state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange). “We’re young, in-your-face activists. Liberal bashing is what we do.”

But others would just as soon the platform got kicked out from under the cheeky young Turks of Illuminare. A few counterpoints:

* “They’re the storm troopers of the right,” Umberg complained. He then added with a chuckle: “I’m starting to get the feeling they don’t like me.”

* “It’s mean-spirited,” Wieder said. “It’s fraught with an attitude that’s anti-women, anti-everything. Well, I want to tell you, I’m anti- them. “

* “The whole thing is very sophomoric,” Padberg said. “To me they’re just losers. All of them.”

Such assessments hardly dent the armor at Illuminare headquarters.

“They’re more than happy to call us fanatics, zealots, obstructionists, Neanderthals, cavemen, reactionaries,” Cunningham said. “But you give it back and they have a conniption, howling over the fact that you have the gall to call them what they are.”

“We like to be wise guys,” conceded Cunningham’s fellow senior editor, Jim Graves, a script writer for stage shows at Disneyland who admits that producing Illuminare is “a lot different than writing jokes for Mickey Mouse.”

The newsletter is published by the pair after working hours on a desktop computer at Graves’ home in Santa Ana. Paper and postage are paid with contributions or out of their own pockets. Cunningham is the most prolific writer, but numerous other Round Table members also regularly contribute.

Among the consistent features is “From the Archives,” a bow to our nation’s forefathers. Illuminare considers them ideological antecedents to modern-day conservatism, repeating their pronouncements in articles like “Patrick Henry Says It’s Time to Fight,” “Wise Words from Ben Franklin,” “Jefferson on Public Debt” and “Abraham Lincoln Offers a Timeless Standard.”

“They knew well the lessons of history and the tendencies of human nature--they had a fear of Big Government,” Graves said. “It’s a celebration of those traditions. I’d say these guys are our heroes.”

On a more contemporary note, the newsletter is flush with heady commentary calling on Republicans to stick to the political right wing. In a post-election analysis of last year’s presidential race, Cunningham concludes that “the Republican Party’s sojourn in the wilderness” will be shortened only “if it rejects the liberal wing’s quisling counsel and sticks to conservative principles.”

There’s also a fair dose of biting humor of the Don Rickles variety. In the lexicon of Illuminare, Republican congressional candidate Judith K. Ryan and political consultant Padberg, who ran Ryan’s failed primary campaign against Rep. Robert K. Dornan, are labeled “the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of Orange County politics.” Umberg is renamed “Scumberg” and dubbed “The Great Prevaricator of Garden Grove.”

But by far the newsletter’s most saucy stuff is its gonzo journalism with a conservative twist. Cunningham or Graves regularly invade the lion’s den of liberalism to ferret out the truth for their readers. Scratched and clawed, they return to their keyboards to write about it.

Consider an article in the May/June issue carrying the kicker “Matt’s Adventures in Squishland,” in which Cunningham invades a meeting of moderate Republicans and comes nose-to-nose with an angry Supervisor Wieder. Here’s an excerpt from Cunningham’s report:

I spotted an unidentified squish leading the scowling visage of Harriett Wieder my way. As she zeroed in on me, it looked as though I was in for a Big Tent welcome from the ringmaster herself. Still, I tried to be nice, standing up and extending my hand in friendship.

“Good morning Supervisor Wieder,” I smiled. Harriett only scowled harder and refused to shake. Mildly taken aback, I took my seat.

“You have a lot of nerve coming here!” Harriett snarled. “You have a lot of nerve!”

And so on.

Wieder still hasn’t forgiven Cunningham for the episode. “He crashed a meeting to which he wasn’t invited!” she complained. “It’s things like that and people like that Matt Cunningham who are doing the Republican Party a disservice!”

Padberg goes further, suggesting that Illuminare and the Conservative Round Table are little more than an extension of such rabble-rousing GOP youth groups as Young Americans for Freedom.

“It’s this whole mentality of fanaticism,” she said. “They feel that if you’re not like them, you don’t belong. They ought to be encouraging a healthy dialogue. They ought to get a life.”

Illuminare’s editors say there’s no association with YAF, although one frequent Round Table participant is a member of that college-based youth group. “If we are like YAF in their humorous style, I’d say it’s coincidental and nothing by design,” Graves said.

He and Cunningham aren’t about to let pointed criticism deter them from their aim--to keep young Republicans on a conservative course and help ensure the Orange County GOP doesn’t become “a clone” of the Democratic Party.

“Moderates talk about the Big Tent, but they’re actively trying to throw conservatives out of it,” Cunningham said. “It’s up to younger people like us to draw a line in the sand and fight for what we believe the mission of Republican Party should be.”