NRA spokeswoman movement’s new face
Dana Loesch has a robust conservative following.
Dana Loesch is CHICAGO — the new public face of the National Rifle Association, an organization long associated with older white men.
At 39, she’s poised, photogenic and a skilled public speaker, yet she’s not softening the message of the NRA as it becomes an increasingly active voice in the nation’s culture wars, with positions on everything from immigration to the media.
In the aftermath of the shooting deaths of 17 people, mostly students, at a Florida high school, it’s Loesch who has been the NRA’s main messenger.
The NRA dispatched Loesch last week to a CNN town hall, where she was questioned by students and parents from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the Valentine’s Day shooting. Often brash and combative, Loesch was measured and even-tempered, though she was booed when she left the stage.
Charlie Sykes, a longtime conservative radio host who has been critical of the NRA, said Loesch’s skill is communicating with a broad range of Americans while retaining the ultra-conservative base built by Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president and CEO since 1991.
“Imagine Wayne LaPierre sitting in that seat and you realize the significance of Dana,” Sykes said. “She can bring the hot sauce without having that persona” of an angry white man.
Even before taking over as NRA spokeswoman last year, Loesch had a robust conservative following, cultivated on social media — she has 765,000 Twitter followers — and through years of television and radio appearances, including on her own radio program, “The Dana Show.”
The day after the televised town hall, she was back in her more familiar mode, speaking to a far friendlier audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington. Loesch defiantly defended NRA’s 5 million members, who she said “will not be gaslighted into thinking that we’re responsible for a tragedy that we had nothing to do with.”
And, her voice dripping with condescension, she addressed journalists from the mainstream media, who she said “love mass shootings” because “crying white mothers are ratings gold.”
Her criticism of the media recalled an NRA video last summer in which she attacked The New York Times in a way that some on the right and the left feared could incite violence. In the video, Loesch said NRA members have “had it” with the newspaper’s “fake news” and warned: “Consider this the shot across your proverbial bow . ... In short? We’re coming for you.”
Loesch was back on television Sunday, defending NRA members and arguing against calls to ban semi-automatic weapons like the one used in the Florida school shooting. “This is not their fault, nor are 5 million innocent law-abiding Americans culpable for this,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”
In response, David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, said students were focused on countering Loesch as they campaign for tighter gun laws.
“If you listen to her speak, she’s not really saying anything. She’s sounding positive and confident and that’s what she wants the people in the NRA to believe, her 5 million plus members,” Hogg said on CNN. “She wants them to think that she’s on their side, but she’s not. She’s actually working with the gun manufacturers.”