Conservative Boycott of "Too Liberal" CPAC is ON!

stevenleser

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Jan-07-10 03:45 AM
Original message

Conservative Boycott of "Too Liberal" CPAC is ON!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Conservative-Boycott-of-T-by-Steven-Leser-100107-3.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 7, 2010

By Steven Leser

Just when you thought the Conservatives couldn't get any wackier this year, there is a concerted effort by a growing group of Conservatives to boycott the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC.

CPAC is considered THE big party of the year for the "conservative wing" of the Republican Party. It is hosted by the American Conservative Union Foundation among other conservative groups. According to Wikipedia, last years speakers included:

Senator John Cornyn

Representative Ron Paul

Governor Mitt Romney

Governor Mike Huckabee

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

House Minority Leader John Boehner

Newt Gingrich

John Bolton

Ann Coulter

Rush Limbaugh

Robert Davi

Michele Bachmann

Jonathan Krohn

Ronald Reagan spoke to CPAC a total of 12 times. According to the CPAC website, former Vice President Dick Cheney had this to say about CPAC:

"CPAC has consistently over the years championed those ideas that have made America great: limited government, free enterprise, low taxes and a strong national defense."
- Vice President Dick Cheney
--------------------------------

All that is out the window this year. A boycott is under way led by such weighty conservatives as Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver, Gary Glenn, President of the American Family Association of Michigan.

What has these �ber conservatives so riled up?

This year, CPAC has accepted the sponsorship of a conservative gay rights group, GOProud. According to an article on Free Republic, "GOProud advocates same-sex "marriage," a repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and "expanding access to domestic partner benefits" for "homosexuals' "

An announcement on GayPatriot, a conservative Gay blog had this to say about GOProud:

I am thrilled to help announce the birth of a new national gay conservative organization, GOProud. As long-time readers know I have been very critical of the national Log Cabin Republicans for many years.

Their left-of-center positions on important issues have bothered me as LCR has continually sucked the teet of the Gay Leftist agenda. LCR's silence and unwillingness to stand up and be vocal on true gay conservative issues (outing of Republican staffers, increasing threat of gays being selectively aborted, peril gays face by Islamic extremists) has been mind-boggling. And LCR's continued obsession in trashing Republicans, yet letting Democrats get a pass on their gay-related hypocrisies, has been infruriating.

Many of you, friends and critics alike, have told me if I wasn't happy with LCR to do something about it. I have tried shining light on the organization from GayPatriot.org. But many of us felt more had to be done.
-----------------------------------
Politico ran an article about the launch of GOProud that said:

GOPROUD, the new 527 group, will launch next week, according to a media advisory. The contact given for the group is Christopher Barron, a former Log Cabin political director who broke with the group.

"Essentially, there's no voice for gay Republicans or gay conservatives in particular in D.C. right now. Log Cabin has been completely and totally absent here in D.C. for months and months," Barron said. "It has simply moved way too far from the left and is basically indistinguishable from any other gay left organization."

The ideological battle has been playing out in the gay media and on some blogs for a while, spurred in part by the Blade's revelation that the Log Cabin Republicans' biggest backer is a prominent Democrat, Tim Gill. Their complaint, in general, is that Log Cabin has grown indistinguishable from left-leaning gay rights groups.
------------------------------------------------------

Free Republic's Jim Robinson has joined the boycott and had this to say about his reasoning:

"I'll join that boycott. If CPAC is no longer for conservative family values then I want nothing to do with them. They'll have to change their name to HOMOPAC."

- Jim Robinson Founder of Free Republic
-------------------------------------------
This boycott has threatened to upset the applecart at a time when conservatives seem to be cementing their stranglehold over the Republican Party. It also threatens to derail CPAC's efforts to get Sarah Palin to speak at the conference. The former Alaska Governor has not yet confirmed she will attend or speak.

I've written about the Log Cabin Republicans (until now the only gay caucus in the Republican Party) several times in the last 7 years. I started out calling them "abused spouses" for their blind support of Republicans despite the fact that Republican politicians, George W. Bush among them, repeatedly used the LGBT community as pejoratives and wedge issues. Eventually, the Log Cabins realized that obsequious behavior wasn't going to get them anywhere and they became more aggressive. With their aggressiveness, you started to hear about more gay staffers being tolerated in the GOP and the potential for some change down the road.

Apparently, this attempt by the Log Cabins to exert some influence in the GOP and stand by some principles has resulted in a backlash in the form of a rival Republican gay rights group that purports to be more conservative. More likely, you will see GOProud start off the way the Log Cabins started out i.e. being the Republican's doormat. This first sponsored event has them right on track.

GOProud has acceded to sponsoring CPAC without having any speakers being allowed to speak and simultaneously accepted being publicly backhanded in the press by CPAC's organizers. ThinkProgress reported on this on December 23rd:

David Keene, the head of CPAC's main organizing group, tried to calm the potential boycott by using a different tactic. In an e-mail to a right-wing radio host, Keene promised that GOProud would not have a speaking spot and that gay rights issues would not be "open to debate":

In his e-mail response, Keene admitted GOProud "has signed on as a CPAC co-sponsor, but will have no speakers and we told them that, in fact, since opposition to gay marriage, etc are consensus positions (if not unanimous) among conservatives, these topics are not open to debate." <...>
----------------------------
You would have to wonder why any activist group that purports to be attempting to further any issue would accept this kind of treatment by the party they have chosen as their own. Now I know I am going to get comments back to this article from GOProud and LCR members accusing the Democratic Party and President Obama of the same thing and in some ways they are right. I admit that I am embarrassed at how little progress has been made on the Gay rights front over the past 11 months.

I'll even go further than that and say that as a straight person, I cannot face my gay friends in the Democratic Party anymore I am so ashamed by how little has been done for them over the first year of this administration. I feel guilty that I am happy with the administration in most ways except of course with this glaring issue. But that still isn't remotely the same as how gays are treated in the Republican party. Pick any 20 Republican or Conservative groups at random and pick any 20 Democratic or Liberal groups at random and tell each that you would like to have a big gay rights representation at their next national meeting and let's see the reaction you get. Something tells me there will be a statistically significant difference in the amount of groups that are accepting of the gay rights groups between the two sets of organizations.

None of this matters to the social conservatives who normally attend CPAC. To them, CPAC has become hopelessly Liberal by accepting sponsorship from GOProud. Comments to Jim Robinson's article on Free Republic include many references by Freepers who are going to attend CPAC anyway and bring signs of protest against the GOProud participation.

All of this controversy has me looking forward to CPAC for the first time in my life. Conservative internecine fighting is more fun to watch then anything Hollywood produces. I might even buy a ticket and attend.