C-WHACK! THE CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ACTION CONFERENCE BECOMES A MUDDLED CARTOON OF HATEMONGERING

So we sauntered out to CPAC 2014, didn’t not expect much, and was not disappointed.

One People’s Project

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD – It was the 50th Anniversary of the American Conservative Union, the organization that annualy sponsors the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and  it may be at a crossroads with the event becoming less eventful in recent years, and this year featuring spectacles such as a cosplayer dressed as Ronald Reagan on stilts, one satellite event sponsored by white supremacists and another where a retired general declaring that Jews are a problem.

CPAC, which ended Saturday, did not see the numbers it had been known for, a possible factor being it being held at the remote Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, which unlike past CPAC locations is outside of Washington, DC and inaccessable via public transportation. That move took place last year after the prior year’s CPAC saw a massive protest from progressive and left wing groups at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. According to staff members, the ACU will hold CPAC at the resort for at least two more years, and whether or not they move to a new location is unclear.

Adam Kokesh, fresh from his short stint in jail on weapons charges after he threatened an armed revolution against the US Government that no one showed up to, also showed up at CPAC.

As has been the case in recent years, the CPAC speakers did not fail to amuse observers in the media and on the internet with over-the-top antics and statements, from billionaire Donald Trump’s gaffe suggesting that Former President Jimmy Carter is dead, to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stepping on stage waving a shotgun over his head, to Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin reading a conservative reworking of the children’s story Green Eggs and Ham. However even with this, the crew of conservatives that in past event turned CPAC into a hatemongering laughing stock had been shunned this year, according to Mother Jones who noted that while in 2012, when CPAC organizers hosted workshops organized by white supremacists like John Derbyshire, who has since been fired from the National Review for telling his kids to avoid black people, and allowed speakers like Wayne Allyn Root, who attempted to swing the 2012 election by claiming Obama attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student,  and last year, when Fox News commentator and supposed comedian Stephen Crowder joked about actress Ashley Judd being a rape victim, none of this appeared on the CPAC schedule this year. The lone white supremacist spokenholdout as an official exhibitor was ProEnglish, an English-Only advocacy group that is run by Robert Vandervoort who is also the onetime organizer of the white nationalist group, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance.

American Renaissance publisher Jared Taylor meanwhile made an appearance Friday evening during what was called an “Unconference” by its sponsor, the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI) Executive Director Richard Spencer saw CPAC as an opportunity to reach out to like minded individuals. “The Republican leadership has expressed its wish for legislation that offers legal status for illegal immigrants. There’s a chance a revolt might occur ,” he wrote. “At the very least, CPAC is an opportunity for us to demonstrate to attendees the necessity of choosing a different path than the ‘Taxes Cuts Will Solve Everything’ (sic) agenda that has defined the conservative movement for decades.”

The “Unconference” was kept secretive, with Spencer only saying on the day of the event that it was going to be held at the Old Hickory Steakhouse within the Gaylord Hotel, and later at a hositality suite.. Spencer assured prosepctive attendees that steps were being taken to assure the privacy of the gathering and assured would-be attendees that they “should be confident that you can attend in an anonymous fashion (short of donning a disguise and voice modulator): no name tags will be issued; no recordings will be made; and all discussion will be strictly ‘off the record.’” Only people with CPAC credentials were allowed in.

The National Policy Institute was co-founded by white supremacist William Regnery II, an heir to Regnery Publishing, which was a co-sponsor of CPAC. William Regnery had spoken once at an event in Chicago sponsored by Robert Vandervoort’s Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance.

Phyllis Schlafly at CPAC. She will be 90 years old in August, and we are very happy to see her live long enough to see all that she worked for in complete tatters in today’s society

Another conference held during CPAC was Uninvited II: The National Security Action Conference, which was sponsored by Breitbart.com. Despite the fact that its late founder Andrew Breitbart was heralded during CPAC, Breitbart.com held this side event to feature “speakers and topics that are absent from the CPAC agenda, such as pro-life issues and border security.” Among those speakers were anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, Veteran conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly and James O’Keefe who was recently noted associating with white supremacists for the second time in recent years. This event saw controversy as one speaker, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who is also the Vice President of the Family Research Council, was caught on mic telling an Israeli repor
ter that “The Jews are the cause of all the problems in the world.” The Family Research Council is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

One facet of hate that was more than apparent was the hatemongering against the gay community. One group that seemed to be the most vitriolic was the Hanover, PA-based American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (ASDTFP), a Catholic group whose members were indentifiable by their red sashes and has been accused of being a cult. In the past they have been known for their protests against the DaVinci Code novel and Park 51, the Islamic Center in lower Manhatthan that Islamophobic activists railed against in 2010 because of its proximity to the World Trade Center site. At CPAC they embarked on an anti-gay campaign that involved warning attendees against GOProud, a conservative homosexual advocacy group that has been disinvited to CPAC due to pressure. They passed out a flyer titled “Why GOProud Does Not Belong at CPAC” that featured Ronald Reagan sitting on a stool with the three legs marked “Fiscal”, “Defense” and “Social” with a rainbow-colored beaver gnawing at the one marked “Social”. The ASDTFP explains this on their website:

“In a stroke of genius, Ronald Reagan compared the conservative movement to a three-legged stool, with defense, fiscal, and social conservatives each being a leg. This stool will not stand without its moral leg.

Thus, while conservatives have every right to concentrate their individual efforts in one or more specific fields, we strongly disagree with those who aid and abet militant secularism’s goal of excluding morality from the non-negotiable core principles of the conservative movement and society. When we surrender our moral principles, we betray America’s Ten Commandments heritage.”

Another group, the National Organization for Marriage, also tabled at CPAC, and was promoting a March on Washington against same-sex marriage to be held on June 19, commonly known in the Black community as Juneteenth, which observes the day slaves in Galveston, Texas were informed that they were free. One person attending CPAC took offense with their activism. “Who cares who gets married?” The unidentified attendee told persons at the desk. “Who gives a shit? This is how the Democrats keep winning!”
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter was the final speaker, and as usual her comments caused a few eyebrows to raise, particularly regarding her remarks on immigration reform. “Amnesty is forever,” she said, “and you gotta vote for the Republicans one more time, but just make it clear, “If you pass amnesty, that’s it. It’s over. Then we organize the death squads for the people who wrecked America.”

This time, however, she is finding support from what seems to be more and more a pattern for CPAC despite their rather week efforts to keep the hatemongers down. Jared Taylor, who also wrote an article where he praised Coulter’s words as “remarkable”, tweeted out a screen shot of Coulter remarking, “The only real man at CPAC was a woman.”