Council for National Policy

Steve Baldwin, the former executive director of the Council for National Policy, an influential conservative policy group founded by Tim LaHaye, went on the Steve Deace show yesterday to discuss why he thinks a President Romney would be disastrous for the country and the Republican Party. Baldwin’s major gripe is his dubious claim that Romney was “obsessed” with gay rights as governor of Massachusetts.

Baldwin expressed frustration that Romney has been given a “free pass” by conservative media, which he chalked up to “conflicts of interest” in the right-wing press. Among those he claimed are biased towards Romney is the publisher of the far-right Human Events, whom he identified as a “homosexual who likes Romney.” Although he didn’t name names on the show, Baldwin has previously asserted that Jeff Carneal, president of Human Events' publisher, is an “avowed homosexual” who has supported pro-equality causes.

But Baldwin’s gay-baiting did not end with his attack on conservative media. He let loose on Romney’s tepid pro-gay rights record as governor of Massachusetts, saying, “His whole administration was characterized by an almost obsessive devotion to the homosexual agenda.” Romney, he fumes, was involved in “gay proclamations, gay dances, gay proms, gay assemblies, gay this, gay that,” adding obliquely, “You gotta start wondering here.”

Baldwin: Our conservative media won’t write negative stories about Romney. They won’t even investigate him. I’ve submitted story after story to National Review, to Human Events, to American Spectator, and every once in a while they’ll do a story with a few negative things about Romney, but a full-scale investigative piece about Romney has not appeared in most of the conservative movement’s media. And you’ll find out there’s conflicts of interests, you’ll find out National Review endorsed Romney last year, they like him this year. You’ll find out that the chairman of Regnery Gateway, that publishes Human Events, is a homosexual who likes Romney. You find out these editors have various biases. And as a result, they have collectively, along with talk radio I have to add – Sean Hannity likes Romney, a lot of our radio talk show hosts have been very hands off when it comes to Romney’s record, even though they have all been briefed and all been given information about Romney’s background. Coulter and other national columnists and Hannity and even Mark Levin say very little about Romney’s record and refuse to dig into it. So you hear nothing from our own media, so the mainstream media, they’re too lazy to dig up the stories. And so as a result, Romney’s getting a free pass here.

…

Deace: Does Mitt Romney have a history of supporting homosexual issues beyond the gay scoutmasters thing that we saw from 1994? What did he do in Massachusetts when he was governor?

Baldwin: Oh my goodness. Gay proclamations, gay dances, gay proms, gay assemblies, gay this, gay that. He had an entire commission called the Governor’s Commission, which served at his own discretion, and they funded gay events and programs in the schools. He promoted all kinds of laws, rules, internal, a lot of internal things, like his department of social services awarded Family of the Year, Parents of the Year, to a gay couple. He appointed homosexual leaders to key positions throughout his administration. I mean, his whole administration was characterized by a an almost obsessive devotion to the homosexual agenda. I would venture to say that Mitt Romney was the most aggressive pro-gay governor in American history, either party. Period. I mean Amy Contrada wrote a thousand page book documenting hundreds of actions by this man to advance the homosexual agenda. Hundreds. He was obsessed with it. You gotta start wondering here.

If you want to get a sense of the extent to which the Religious Right is locked in a seemingly fruitless but entirely co-dependent relationship with the Republican Party, just take a listen to James Dobson's radio program this week.

For the next three days, Dobson is airing a speech he delivered back in February 1998 (presumably at the Council for National Policy meeting) laying out the Religious Right's abandonment issues and experience of repeatedly being abandoned by the GOP.

And the reason that Dobson decided to air this speech now is because the big GOP gains in the recent election just might be history repeating itself and Dobson feels the need to issue a "pre-emptive" warning: 

James Dobson (from 1998 speech): In 1995, I was looking for a politician, a Republican leader who had a chance to win the White House who understood what I'd been saying, who understood that moral foundation to the universe, who was willing to articulate it and willing to fight for it.

And I decided that Phil Gramm just might be that man. I heard him on TV, I liked what he said, I thought maybe he might be the one that we could get excited about, and so I asked for an appointment to see him and he agreed to see me.

And I flew to Washington DC from Colorado Springs and with me that day were Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, and Betsy DeVos. We went in an sat down and I had this on my heart, something I really want to say. And he starts by telling us that he only has forty minutes, he has to go to something, and he begins talking - and he talked, and he talked, and he talked for thirty minutes and we just got ten minutes left and he's still talking.

And so I finally said "Senator, it's not polite to interrupt a Senator when he's talking, but I came a long way to say something to you and if you don't ever let me say it, I'll leave here and you won't ever know what I came to say."

So he talked some more and then he said "okay, what is it you came to say?"

I said "Senator, there are millions and millions and millions of people out there, good family people trying to raise their kids, trying to keep them moral, trying to teach them what they believe, that are very agitated and are very concerned because they don't hear anybody echoing what they believe. And they're not known to the New York Times, they're not represented by the New York Times. And they're not known inside the Beltway, people don't talk about those folks inside the Beltway. It's as though they don't exist, or if they do, they're called names like Hillary Clinton called them last week. And they're not know to the Washington Post who referred to them as poor, uneducated, and easy to control. That's the attitude."

And I said "Senator, if you would hone in on those people and speak their language and talk to their hearts and identify with the things they care about instead of just talking about taxes and the economy and money - they care about more than money. If you will do this, you will have millions of people following you."

I'll never forget what he said. What he actually said was "I'm not a preacher and I can't do that."

And I said "Senator, you will never reach our people." And we got up and left. And Senator Gramm was out of the race in Louisiana just a few weeks later.

Ryan Dobson: That was my dad, Dr. James Dobson, speaking twelve years ago to a large assembly of people concerned about public plicy and, more specifically, about the failure of Republicans to fulfill their promises made to the American people back in 1994.

Dad, that was powerful.

James Dobson: Well, there are times when a speaker is on fire and you ain't heard nothing yet because you can hear where I'm going in the next two days and we will put flesh on those bones.

Ryan Dobson: And, in a way, is this not a warning to the newly elected officials to not abandon their base?

James Dobson: Well Ryan, that's why we're airing it, because this does represent something of a warning to the new Republican majority because it's happened before. They've been there before.

In 1994, they suddenly found themselves in the majority. No one predicted it and there they were and they did it by promising some things to the American people. And immediately set out to abandon them and that is what we're going to be talking about in the next two days.

Ryan Dobson: They immediately started talking about bipartisanship, reaching across the aisle, building bridges. To be honest, I never elect somebody to be bipartisan - I elect somebody to be conservative. I do not elect anybody to reach across an aisle - I elect them to be conservative.

James Dobson: And you expect them to tell the truth about what their values are. And we have not seen anything yet that would indicate the Republicans are about the lie to us, so this is pre-emptive, but that's where we're going because this is history repeating itself.

So, to hear the Dobson's explain it, the real problem with Newt Gingrich and the Republican radicals who took over Congress in 1994 was that they were too committed to "bipartisanship" and "reaching across the aisle" and that is why they eventually lost their majorities.

I would also just like to point out that we have had three presidental elections since Dobson delivered this speech ... and in each one Dobson has supported the Republican candidate despite his deep disappointment with the party and even after vowing repeatedly that never to support John McCain.

So you have to wonder just what kind of "pre-emptive" warning Dobson thinks he is sending to the GOP this time around considering that he's been sending this very same warning to them for more than a decade and yet, inevitably, when it comes time to cast his vote, Dobson swallows his pride, falls in line, and throws his support to the Republicans. 

Several months ago, I wrote a post noting the emergence of the new right-wing coalition calling itself that Conservative Action Project. At the time, all that I could figure out about it was that its membership included several Religious Right leaders and it seemed to operate out of the Council for National Policy.

Today, the Washington Post examines the role that new media is playing in shaping and disseminating conservative messaging throughout the right-wing echo chamber and reports that the Conservative Action Project is playing a a key role in that effort through the weekly meetings hosted by the Family Research Council:

Inside the Beltway, much of it is fueled by the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a new group of conservative leaders chaired by Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese III. CAP, whose influential memos "for the movement" circulate on Capitol Hill, is an offshoot of the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization of conservative leaders and donors.

...

At 7:30 a.m., members of the Conservative Action Project gather at the Family Research Council, a social conservative group.

CAP grew out of a series of meetings of conservatives, determined to engineer a political comeback, in the weeks after Obama's election. One took place during a Council for National Policy meeting at a D.C. hotel, conservatives said. The secretive council was formed in the early 1980s to coordinate what was then called the "New Right."

Key players in CAP, members said, include Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway; Greg Mueller, president of CRC Public Relations; and former congressman David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.). Its only paid staff member is Patrick Pizzella, an official in the George W. Bush administration, who works out of the Council for National Policy offices.

Among CAP's projects was supporting the Health Care Freedom Coalition, whose more than 50 economic and social conservative groups quietly built health-care opposition, CAP members said. The coalition is a spinoff of FreedomWorks, the D.C.-based group that works extensively with tea-party activists.

CAP also worked unsuccessfully to defeat David F. Hamilton, Obama's first appellate judicial nominee. A Nov. 9 CAP memo calling Hamilton "an ideologue first and a jurist second" helped trigger blog blasts from Erickson and an anti-Hamilton speech at the conservative Federalist Society by Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Judiciary Committee Republican.

Yesterday we posted video of James Dobson's remarks at the recent Council For National Policy meeting, so we were aware of the meeting took place, but didn't know where it was held.

W. Gardner Selby of the Austin America-Statesmen reports that it was held in Austin, Texas and that RNC Chairman Michael Steele was in attendance:

Eyewitness nugget: At the Austin event, Chairman Michael Steele of the Republican National Committee took [Phyllis] Schlafly's questions only after calling a time-out to give her a hug. I'll speculate he was trying to soften her up.

Steele told me his general message was to " get ready, stay engaged. There's a lot of work that has to be done."

Apparently, Steele has weathered the storm from earlier this year when various CNP members and allied activists were demanding his resignation.

Despite all of the predictions that the Religious Right was on its deathbed, they sure do seem to be extremely active of late.

Of course, they don't seem to have any new ideas or desire to change their agenda in any way, but in last few months have seen a flurry of new groups popping up designed to fill some unseen void that has been apparently responsible for their current predicament.

In the last few months we seen the arrival of the Faith and Freedom Institute, which was followed by Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, while Newt Gingrich was unveiling his Renewing American Leadership effort, and Lou Engle was announcing his Call to Action.

And now we come to find out via Pam that pretty much every Religious Right group has joined together under the umbrella of something called The Freedom Federation, incuding Renewing American Leadership and Call to Action, which were just recently created - so now you have two new groups created specifically to fill this void joining a new coalition effort ... designed to fill this very same void:

Press Conference to discuss the formation of the Freedom Federation and its purpose.

The Freedom Federation is a new and unique federation of some of the largest multi-ethnic and transgenerational faith-based organizations in the country committed to plan, strategize, and work together on common interests within the Judeo-Christian tradition to mobilize their grassroots constituencies and to communicate faith and values to the religious, social, cultural, and policymaking institutions.

-- American Association of Christian Counselors
-- American Family Association
-- Americans for Prosperity
-- Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND)
-- Campaign for Working Families
-- Catholic Online
-- Concerned Women for America
-- Conservative Action Project
-- Eagle Forum
-- Exodus International
-- Faith and Action
-- Family Research Council
-- High Impact Leadership
-- Liberty Alliance Action
-- Liberty Counsel
-- Liberty University
-- Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN)
-- Marc Nuttle
-- Morning Star Ministries
-- National Clergy Council
-- National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
-- Renewing American Leadership
-- Strang Communications
-- Teen Mania
-- The Call to Action
-- Traditional Values Coalition
-- Vision America

Wow - did they put this coalition together by going through our list of right-wing organizations and simply inviting all the groups and individuals we write about most frequently to join?  Sorry,  Christian Anti-Defamation Commission  - if only we had written about you a few more times, maybe you would have been deemed worthy of inclusion in this ground-breaking new effort by the Religious Right ... to do whatever it is this new organization is going to do.

Honestly, what purpose can this possibly serve?  Are the Council for National Policy and the Arlington Group somehow lacking and so these groups decided that what they really needed was yet another coalition to carry out the same work?

Anyway, this effort seems to be organized by Rick Scarborough ... or at least he is the first to send out a press release trying to take credit for it:

Today, representatives of some of America's largest faith-based groups gathered in the nation's capital to announce that they will organize and mobilize their grassroots constituencies in a common cause.

At the National Press Club, Vision America President Pastor Rick Scarborough joined other conservative leaders, including Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University Law School and the Federation's convener, to formally announce the formation of the Freedom Federation.

The Federation encompasses individuals of different races, faiths and backgrounds who are committed to the preservation of freedom and American values, founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Freedom Federation is not a separate organization, but an association of like-minded national organizations with large and unique religious and political constituencies.

...

Scarborough commented: "These organizations represent some of the nation's largest constituencies of youth, Hispanics, African-Americans, women, pastors and churches, who are uniting to defend a tradition increasingly under attack."

The Freedom Federation is committed to defending and extending core values expressed in the Declaration of American Values, the organization's founding document. These include the right to life, the institution of marriage, parental rights, religious liberty, an environment free of pornography and indecency, the right to property, freedom from excessive taxation, and national sovereignty. The statement is posted on the Vision America website at www.visionamerica.us.

And here is their Declaration of American Values, which they vow to protect with their lives:

We the people of the United States of America, at this crucial time in history, do hereby affirm the core consensus values which form the basis of America’s greatness, that all men and women from every race and ethnicity are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We adhere to the rule of law embodied in the Constitution of the United States and to the principles of liberty on which America was founded. In order to maintain the blessings of liberty and justice for ourselves and our posterity, and recognizing that personal responsibility is the basis of our self-governing Nation, we declare our allegiance –

1. To secure the sanctity of human life by affirming the dignity of and right to life for the disabled, the ill, the aged, the poor, the disadvantaged, and for the unborn from the moment of conception. Every person is made in the image of God, and it is the responsibility and duty of all individuals and communities of faith to extend the hand of loving compassion to care for those in poverty and distress.

2. To secure our national interest in the institution of marriage and family by embracing the union of one man and one woman as the sole form of legitimate marriage and the proper basis of family.

3. To secure the fundamental rights of parents to the care, custody, and control of their children regarding their upbringing and education.

4. To secure the free exercise of religion for all people, including the freedom to acknowledge God through our public institutions and other modes of public expression and the freedom of religious conscience without coercion by penalty or force of law.

5. To secure the moral dignity of each person, acknowledging that obscenity, pornography, and indecency debase our communities, harm our families, and undermine morality and respect. Therefore, we promote enactment and enforcement of laws to protect decency and morality.

6. To secure the right to own, possess and manage private property without arbitrary interference from government, while acknowledging the necessity of maintaining a proper and balanced care and stewardship of the environment and natural resources for the health and safety of our families.

7. To secure the individual right to own, possess, and use firearms as central to the preservation of peace and liberty.

8. To secure a system of checks and balances between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches within both state and federal governments, so that no one branch – particularly the judiciary – usurps the authority of the other two, and to maintain the constitutional principles of federalism which divide power between the state and federal governments.

9. To secure our national sovereignty and domestic tranquility by maintaining a strong military; establishing and maintaining secure national borders; participating in international and diplomatic affairs without ceding authority to foreign powers that diminish or interfere with our unalienable rights; and being mindful of our history as a nation of immigrants, promoting immigration policies that observe the rule of law and are just, fair, swift, and foster national unity.

10. To secure a system of fair taxes that are not punitive against the institution of marriage or family and are not progressive in nature, and within a limited government framework, to encourage economic opportunity, free enterprise, and free market competition.

We hereby pledge our Names, our Lives and our Sacred Honor to this Declaration of American Values.

It is no secret that the Right has been staggeringly overjoyed with John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate - so much so that they are literally thanking God for sending them a political savior. 

When she was first announced, James Dobson declared that "I believe Sarah Palin is God's answer [to our prayers]", a point echoed by Kelly Shackelford, who proclaimed those gathered for the Council for National Policy meeting "really felt like the Lord was answering [their] prayers" when Palin made her first appearance.

And now Salon reports that a former vice president of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is sending around an email declaring that Palin has been anointed by God:

Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing. You can tell by how the dogs are already viciously attacking her. But they will not be successful. She knows the One she serves and will not be intimidated.

...

Only God knows the future and how she may be used by Him, but may this noble woman serve to bring renewal in the land, and inspiration.

Even the columnists at WorldNetDaily - a site which, until recently, absolutely loathed McCain - are declaring that Palin just might be "destined to be the matriarch of her people": 

Could it be that someday Sarah Palin could be the president of the United States? Is she, like the ancient Queen Esther, destined to be the matriarch of her people? As was the case with Esther, is it the same with Sarah? Has she been lifted up for such a time as this? (Esther 4:14)

Only time will tell, but in reality the only thing standing in front of a Palin presidency is a nearby November election and a subsequent breathtaking event.

This God-fearing woman, who many voters believe is an answer to their prayers, has special needs. Her husband and average American family have been advanced into a modern-day David-meets-Goliath scenario. This diamond in the rough appears wired to answer the gigantic call, and if she has been lifted up for such a turbulent time as this, then bipartisan prayer is the call of this all-important hour.

Of course, the last time we had a politician modeled on Queen Esther, we ended up with this:

Former state legislator Woody Jenkins won the Republican nomination Saturday for the special election to replace Louisiana Rep. Richard Baker, who retired this year to become a lobbyist. During Jenkins’s unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaigns in 1978, 1980, and 1996, he received his strongest support from far-right groups such as the Christian Coalition, Americans for Life League, and the Christian Action Network, and this run is no different: He’s received endorsements from James Dobson, Paul Weyrich, Tim LaHaye, and Family Research Council Action, as well as the Club for Growth’s PAC.

While it’s unusual to see FRC Action making an outright endorsement of a candidate, it should be no surprise, as FRC President Tony Perkins managed Jenkins’s 1996 Senate campaign. Many will recall that Perkins gained some notoriety for his role in buying Ku Klux Klansman David Duke’s phone bank list for Jenkins’s campaign and attempting to cover up the payment.

But what’s not commonly known is that Jenkins helped found the Council for National Policy in 1981, serving as its first executive director. “One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government,” claimed Jenkins. For the past year, at least, Republican candidates for president have been hard pressed to ignore the secretive Religious Right gathering’s finicky vetting of candidates and its brief threat to ditch the GOP entirely. Even after he won, John McCain felt he had to go back before the council and plead for their grudging support.

What can voters expect from Jenkins? The Weekly Standard wrote in 1996 that he was “best known for leading the 1990 fight to pass what would have been the nation’s most restrictive abortion law and for occasionally bringing a plastic fetus onto the floor of the legislature.”

With some on the Religious Right threatening to divorce the GOP and support a third-party candidate—as a way to punish Republicans if they nominate Rudy Giuliani—one has to wonder who exactly they would be endorsing. Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan captured the far-right imagination in 1988 and 1992, respectively, but there don’t appear to be any big-name spoilers waiting in the wings this year. Even Alan Keyes, a perennial-favorite losing candidate, has thrown his lot in with the Republican field.

The third-party posturing has been led by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, and his own love-hate past with the GOP gives us a clue. In 1996, unwilling to support Bob Dole, Dobson cast a “protest vote” for Howard Phillips, the nominee of the extreme-right U.S. Taxpayer’s Party (a.k.a. the Constitution Party). Phillips was also present by telephone at the Council for National Policy meeting that discussed the third-party strategy.