union

Michele Bachmann

New Hampshire: Announces intention to visit New Hampshire at CPAC (Minnesota Independent, 2/14).

CPAC: Uses faulty tax math at her CPAC speech (WaPo, 2/11).

Health Care: Says that repealing reform law is “the driving motivation of my life” (RWW, 2/10).

Haley Barbour

Immigration: Lobbied for Mexico to support the extension of an “amnesty” program (Salon, 2/14).

Lobbying: Politico looks into conflicts of interest as Governor after lobbying for tobacco industry (Politico, 2/14).

Iowa: Plans to address a Republican fundraiser in Iowa on March 15 (The Note, 2/14).

Mitch Daniels

Tea Party: Rush Limbaugh thinks Daniels is trying “to discredit talk radio and the tea party movement” (Politico, 2/14).

CPAC: Speech on debt receives rave reviews from pundits, but Daniels wins just four percent of straw poll votes (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 2/14).

Education: Pushes dramatic school vouchers bill despite cuts to public education (Evansville Courier & Press, 2/13).

Jon Huntsman

Utah: The former Utah governor trails Romney among state’s Republicans (Desert News, 2/12).

2012: Hires staff for his leadership PAC (Politico, 2/11).

Mike Huckabee

Religious Right: Criticizes GOProud during CPAC controversy (GOP12, 2/11).

Poll: Leading Republican choice on who would make a good president (The Atlantic, 2/11).

Sarah Palin

Poll: Struggles in polls of early primary states (Politico, 2/14).

Budget: Uses phony data to critique Obama’s proposed budget (CBS News, 2/14).

PAC: Hires chief of staff for leadership PAC (CNN, 2/11).

Tim Pawlenty

Religious Right: Plans to attend Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition meeting in Iowa in March (Iowa Independent, 2/14).

Florida: Set to address Florida’s Republican state legislators (Florida Times Union, 2/11).

CPAC: Attacks President Obama as weak in CPAC speech (RWW, 2/11).

Mitt Romney

New Hampshire: Has support of 40% of New Hampshire GOP primary voters in WMUR Granite State poll (WMUR, 2/14).

Nevada: Meets with supporters in the early caucus state (LVRJ, 2/14).

Health Care: Massachusetts reform law continues to haunt Romney among conservatives (The Plum Line, 2/14).

Rick Santorum

Religious Right: Plans to attend Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition meeting in Iowa in March (Iowa Independent, 2/14).

Palin: Runs away from criticizing Palin after she calls him a “Neanderthal” (PoliticalWire, 2/10).

CPAC: Criticizes judiciary and defends social conservatism at CPAC (RWW, 2/10).

• Justin Elliott @ Salon: Pamela Geller versus CPAC.
• Steve Benen: Taking union busting to a whole new level.
• Joe.My.God: Rumsfeld Endorses DADT Repeal.
• Stephanie Mencimer @ Mother Jones: Tea Party Patriots Investigated: "They Use You and Abuse You."
• Jason Hancock @ Iowa Independent: Pawlenty, Santorum to attend event hosted by Ralph Reed’s Iowa organization.
• Advocate: Tammy Bruce Leaves GOProud Post.
• Igor Volsky @ Wonk Room: GOP Congressman: Gay-Friendly Passport Change Will ‘Undermine The Traditional American Family.’
• Eric Lach @ TPM: Shirley Sherrod Sues Andrew Breitbart Over Video.

At a Saturday CPAC panel attacking public sector unions, the crowd cheered the news that the new Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has set out to destroy public sector unions by moving to strip employees of collective bargaining rights.

A group of right-wing legal advocates warned CPAC participants – or more accurately, a tiny subset of CPAC participants – about “The Left’s Campaign to Reshape the Judiciary.”

Following in the footsteps of right-wing pundit Frank Gaffney, David Horowitz is accusing CPAC of having connections to radical Islam. Horowitz spoke at a CPAC panel in 2009, where he was introduced by notorious anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center is a CPAC participating organization. But Horowitz, who recently defended Glenn Beck in his linking of the progressive movement to the Muslim Brotherhood and claimed that public school teachers encourage the indoctrination of students into “Jihadist doctrines," has now joined other CPAC detractors like Gaffney to blast the involvement of Suhail Khan. Khan is a board member of the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC, and tomorrow is leading a panel on inclusion in the conservative movement.

Gaffney first charged Khan with ties to extremist groups in early January. Now Horowitz and another anti-Muslim activist, Robert Spencer, are joining a coalition of anti-gay Religious Right groups in boycotting the conference.

Rick Scarborough, the head of Vision America, recently placed an ad in The Washington Times attacking CPAC for including the gay conservative group GOProud, and today condemned the gathering for supposedly slighting Religious Right groups (a fear also present at the conference).

The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, which supports the CPAC boycott, reports:

A full-page ad in The Washington Times -- placed by Vision America -- challenges the direction of CPAC. Vision America president Pastor Rick Scarborough, who initiated the project, notes that the "driving force" in the conservative movement, generally speaking, has been Christians.

"Right now [though], libertarians are trying to force us out -- and I just simply decided that enough is enough," says the longtime Christian activist. "So we're trying to speak out, and we're finding that it's resonating with a lot of folks."

...

Islamic influence within CPAC?

Meanwhile, a terrorism expert who is also advocating for a drastic change in the leadership of CPAC believes the event has been compromised by radical Islamic influences. Author and activist David Horowitz says a CPAC board member by the name of Suhail Kahn has not been forthcoming about his ties to extreme Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Suhail Kahn is a member of the board of the American Conservative Union. He's moderating a [CPAC] panel," Horowitz explains. "His father created an Islamist mosque in California that held fundraisers for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number-two [man] in al-Qaeda. This was in the [19]90s."

Terrorism expert Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, comments as well on Kahn.

"Suhail Kahn has also spoken about how Muslims should be eager to die for the Palestinian question, using the same kind of language that suicide bombers have employed," he notes. "This is not really somebody who should be considered moderate or certainly not conservative."

Spencer is calling for changes. "There needs to be a drastic overhaul at the top of CPAC -- and [for] the American Conservative Union that runs it," he says.

For the third year in a row, Newt Gingrich makes a State of the Union-like entrance to CPAC, entering from the back of the ballroom and shaking hands as he makes his way to the stage as "Eye of the Tiger" blasts over the sound-system, while every other speaker simply steps on stage after waiting in the wings:

Erick Erickson of the prominent right-wing blog RedState and a commentator for CNN hasn’t made any comments about the CPAC boycott controversy until now, attacking GOProud and its ally Grover Norquist for criticizing the Religious Right. GOProud’s leaders Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia recently lashed out at social conservative leaders boycotting CPAC as “nasty, anti-gay bigots” in an interview with Metro Weekly, and Erickson is not happy about it:

I have done my best to stay out of this business, keep my mouth shut, and appreciate my friends on both sides of the CPAC divide. Had I not seen this particular attack by GOProud against long time solid conservatives I’d continue keeping my mouth shut. But this is too much. And my guess is that there aren’t many if any willing to call foul, so I will do it.

As someone who spent time trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, I accept this as conclusive proof that, while it is a Republican organization, GOProud is not a conservative organization.

…

You really should read the whole thing. You’ll learn that should you disagree with GOProud, you are a bigot too. In fact there are lots of delightful quotes. GOProud has taken one of the favorite leftist bullet points and brought it straight into CPAC. You oppose affirmative action? You’re a racist. You oppose gay marriage? You’re a bigot.

Wonderful trick. Sadly, it is being used on real heros within the conservative movement, including Cleta Mitchell, a board member of the American Conservative Union.

According to the dictionary, a bigot is a person “obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of [their] own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions.”

Chris Baron might want to look in the mirror.

…

While Cleta Mitchell was fighting for children, Chris Baron was signing up to work for the champions of child killing.

While Cleta Mitchell was fighting for people’s right to work, GOProud was aligning itself with the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.

While Cleta Mitchell was helping the Senate Conservatives Fund get people like Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and others elected, GOProud was attacking Jim DeMint.

While Cleta Mitchell was in super secret meetings of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy this week, GOProud was attacking Tim Pawlenty for daring to defend conservative positions on don’t ask-don’t tell.

Those groups and people who have sat out CPAC this year have done so not because they hate the gays, as Grover Norquist and GOProud would have you believe, but because GOProud is not a conservative organization and its agenda is not a conservative agenda.

For that, they are called losers and nasty bigots.

These losers and nasty bigots have done a lot more for the conservative movement than GOProud. And I am very happy to call them my friends.

This week, I’d much rather be with them than be at CPAC.

With CPAC beginning tomorrow with the inclusion of GOProud, a group which represents gay conservatives, the American Principles Project is launching a last-ditch effort to discredit the conference and express their outrage over the participation of a group with gay and lesbian members. Even some conservatives planning to address CPAC, such as Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, and Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring, signed on to a “Conservatives for Unity” letter condemning GOProud’s involvement in CPAC. The letter “was signed by about two dozen leaders,” including Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council and Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, who both represent groups boycotting CPAC, and “argued that there can be no common ground between gay rights conservative activists and social-issues conservatives.”

The APP, which was founded by anti-gay marriage activist Robert George, was the first to demand a boycott of the American Conservative Union’s CPAC over GOProud’s inclusion, launched a new website, GetConservative.com.

The mission of GetConservative is to create a “unified” and “full power conservativism” that would leave out groups sympathetic to LGBT rights like GOProud. Religious Right organizations like the APP have also been angered by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’s call for a social issues “truce,” which they see as part of “an increasing trend among GOP elites to try to undermine social issues.”

For the APP, CPAC’s inclusion of GOProud was “slap in the face to social conservatives and an injury to conservatism as a whole,” and giving Daniels a speaking spot made matters even worse. According to their mission statement:

Get Conservative is an initiative of the American Principles Project (APP), an organization dedicated to upholding the fundamental principles on which this country was founded. During the 2010 election cycle, APP noticed an increasing trend among GOP elites to try to undermine social issues like traditional marriage, the right to life, and religious liberty and thereby quiet the voice (and influence) of social conservatives. In response to these efforts, the American Principles Project found itself with a new mission–to defend and promote social conservatism and be sure that it remains a vibrant part of the conservative movement.

When it became clear that the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had joined the effort to marginalize social conservatives by allowing GOProud to be a prominent part of their 2011 event, APP led a boycott of CPAC to protest the inclusion of a group that actively opposes fundamental conservative principles (like the defense of traditional marriage). The point of the CPAC boycott was not to urge others not to attend, nor was it an effort to dictate who should be permitted to be part of the conference. The point of the boycott was to state unequivocally that for conservatism to have meaning, the fundamental principles of it (including the defense of traditional values) must be respected, and that to invite an organization that actively worked against one of those principles was a slap in the face to social conservatives and an injury to conservatism as a whole. The problem was then compounded when CPAC invited Mitch Daniels (who in 2010 famously called for a “truce” on social issues) to be the speaker at the Reagan dinner. This was an invitation that underscored the second-class status to which CPAC was assigning social issues and social conservatives.

But despite the furor that arose from the CPAC boycott, the American Principles Project remains committed to being part of a strong and vibrant conservative movement. This site challenges all conservatives to stand together and speak out in defense of social issues.

The feud between Glenn Beck and William Kristol over Beck’s bizarre and paranoid ranting about the crisis in Egypt has become increasingly bitter. Beck prophesizes an alliance between the political left and an Islamic caliphate that he claims will takes over Europe and the Middle East. Beck believes that progressives and Islamists “stand together” as “one nation” and predicts that the anti-Mubarak uprising will engender a pernicious socialist-Islamist-Chinese union will try to takeover the world. Conservative writer William Kristol responded in his Weekly Standard column that as Beck “lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.”

Beck, in his own signature obsessive way, has struck back at Kristol, earning further criticism from conservative writers including the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin. But not all neoconservatives are defending Kristol, who unlike Beck supports Egypt’s democracy movement. One major backer of Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy is rushing to Beck’s defense. David Horowitz has a long-held belief that an axis between radical Islamists and progressive activists and university professors will attempt to topple the US government (among others), a claim embraced by other right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Cliff Kincaid, and Robert Spencer. Even Gateway Pundit is trying to use Code Pink’s support for the anti-Mubarak protests to tie the group to the Muslim Brotherhood.

On his blog, Horowitz writes that Kristol should immediately apologize to Beck and “should be embarrassed by his own ignorance of the agendas of both American radicals and their jihadist allies.” He continues:

Bill Kristol is entitled to his optimism about democratic revolutions in the Islamic world. Perhaps the elections in Egypt will turn out better than those in Gaza where Hamas now rules a terrorist state; Iraq, which has instituted an Islamic Republic; Lebanon, where Hezbollah now rules a terrorist state; and Afghanistan, which is a kleptocracy wooing the terrorist theocracy in Iran. What he should not be doing as a conservative leader is demonizing Glenn Beck, who has done more to educate Americans about the unholy alliance between the secular left and the Islamic jihadists than anyone else. Kristol needs to apologize to Beck for comparing him — outrageously — to the conspiracist Robert Welch, and should be embarrassed by his own ignorance of the agendas of both American radicals and their jihadist allies. At this point in time, such ignorance is not only inexcusable but dangerous.

Previously, Horowitz even tried to link right-wing boogeyman Bill Ayres to the Muslim Brothers:

We saw the unholy alliance at work in the Hamas inspired campaign to break the Gaza blockade. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were leaders of the American wing of the Hamas coalition against the blockade and went to Gaza to meet with Hamas shortly before the terrorist Flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces. The Gaza blockade was jointly instituted by Israel and Egypt – by the Mubarak regime in Egypt. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood’s army. If the Muslim Brotherhood topples the Mubarak regime, Hamas’s war against the Jews will be immeasureably [sic] strengthened. The radical left in America and internationally is committed to Hamas and its genocidal campaign against the Jews and its general war against the United States. That is why the fate of Egypt in this crisis resonates for all of us.