Did Hannity Withdraw From CPAC Over GOProud?

Yesterday we noted that Ann Coulter had been dropped from the upcoming Take Back America Conference being organized by WorldNetDaily because Coulter had agreed to speak at a different conference hosted by the gay conservative group GOProud.

And with attention-seekers like Coulter and WND’s Joseph Farah involved, you just knew that there was no way that was going to be the last word about it:

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter responded today to the announcement that WorldNetDaily was dropping her as a speaker for one of their events, calling WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah a “publicity whore” and a “swine.”

Coulter was bumped from the speakers list of WND’s September “Taking America Back National Conference” after it was announced that she had accepted a speaking gig at a New York City party hosted by GOProud, a Washington-based group that represents gay conservatives.

“[F]arah is doing this for PUBLICITY and publicity alone,” Coulter wrote in an email to The Daily Caller on Wednesday afternoon.

This, in turn, has set off another round of stories on WorldNetDaily, but I want to highlight this one by David Kupelian, claiming that Sean Hannity pulled out of CPAC and Sarah Palin refused to attend all because of GOProud:

It caused Sean Hannity to pull out of last February’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., where he had been slated to appear as keynote speaker. When Hannity withdrew from the CPAC lineup, Glenn Beck stepped in. (Though this has not been previously reported, my source is highly placed and utterly reliable.)

It was also a big reason Gov. Sarah Palin opted not to speak at CPAC, long the nation’s largest and most influential annual gathering of conservatives.

It caused WorldNetDaily, as well as major conservative institutions like Liberty University, to drop their planned sponsorship of the event.

“It” … is GOProud, the homosexual activist organization masquerading as a “traditional conservative” group, whose acceptance as official sponsor of CPAC caused many traditionally minded individuals and groups to pull out – on principle.

Now obviously, anything that has never been reported elsewhere that is suddenly being “reported” by WND is immediately suspect. 

I don’t buy the Palin claim, since she has skipped CPAC the last two years, apparently because she personal gripes against organizer David Keene, who dared to criticize her, and I don’t know that I believe the claim about Hannity either … but it sure would be interesting to get some non-WND sourced confirmation of this claim.