Former Rep. Allen West was one of the first speakers scheduled to kick off CPAC 2013 and he wasted no time firing up the conservative crowd by proclaiming that "there is nothing on this green earth that a liberal progressive fears more than a black American who wants a better life and a smaller government."
Later, West ran through a litany of obstacles over which this nation has triumphed, including the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, the battle against Nazism in World War II ... and the presidency of Barack Obama, declaring that just as this nation overcame these previous threats, "when Barack Obama packs his bags and beats a hasty retreat back to Chicago, we will persevere":
Pamela Geller will not be welcomed back to CPAC this year, representing yet another development in annual conservative gathering’s frequentclashesoverIslamophobia. Anti-Muslim activists like Geller, David Horowitz, Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer claim that the Muslim Brotherhood and its cohorts, namely Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan, are trying to infiltrate the conservative movement.
During her panel last year, James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force bragged that he was “proud” that many of the attacks on mosques in the U.S. have occured in the South.
But while Geller might be absent this year, CPAC still is hosting a number of anti-Muslim speakers:
1. Allen West.
Former congressman Allen West became a hero of the Radical Right through his inflammatory remarks about Islam, including his claim that the “enemy represents something called Islam and Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology, it is not a religion,” and that the Quran commands people to become terrorists. West has worked with Gellerbefore (even writing a column for her blog) and told one of her conferences that “the nation goes to war against an ideology and we’ve been talking about the fact that we are against something that is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology and it is called Islam.” He also said that “satellite organizations that come from the Muslim Brotherhood” are growing throughout the US.
2. Tom Fitton.
Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton has been on a mission to “expose” how the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department are all working together with radical Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood. In a recent interview with End Times radio host Rick Wiles, he argued that the State Department is recruiting people directly from “the jihadist movement here in the United States” and “terrorist front organizations,” adding that the majority of Muslim-American groups are “all fronts for these terrorist front groups.”
Fitton also told Wiles that he agreed with Rep. Michele Bachmann’s anti-Muslim government witch hunt as “perfectly legitimate” and said that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin may be connected to people who are security threats.
3. Newt Gingrich.
Former Speaker Gingrich praised the anti-Muslim witch hunt spearheaded by Bachmann and four of her fellow Republican colleagues, calling the group of congressmen the “National Security Five.” He consistentlyattacked the Muslim community during his presidential campaign and claimed that Muslims in the US are trying to impose Sharia law. He even argued that the US should respond to Saudi Arabia’s ban on churches by banning the Park 51 Islamic Community Center in New York, and said that the government should treat Muslims like Nazis. Gingrich has also warned that America’s “elite favors radical Islam” and that the media is covering up stories about “Obama’s Muslim friends.”
4. Rick Santorum.
While running for president, former U.S. Senator Santorum claimed that equality is incompatible with the Islamic faith and that Muslims should face profiling by law enforcement. He also raised doubts about Obama’s Christian faith and a top aide accused the President of supporting “radical Islamic policies.” Following the campaign, he became a columnist for the anti-Muslim conspiracy website WorldNetDaily. Before running for president, Santorum told a conference hosted by Islamophobic activist David Horowtiz that America is engaged in a “long war” with “Islamo-fascism” and that it must be “eradicated.”
After losing his bid for a second term in Congress, despite a more favorable district, Allen West is continuing his work as a fulltime conservative blowhard (but without a taxpayer-funded salary). West is working at PJ Media and appeared yesterday on Washington Watch with Family Research Council leaders Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin, where he criticized the lifting of the bans on women in combat and gays and lesbians in the military.
West told Boykin that “the liberal progressive left” is “coming at the military so viciously and vehemently because they want to tear down that ‘last bastion of strength, honor and moral fortitude,’ things that they really don’t understand,” lamenting that the generals haven’t stopped them.
The former congressman pointed to the election of Ashley Broadway, who is married to Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack, as Fort Bragg’s 2013 “Spouse of the Year” in a Military Spouse magazine poll. Broadway had previously been turned away from joining the base’s spouses club. West said Broadway’s story will undermine military’s resolve and strength.
He added that if he was an “enemy propagandist and I look at the lifting of this combat exclusion ban I’m going to turn that my benefit.”
West: The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and now this policy about lifting the exclusionary ban, people are starting to ask: what are the Generals in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps thinking about in not challenging to say, ‘this can’t be done.’
Boykin: I think your points are very well taken because I think one of the consequences of this will be a further erosion of the credibility of the General officer corps in the military and all services, as well an erosion of a confidence of the Americans in our military. You know the military has always been sort of the keepers of the keys of traditional American values and I think people are starting to question it and I think that’s what you were saying.
West: You are absolutely right and you know that from firsthand experience. I believe that is a reason why the liberal progressive left are coming at the military so viciously and vehemently because they want to tear down that ‘last bastion of strength, honor and moral fortitude,’ things that they really don’t understand. Look at just recently happened at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the ‘Military Spouse of the Year’ for Fort Bragg, North Carolina is a lesbian partner to an Army Lt. Colonel or a Colonel. These are the type of things that are starting to happen which is going to question people’s resolve as far as, what are we doing to our military? Are we focused so much on winning social engineering points for special interest points or are we supposedly focused on what we should be doing which is going out there and fighting this very strong, very vicious, very determined radical Islamist enemy. If I’m an enemy propagandist and I look at the lifting of this combat exclusion ban I’m going to turn that my benefit and my messaging is going to be: the American men don’t want to fight us so they’re turning to their women.
Meanwhile, Perkins onceagain said that the “social engineering that has gone on in the military” and “tampering with the military environment” under President Obama “could very well lead to a draft.”
Perkins: What you have seen since you left the military but in particular under the four years of the Obama administration, I don’t think anybody could argue with the social engineering that has gone on in the military. My concern here in part is with all this tampering with the military environment that it’s going to have an effect—might be ten years until we see the total effect—it’s going to have an effect on retention, recruitment and this could very well lead to a draft once again because the volunteers are not going to be there in this environment which has been so damaged by these policies.
The Thomas More Law Center, a right-wing legal group whose advisory board includes Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Rep. Allen West, is warning the Supreme Court that a ruling in favor of marriage equality would lead to “ideological totalitarianism” and hand gay rights advocates “a legal weapon with which to beat down ideological opponents.”
In an amicus brief filed last week [pdf], Thomas More argues:
To enshrine one side of a deeply divisive issue in constitutionally untouchable concrete is to fashion a legal weapon with which to beat down ideological opponents, at the cost of intellectual liberty. For this Court to say that it is irrational or illegitimate for a government to recognize, and act upon, the distinction between the potentially procreative marital act, and every other sexual act, would be for this Court implicitly to declare as irrational, benighted, or bigoted, all those individuals who adhere to the traditional view of marriage.
Already those who dare to voice objections to any part of the political program of various LGBT advocacy groups risk vilification, marginalization, or worse. Liberty suffers when one side of a debate is delegitimized as a matter of constitutional law.
….
In Lawrence, this Court has held that sexual acts between persons of the same sex may not be prohibited. But to go further and say that no government may treat such acts as different, for purposes of government policy or official recognition, from the unique marital acts of a man and a woman, would be enormously to expand the constitutional power this Court already affords sexual choices as such. To take that additional step would be to declare unacceptable and illegitimate the recognition of the uniqueness of the marital act. Those who subscribe to that recognition, in turn, then become pariahs, ignoramuses, or bigots in the eyes of the law.
Opponents of the legal redefinition of marriage already face the prospect of significant retaliation. Equating such persons, as a matter of constitutional law, with racist rednecks or backwards fools, serves as a legal license to continue or increase the legal and social marginalization of such persons. The price is the loss of liberty for those individuals who can no longer obtain gainful employment in their fields….and the loss of intellectual diversity for larger society…This Court should not foster the imposition of what would be, in effect, an ideological totalitarianism, i.e., a regime in which the unquestioning acceptance of the same-sex marriage movement represents the only permissible point of view. (Citations omitted)
The Thomas More Law Center is prone to this sort of dramatic prediction. The group unsuccessfully sued the Justice Department over the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which it claimed would create “a special class of persons who are ‘more equal than others’ based on nothing more than deviant, sexual behavior.” The group further claimed that "the sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin." The Shepard-Byrd Act, of course, only imposes jail sentences on people who have actually committed crimes and has yet to “criminalize the Bible.”
Ben Shapiro on Breitbart says David Petraeus didn’t willingly resign but was pushed out by the “Obama Mafia” and his “resignation is only the most recent evidence that the Obama administration will lie to the American people to achieve its ends.” Laura Ingraham and Monica Crowley seem to agree.
Allen West’s initial legal challenge to force a recount has been denied.
La Shawn Barber of WORLD magazine hopes that “homosexual activism in government schools is a spark that will ignite a larger movement among Christians to take their children out and homeschool them or opt for private Christian schools” as parents “peacefully protest homosexual indoctrination.”
Erik Rush, once again, asserts that “voter fraud and possibly electronic tampering played a part in the victory of Barack Obama and other Democrat office holders,” still offering zero evidence.
Sandy Rios of the American Family Association mourned the defeat of anti-gay ballot measures and candidates for office during her organization’s election coverage, and was dumbfounded as to why actor Brad Pitt donated to the marriage equality campaigns in four states. She asked: “What causes a person of such means to be so passionate about that, who is a heterosexual man with children? What is that all about?” As AFA news director Fred Jackson noted, Pitt “didn’t listen to his mom.”
Rios: Last week in the midst of the hurricane and the devastation and people clamoring for food and help, Brad Pitt made this huge donation to gay marriage. I think, what drives that? I think he gave $100,000, $25,000 to each state to fund homosexual marriage. What causes a person of such means to be so passionate about that, who is a heterosexual man with children? What is that all about?
Jackson: That is the case; he didn’t listen to his mom.
Rios: That’s for sure.
Later, Rios and AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer were stunned by Allen West’s loss in Florida, which for Fischer proves that Americans are making “alarming choices about who their leaders are going to be.” Rios lamented that voters have clearly become solidly in favor of abortion rights and gay equality, saying that voters “want abortion, they are demanding it,” and are also “clamoring for gay marriage.” She went on to argue that marriage equality will lead to “explicit instruction in public schools” and the “rape of our children’s innocence.”
Fischer: Allen West apparently has gone down to defeat in Florida.
Rios: Tremendous loss, tremendous loss.
Fischer: He was a guy that represented the best of America, his military service, his staunch conservatism on all facets, so the fact that the voters in Florida chose not to renew their confidence, their trust, their contract with Allen West, that’s another mystery to me. But I think one of the things it indicates is that this is no longer the country that we grew up in, this is a different country now today, the values are different, the people are making different and I think alarming choices about who their leaders are going to be.
Rios: I think you’re right, I have some very deep thoughts about this and I’ve just been holding back. The thing that struck me last night and I’ll go right for this I suppose: I really do believe that God is really giving us the desires of our heart, as a nation, not us individually. This is what the nation wants. The nation wants abortion all the time for any reason. That was very important to people, that was one of the reasons that some people went down last night. That’s one of the reasons the President prevailed among women by a pretty high percentage. They want abortion, they are demanding it, they are going to get it and with no restrictions, they are going to get government-funded abortion. They also want gay marriage, they are clamoring for gay marriage. Of course it isn’t just gay marriage, it’s instruction, explicit instruction in public schools, it’s really I think the rape of our children’s innocence, but they want it and they are going to get it, and we’re going to get it too.
Glenn Beck interviewed Rep. Allen West on Friday's radio program where the two discussed West's bid for re-election in a tight race against Patrick Murphy, whom West dismissed as a spoiled rich kid who "has had his father pretty much give him and do everything for him."
West assured Beck that there was no need to worry because "we’re going to be successful next Tuesday night," which prompted Beck to declare that he was not worried about the election in the least because "I believe in the protection of divine ... and God is not neutral in freedom of all of mankind." Saying that "if America falls," it would take the world a thousand years to recover, Beck assured his audience that God would not let that happen because "His work isn't done [and so] we will be preserved to do his will. And I think that’s exactly what you’re going to see on Tuesday":
Rep. Allen West says that if he addressed the UN, he'd tell our enemies that "the Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence." Can we all agree to never let Allen West address the UN?
The Washington D.C. police department is refusing to release a copy of a 911 call made after the shooting at FRC headquarters.
Bill Keller is bravely challenging Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi "to charge him with insulting and publicly attacking Islam, and he will be happy to come to Egypt to stand trial."
For those who are interested, this weekend's America for Jesus rally will be broadcast on GODTV.
Finally, John Hagee says the re-election of President Obama will spell the end of America: "Four more years of Obama will bring absolute socialism to America. Our children and grandchildren will never know the greatness of America that we have experienced."
Congressman Allen West (R-FL) is out with a new ad this week. Set to soaring, dramatic music, the Congressman tells the story of his upbringing and how describes how his father gave him the opportunity live the American Dream. He runs through typical Republican talking points calling for tax cuts and slashing services, and laments the failings of Washington. It’s standard campaign-ad fare, and he concludes by stating “I’m just getting started; that’s the American Way.”
However, West’s record suggests that his notion of the “American Way” is rather at odds with the Constitution’s promise of freedom and equality for all.
The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of religion for all Americans, and Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” But West thinks that Representative Keith Ellison (D-MI), a practicing Muslim, represents the "antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established." He also harbors some vehemently anti-Islamic ideas.
America is a country that values free speech and open debate. Yet West has a habit of resorting to calling his colleagues who disagree with him Communists. Liberals, he said, can just “Get the hell out of the United States of America.”
Freedom of the press doesn’t seem to be high on his list either. He once called for censoring American news agencies for publishing information about the government’s activities.
West believes America is a land of opportunity – something to which he owes his own success – but “equality” and “fairness” somehow fly in the face of liberty. Marriage equality, he says, is not only un-American but will destroy society as we know it.
Congressman West may have produced a slick ad, but the agenda he pushes in Congress would increase inequality, harm working families, destroy core constitutional liberties and cripple Americans’ ability to address pressing problems through government. That’s not the American Way.
Last time Rep. Allen West (R-FL) appeared on Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio, the congressman claimed that the “Obama administration has been absolutely horrible as far as the national security of the United States of America and the foreign policy relations in the Middle East,” saying that “we have to have a sure shift in the leadership of this country and it starts on high with President Barack Hussein Obama and we have to have him replaced.” West visited Gaffney again today, and this time went into a tirade alleging that the FBI and Defense Department are “whitewashing” their training materials and reports on terrorist attacks:
He later attacked former President Bill Clinton for appearing in an Obama campaign about the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden, saying “he let Osama bin Laden get away” and has “zero credibility there.” “Again, I think that the truth may end up coming out about how that decision was made,” West told Gaffney, “we don’t know what really happened.” He went on to suggest that Obama may not have even “made the call” as Gaffney suggested Obama would have blamed Admiral William McRaven is the mission to kill bin Laden had failed:
West even claimed that Obama’s meeting with Hamid Karzai was “a 1930s, Chamberlain, Hitler moment”:
Gaffney: Obama made a kind of, well, I think of it as a whistle-stop campaign appearance in Afghanistan to sign and obviously get our attention towards the ten year security agreement with the Afghans. Does that give you confidence that in fact we’re going to maintain the pressure on the enemy there that we’ve felt necessary to this point or are we in fact really just trying to paper over the impending surrender of the place to the Taliban?
West: I think that right now no one is really sure, Frank. I look at what happened between President Obama and President Karzai as a 1930s, Chamberlain, Hitler moment. There is not going to be peace in our time.
Rep. Allen West (R-FL) today announced that he will be joining the Thomas More Law Center’s Citizens Advisory Board, because the group “knows the true threat to our nation posed by radical Islam and it has initiated and funded more cases challenging the Stealth Jihad being waged against our Nation than any other public interest law firm in America.” West will be joining former Republican presidential candidate and conspiracytheoristAlan Keyes, anti-choice activist Mary Cunningham Agee, and former Alabama Republican Senator Jeremiah Denton.
Seeing that West has his own rabidly anti-Muslim views, he should fit right in, and last month Tom Lynch of the Law Center told Concerned Women for America’s Chelsen Vicari that Islam is a Trojan Horse trying to “destroying America” that is simply “disguised as a religion,” and that nobody should trust Muslims because they are lying because of Taqiyya:
A lot of Americans are ignorant and that’s why I want to talk about this subject today, about this internal subversion or what we call a stealth jihad. If you go back in history, I mean today the Trojan Horse here in America is Islam, it’s entered America disguised as a religion, it’s ultimate objective is political, and that is to destroy America and to establish an Islamic nation under Allah and Sharia law.
…
With Taqiyya, if you’re following the Qur’an and your religion, that means that you can lie. So how can you really trust anybody that might be appeasing to our Constitution, our Christianity, or our country?
Before the upcoming election, the GOP is looking to restore its traditional polling advantage on national security with virulent criticisms of President Obama’s handling of foreign affairs. But as MSNBC’s Chuck Todd pointed out last September, “No president since George H.W. Bush has had more foreign-policy successes happen under his watch than President Obama,” and Americans have given Obama high marks for his counter-terrorism strategy.
So when some Republican officials and conservative activists need to lash out at President Obama’s foreign policy credentials, they turn to right-wing talk show host and anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney for help. Gaffney uses his Secure Freedom Radio program and Washington Times column to level outlandishcharges against the president, including calling Obama “America’s first Muslim president” and alleging that he is likely a secret Muslim and raising doubts about his birth certificate.
On Wednesday, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) joined Gaffney in distorting a quote from an anonymous State Department official regarding thesuccessfuldismantling of Al-Qaeda and the administration’s aversion to using the phrase “war on terror.” West told Gaffney that the official’s words meant Obama had “signed a surrender agreement.” Later, he pointedly used the president’s middle name in calling for the defeat of “Barack Hussein Obama” and said that the president has been “absolutely horrible as far as the national security of the United States of America and the foreign policy relations in the Middle East.” Rep. West also suggested that “radical Islamist groups” have seized control of Libya after the rebellion and NATO effort which toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, even though Libya’s National Transitional Council explicitly banned religious parties.
Gaffney: Congressman West, just in the past twenty-four hours as you know there is an unnamed State Department official who kind of has personified this witlessness or worse this submission to the Brotherhood with the comment, ‘the war on terror is over.’
West: I know, I’m going to pop a bottle of champagne tonight, I guess we just raised the flag. I don’t know who signed the surrender agreement but I guess it’s all done.
Gaffney: Well if anybody has I’m afraid it’s us, but the question I’m working to get at is, can we realistically expect from an administration that seems to be indulging in this idea, the sort of leadership that you’re talking about on so many of these fronts?
West: No. That’s the short answer to your question. The Obama administration has been absolutely horrible as far as the national security of the United States of America and the foreign policy relations in the Middle East, especially with these actors like you say, with the Muslim Brotherhood, totally misread what was happening in Libya, now we have more radical Islamist groups that are controlling these countries throughout the Maghreb, which is North Africa. So this is why we have to have a sure shift in the leadership of this country and it starts on high with President Barack Hussein Obama and we have to have him replaced.
Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on Gaffney’s show to discuss a recent executive order regarding INTERPOL. In the interview, Paul attempted to link INTERPOL to Egypt’s prosecution of American NGO employees, who have since left the country. Paul blatantly distorted the executive order by insisting that Obama gave INTERPOL “diplomatic immunity.” ABC’s Kristina Wong points out the executive order does not give INTERPOL agents diplomatic immunity and only extends to them privileges regarding different federal taxes and custom duties.
Paul also suggested that INTERPOL is involved in investigations of “religious crimes,” even though the group is prohibited from “political, military, religious or racial” interventions and on Monday “refused a request by Egypt to issue worldwide arrest warrants” for the fifteen US employees. The senator later claimed that Obama “has very little regard for the rule of law or for the Constitution”: very little regard for the rule of law or for the Constitution”:
Paul: As you’ve pointed out in some of your articles that INTERPOL’s been given diplomatic immunity here, INTERPOL has also extradited religious people who are accused of religious crimes from other countries.
Gaffney: This business about the executive order that the President issued concerning INTERPOL is again a place where we have I think we have very, very much the same concerns. Do you believe Senator Rand Paul that we are looking at a President who is disposed, at least in principle, to having this extra-constitutional role played by INTERPOL, perhaps in this case, perhaps in some others, might result in American citizens not being allowed to have the protections that the Constitution affords them from unreasonable search and seizure, among other things.
Paul: Yeah, I think this President has very little regard for the rule of law or for the Constitution.
In another case of right-wing paranoia, sports-reporter-turned-“terrorism analyst” for the Christian Broadcasting Network Erick Stakelbeck told Gaffney in an interview yesterday that Obama is intentionally bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the U.S. and abroad so he and “the rest of his compadres on the radical Marxist left” can work with “hardcore Islamists” to push “the downfall of Judeo-Christian Western civilization.” Gaffney agreed and went even further, saying that Obama has “not only a deep background in the radical left but also of course considerable experience with Islamists, certainly with Islam himself” and is the “personification” of the “Red-Green” axis between the left and radical Islamists:
Stakelbeck: They are welcomed in to the inner sanctum and they are whispering in our leaders’ ears, telling them, ‘Hey the Muslim Brotherhood has reformed, they have renounced violence, we can deal with these guys, you need to embrace them and use them as a counterweight against the really bad guys and Al-Qaeda.’ That’s exactly what’s happening, our leaders are letting them in through ignorance in many cases, but in other cases and I believe in the case of President Obama, he knows exactly what the Brotherhood is all about, and for him and the rest of his compadres on the radical Marxist left, empowering Islamists is just a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Hardcore left, hardcore Islamists, both seek the downfall of Judeo-Christian Western civilization, so they must be embraced by the left.
Gaffney: Wow. This is of course a very powerful indictment, Erick Stakelbeck of ‘Stakelbeck on Terror,’ and I must tell you the only quibble that I guess I would have with what you’ve said is the President brings to the party of course not only a deep background in the radical left but also of course considerable experience with Islamists, certainly with Islam himself, and in a way he kind of is the personification of what’s been called the Red-Green axis, it comes together with him.
The Freedom Federation – an anti-Obama amalgam of Religious Right groups, "apostolic" ministries, and the corporate-funded astroturf Americans for Prosperity – is holding its third annual Awakening conference in Orlando, Florida this weekend. Here’s how it describes the event:
Uniting our Voices Around Shared Values: Turning Voices into Votes
A war is raging against our shared values. Our faith and freedom are under attack. Silence in the face of this war is not an option. Decisive action is needed. Join with others who share the core values that make America a great nation. Take a stand for righteousness and justice and be part of a new revolution to take back America. The time has come to turn our voices into votes and to change the course of history.
Outreach to the Hispanic community is a major goal of this year’s Awakening and the theme of Friday’s opening night session. That marks a continuation of the Freedom Federation’s efforts to re-brand the Religious Right as a multiracial and multigenerational movement, and to re-brand the culture war as a “social justice” movement. Last year’s gathering included a major effort to claim a religious grounding for the anti-tax, anti-government agenda of Grover Norquist and the Tea Party.
This year’s conference features Samuel Rodriguez, the head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, who tries to sell the Religious Right’s culture war to Latinos while trying to get Religious Right leaders to make themselves more palatable to Latinos. Rodriguez recently said that Latinos are here to “bring panic to the kingdom of darkness” and “make the gospel of Jesus Christ, the church, the most influential institution in America.” He said God has sent illegal immigrants here to “redeem Christianity” in America.
Also scheduled to address this year’s conference is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a favorite of Tea Party and Religious Right leaders who describe him as the party’s Latino Ronald Reagan. Rubio is reportedly concocting a hollowed-out version of the DREAM Act that will try to help Romney and the GOP fix their well-earned image as hostile to the aspirations of millions of immigrants.
A new feature at this year’s Awakening is Patriot Camp on Saturday for kids ages 5-15. Organizers promise that kids will learn about “the Christian principles on which America was founded,” which is important since, “As most Christians know, our true American heritage is not taught in schools, especially not in an objective manner.”
Notably for this Obama-bashing group, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sending a video presentation; senior Likud official Moshe Ya'alon, Vice Premier, Minister of Strategic Affairs, is also listed as a speaker. Also on the list, some of whom might appear by video: Former GOP presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, and Reps. John Mica and Allen West. West has been warming up for the conference by announcing, McCarthy-style, that dozens of progressive members of the House of Representatives are communists.
The list of speakers is a Who’s Who of the Religious Right and conservative legal movements, including characters like spiritual warrior Lou Engle and Cindy “God kills birds when America supports gays” Jacobs, who once haunted the fringes of the far right but have since been welcomed into a movement seeking to build the broadest political base possible. Among them:
John Stemberger: head of the Florida Family Policy Council who chaired the 2008 campaign that outlawed marriage equality in Florida. Awakening organizers say he has “a unique understanding" of law and government. You could say that: He has argued that only Christians are capable of creating a free society. As a lawyer he once sued a rental car company when an Irish customer was involved in a fatal crash; he argued that the company should have known that an Irish customer “would have a high propensity to drink alcohol.” (He later apologized.)
Rick Scarborough:birther, self-proclaimed “Christocrat,” and Rick Perry backer who said last year that he refused to endorse Romney in the primary because he is a Mormon. At the 2010 Awakening, Scarborough called Obama a “Marxist president.” Scarborough stated a few months ago that AIDS is God’s judgment for engaging in an immoral act.
Frank Gaffney: his infamous anti-Muslim bigotry, including charges that fellow conservatives are Islamist sympathizers, is so virulent that he was denounced by the American Conservative Union.
Harry Jackson: point man for the Religious Right’s anti-gay racial wedge strategies, defender of the National Organization for Marriage’s cynical racial wedge politics, and all-around right-wing activist, who recently called for believers to form a “fifth column” to undermine America’s secularist culture from within.
Rick Joyner: a dominionist and self-proclaimed prophet who recently warned people to get out of California because God is going to punish America for not being sufficiently supportive of Israel, Joyner heads the Oak Initiative.
Richard Land: the primary political spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, Land supports the criminalization of homosexuality and recently told NPR that “The Bible tells us that socialism and neo-socialism never worked. Confiscatory tax rates never work.” Land was recently pushed into apologizing both for racially inflammatory remarks about the Trayvon Martin case and for having plagiarized them from right-wing columnists.
Janet (Folger) Porter: an anti-abortion activist who famously brought fetuses to “testify” for Ohio’s “Heartbeat Bill,” declared during the 2008 GOP primary that God had chosen Mike Huckabee to lead the nation. Her radio show was dropped by a Christian radio network unhappy with her political embrace of Christian dominionists.
Mat Staver: heads Liberty Counsel, recently called the “homosexual agenda” a “moral iceberg” that threatens religious freedom. At the 2010 Awakening, Staver agreed with a questioner that the health care reform law had a provision that gave Obama the power to create an army of brownshirts that could take control of communities.
Rep. Allen West did his best to channel Joseph McCarthy in a Palm City, Florida town hall. In response to a question about “card-carrying Marxists” in Congress, West said there are between 78 and 81 Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party.
Under Florida's redistricting plan, the district currently represented by Rep. Allen West is set to become more heavily Democratic, thus making his fight to win re-election all the more difficult.
But West is not particularly worried, as he made clear when he appeared on "Today's Issues" yesterday with Tim Wildmon and Tony Perkins, vowing that nobody will ever be able to outfox him (as demonstrated by the fact that he just switched districts) and pledging that his voice will not be leaving Washington, DC.
But, should he lose, he has already received a job offer from Perkins to come and work at the Family Research Council:
West: So, on the surface, it does seem to be that I am the sacrificial lamb here in the Florida Congressional Delegation. And if that be the case, that's fine. But no one will ever be able to out-fox or out-maneuver me. I spent twenty two years in the military; I know a little bit about strategic thinking and my voice will not be leaving Washington, DC. No one has to be concerned about that.
Perkins: Well, I can assure you, if something happens in Congress, I've got your number. We'd love to have you over at the Family Research Council.
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