Free Republic

"Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday with a blistering attack on "racketeering" Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like "marks.""

Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Wednesday with a blistering attack on "racketeering" Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like "marks." "I blame the donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers....It's time to stop being marks. It's time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get real," he told the audience that included two top Republican consultants. . . . Caddell left no doubt...

About 200 donors on the email distribution list for Karl Rove's group "American Crossroads" may be receiving an interesting message Thursday: Don't donate to American Crossroads. Conservative activist Brent Bozell, chairman of the group ForAmerica, obtained the distribution list and plans to send a letter blasting Crossroads' role in last year's election and the creation of its new independent group for the 2014 mid-term elections. Rove, the former top political adviser to President George W. Bush, generated strong pushback from tea party groups earlier this year when he announced the formation of another offshoot, "Conservative Victory Project," dedicated to helping...

From its founding four decades ago, the Conservative Political Action Conference — known as CPAC and set to get underway Thursday — has come to function as an annual gut check for the political right. At the CPAC gathering of post-Watergate 1975, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan famously exhorted the demoralized group to raise “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people.” And CPAC was where, on the heels of his landslide presidential reelection a decade later, Reagan proclaimed: “The tide of history is...

For anyone going to the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), I’m sure by now you’re aware that there will be no panels conducted regarding the threat of Islam this year.  All of our leading experts on Islam–Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney and others–have been banned from speaking and/or holding panels.Unfortunately, many Conservatives still aren’t aware that two of the most influential organizers of CPAC—seemingly innocuous tax guru Grover Norquist and former aide in the Bush administration Suhail Khan—are fighting together to eliminate any dissenting voices about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.  Why is this?Last year, I...

Over at Atlas Shrugs I discuss why the common categorization of me as "right-wing" is all wrong: Many years ago, when I interviewed the great avant-garde saxophonist Charles Gayle, I asked him about bitter criticism he had received for his tendency to preach a pro-life message in the middle of his concerts. “Yeah,” he said with some amusement, “they always call me ‘right-wing.’ Man, I ain’t got no wings!” Neither do I. And as the events of the past week have shown, I am not “right-wing,” either; nor am I a conservative. Throughout my public career, of course, the mainstream...

American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said he supported a bipartisan Senate effort at immigration reform, stressing that the proposal must include a way for an estimated 11 million illegal aliens to “come out of the shadows” and be given “a legal status where they can be secure in this country for their future and that of their children.” Cardenas made his remarks on the Spanish-language Telemundo show Enfoque on Sunday, noting that immigration is an issue he plans to stress at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., which opens next week. … When asked what...

Popular radio show host Sean Casey (The Morning Show with Sean and Frank) had CPAC chief Al Cardenas on his show today, and Sean asked Cardenas about my banning at CPAC (a story that has gone viral). If you recall, Al Cardenas told the Washington Post last week: "...this year we decided not to invite Pamela Geller for comments she made at CPAC critical of our officers [ Grover Norquist]. In each of these cases, their ad hominem attacks denigrate the debate and distract from the real point of CPAC....." But in his response to Sean Casey this morning, he...

For decades, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has been a barometer of the different political tendencies inside the right-wing. In the 1980s, Reagan administration officials and Reaganite New Rightists dominated the podium. Pres. Reagan spoke at CPAC in both 1984 and 1988. In the 1990s, culture warriors like Pat Buchanan and the Rev. Pat Robertson joined Republican regulars such as Sens. Bob Dole and Phil Gramm. At this years’ CPAC13, Tea Party leaders and Tea Party-supported politicians will dominate the proceedings. The result is an agenda filled with bigots, conspiracy mongers, and publicity hounds. Consider the inclusion of...

I was surprised and honored that Jihad Watch was among the nominees for the People's Choice Blog Award, sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net, to be awarded at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2013. As you can see from the vote above, Jihad Watch won decisively, getting over 50% of the vote in a field of fifteen. And I received confirmation of the victory from one of the organizers of the CPAC blog awards when I asked him when voting officially ended: From: XXXXXXXXX Subject: Re: You've Been Nominated For A People's Choice Award At the CPAC Blogger...

Conservatives confronted with the Republican Party's "stupid party" image after the November 2012 election will be gathering on March 14-16 for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. CPAC is an annual, 3-day gathering of conservative activists and political leaders who network and set the tone of the conservative political agenda. This year, CPAC has not been without controversy . Box Turtle Bulletin's Timothy Kinkaid has pointed out that gays — and in particular, GOProud — are banned from any formal role because of the cries of the Family Research Council and other religious right activists. Chris Christie,...

their names are David Keene, Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan. It is Norquist who is blamed for getting Geller kicked off ... “ CPAC Shills For Islamic Terrorists.” . ... Grover Norquist’s troubling ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes, who was director of communications for his Islamic Free Market Institute until they married in 2005, are very active in “Muslim outreach.” Just six weeks after 9/11, The New Republic ran an expose explaining how Norquist arranged for George W. Bush to meet with fifteen Islamic supremacists at the...

For the last four years, Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com and the American Freedom Defense Initiative have held events at CPAC featuring guests she invites to discuss the influence of Islamism on America. But this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU) has no room for Geller or her message. [...] In years past, the events were standing room only thanks to their popularity, but that apparently was not enough to counter pressure brought to bear from somewhere to exclude Geller’s message.

On Tom Trento’s radio show today, former FBI agent, John Guandolo, who wrote the first Muslim Brotherhood training manual for the FBI, outs John Brennan, Obama’s nominee for CIA Director, as having converted to Islam while working in Saudi Arabia. (Embedded video: Fast forward to 11 minute mark and watch til the 52 min mark)

Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist says that large-scale immigration is good for America and the Republican Party — and that critics of easy immigration should get out of the way. “There are a whole bunch of people who are listening to loud voices, some of whom claim to be Republican … talking about [employers] who didn’t fill out the paperwork, about going after [an immigrant's] aunt,” said Norquist, whose opposition to tax increases has made him popular among Republicans and a hate-figure among progressives. Once advocates for tighter immigration are sidelined, the GOP will be able to win...

We’ve had a wide variety of conservative: the neo-cons, the paleo-cons and most recently the crunchy cons. Have you ever noticed how many of the most prominent conservative voices in America sound more like liberals? I have, and I believe they are in class all their own: they have a special mission and fit a particular profile. They are what I like to call ‘kept cons.’ They are ‘kept’ by liberals in that kept cons generally work for liberal institutions and seem to fill the role of token...

Yay!! MORE POOR DEMOCRAT VOTERS! Anti-higher taxes activist Grover Norquist is joining an effort to convince conservatives to support statehood for Puerto Rico. Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, is scheduled to appear at a press conference with Luis Fortuno, the former Republican governor of Puerto Rico, in Washington to push statehood for the territory next week. The group organizing the effort is the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. “The group of conservative leaders will call on Congress to pass legislation to allow the people of Puerto Rico to decide their political future among non-territorial and constitutionally valid...

Shortly after the Center for Immigration Studies put out a report warning that the Student and Exchange Visitor Program was widely unregulated and abused, the Obama Administration has decided to dispose of the last restrictions instituted after 9/11 to prevent a repeat of the revolving door Saudi visa system. The United States, a decade after Al Qaida strikes in New York and Washington, has opened its doors to Saudi nationals. Diplomats said the administration of President Barack Obama has removed most restrictions on the entry of Saudis to the United States. They said the percentage of visa approvals for Saudis...

Grover Norquist declared in an exclusive Newsmax TV interview that President Barack Obama will not get to increase the nation’s debt ceiling unless Republicans “get a dollar-for-dollar reduction in real spending.” “That’s the leverage,” Norquist, the influential founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, tells Newsmax. “The president needs something. He’s running up debt. He needs a debt-ceiling increase.” As discussions to raise the nation’s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling near, House Speaker John Boehner has said he would not negotiate with President Obama. Still, “The Boehner Rule” — which ties a rise in the debt threshold to an equal...

Over the last four years, a die-hard cadre of activists and their allies in Congress have dragged the Republican Party into a fever swamp of Islamophobia and barely-concealed anti-Muslim bigotry. In their paranoid scenario, Islamic Shariah law is creeping into American courts; the Department of Justice has come under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood; and the president’s engagement ring includes secret writing that indicates Muslim loyalties. But after a November election that saw three of the party's loudest voices on "creeping Shariah" defeated—and the GOP presidential nominee ignore the issue entirely—the anti-Islam movement within the Republican party may have...