Last week the American Principles Project announced that it would boycott the next CAPC convention if organizers allowed the gay conservative group GOProud to participate.
Now, the APP has gotten other Religious Right groups to sign on to a letter to announcing their intent to likewise withdraw from the event:
A coalition of conservative groups led by the American Principles Project today sent a letter to David Keene, Chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and his fellow board members announcing their withdrawal from participation in the 2011 CPAC.
The letter, signed by leaders of American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage, cites the decision to allow GOProud to participate in CPAC, explaining that the inclusion of this group that stands in diametrical opposition to a core principle of conservatism made it necessary to take action.
“This is the line in the sand,” stated Frank Cannon, President of the American Principles Project, an organization dedicated to upholding our most fundamental American Principles. “True conservatives and conservative organizations are rejecting the efforts to destroy conservatism from within by those attempting to marginalize social conservatism. And if that means rejecting CPAC, these conservative leaders have the courage to stand by their principles.”
In the letter, the leaders of these organization actually compare GOProud to the John Birch Society:
Exclusion of GOProud would not be without precedent in the modern history of conservatism. In 1962 William F. Buckley, Jr., called on the Republican Party and the conservative movement generally to dissociate themselves from the John Birch Society. There was no doubt then that the Birch Society embraced such principles as anti-communism and limited government. Yet Buckley and others rightly recognized that there were views its founder and leader possessed, and transmitted to the organization, that, as he wrote in the pages of National Review, were “far removed from common sense.” Buckley concluded, “We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.”
A political generation ago, the John Birch Society embraced conspiracy theories about President Eisenhower, challenging his anti-communist credentials. Today GOProud describes Jim DeMint’s culturally conservative views as “bizarre.”
You know what is the greatest thing about this comparison?
Last year, the John Birch Society was a co-sponsor of CPAC.
