SECRETIVE FAR RIGHT REPUBLICAN FACTION OFFERS GOP NOMINATION TO MARK SANFORD

I sure hope all DWT visitors are reading-- or have read or will read-- Joe Conason's spectacular new book, It Can Happen Here. It's one of those rare books I have to ration so that I don't finish it too fast. It reads like a how-to manual for dealing with the criminality of the Bush Regime. In fact, I keep a sheet of paper in it so that I can jot down the names of the worst characters Conason brings up. In Column A I write the names of the most egregious criminals and traitors who need to be dealt with most severely. Column B is for people who should get life in prison. Column C is for lesser crooks, etc. Many of them are commonly known monstrosities, like Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld but there are also the ones I only knew a bit about, people like John Yoo, Michael Ledeen and Laurence Silberman, and then there are the secret toilers that have been unleashed on us, people like Viet Dinh, Abram Shulsky, John Rendon...

Even worse is the umbrella organization for the vast right wing conspiracy, the uber-secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), the heart and soul of today's Republican Party. The CNP’s bylaws forbid members from publicly disclosing its membership or activities, but tomorrow's New York Times has a splashy story about the organization in which Grover Norquist and Richard Viguerie participants agreed to discuss a recent secret meeting on Amelia Island, Florida on the condition of anonymity.

The story itself, by David Kirkpatrick, deals with the old saw about how the extreme right is unhappy with the candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination. (DWT has published a dozen pieces on it already-- here, here, here, here, and here for example.) But Kirkpatrick has written about these vicious dangerous fascists before for the Times and he is eager to shine the light they so disdain on them. "The Council for National Policy was founded 25 years ago by the Rev. Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians to strategize about turning the country to the right. Its secrecy was intended to insulate the group from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media. In recent years the group has brought together a cross-section of the right from Edwin J. Feulner to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association."

A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.

The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Although little known outside the conservative movement, the council has become a pivotal stop for Republican presidential primary hopefuls, including George W. Bush on the eve of his 1999 primary campaign.

But in a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

And it isn't just the universally hated-- well universally hated in that whacky universe-- McCain, Giuliani and Romney, who worry them. The general feeling among the right-wing fanatics is that neither Huckabee nor Brownback nor Hunter has what it takes either. Well... in Hunter's case there's the little matter of an impending indictment stemming from the Duke Cunningham bribery convictions. But even worse, his hysterical anti-immigrant stand, which so pleases the nuts on the religionist right, freaks out the nuts from the Greed and Selfishness wing, the ones who fund the GOP and demand, above all else-- other than no taxes for the wealthy-- cheap labor. "'There is great anxiety,' said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and an elder statesman of the conservative movement. 'There is no outstanding conservative, and they are all looking for that.'"

Apparently the favorite at the meeting was Rick Santorum, the embodiment of the greed and corruption favored by the money wing and of the hypocrisy and bigotry beloved by the religionist loons. But Santorum's devastating and overwhelming defeat pretty much ended his electoral career on the spot. His speech was about going to war against Muslims, a favorite them of the convention. That worked for Hunter too.


Still, right-wing maniac Gary Bauer summed it up for many when he said “Right now there is still a vacuum among conservative Republicans. [Conservatives] "want a more provable conservative who also is demonstrating that they can put together the resources necessary to prevail." One person who thinks a deal can be worked out is far right lobbyist and Abramoff bagman, Grover Norquist, who still has a lot of clout in rightist circles. He says he's still open to Huckabee, Hunter, Romney and Brownback. "He argued that with the right promises, any of the four could redeem themselves in the eyes of the conservative movement despite their past records, just as some high school students take abstinence pledges even after having had sex. 'It’s called secondary virginity,' Mr. Norquist said. 'It is a big movement in high school and also available for politicians.'"

It's not big in any of the high schools where I live. You?