The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is an institution. Now in its 32nd year, CPAC is the largest annual gathering of grassroots activists on the right.
But when it comes to co-sponsors, CPAC and its parent group, the American Conservative Union, are keeping strange company.
CPAC always has a lustrous lineup of speakers. Ann Coulter, Oliver North, George Will, Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) and Vice President Cheney all addressed this year’s conference. For the most part, the panel discussions and workshops were informative.
Increasingly, CPAC is becoming a youth conference - demonstrating the movement’s vitality. Of the 3,500 or so attendees at CPAC 2006 (Feb. 9-11), at least half were under 25.
But this also highlights the danger of CPAC’s associating with the American Civil Liberties Union (an exhibitor at this year’s conference), Muslim organizations with dubious ties and George Soros-funded drug-legalization groups.
College kids who encounter the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Drug Policy Alliance at CPAC assume there’s a connection between what these groups are pushing and the conservative agenda, especially when they’re also on the CPAC program.
For a $3,000 fee, co-sponsors get an exhibit, listing in conference materials and a place in the program. CPAC is getting less and less discriminating about who it lets in the door. Finances outweigh principle.
At its booth in the exhibit hall, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) distributed flyers headlined: "American Muslims Fighting Terrorism." If there are American Muslims fighting terrorism, they’re not in MPAC.
The group was founded in 1989. On the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, MPAC co-founder Salam al-Marayati told a
Another MPAC leader, Maher Hathout, condemned U.S. airstrikes on terrorist bases in
When a suicide bomber blew up an Israeli pizzeria in August 2001, scattering the body parts of young parents and their children, MPAC said the Israelis had it coming. According to the self-styled anti-terrorist group,
In a 1999 publication, MPAC excused the 1983 suicide attack on the Beirut Marine compound (that left 241 dead) as a military operation. In its "Position Paper on U.S. Counterterrorism Policy," MPAC observed: "Yet this attack, for all the pain it caused, was not in a strict sense a terrorist operation - It was a military operation producing no civilian casualties - exactly the kind of attack that Americans might have lauded had it been directed against Washington’s enemies" - which should come as a great comfort to the families of 241 dead Marines.
On its website (Jan. 26, 2006), MPAC posted a report that tried to rationalize the Hamas victory in the recent Palestinian election.
A win for terrorism? Not at all, MPAC argued. Voters chose the enthusiastic killers of Hamas (over the more sedate killers of Fatah) because they were "unhappy with the status quo" and demand better services - like the more efficient murder of Jews.
With Americans dying in
The Islamic Free Market Institute has been a CPAC co-sponsor for the past two years. While there’s less of a paper trail here, there is enough troubling intelligence to disqualify the group as a co-sponsor.
Also known as the Islamic Institute, the operation initially was funded by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a fan of Hamas and Hezbollah. In 1996, Alamoudi told the annual conference of the Islamic Association of Palestinians, "If we are outside this country we can say, ‘O Allah, destroy
So, the Islamic Free Market Institute - do they cut your taxes before or after they cut off your head?
Also waging war on Western civilization were CPAC’s druggie co-sponsors. Speaking from the floor of the House of Representatives on February 8, Rep. Mark Souder (R.-Ind.) who has spoken at CPAC in the past (as has your humble servant, at least half a dozen times in the past 20 years), declared:
“One can imagine a conservative’s surprise to read on the CPAC agenda that a representative of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is slated to moderate - yes, moderate - a panel Friday discussing drug policy. For those who are unacquainted with it, the pro-marijuana MPP has been funded by Soros in the past. Also represented on the panel is the Drug Policy Alliance, which is [George] Soros’ principal pro-drug arm. Incidentally, the moderator himself (Rob Kampia) is a convicted drug dealer.”
Souder could have added that billionaire George Soros (dubbed "the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization" by former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano) is the chief financial angel of the Marijuana Policy Project, and donated $8.5 million to the Drug Policy Alliance between 2001 and 2004.
Drug legalization is part of Soros’ final solution for
A dispassionate observer of the political scene, he once compared the president to the Nazis ("When I hear George W. Bush say: ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans" – this not in reference to Beethoven and Kant.) In 2004, through a complex of 527 groups like MoveOn.org, Soros spent an estimated $18 million dollars to defeat the Fourth Reich of Herr W.
Soros could make common cause with the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He’s forever telling us that the War on Terrorism can’t be won (just like the War on Drugs).
An inveterate root-causer, Soros cautions that we must "correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds" - including the lack of a Palestinian state, the existence of Israel, cartoons depicting Mohammed, and the destruction of the Spanish caliphate in 1492.
In his book Soros On Soros (How’s that for humility?), the Hungarian-born immigrant and convicted insider-trader said that if it were up to him, he’d legalize all drugs "excluding the most dangerous ones like crack." Presumably, the legalization list would include such benign substances as cocaine and heroin.
The Drug Policy Alliance’s Ethan Nadelmann recently suggested, "Coca (the plant from which cocaine is derived) deserves the same opportunities to compete legally in international markets as coffee." Cocaine - good to the last drop?
In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Nadelmann argued, "If you possess small amounts of a drug for your own personal use, that should not be a crime - regardless of the drug."
While it’s true that there are a few prominent conservative proponents of marijuana legalization (like William F. Buckley Jr. and economist Milton Friedman), with the exception of the libertarian Cato Institute - which also follows the Soros line on foreign policy - I can’t think of a single legitimate group on the Right that shares this societal death wish.
Reportedly, ACU Chairman David Keene is amused that Soros is helping to fund a conservative conference. Does he also chuckle over the fact that young conservatives are duped into thinking that the hypodermic crowd is conservative? ("Yeah, man, like we believe in individual liberty - or something.")
Is he amused that the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Free Market Institute can use their association with CPAC (they’re co-sponsors, after all) to legitimize themselves?
Informed conservatives understand that the left is involved in a relentless crusade to undermine
Tragically, the Conservative Political Action Conference is now unwittingly aiding
Perhaps next year’s CPAC will include the Medellin Cartel and Hamas among its cosponsors. Wouldn’t that be a blast?
This article was first published at FrontPageMag.com.
