A Christmas of Crazy: CPAC begins

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The Conservative Political Action Committee commenced this very day, and lo, the riches spilled forth:

Bachmann gave a speech about foreign policy, blaming Obama for failing to adequately support Israel -- and for permitting the “Arab Spring” to overthrow governments friendly to the United States.

“Obama failed to stand by Mubarak, and that helped lead to the revolution in Egypt,” Bachmann said. And, she said, “Before Obama was elected, Tunisia was a stable U.S. partner. No more.”

Which informed Obama's inaction to a greater degree: his Muslim faith or his hatred of America? Discuss.

"Compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals," DeMint told the activists gathered for the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "When you have a shared goals, you can sit down together. We don't have shared goals with the Democrats."

So... apparently the common good of the citizens of the United States isn't common ground. One party wants to destroy America while the other one wants to save it. Or something.

What an absolutely broken world-view.

Hypatian wrote:

So... apparently the common good of the citizens of the United States isn't common ground. One party wants to destroy America while the other one wants to save it. Or something.

What an absolutely broken world-view.

Seriously...
It's looking more and more likely that my brief fling with the Democratic Party is going to be more of a lifelong relationship.

dont feel too bad about that. Modern Democrats are the party of Reagan. Not sure where actual left wingers go to.

Seth wrote:

dont feel too bad about that. Modern Democrats are the party of Reagan. Not sure where actual left wingers go to.

We're there, too. We just feel awfully marginalized.

Bachmann gave a speech about foreign policy, blaming Obama for failing to adequately support Israel -- and for permitting the “Arab Spring” to overthrow governments friendly to the United States.

“Obama failed to stand by Mubarak, and that helped lead to the revolution in Egypt,” Bachmann said. And, she said, “Before Obama was elected, Tunisia was a stable U.S. partner. No more.”

Whaa? I guess democracy is no longer a Republican value.

Hypatian wrote:
"Compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals," DeMint told the activists gathered for the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "When you have a shared goals, you can sit down together. We don't have shared goals with the Democrats."

So... apparently the common good of the citizens of the United States isn't common ground. One party wants to destroy America while the other one wants to save it. Or something.

What an absolutely broken world-view.

In other words: "if you agree with our goals we're willing to compromise"!

That might be the biggest WTF? statement I've seen yet.

They do not support Mitt Romney, which perversely makes me want him as the candidate even more.

Are we faulting Bachmann for placing diplomatic advantage over our founding principles, or for being blunt about it? She's right (just this one time). Arab Spring was bad for US interests in the region. It was good for the people actually LIVING there and it was good for humanity but if the US was really in the business of liberation we would have bailed on those dictators long before it was cool.

We don't have shared goals with the Democrats.

That may be the most frightening thing I've ever heard a American politician say. I'm sure it'll be trumped by something more, soon, but right now, I think that's #1.

That's something you say about people you want dead.

“We are a nation of double-flushers!”

Truth.

Malor wrote:
We don't have shared goals with the Democrats.

That may be the most frightening thing I've ever heard a American politician say. I'm sure it'll be trumped by something more, soon, but right now, I think that's #1.

That's something you say about people you want dead.

Allow me to call bullsh*t on that last sentence that you typed.

UTTER, RIDICULOUS BULLsh*t.

Please do not construe this message as support for views that oppose yours. Neither is it support for your own view. It is merely a statement regarding bovine excrement and its issuance from your keyboard.

That's all. Thanks.

Not sure I'd put it quite so strongly but I've got to agree, I think you're being a little melodramatic here, Malor. I find the oft-repeated, "take America back" slogan to be much more unsettling. Take it back from whom?

Besides, it's not even true that Republicans and Democrats have no shared goals. There's just no point discussing settled matters, and making yourself look similar to your opponent isn't a very good campaign strategy.

I think the problem fundamentally stems from the fact that the "conservative" wing of the Republican party has never managed to make the transition from the skills necessary to mount a successful insurgency to the skills necessary to govern with responsibility and integrity. And those are two very different and distinct skill sets. Moreover, they are very different temperaments and inclinations.

It appears that the "conservative" wing is happiest when it is out of power looking in. This gives it the ability to throw rhetorical bombs with impunity, firm in the knowledge that others will have to pick up the pieces. And when its ideas become mainstream or adopted by the opposition party (e.g.: the democratic party's capitulation on the sanctity of tax cuts and subsidies to the uber rich), they feel compelled to become more and more radical to maintain their "outsider" street cred.

It is almost Maoist in its compulsion to a state of eternal revolution.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be upset about the CPAC crowd and their influence on contemporary American politics without engaging in hyperbole.

I find the fact that CPAC speakers view compromise as anathema rather than an essential part of the political process plenty toxic, setting aside the fact that some view their political opponents as being possessed by demons.

Spoiler:

Not hyperbole.

Evangelicals and politics is a given in America. What is new in the 2012 race is the emergence of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which was named by C. Peter Wagner, a Colorado Springs--based minister who writes books with titles like Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World and believes the world is in the grip of evil. Even the Capitol--or at least the Democratic side of it--is considered under demonic control.

I dunno, Dimmer. After reading that article I don't see much difference between "dominionists" (which I'd honestly never heard of before today) and the standard Focus on the Family crowd. Seems to me that it's a slightly different label for the same subset of politically-involved evangelicals that have existed for decades now.

I mean, I roll my eyes at a lot of it, but I don't actually find it frightening. Sound and fury, etc.

If you don't find it frightening that folks who genuinely believe their political opponents are literally possessed by demons have an outsized influence on one of the two major political parties, I'm not sure entirely how to respond.

I guess I admire your unflappability.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

If you don't find it frightening that folks who genuinely believe their political opponents are literally possessed by demons have an outsized influence on one of the two major political parties, I'm not sure entirely how to respond.

I guess I admire your unflappability.

I cut them a little slack because I did and still do believe that Jerry Fallwell was an actual, Biblical demon sent to confuse and tempt people. So i avoid remarking on the color of that kettle.

Well, it doesn't really faze me for two reasons. One, I actually know people who could probably be classified as Dominionists. They're not scary so much as they are distinctly weird. I mean, you would never confuse them with someone who is going to have an actual, measurable effect on the political process. Two, I don't think they have as much influence as others think they do. On all the cultural touchstone issues of the last twenty years they are losing ground and they know it.

Maybe I'm naive, but I see these people complaining constantly about how their influence is diminishing, so I don't really feel threatened by them. There's always gonna be crackpots. If they're choosing to marginalize themselves by not compromising on anything, that's their problem. The process will weed out their influence.

EDIT: Sorry, don't mean to derail the thread about CPAC with this stuff. Just thinking out loud.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Are we faulting Bachmann for placing diplomatic advantage over our founding principles, or for being blunt about it? She's right (just this one time). Arab Spring was bad for US interests in the region. It was good for the people actually LIVING there and it was good for humanity but if the US was really in the business of liberation we would have bailed on those dictators long before it was cool.

No, she's not right. Supporting brutal dictators may be a good short-term strategy (the word "short" here is tragically inaccurate), but long-term, you need the people in these countries to respect you, not their bastard leaders. The big problem with the way many people view the Islamic world is that there's a depressing tendency to view it as some unified whole, just like the giant mess we got ourselves in during the Cold War about the Communist world, where we assumed every action from every Communist country was dictated by Moscow. Had the U.S. been willing to see that Stalin and Mao hated each other, or that Ho Chi Minh was really just a nationalist who happened to be a Communist, we'd have had a much smoother go in the latter half of the 20th century rather than getting ourselves dragged into a bunch of military conflicts and into supporting lord knows how many complete bastards just because they were willing to say "COMMUNISM BAD".

Supporting Middle Eastern dictators because we're scared of Islamist parties is the same thing. There is no single, giant Islamist movement where the dictates are coming down from Mecca. What will happen in all these countries is that varied flavors of Islamist governments will pop up. They will be repressive or free in various ways, and there will undoubtedly be violence and civil wars, but it's not like repression and violence are exactly absent from these places now. In the end, people in that part of the world will go back to hating each other rather than bothering the U.S., because that's what they've always done. By sticking our foot in, we give them a common enemy, and they'll give us the finger. Get. The. Hell. Out. Let them work out their own problems.

The whole GOP party line of opposing the Arab Spring is incredibly short-sighted and a terrible, terrible idea.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Not sure I'd put it quite so strongly but I've got to agree, I think you're being a little melodramatic here, Malor. I find the oft-repeated, "take America back" slogan to be much more unsettling. Take it back from whom?

I've always found it particularly insulting that the far right seems obsessed with laying claim to this country. Many of them act as is their way is the only way as bestowed upon them by our forefathers. There is no middle ground, there is no compromise. Their vision of what American should be is on the only option and they all to often paint anyone that disagrees with them as "un-Americans", ''non-patriotic" or even "socialist".

That tool Hannity even refers to his callers as "great Americans". It's f*cking insulting.

Two, I don't think they have as much influence as others think they do. On all the cultural touchstone issues of the last twenty years they are losing ground and they know it.

Read Jeff Sharlet's "The Family" and get back to us... He wrote an article for Harper's on it as well.

Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.

The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family's leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.” 11. The Los Angeles Times reported in September that the Fellowship Foundation alone has an annual budget of $10 million, but that represents only a fraction of the Family's finances. Each of the Family's organizations raises funds independently. Ivanwald, for example, is financed at least in part by an entity called the Wilberforce Foundation. Other projects are financed by individual “friends”: wealthy businessmen, foreign governments, church congregations, or mainstream foundations that may be unaware of the scope of the Family's activities. At Ivanwald, when I asked to what organization a donation check might be made, I was told there was none; money was raised on a “man-to-man” basis. Major Family donors named by the Times include Michael Timmis, a Detroit lawyer and Republican fund-raiser; Paul Temple, a private investor from Maryland; and Jerome A. Lewis, former CEO of the Petro-Lewis Corporation. The Family's only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can't.”

At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy,” as an “ambassador of faith.” Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, “making friends” and inviting them back to the Family's unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation. A waterfall has been carved into the mansion's broad lawn, from which a bronze bald eagle watches over the Potomac River. The mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by magnolias, and by red trees that do not so much tower above it as whisper. The mansion is named for these trees; it is called The Cedars, and Family members speak of it as a person. “The Cedars has a heart for the poor,” they like to say. By “poor” they mean not the thousands of literal poor living barely a mile away but rather the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom: the senators, generals, and prime ministers who coast to the end of Twenty-fourth Street in Arlington in black limousines and town cars and hulking S.U.V.'s to meet one another, to meet Jesus, to pay homage to the god of The Cedars.

There they forge “relationships” beyond the din of vox populi (the Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and “throw away religion” in favor of the truths of the Family. Declaring God's covenant with the Jews broken, the group's core members call themselves “the new chosen.”

You know there is a very over used quote that is appropriate here:

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Likewise the greatest political blunder is convincing yourself that theocratic politicians have marginalized themselves by their rhetoric and will continue to lose influence over time.

EDIT: Not worth it. Back to lurking.

(Aside to Robear: please consider using {quote=Whoever} {/quote} so that it's clear who it is you're responding to. Often times I see your posts and have to backtrack to follow the discussion.)

Hmmm. Always wondered how that was done. I'll try to remember it.

MyBrainHz wrote:
Robear wrote:

Read Jeff Sharlet's "The Family" and get back to us...

fangblackbone wrote:

Likewise the greatest political blunder is convincing yourself that theocratic politicians have marginalized themselves by their rhetoric and will continue to lose influence over time.

And thus ends my annual excursion to the wilds of P&C. Kudos to Dimmerswitch, at least, for trying to foster actual discussion in the midst of the echo chamber.

I was freezing my ass off at the dog park and missed my chance to respond in timely fashion, but I'd actually second Robear's recommendation of "The Family". It's a good read into the history of one religious group's organized attempts to infiltrate and influence the centers of power in this country.

For what it's worth, I didn't think MyBrainHz was derailing the topic at all. I did want to respond to this point, though.

MyBrainHz wrote:

Well, it doesn't really faze me for two reasons. One, I actually know people who could probably be classified as Dominionists. They're not scary so much as they are distinctly weird. I mean, you would never confuse them with someone who is going to have an actual, measurable effect on the political process. Two, I don't think they have as much influence as others think they do. On all the cultural touchstone issues of the last twenty years they are losing ground and they know it.

Santorum won three primaries this week. Nate Silver expects Santorum to be at the top of nationwide polls. Santorum's political ideology is, essentially, Dominionist (though I don't think we know whether he believes Democrats are afflicted with demons). He may not win the nomination, but I think it's difficult to argue that he's not impacting the political process.

As to the second point, I would argue that the complaints by some portions of the religious right about diminished influence are about as well-founded as their opinions on demonic possession, but agree that over the longer-term demographics are tilting away from their brand of wild-eyed zealotry. That realization may be part of what's driving the current attempts to legislate their faith, in fact.

DEMONCRATS.

I agree with Dimmer. It's hard to reconcile the idea that theocrats aren't scary because they're powerless with Santorum's sudden and unexpected primary wins.

MyBrainHz wrote:

EDIT: Not worth it. Back to lurking.

Brian! Don't reject me, Brian!

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

The whole GOP party line of opposing the Arab Spring is incredibly short-sighted and a terrible, terrible idea.

The US has a long and shameful history of supporting assholes without popular support just because they are friendly to US interests. And when those assholes inevitably get sent packing, what the people there remember about the US is that we supported the asshole. So it ends up backfiring against US interests.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Are we faulting Bachmann for placing diplomatic advantage over our founding principles, or for being blunt about it? She's right (just this one time). Arab Spring was bad for US interests in the region. It was good for the people actually LIVING there and it was good for humanity but if the US was really in the business of liberation we would have bailed on those dictators long before it was cool.

No, she's not right. Supporting brutal dictators may be a good short-term strategy (the word "short" here is tragically inaccurate), but long-term, you need the people in these countries to respect you, not their bastard leaders. The big problem with the way many people view the Islamic world is that there's a depressing tendency to view it as some unified whole, just like the giant mess we got ourselves in during the Cold War about the Communist world, where we assumed every action from every Communist country was dictated by Moscow. Had the U.S. been willing to see that Stalin and Mao hated each other, or that Ho Chi Minh was really just a nationalist who happened to be a Communist, we'd have had a much smoother go in the latter half of the 20th century rather than getting ourselves dragged into a bunch of military conflicts and into supporting lord knows how many complete bastards just because they were willing to say "COMMUNISM BAD".

Supporting Middle Eastern dictators because we're scared of Islamist parties is the same thing. There is no single, giant Islamist movement where the dictates are coming down from Mecca. What will happen in all these countries is that varied flavors of Islamist governments will pop up. They will be repressive or free in various ways, and there will undoubtedly be violence and civil wars, but it's not like repression and violence are exactly absent from these places now. In the end, people in that part of the world will go back to hating each other rather than bothering the U.S., because that's what they've always done. By sticking our foot in, we give them a common enemy, and they'll give us the finger. Get. The. Hell. Out. Let them work out their own problems.

The whole GOP party line of opposing the Arab Spring is incredibly short-sighted and a terrible, terrible idea.

Just because it's a short-sighted, wrong idea doesn't mean that's not what's going on, no matter who's in office. Do you really think a Republican administration would have handled things any differently? Part of running an "Anyone But The Incumbent" campaign is framing every single thing the incumbent does as somehow wrong.

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