Frank Gaffney-Grover Norquist Islamophobia Feud Erupts In Public At Conservative Conference
From ThinkProgress:
As the Tea Party continues to its quest to pull the Republican Party further and further to the right, fault lines are beginning to open up among conservatives, particularly regarding the future of minority voters and the GOP.
This battle between the conservative pragmatists and hardliners was on full display Saturday as anti-Sharia activist Frank Gaffney and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist hurled charges against one another at a conservative conference in Lynchburg, Virginia.
ThinkProgress spoke with Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, following his panel discussion on conservative economics. Norquist accused anti-mosque activists like Gaffney of waging “a direct attack on religious liberty.” When I asked if Gaffney was playing a constructive role, Norquist’s distaste for him was so intense that he would not even speak his name, saying instead that “The other guy has his own agenda which is not useful”:
However, Norquist’s comments paled in comparison to the volley Gaffney unleashed during his panel. In the midst of discussing how the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the conservative movement in the United States, Gaffney put a picture of Norquist up on the PowerPoint presentation, telling the crowd “this is how that has happened.” Gaffney went on to note that it had been his “personal burden for the past 12 years” to expose Norquist, telling the cheering crowd that Norquist has been “actively involved both enabling and empowering Muslim Brotherhood influence operations against our movement and our country”:
