GOProud and Birchers Booted from CPAC as Co-Sponsors But Horowitz Survives the Purge
With this news you can expect the right to continue circling their wagons around the counter jihad hate bloggers.
The decision comes after GOProud’s 2011 sponsorship sparked severe criticism from ACU board members — and prompted several social conservative groups to boycott the event. The controversy reached a boiling point when GOProud’s chairman called respected ACU board member Cleta Mitchell “a nasty bigot.”
Long considered a fringe group, the John Birch Society’s sensationalist accusations (such as saying Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy“) prompted William F. Buckley to effectively banish them from the conservative movement.
Both GOProud and the Birchers were highly offensive to various blocs of CPAC board members — for entirely different reasons.
Meanwhile, one controversial conservative activist actually survived the ACU board vote.
Despite accusing Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and ACU board member Suhail Khan of being in league with the Muslim Brotherhood during his 2011 CPAC speech, it was decided that conservative activist David Horowitz would not be precluded from participating in the future.
ACU’s decision to revisit past decisions regarding CPAC has been expected. After the departure of longtime ACU Chairman David Keene last year, it was predictable that ACU’s board of directors would address lingering questions surrounding past co-sponsors and speakers.