Here’s something we hardly ever get to see: powerful conservatives owning the fact that they are terrible people. And I am 100% here for it.
Conservatives, especially elite conservatives, normally hide or deny their racism, lawbreaking, lying, hatred for democracy and… hmm, how should I put this?… Moral flexibility.
But I received this “Breaking News” email alert from WaPo:
Videos show closed-door sessions of top conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’
Footage obtained by The Post, covering dozens of hours of Council for National Policy meetings in February and August, offers an inside view of activists’ obsessions, fears and plans at a pivotal moment in the conservative movement.
I clicked through to read the full article. And voter suppression? JFC that isn’t even the half of it. In fact, if I were writing that email blurb, “voter suppression” might not even make it in (although “open hatred for democracy” might). But that’s probably only because I am interested in things like truth and calling things exactly what they are. Unlike, say, editors at The Washington Post.
Investigative journalist Robert O’Harrow Jr. wrote the piece after viewing dozens of hours of video obtained by The Post from two secretive conferences put on this year by some Very Big Willies in the conservative movement. This Council for National Policy (CNP) sounds sort of like CPAC, only much more exclusive. You know, without all the riff-raff. Let’s dive right in and have a look, shall we? C’mon, it’ll be fun.
As the presidential campaign entered its final stages, a fresh-faced Republican activist named Charlie Kirk stepped into the spotlight at a closed-door gathering of leading conservatives and shared his delight about an impact of the coronavirus pandemic: the disruption of America’s universities. So many campuses had closed, he said, that up to a half-million left-leaning students probably would not vote.
“So, please keep the campuses closed,” Kirk, 26, said in August as the audience cheered, according to video of the event obtained by The Washington Post. “Like, it’s a great thing.”
A great thing! In case you haven’t been keeping up I’ma ‘splain. See, SARS-Cov-2 is a liberal hoax that doesn’t exist AND an all-too-real bioweapon unleashed by China AND it does not spread via aerosolized particles AND it does spread by aerosolized particles AND it does not spread via airborne droplets (again? still?) AND the President of The United States is immune to it even though he got sick from it but even if he were not immune to it then ingesting hydroxychloroquine and/or bleach would totally cure him.
SARS-Cov-2 IS NOT a novel virus causing a deadly worldwide pandemic, the criminally incompetent mishandling of which by conservatives has already killed over 210,000 people in the US, so masks are for LOSERS! But whatever SARS-Cov-2 is or isn’t, as long as it results in the disenfranchisement of half a million voters, “Like, it’s a great thing.”
YAY! 🎉👍🏼😃
The gathering in Northern Virginia was organized by the Council for National Policy, a little-known group that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them. Members include Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to President Trump who has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors to support conservative causes and the nominations of conservative federal judges.
(Ginni Thomas, drunk dialer. This is fucking awesome. 🍿)
Videos provided to The Post — covering dozens of hours of CNP meetings over three days in February and three in August — offer an inside view of participants’ obsessions and fears at a pivotal moment in the conservative movement. The videos, recorded by CNP to share with its members, show influential activists discussing election tactics, amplifying conspiracy theories and describing much of America in dark and apocalyptic terms.
Those videos were for members only, people! No one else is supposed know about conservative “election tactics” like election fraud! Come for the wildly hilarious conspiracy theories, stay for the dark and apocalyptic worldview!
“This is a spiritual battle we are in. This is good versus evil,” CNP’s executive committee president, Bill Walton, said on Aug. 21, addressing attendees at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City. “We have to do everything we can to win.”
“And I mean everything. Even if we have to commit every single crime we accuse the libruls of committing, it’s okay ‘cuz we’re doing it for Jeezus! Can I get a AMEN!”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told attendees that same day that the left is “war-gaming” a plan to delay the election tally until Jan. 20, 2021, and enable House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to become acting president. “This is kind of like crazy talk” among political people, Fitton said. But he added: “This is not an insignificant concern.”
We know we sound like we’re all trippin’ balls on LSD but we just don’t care anymore! Nancy Pelosi is a war-gaming communist! No projection here at all! 
Expressing concern about voter fraud and disenfranchisement, Fitton called on the audience to find a way to prevent mail-in ballots from being sent to voters.
Conservatives are very, very concerned with fraud and disenfranchisement!
“The left has war-gamed this out,” Fitton said. “And it could cause civil war.”
MOAR PROJECKSCHENZ?
Brent Bozell, a CNP executive committee member…told attendees at one of the August sessions that he believes the left plans to “steal this election.”
“And if they get away with that, what happens?” he said. “Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism.”
MOAR PROJECKSCHENZ.
J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a charity, described mail-in voting as “the number one left-wing agenda.”
Adams urged the activists not to worry about the criticism that might come their way. “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams said.
In response to questions, Adams wrote in an email: “I stand by what I said because it is accurate.”
You go, J. Christian Adams! Own that shit. Look, I even designed your t-shirts!
©Iris Vander Pluym 2020
All Rights Reserved.
Hey, Public Interest Research Foundation!
YOU can license my klassy t-shirt design
for only $2 million!
(Red and yellow are the traditional clown colors, right?)
YOU’RE WELCOME.
Two tax law specialists who viewed hours of video at The Post’s request said some of the remarks and planning on the videos could be improper for the groups that are registered with the IRS as charities.
Why should a petty little thing like tax law get in the way of FREEDOM?! Everybody knows paying taxes is only for poor people! Working people! The liberals!
The sessions are closed to the public, and participants are told not to talk to the media about the group or its proceedings. “It absolutely could be open to the media, except that the media is known to be left, and then creates a distorted vision of their conversations,” [CNP’s executive director Bob] McEwen said.
Quite right! Behold your liberal media! Also, fuck all those flaming Marxists over there at FoxNews! Those pinkos are why we have to sneak around and keep everything SOOPER SEEKRIT!
In the years leading up to Trump’s election, [CNP] members included Stephen K. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. The videos make clear that CNP maintains strong links to the White House.
Some participants spoke of a CNP-associated delegation that meets weekly with White House officials. They said the group, the Conservative Action Project, has helped to choose loyalists to run federal agencies and coordinate outside messages with nonprofit organizations to support administration policies and leaders.
“It’s kind of this little secretive huddle that meets every Wednesday morning,” Paul Teller, a Trump deputy and director of strategic initiatives for Vice President Pence, told the audience in August.
SOOOOOOOOPER SEEKRIT.
During CNP’s February meeting, CNP member Rachel Bovard:
- described the Conservative Action Project’s influence in helping the Trump administration select political appointees for the executive branch.
- said the Conservative Action Project coordinated closely on these and other efforts with CNP members and the Conservative Partnership Institute, a tax-exempt charity run by former senator and tea party leader Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
- said “We work very closely — CAP does and then we at CPI also — with the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House to try and get good conservatives in the positions because we see what happens when we don’t vet these people.”
- cited as examples two figures who testified against Trump last year in the House impeachment hearings: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs at the National Security Council, and Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
- said “All these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place. We want to prevent that from happening.”
- described Ginni Thomas as a crucial link to the White House. “She is one of the most powerful and fierce women in Washington. She is really the tip of the spear in these efforts.”
(Whoa. Déjà vu! I don’t know if I told you guys this, but for many years now I’ve been having this weird recurring nightmare about a Bush/Cheney administration packing all the federal courts and agencies full of Liberty University grads and other assorted doucheweasels whose only qualification for the job was getting the “God, guns and gays” questions… um…”right?” Good thing that never happened, and is definitely not happening again now! Otherwise, the country would be totally and irredeemably FUCKED for generations!)
In one of the sessions, author and former professor Carol Swain, speaking on a panel about race relations, said that “White people have lost their voice in America.”
I know, right?! Nobody even knows what the censored and oppressed white people have to say about anything anymore! SAD!!!
She likened the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan. “The Democratic Party is using Black Lives Matter and antifa the same way they used the KKK,” said Swain, who is Black. “They created the KKK. It was their terrorist wing to terrorize everyone.”
If a Black person says BLM is just like KKK terrorists, it must be true! That’s how TRUE works, people! And don’t even get me started on antifa! Do you know what antifa means, huh?! Well, do you?! It means anti-fascist! Can you believe these people?! No Real American™ could be against fascism!!!
In response to questions, Swain stood by her remarks.
Of course she did! She is part of this new strategic development in the conservative movement of openly owning that conservatives are truly terrible people!
Some participants bridled at pandemic restrictions — and the video showed that many did not wear masks.
“You will need to wear masks in the public part of the hotel but not here,” Walton, the CNP president, announced to applause.
“Yeah,” Walton said. “That’s great!”
Like, it’s a great thing!
Others described an elaborate social media and advertising campaign by a collection of nonprofits — some of them tax-exempt charities — to convince voters this fall that a Republican free-market approach to health care would offer more choices.
More choices of streets you can sleep in after you lose your house in bankrupcy from medical debt! More choices in ER doctors, anesthesiologists and radiologists who don’t take your insurance at “in-network” hospitals and just bill you a couple grand later! More choices to drive right by the closest hospital in a life-threatening emergency because it’s out-of-network! More choices to not seek medical care at all for fear you can’t afford it even with insurance! CONSERVATIVES ARE ALL ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE PROFITS–I MEAN CHOICES! We just don’t understaaaaand why people are not convinced of this! (Hey, does anybody know where we can obtain massive quantities of LSD? Asking for a friend…)
Organizers showed ads that feature doctors in white lab coats with stethoscopes. They told the CNP audience that market research found that featuring doctors engenders trust among voters.
“And so I remind people that what we’re trying to do is put on theater here,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of Job Creators Network and chief executive of its foundation. “It’s the stage. It’s the script and the actors.”
We admit it! We’re totally fake! Except when we’re not! We’re just pretending… maybe! Sometimes! Hahaha!
Everyone should just sit back and enjoy the show! It’s not like we really hate democracy and black people and women and immigrants and Muslims and people getting health care and will steal the election if we can possibly get away with it!
Funny, the WaPo leaves out some of the CNP’s most colorful members, including megachurch preacher Tim LaHaye (best known as co-author of the Left Behind armageddonovels), Paul Weyrich (co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and Operation Rescue, among other peccadillos), and too-nefarious-to-describe Lt. Col. Oliver North (USMC, ret).
Indeed. Perhaps they too fancy themselves as a “public interest” organization, and wouldn’t want to unfairly bias readers’ impressions of this fine organization by mentioning its more unsavory members. Well, at least they threw us a bone with Ginni Thomas.