GOProud Participation in CPAC Incites SOME Conservative Groups to GOStupid

The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor. -Ronald Reagan

Last year, while attending my first ever CPAC,  (Conservative Political Action Conference)  Ryan Sorba of California Young Americans for Freedom preached intolerance, when he spoke in front of the group and condemned his hosts allowing gay Republican group GOProud to be a part of the event. Sorba got the reaction he deserved, he was booed of the stage.




If Sorba took the time to look at GOProud's  web site he would have seen that the groups priorities were the same as any other conservative organization.

GOProud is an organization that is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy.

This week, two socially conservative groups, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women of America, announced that they are opting out of next year's CPAC because GOProud had been invited. The Family Research Council's Tom McClusky told WorldNetDaily that part of the reason for the decision was CPAC's "movement away from conservative principles," as evidenced by the inclusion of GOProud.

Of course McClusky gravitated to WND, back in August, conservative commentator Ann Coulter was dropped from its "Taking America Back National Conference" because of her participation in a GOProud event called "Homocon." The site's editor said Coulter "clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very 'unconservative' agenda represented by GOProud."
By throwing its lot in with World Net Daily. The Family Research Council is associating with a group with a long history of supporting of intolerance (one of their key columnists is the passionately anti-semitic Holocaust denier Pat Buchanan) and wacko positions such as their infamous of the discredited birther story, puts them on the outside fringe of the conservative movement. Sadly their extreme positions provide fodder for liberal propaganda.

GOProud is no liberal group: executive director Jimmy LaSalvia has pushed a Dick Cheney presidential run, and he told CBSNews.com earlier this year not to "assume that just because we support equality issues we support a big government agenda of government takeover of health care, labor unions, climate change mumbo jumbo."

The truth is, is that CPAC is doing the right thing by inviting GOProud to participate in its February conference. One thing I learned at CPAC last year is that the conservative movement is not the monolithic vanilla organization as described by the liberal media. Last year's conference included social conservatives, the John Birch Society, Libertarians, Muslim Conservatives, Ron Paulnuts, flat tax proponents, fair tax proponents, and even featured a yalmukah-wearing Jew singing the Star Spangled Banner (and a damn good looking one at that :))

The point of the conference is for conservatives of all ideas and opinions to come together and learn about each other (whether you end up agreeing or not) and discuss their differences.  At the end of the conference most will still disagree, but will understand the reasons why they disagree. By pulling out of the conference groups such as the Family Research Council are saying that they don't have the confidence in their convictions to debate them with people who disagree.  That is not what the conservative movement is about, even more importantly that is not what America is about.