#Conservative Political Action Conference

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) recently announced that in April, she would become a 36-year-old grandmother after the birth of her teen son’s baby. Boebert has been blasting “comprehensive sex education” as inappropriate for kids and is now being ruthlessly mocked for her family’s continued inability to stave off teen pregnancy.

Boebert, herself, dropped out of high school when she got pregnant as a teen, and now her son is following in her footsteps.

Boebert’s announcement about her grandchild also included a dig at trans people.

“We are raising our four boys to be men before liberals teach them to be women,” she said before announcing that “not only am I a mom of four boys, but come April, I will be a Gigi to a brand new grandson.”

She then talked about how her son, Tyler, who is almost 18, joked it was “hereditary” since Boebert made her mother a 36-year-old grandma as well.

On top of it all, while speaking at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Boebert (R-CO) stated that public school students should be banned from learning sex-ed and about how LGBTQ+ people have sex.

“There are schools that are teaching worse than just gender ideology,” she said. “I mean they have comprehensive sex-ed. They’re teaching kids how to have and enjoy sex – and even same-sex sex.”

Boebert said no public school students should be learning these things and that schools that teach it should have their funding cut. She also claimed elementary school students were learning these things, though she offered no proof.

Twitter users ruthlessly mocked Boebert for her stance, considering she dropped out of high school when she became a teen mom. Now they are at it again, pointing out Boebert’s inability to notice the irony of her so-called conservative beliefs as she bragged about her growing family.

[thenewdemocratus]

National Review: Jim Geraghty Interviews Ralph Reed at CPAC 2014

Source:The New Democrat  The face of the GOP is really the religious right, the “get big government into our personal lives wing of the Republican Party.” I wonder what the Conservative Libertarian wing of the GOP led by Rand Paul, Senator Mike Lee, Senator Jeff Flake, Senator Ron Johnson, Representative Justin Amash, and others think about that.  They have been working on getting big government…

[muddypolitics]

(via Arizona Republicans travel to Hungary for far-right conference)

At the Hungarian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference, Arizona is on center stage as U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake will share a stage with the leader of a far-right Austrian party founded by former Nazis.

The Freedom Party of Austria, or FPÖ, was founded in 1956 by former officers of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, the paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The party has staked out far-right policies on immigration, the government and Muslim immigrants.

[tomorrowusa]

The annual far right CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) gathering is taking place and it’s being dominated by Donald Trump and talk of Donald Trump.

Check out the Trump kitsch shown at the CPAC merch tables near the beginning of this CNN clip.

Trump himself is expected to speak at CPAC on Saturday. Maybe he’ll point out that there aren’t any DeSantis bobbleheads being sold at the conference.

[articlesminer]

Viktor Orban Advisor Resigns Over Speech, Calling It 'A Pure Nazi Text'

Viktor Orban Advisor Resigns Over Speech, Calling It ‘A Pure Nazi Text’

A longtime advisor to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban resigned on Tuesday, calling one of his recent speeches “a pure Nazi text worthy of Goebbels” in reference to Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s minister of propaganda under Adolf Hitler. Zsuzsa Hegedüs, who worked with Orban for over 20 years, issued a public resignation letter saying the prime minister’s words crossed a line and accusing him…

[xtruss]

Latin America’s New Hard Right: Bukele, Milei, Kast And Bolsonaro! Crime, Abortion and Socialism, Not Immigration, Are The Issues That Rile Them

— April 1st 2024| Santiago, Chile 🇨🇱

A montage of right-wing Latin American leaders on a red and blue background with Donald Trump throwing maga hats at them. Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy

“Mr president!” Javier Milei could barely contain himself when he met Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington in February. The pair embraced and exchanged slogans, with Mr Trump intoning “Make Argentina Great Again” several times and Argentina’s new President yipping “Viva la Libertad, Carajo” (“Long Live Freedom, Dammit”) in response.

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Popular Autocratic President, had already addressed the conference. “They say globalism comes to die at CPAC,” he told enraptured Republicans. “I’m here to tell you that in El Salvador, it’s already dead.” Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Hard-Right Former President, was a star guest in 2023. He, like Mr Trump, claimed without evidence that his bid for a second term was thwarted by fraud. His supporters also attempted an insurrection.

These scenes suggest a seamless international alliance between Mr Trump and the leaders of Latin America’s hard right. Its members also include José Antonio Kast of Chile, who has spoken at cpac in the past too. This new right basks in Mr Trump’s influence. It has turned away from a more consensual form of conservative politics in favour of an aggressive pursuit of culture war.

Its ascent began with the surprise victory of Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, followed by that of Mr Bukele in 2019. In Chile Mr Kast, the founder of a new hard-right Republican Party, got 44% of the vote in a presidential run-off in 2021 and his party won an election for a constitutional council in 2023. Mr Milei won his own surprise victory in November. Would-be leaders of the radical right jostle in the Politics of Peru and Colombia.

Unlike its older European and North American equivalents, the Latin American hard right does not have roots in the fertile soil of public anxiety about uncontrolled immigration (although this has become an issue recently because of the arrival of millions of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s rotten dictatorship).

The new group shares three hallmarks. The first is fierce opposition to abortion, and gay and women’s rights. “What unites them is an affirmation of traditional social hierarchies,” as Lindsay Mayka and Amy Erica Smith, two academics, put it. The second hallmark is a tough line on crime and citizens’ security. And the third is uncompromising opposition to social democracy, let alone communism, which leads some to want a smaller state.

There were common factors in their ascents, too. They were helped by a sense of crisis—about corruption and economic stagnation in Brazil and Argentina, gang violence in El Salvador and the sometimes violent “social explosion” in Chile.

Cousins In Arms

But each leader has adopted a different mix of these ideological elements. The hard right in Latin America are “cousins, not brothers”, says Cristóbal Rovira of the Catholic University of Chile. “They are similar but not identical.”

Mr Bolsonaro’s constituencies were evangelicals, to whom he appealed with his defence of the traditional family, and the authoritarian right in the form of the army, the police and farmers worried about land invasions and rural crime. But he was lukewarm about the free market and fiscal rigour. Mr Bukele made security the cornerstone of his first presidential term, overcoming criminal gangs by locking up more than 74,000 of El Salvador’s 6.4 Million Citizens. His economic policy is less clear and, despite his claim at CPAC, is not self-evidently “anti-globalist”.

Mr Milei was elected for his pledge to pull Argentina out of prolonged stagflation and to cut down what he brands as a corrupt political “caste”. A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, he is a fan of the Austrian school of free-market economics. Unlike Mr Trump, he is neither an economic nationalist nor protectionist on trade. He has only recently adopted his peers’ stance on moral issues. His government supports a bill to overturn Argentina’s abortion law, and says it will eliminate gender-conscious language from public administration. Mr Bukele followed suit.

Mr Kast attempted to put conservative morality in the constitutional draft his party championed, which was one reason why it was rejected in a plebiscite. He wants tough policies on security and against immigration. “We should close the borders and build a trench,” he says. He wants to “shrink the state and lower the tax burden”. Whereas Mr Bolsonaro is a climate-change sceptic and anti-vaxxer, Mr Kast is not.

Democracy For Thee, Not For Me

Right-wing populists also have differing attitudes to democracy. With his attempt to subvert the election result, for which he is under police investigation, Mr Bolsonaro showed that he was not a democrat. Mr Bukele is contemptuous of checks and balances. His success at slashing the murder rate made him hugely popular, allowing him to brush aside constitutional term limits and win a second term in February.

Mr Milei’s “disdain for democratic institutions is clear”, says Carlos Malamud, An Argentine Historian, citing Mr Milei’s break with convention by giving his inauguration speech to a crowd of supporters, rather than to Congress. But, Mr Malamud adds, Mr Milei may yet learn that he needs to include the parliament in government.

“I’m a democrat,” insists Mr Kast, and his opponents agree. “On security and shrinking the state, we share views with Bolsonaro,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we are the same as Milei or Bolsonaro or Bukele.” As Mr Kast notes, policy choices are shaped in each country by very different circumstances.

So are the prospects of the various leaders. Mr Bukele is by far the most successful, with would-be imitators across the region and no obvious obstacles to his remaining in power indefinitely. In contrast, Mr Bolsonaro’s active political career may well be over. The electoral court has barred him as a candidate until 2030 (when he will be 75) for disparaging the voting system at a meeting with foreign ambassadors. He may be jailed for his apparent attempt to organise a military coup against his electoral defeat; he denies this and claims he is a victim of political persecution.

Mr Milei’s future is up for grabs. Succeed in taming inflation, and he could emerge strengthened from a midterm election in 2025. But if he refuses to compromise with Congress and provincial governors, he may be in trouble before then. In Chile, Mr Kast seemed to overplay his hand with the constitutional draft. The election in 2025 could see the centre-right take power. One influential figure of that persuasion argues that Mr Kast is unable to represent the diversity of modern Chile.

Ultimately, the group is bound by an international network built around common political discourse and cultural references. Mr Kast chairs the Political Network for Values, an outfit previously led by an ally of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Populist Leader. Vox, Spain’s hard-right party, organises the Foro de Madrid, a network of like-minded politicians mainly from what it calls the “Iberosphere” in Latin America.

These gatherings offer a chance to share experiences and sometimes a bit more. Mr Bukele has advisers from Venezuela’s exiled opposition. Mr Trump’s activists have shown up at Latin American elections. Recently, Mr Bolsonaro took refuge in the Hungarian embassy in Brasília for two nights when he feared arrest.

But there are no signs of central direction or co-ordination. The right in Latin America has long claimed that the Foro de São Paulo, a get-together of Latin American left-wingers, is a highly organised conspiracy. All the evidence is that it is a loose friendship network. That seems to be true of its right-wing peer, too. ■

— This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The Anti-communist International"

[dmdigitalmarketingagency]

"Trump wins big in CPAC straw poll, is the Republican nomination his for the taking?"

Trump wins CPAC straw poll by a large margin, signalling strong support from Republican voters Summary: Former President Donald Trump has won the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll by a large margin, indicating that he continues to enjoy strong support from Republican voters. The poll was conducted over the weekend of February 24-27, 2023, with attendees voting for their…

[pers-books]

Liz Truss’s bid to ban trans women from sports runs out of time after MPs discuss ferrets instead

Left: former PM Liz Truss. Right: two domesticated ferrets (names unknown) Getty/Wikimedia Commons

Former UK prime minister Liz Truss’s recent attempt to ban transgender women from female spaces ran out of time and will now not be debated after MPs joined forces to “talk it out” for five hours, including discussing ferret name choices.

Truss, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister, sponsored the bill – entitled the Health and Equality Acts (Amendment) Bill – saying it would define sex in law as biological and, in her view, end the “absurd and dangerous situation where biological males self-defining as females can access girls’ and women’s toilets and so on – as well as sports competitions”. 

In recent months, Liz Truss has become increasingly vocal over trans issues and has aligned herself with hard-right groups and figures, even appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US state of Maryland last month, where she claimed that “trans activists” had infiltrated the UK’s civil service.

One of Liz Truss’s allies, Secretary of State for Trade Kemi Badenoch, slammed the “filibuster”, saying that Labour MPs had used parliamentary time to discuss ferret name choices instead of “protecting children.”

Champion said: “I am interested that my right hon. Friend is keenly mentioning ferrets at every opportunity that she can get in this debate, so let me just put it on record that my brother had a ferret called Oscar.” Eagle replied: “My hon. Friend now has that on the record. I do not really know what else to say about that, except that I am sure that Oscar brought her brother great joy.”

Conservative MP for North Devon Selaine Saxby also joined in the Animal Welfare debate after she was asked by Ms Eagle whether she had ever owned a ferret, “and if so, what was that ferret’s name?”

Saxby replied: “That is an excellent intervention. I will come to ferrets, but unfortunately I have not had the pleasure of one at home myself.”

At one point, the Animal Welfare debate segued into a discussion of the soap opera Coronation Street, with Labour MP for Chester Samantha Dixon saying: “Is my hon. Friend aware of a recent Coronation Street storyline on precisely this issue? It involved the indomitable Evelyn, who is, of course, played by Maureen Lipman, and covered the issues around puppy farming. It was a strong, educational storyline.”

A bill aimed at ban conversion therapy failed to move through Parliament on Friday 1 March for the same reasons, after a debate on it ran out of time: with anti-conversion therapy ban MPs, including gender-critical Labour MP Rosie Duffield and several Conservative MPs, similarly accused of ‘filibustering’.

Were it not too early in the morning for it, I'd be HOWLING with laughter at this!

Here's a suggestion - instead of hounding trans people, do something about the number of children being groomed online!

[posttexasstressdisorder]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Conservative Political Action Committee.

A Nazi oligarch funded political agency he’ll bent on destroying the Democratic Party and turning the US into Nazi Germany.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

According to law, former President Donald Trump can be elected president if indicted -- or even convicted -- in any of the state and federal investigations he is currently facing, experts tell ABC News. But there are practical reasons that could make it a challenge, experts say.

Trump said over the weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he would "absolutely" stay in the race for president even if he were to be criminally indicted.

"I wouldn't even think about leaving," Trump told reporters ahead of his speech on Saturday. "Probably it will enhance my numbers."

Special counsel Jack Smith is currently investigating Trump's involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as his handling of classified material after he left office. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, have been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results. And in New York, the attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney have been probing Trump's personal finances and those of his namesake real estate company.

In all cases, Trump has denied wrongdoing and has characterized the probes as part of a "witch hunt" against him.

The U.S. Constitution does not list the absence of a criminal record as a qualification for the presidency. It says only that natural born citizens who are at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years can run for president.

Constitutional experts also told ABC News that previous Supreme Court rulings hold that Congress cannot add qualifications to the office of the president. In addition, a state cannot prohibit indicted or convicted felons from running for federal office.

"Some people are surprised to learn that there's no constitutional bar on a felon running for president, but there's no such bar," said Kate Shaw, ABC News legal analyst and professor at Cardozo School of Law.

"Because of the 22nd Amendment, the individual can't have been twice elected president previously," Shaw said. " But there's nothing in the Constitution disqualifying individuals convicted of crimes from running for or serving as president."

Shaw said that while incarceration "would presumably make campaigning difficult if not impossible," the impediment would be a "practical problem, not a legal one."

James Sampler, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University, told ABC News that the Constitution sets the minimal requirements, but leaves the rest up to the voters.

"It depends on the wisdom of the people to determine that an individual is not fit for office," Sampler said. "So the most fundamental obstacle that President Trump has in seeking office in 2024 is the obstacle that anyone has, but he has it in a different and more pronounced way -- which is proving to the voters that the individual deserves the office."

If Trump were to be indicted or convicted and prevented by law from traveling out of state, Sampler said, that would impose a practical limitation on his ability to travel the country and campaign -- but it wouldn't prohibit him from running.

Sampler also pointed out an irony in the electoral system, in which many states bar convicted felons from voting. According to the Sentencing Project advocacy group, 48 states have laws that ban people with felony convictions from voting.

"It is a sad day for a country that ostensibly values democratic participation and equality, that individuals who've been convicted of a felony can be prohibited from participating even as voters in our democracy, but a president convicted of a felony is still allowed," he said.

Jessica Levinson, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School, agreed.

"You could conceivably have a situation where the President of the United States is not disqualified from being President ... but can't vote for himself," Levinson told ABC News.

"The interesting thing about the qualifications like you have to be born here, you have to live here for a certain amount of time ... all of that is kind of getting at the idea that we want you to be loyal to our country," Levinson said. "But you could conceivably be convicted of crimes against our country, and still be able to serve as President."

[truthdogg]

Our ongoing mass shootings are the POINT of no gun regulation, not some accidental side effect. Otherwise, who are the “tyrants” the far-right is stockpiling their guns to kill?

Here’s the most important line of the article, because this, ultimately, is the basis of today’s right-wing conservative belief in the purpose of the 2nd Amendment:

“The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government.”

They’ve taken one comment about “watering the tree of liberty,” and applied it to all of the founders, even to those who were very clear, in writing, about the purpose of the 2nd Amendment and the need for citizen militias. It’s insane, and it makes zero sense that a government created by an elite minority of wealthy men would have specifically wanted the powerless non-voters to be able to kill them all, but that’s apparently what these guys truly believe.

But for our purposes, who even are these “tyrants?” At first, they seem to be referencing a Stalin or Hitler-type leader, especially since so many love to tell us that Hitler disarmed the Jews. But that’s not the sort of leader ever mentioned in the real world of policy and elections. So do we have a parliamentary system that may appoint a madman like Hitler? No. Did we recently elect a lunatic who tried to stay in power after being voted out? Yes, we absolutely did, but they clearly don’t mean a leader like him since they mostly all supported the self-coup. So who is it that they’re so afraid of?

Conservatives like Kirk often refer to the founders’ real fears of a “tyranny of the majority,” meaning the landless laborers, slaves, and minorities who had no right to vote. They see themselves as the rightful inheritors of the founders’ elitist political power, arrayed against those who outnumber them. For their part, the founders were right to fear a disenchanted majority; after all, they had just invented a republic that put themselves at the top of a power-sharing arrangement to replace a king, and they knew that despite their revolution they had avoided a French-style massacre of elites. Further, they had also just agreed to perpetuate a dystopian society for a large portion of the population that would take another two centuries to slowly and painfully unravel.

Embracing that language of the founders does help to demonstrate just how wrong the right-wing misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment truly is. It also shows us how much they want to return to a tightly limited number of voters, based once again on wealth and race. But today’s conservatives only share the founders’ traits of being overwhelmingly white and wealthy, with zero sense of their noblesse oblige or even a rudimentary responsibility to the future.

But back to tyrants. The way we most commonly hear the word “tyranny” used today, by far, is when a right wing candidate simply loses an election. Rather than moderating their positions or trying to improve the outcomes of their policies, the right simply doubles down, claims “tyranny of the majority,” and insists on power. Extreme conservatism, they believe, must be represented in government, even if those being governed don’t want it. So who, again, are the “tyrants” in this right-ring fever dream? Who are all these weapons being stockpiled to kill?

That would of course be me, you, and anyone else who disagrees with, doesn’t look like, or—perhaps most of all—votes differently from them.

This isn’t some future scenario, it’s happening now. From a Buffalo grocery store to a Colorado Springs nightclub. From synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway to a church in Charleston. Mass murders are not some accidental side effect of this ludicrous interpretation, they are its purpose. Charlie Kirk says “it’s worth it” because the terror is the intent. It’s more than worth it, it’s part of the program.

Unless and until we come to terms with just what, exactly, these far-right activists are seeking and supporting, we’ll continue seeing our friends, families, and neighbors terrorized and killed. Every mass shooting we have, every single one, is a product of that desire on the far right to murder so-called tyrants, and far too often a literal manifestation of this philosophy in action.

Because increasingly to them, losing power or simply being outvoted is tyranny, and the tyrants—be they you, me, minority groups or progressives of any sort—must be killed.

[antidrumpfs]

Far Right Christian Matt Schlapp agrees to $480,000 settlement for sexual assault allegations made against him by male Republican political aide...

Wow, close to half a million dollars, nearly four times the amount of money that bible salesman Donnie Trump paid to keep Porno star Stormy Daniels silent prior to the 2016 election was paid out on behalf of far right “Christian” Matt Schlapp. The pay out was intended to keep the latest male accuser who claimed he had been sexual assaulted by Schlapp silent.

It had been alleged that Schlapp, leader of the far right “Christian” Conservative Political Action Conference while being given a ride to his hotel after a political event “aggressively fondled” the genital area of a male republican political aide.

I suspect that another reason for this pay out being made, in addition to making this latest allegation go away for Schlapp, is the fact it will keep the previous allegations of Schlapp's alleged sexual advances on other males from the public. Much was said to have surfaced in depositions taken in preparing for the groping lawsuit brought against Schlapp, and if those details were made public in a trial it would have not looked good at all for Schlapp.

[boreal-sea]

Vote for Biden, unless you're ok with this guy being president:

"Donald Trump styled himself as a “proud political dissident” and promised “judgment day” for political opponents in an address that offered a chilling vision of a democracy in imminent peril."

"He pledged to crack down on border security and deliver the biggest deportation in US history if he wins the 5 November election."

"“For hard-working Americans, November 5th will be our new liberation day,” Trump told a packed ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor in Maryland. “But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day!”

He added: “Your victory will be our ultimate vindication, your liberty will be our ultimate reward and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge.”"

"The ex-president, who has spent years demonising immigrants, said: “They’re coming from Asia, they’re coming from the Middle East, coming from all over the world, coming from Africa, and we’re not going to stand for it … They’re destroying our country.”"

"He added: “We have languages coming into our country … they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a horrible thing.”"