Council for National Policy: Ken Blackwell, Ohio Candidate for Governor, Caught Scrubbing Post

[Guest guest]

Here is a little something which seems worth looking into.

 

 

 

Ken Blackwell, Ohio Candidate for Governor, Caught Scrubbing Post

about Speech Before Ultra-Rightwing Conservative Group, Council for

National Policy

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/8/2250/63002

 

 

 

 

Updated! Ken Blackwell's Blog Caught Scrubbing Super Secret Post

by progressivearlingtonian

Wed Mar 08, 2006 at 08:05:00 PM PDT

 

Ken Blackwell Ohio Candidate for Governor Caught Scrubbing Post about Speech

Before Ultra-Rightwing Conservative Group

 

Council for National Policy

 

3/6/2006 9:53:39 AM [KenBlackwell.com Blog :: Featured Posts] [Matt Naugle]

 

blackwell-councilfornationa.gif

 

Recently, Ken Blackwell spoke at a meeting of the Council for National Policy.

 

This picture with the one line of text appeared on Ken Blackwell's Blog Monday.

I received it through my RSS Subscription to his blog.

 

Sounds innocent enough, but I was curious why there was not more promotion of

the speech and the group Blackwell was speaking to accompanying the blog post.

 

When I went to Ken Blackwell's Blog, the post had been removed.*

 

* progressivearlingtonian's diary :: ::

*

 

Who is the Council for National Policy (CNP)? And if the name isn't familiar to

you, don't be surprised. That's just what the Council wants.

 

" The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our

programs, before or after a meeting, " reads one of the cardinal rules of the

organization.

 

The membership list of this group is " strictly confidential. " Guests can

attend only with the unanimous approval of the organization's executive

committee. The group's leadership is so secretive that members are told not to

refer to it by name in e-mail messages. Anyone who breaks the rules can be

tossed out.

 

Is this the reason the blog post was scrubbed?

 

What is this group, and why is it so determined to avoid the public spotlight?

 

A little internet digging (mostly facilitated by a post from February 2005 right

here on Daily Kos, " Sith Lords of the Ultra-Right " brought out a lot about " The

Council for National Policy " .

 

The CNP was founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders

who would gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and

candidates to advance the far-right agenda. Twenty-five years later, it is still

secretly pursuing those goals with amazing success.

 

Since its founding, the tax-exempt organization has been meeting three times a

year. Members have come and gone, but all share something in common: They are

powerful figures, drawn from both the Religious Right and the anti-government,

anti-tax wing of the ultra-conservative movement.

 

It may sound like a far-left conspiracy theory, but the CNP is all too real and,

its critics would argue, all too influential.

 

CNP's first president was Tim LaHaye famed millenialist preacher and writer of

the Left Behind series of popular books about the " end-times " and the Second

Coming of Christ. LaHaye,like the whole of the nation's Religious Right leaders,

nurtured a strong contempt for the First Amendment principle of church-state

separation, because it seriously complicates their goal of installing

fundamentalist Christianity as the nation's officially recognized religion.

 

Many members of the CNP are part of the Christian Recon­struc­tionist movement.

Reconstructionists espouse a radical theology that calls for trashing the U.S.

Constitution and replacing it with the harsh legal code of the Old Testament.

They advocate the death penalty for adulterers, blasphemers, incorrigible

teen­agers, gay people, " witches " and those who worship " false gods. "

 

A list of former and past members reads like a who's who of conservative

Christian Right activists, anti-tax and anti-government activists, billionaire

right wing philanthropists and GOP office holders, past and present.

 

And what was the ultimate goals of this organization? Well, they stated them

pretty clearly early on . . .

 

From the beginning, the CNP sought to merge two strains of far-right

thought: the theocratic Religious Right with the low-tax, anti-government wing

of the GOP. The theory was that the Religious Right would provide the grassroots

activism and the muscle. The other faction would put up the money.

 

Bringing together the two strains of the far right gave the CNP enormous

leverage. The group, for example, could pick a candidate for public office and

ply him or her with individual donations and PAC money from its well-endowed,

business wing.

 

The goals of the CNP, then, are similarly two-pronged. Activists like Grover

Norquist, who once said he wanted to shrink the federal government to a size

where it could be drowned in a bathtub, are drawn to the group for its

exaltation of unfettered capitalism, hostility toward social-service spending

and low (or no) tax ideology.

 

Dramatically scaling back the size of the federal government and abolishing the

last remnants of the New Deal may be one goal of the CNP, but many of the foot

soldiers of the Religious Right sign on for a different crusade: a desire to

remake America in a Christian fundamentalist image.

 

Since 1981, CNP members have worked assiduously to pack government bodies with

ultra-conservative lawmakers who agree that the nation needs a major shift to

the right economically and socially. They rail against popular culture and

progressive lawmakers, calling them the culprits of the nation's moral decay.

Laws must be passed and enforced, the group argues, that will bring organized

prayer back to the public schools, outlaw abortion, prevent gays from achieving

full civil rights and fund private religious schools with tax funds.

 

Alongside figures like LaHaye and leaders of the anti-abortion movement, the

nascent CNP also included Joseph Coors, the wealthy beer magnate; Herbert and

Nelson Bunker Hunt, two billionaire investors and energy company executives

known for their advocacy of right-wing causes, and William Cies, another wealthy

businessman.

 

Interestingly, the Hunts, Cies and LaHaye all were affiliated with the John

Birch Society, the conspiracy-obsessed anti-communist group founded in 1959.

LaHaye had lectured and conducted training seminars frequently for the Society

during the 1960s and '70s a time when the group was known for its campaign

against the civil rights movement.

 

In 1988, writer Russ Bellant noted in his book The Coors Connection . . .

that many CNP members have been associated with the outer reaches of the

conservative movement.

 

 

 

Tom Ellis, a top political operative of the ultra-conservative Jesse Helms,

followed LaHaye as the CNP president in 1982. Ellis had a checkered past, having

served as a director of a foundation called the Pioneer Fund, which has a long

history of subsidizing efforts to prove blacks are genetically inferior to

whites.

 

In addition to obsessing over communist threats and buttressing white

supremacist ideology, the CNP has included many members bent on replacing

American democracy with theocracy.

 

The CNP's current executive director, a former California lawmaker named Steve

Baldwin, has tried to downplay the organization's influence on powerful state

and national lawmakers. He has remained cagey about the CNP's goals, insisting

it is merely a group that counters liberal policy arguments.

 

In many ways, Baldwin himself exemplifies the CNP's operate-in-secret strategy.

As a political strategist in California in the early 1990s, Baldwin was one of

the key architects of the " stealth strategy " that led to Religious Right

activists being elected to school boards and other local offices.

 

" Stealth candidates " were trained to emphasize pocketbook issues such as taxes

and spending. But once elected, they would pursue a Religious Right agenda, such

as demanding creationism in public schools.

 

In the spring of 2002, while working at the CNP, he penned a controversial

article for the law review at TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent University. The

piece, " Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement, " linked pedophilia to

homosexuality.

 

The article went on to become a staple in the Religious Right's anti-gay canon,

despite the fact that its claims were challenged by legitimate researchers.

 

" It is difficult to convey the dark side of the homosexual culture without

appearing harsh, " wrote Baldwin. " However, it is time to acknowledge that

homosexual behavior threatens the foundation of Western civilization the nuclear

family. "

 

In 1999, candidate George W. Bush spoke before a closed-press CNP session in

San Antonio. His speech, contemporaneously described as a typical mid-campaign

ministration to conservatives, was recorded on audio tape.

 

(Depending on whose account you believe, Bush promised to appoint only

anti-abortion-rights judges to the Supreme Court, or he stuck to his campaign

" strict constructionist " phrase. Or he took a tough stance against gays and

lesbians, or maybe he didn't).

 

The media and center-left activist groups urged the group and Bush's

presidential campaign to release the tape of his remarks. The CNP, citing its

bylaws that restrict access to speeches, declined. So did the Bush campaign,

citing the CNP.

 

Shortly thereafter, magisterial conservatives pronounced the allegedly

moderate younger Bush fit for the mantle of Republican leadership.

 

Is it possible they're now doing the same for Blackwell?

 

Ohio Voters deserve to know that Blackwell is associating himself with this

group. We have a right to ask Ken Blackwell if he agrees with the value and

principles of this group. Is he accepting funding from any members of the

National Council for Policy?

 

The Ohio Media I contacted seemed interested in the story, but aren't going to

publish. The Cleveland Plain Dealer emailed me all day today acting if they

were going to publish their own story and then only put up a link to the

original post " Open Links: Links of the Week : Ohio UAPA Did Blackwell Scrub a

Flub?. The Columbus Dispatch wouldn't touch it. Many " Lefty Blogs " in Ohio

crossposted and linked and Hotline's Blogometer wrote a paragraph on it today.

 

I need some help getting this story out there. Can anyone help or advise me?

 

Crossposted Upper Arlington Progressive Action

 

Update: My ultimate goal here is to get this into the media because if the CNP

finds out that Ken Blackwell shed light on their organization they'll drop him

like a hot potato.

 

Remember, you can get thrown out of the CNP for mentioning their name in an

email. What would they do to Ken Blackwell if he brings national media attention

upon them? The voters aren't really even the number one target, I want to cut

off his funding from the CNP.

 

Update II: Thanks for all the great suggestions! As of this morning, I have sent

the following message out to The Columbus Dispatch, The Athen News, The Toledo

Blade, The Other Paper and E Pluribus Media:

 

As of now I've heard back from exactly none of them.

 

I was interviewed by the Cleveland Free Times who will be doing a story, but

don't publish until next week.

 

Blackwell Story Gaining Interest on the " Internets "

 

This story appears to be growing in interest on the " internets "

 

Ken Blackwell Speaks to " Sith Lords of the Ultra-Right " and Then Scrubs Blog

Post About It

 

Daily Kos:#1 recommended Diary

Ken Blackwell's Blog Caught Scrubbing Super Secret Post

 

Steve Gilliard's News Blog

Supping with racists

 

Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Open Links: Links of the Week : Ohio UAPA Did Blackwell Scrub a Flub?

 

Ohio Voters deserve to know that Blackwell is associating himself with this

group. We have a right to ask Ken Blackwell if he agrees with the values and

principles of the Council For National Policy. Is he accepting funding from any

members of the CNP?

 

Please continue to recommend this diary and feel free to pass This story or

links to this story along to anywhere that you think might get it attention in

the MSM or the other " big fish " in the blogosphere.

I appreciate your help!

 

Tags: Ken Blackwell, Ohio Govenor (all tags)

 

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