Conservative group puts core value - secrecy - of Republicans on display

SALT LAKE CITY - The Republican Party under the leadership of Vice President Dick Cheney will display one of its core values – secrecy – during a conference of the Council for National Policy, said Wayne Holland, chair of the Utah Democratic Party.

Cheney and Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, will address the group Friday at The Grand America Hotel.

“We welcome members of CNP to Utah,” said Holland. “Utahns have a rare opportunity to see – or more accurately not see – what Republicans are all about. And that is how policy is influenced in this country by what amounts to a secret society of far right-wing conservatives and religious extremists.

“It is disturbing that Romney, a man many people in Utah admire, has chosen to pander to these people.”

The Council for National Policy was co-founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye, a conservative evangelical Christian minister and author of the best-selling “Left Behind” series of apocalyptic fiction, according to Source Watch: A Project of the Center for Media and Democracy. It is a secretive forum designed to facilitate networking of leading conservative political leaders, financiers, and religious right activist leaders.

Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation and State, told The New York Times several years ago: “The real crux of this is that these are the genuine leaders of Republican Party, but they certainly aren’t going to visible on television ...”

Form 990 filed with the IRS in 2002 indicates prominent conservative theorist Grover Norquist sits on CNP’s board of directors.

CNP’s membership, obtained by the Institute for First Amendment studies several years ago, includes a “who’s who” of the far right-wing of the Republican Party and their evangelical Christian allies:

• Former Attorney General John Ashcroft (former member)
• Tommy Thompson, former Health and Human Services Secretary, (former member)
• Richard De Vos, founder of Amway and partial funder of the pro-voucher campaign in Utah
• Holland Coors and Jeffrey Coors of the Coors brewing company
• Pat Robertson, former GOP presidential candidate and founder of the Christian Coalition
• Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University
• Phyllis Schlafly
• Oliver North, a political commentator. North was convicted of three felonies in 1988 related to the Iran-Contra scandal under President Reagan. The convictions later were vacated.
• Henry Morris, a prominent creationist
• Chuck Missler, an Idaho radio host who has predicted an imminent invasion of Jerusalem by forces guided by the Antichrist
• Sam Moore, president of Thomas Nelson, a Christian book publishing company

Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University and author of several books critical of right-wing politics in the United States, adds to the list the following:

• Tom Delay
• Trent Lott
• Ed Meese
• James Robison
• Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Source: Source Watch: A Project of the Center for Media and Democracy