Todd Akin in Tampa with secretive conservative group [UPDATED 5:15 EST]
Last edited Thu Aug 23, 2012, 05:17 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: WaPo
Politico reports that Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) was in Tampa Wednesday night to meet with ”members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive coalition of powerful conservative and evangelical leaders.”
Founded by prominent Christian conservatives in 1981 as a conservative counterweight to left-leaning policy groups, the CNP according to a 2002 Atlantic article, serves as “a sausage factory for conservative ideas of a particular goût: strong affirmations of military power, Christian heritage, traditional values, and leave-us-alone-get-off-our-backs legislation.”
Regular CNP conventions are held, but little is known about them. Membership is confidential, discussions are not discussed publicly and guests can attend only with “the unanimous approval of the executive committee,” according to a memo obtained by the New York Times in 2004.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/08/23/todd-akin-in-tampa-with-secretive-conservative-group/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
UPDATE:
Akin assessing candidacy with conservatives in Florida
Tampa, Florida (CNN) - Facing pressure from Republican heavyweights in Washington to abandon his Missouri Senate bid, Rep. Todd Akin is huddling with top conservative activists in Tampa to assess whether to move forward with his embattled candidacy.
Akin spent Wednesday night and Thursday in a series of private meetings at the two-day summit of the Council For National Policy (CNP), a secretive group of conservative leaders who are meeting in Florida before next week’s Republican National Convention.
The congressman was scheduled to attend the conference long before he suggested that “legitimate rape” might not cause a woman to become pregnant, comments that have roiled the Republican Party and shifted the focus of the presidential race away from the economy and toward the divisive social issue of abortion - just days before the GOP officially nominates Mitt Romney as its standard-bearer.
Multiple sources at the CNP conference told CNN that Akin is being encouraged by leading figures in the conservative movement to remain in the Senate race even as he faces pressure from Republican establishment.
Still, several of the activists and conservative thought leaders here acknowledged the long odds he faces.
more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/23/akin-assessing-candidacy-with-conservatives-in-florida/
Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy
Three times a year for 23 years, a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country have met behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference, the Council for National Policy, to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.
Details are closely guarded.
"The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before of after a meeting," a list of rules obtained by The New York Times advises the attendees.
The membership list is "strictly confidential." Guests may attend "only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee." In e-mail messages to one another, members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name, to protect against leaks.
This week, before the Republican convention, the members quietly convened in New York, holding their latest meeting almost in plain sight, at the Plaza Hotel, for what a participant called "a pep rally" to re-elect President Bush .
more:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/politics/campaign/28conserve.html?pagewanted=all
= new reply since forum marked as read
How much for you to get out?
if membership is 'confidential,' how can any reporter say they are 'powerful conservative and evangelical leaders'???
Or, as Stalin might have put it (speaking of the Pope), "how many divisions do they command"????
