The right-wing site World Net Daily and conservative columnist Frank Gaffney came up with a new reason this week to hate the Conservative Political Action Conference, arguing that it has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood thanks to Grover Norquist, the Republican group Muslims For America, and Ex-Bush staffer Suhail Khan.
In an interview with TPM today, Khan described how “every few months there’s a different iteration of [Gaffney] and his cohorts’ wild accusations,” but it is simply untrue, and a part of Gaffney’s “temper tantrum” that he has been marginalized by the conservative movement.
CPAC is not exactly known for its fuzzy left-wing politics. Last year’s conference included appearances by Dick and Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Jim DeMint, with Glenn Beck as keynote speaker. Rush Limbaugh keynoted in 2009.
But in an article yesterday on World Net Daily called “Now look who else is infiltrating CPAC,” Gaffney “told WND that Islamism has infiltrated the American Conservative Union, the host of CPAC, in the person of Washington attorney and political activist Suhail Khan and a group called Muslims for America.”
Gaffney has been a go-to shariah “expert” on the right for some time – he even testified against a proposed mosque project in Murfreesboro, TN, and then said on CNN that the purpose of mosques “is to destroy western civilization from within.”
“What’s going on in conservative circles should give everyone real cause for concern,” Gaffney told World Net Daily. “What it bespeaks is an effort to penetrate and influence conservatives, who are the most likely and perhaps only community in America who will stand up to and ultimately help ensure the defeat of this seditious totalitarian political program.”
He also implicated anti-tax conservative activist Grover Norquist in the plot: “Grover Norquist is credentialing the perpetrators of this Muslim Brotherood influence operation. This is part of tradecraft, to get people who have standing in a community to give it to people who lack it, so they can do what they’re assigned to do in terms of subversion. We are in a war, and he has been working with the enemy for over a decade.”
“The fact that it has gone on within conservative circles for this long, and may be further enabled at CPAC this year, is a travesty,” he continued.
Of course, you might argue that nobody would give any credence to Gaffney’s ravings anyway. Nobody, that is, except Harry’s Place.
Update: See also “Conservatives claim anti-tax crusader secretly leading Muslim indoctrination”, Raw Story, 6 January 2011