Almost every single 2012 candidate is descending on Washington, DC tomorrow and Saturday to punch their dance cards with both the extreme social conservative and extreme Tea Party wings of the GOP at the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference and Strategy Briefing. Among the right-wing luminaries that Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum will be rubbing elbows with are:
- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), architect of the GOP’s extremely unpopular plan to end Medicare as we know in order to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy and Big Oil
- Donald Trump
- Glenn Beck, whose contract with Fox finally terminates on June 30
- Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that has beenleading the right-wing’s charge to destroy Planned Parenthood
- Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, a group whose tireless work to deny equal rights to gay people has caused it to be officially branded a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center
- James O’Keefe*, the convicted criminal whose doctored videos brought down ACORN and more recently cost an NPR executive her job
- Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose lucrative work for Tea Party groups involved in issues before the Supreme Court has led to calls for her husband to recuse himself from high-profile cases or even be impeached
- Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, another officially-designated hate group
- More Tea Party activists than you can count
But perhaps most interesting of all is the man behind the conference: Ralph Reed, disgraced lobbyist and 1990s-era GOP golden boy. After his 1990s rise to power as head of the Christian Coalition, Reed used his influence over the right-wing Christian base to enrich himself as a lobbyist. He and his partner, Tim Phillips (who now runs the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity), worked together to do things like help convicted felon Jack Abramoff kill a bill that would’ve cracked down on sweat shops in Saipan (part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands) whose cruel conditions included forced abortions and prostitution. They also represented a range of corporate clients, with Enron among them. Check out thishighly informative Rachel Maddow piece on Reed’s recent reemergence, including his role leading an astroturf campaign to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill:
*James O’Keefe is listed on the official speakers list for the conference, but may or may not actually show up as he is apparently not allowed to leave New Jersey as a condition of his probation.
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