Fighting communism is back!
It’s where you least expect it!
Jeffrey Denny
“Stopping communism.”
This was cited as a top achievement of Matt Schlapp, head of the Conservative Political Action Conference, whose annual gala just wrapped up across the Potomac from Washington, DC.
Schlapp’s CPAC headliners included Donald Trump, presidential wannabees Niki Haley and Mike Pompeo, and election deniers Mike Lindell and Kari Lake. They all tossed slabs of past-prime red meat to the MAGA-craven crowd about threats to America (except their own).
But a queasy cloud — more than typical — hung over the proceedings after serious allegations emerged that Schlapp sexually assaulted a GOP campaign aide working for unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
“The [Washington] Post review found that call logs, texts and videos provided by the Walker staffer and his confidants broadly match the account of Schlapp making unwanted sexual advances after buying him drinks at two Atlanta bars on the night of Oct. 19,” the newspaper reported. “Six family members and friends and three Walker campaign officials confirmed to The Post that he told them about the alleged incident that night or the next day.”
CPAC of course denied the allegations and attacked The Washington Post, declaring it was trying to “silence a prominent conservative voice.”
“Under Matt’s leadership, CPAC has grown into a professionalized organization focused on bolstering grass roots conservative activism, impacting policy, stopping communism, fighting back against fake news, and prioritizing individual liberty in America and around the world,” a CPAC official said.
Forget the irony: While Schlapp’s party is attacking LGBTQ rights and respect as “wokeness” and “grooming,” and Democrats as the enemy of traditional family values, he’s groping a young man behind his wife’s back. She’s no less a former Trump White House aide on the CPAC dole. The shameless hypocrisy gets richer the more the story unfolds.
But because I just re-watched “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the 2005 film about CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow’s battle with communist witch-hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the most intriguing item in CPAC’s defense of Schlapp is that he’s been “stopping communism.”
Where, exactly?
Oh, wait, I get it—joke’s on me. Schlapp and CPAC have been so successful at stopping communism that you never see it.
But it’s there. Right in the room at the CPAC gala, cheering for Trump and Trumpism.
“That’s stupid and silly,” Republicans would huff in high dudgeon.
But is it?
Let’s take a page from old Joe McCarthy and look at who’s taken up the communist mantle of subversive threat to America today:
— The U.S. Homeland Security Department “Summary of Terrorism Threat” says “the United States remains in a heightened threat environment. Lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the Homeland.”
Is it not true, as Homeland Security evidences, that these threats to America are primarily from Trump supporters? That Republican Party leaders, fellow travelers such as CPAC, and card-carrying members of the GOP not only defend, but even embrace and bow to?
— Is it not also the case that the former Republican Party president and his loyalists carried out a systematic campaign to undermine trust and confidence in our democracy and elections? And then went on to incite the violent attempt to overthrow our democratically elected government?
— Most Republican Party leaders refuse to denounce the violent coup attempt by their followers and deny the overwhelming and verified evidence. Does this not suggest the Party approves of violent coup to stay in power and may welcome future attempts that may succeed?
— Is it not also true that Party members and their most radical groups are the most heavily armed in America, with stockpiles of military-grade weaponry? Does this not make an armed coup not only possible but likely, as evidenced by the armed mob that swarmed the Michigan State House to overturn the election?
— Homeland Security says key targets of the domestic terrorist threat include the LGBTQ community, schools, racial and religious minorities, and the media. Is it a coincidence that the Republican Party, its media, and its extremist followers have targeted the same Americans with hate, intimidation, infringement of rights and freedoms, and threats of violence?
— Many Republican Party members, representatives and media “personalities” have taken sides with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his brutal war to annex Ukraine. Please explain why they should not be regarded as Russian fellow travelers, sympathizers and “useful idiot” propagandizers giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States and our Western Alliance.
— In a similar vein, is it not true that the Republican Party and its members and media offer aid and comfort to communist China by attacking the U.S. president as “weak” against China?
Fortunately, good Americans today are disgracing Trump and rejecting today’s GOP witch hunt against “woke” liberals.
Just like we did in ultimately sending McCarthy and his cruelty and recklessness against fellow Americans into history’s dumpster as the real enemy of the state.
Real Americans know that the Trump- and MAGA-enslaved GOP has no sense of decency, at long last.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
