Third Strike and he's out: The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Ben Carson?

Less than one month ago, Dr. Ben Carson's stock with conservatives shot into the stratosphere after a thirty minute speech at the Washington Prayer Breakfast. Never before had someone so eloquently and politely embarrassed Barack Obama while sharing the same room. I remember pumping my fist a few times while watching that speech. Conservatives began to entertain the idea that Carson would be presidential material in 2016.

Now, er not so much. In fact, the degree to which Carson seems to have diluted and convoluted his message is more than just a little vexing. It's as if he doesn't want conservative support.

My antennae first went up with Carson back on February 17th during his appearance on ABC This Week, just ten days after his speech. Take note beginning at the 1:45 mark, when Carson says we need to 'tone down the rhetoric' and 'discuss things in a reasonable and rational way'. He then advocates for both sides coming together rather than 'one side or the other side winning'.

Exhibit A (strike 1):



Does this mean Carson believes Capitalists can compromise with Marxists? Because of how well Carson did at the prayer breakfast, he seemed to receive a bit of a pass there but conservatives are a little hypersensitive whenever the 'both sides need to come together' rhetoric starts. Such thinking includes a premise that says both sides are equally to blame. That is a false premise indeed. Anecdotally, just look at how Obama ran his presidential campaign compared to how Romney ran his. Obama's campaign lied about Romney being a murderer and a felon while Romney's campaign wouldn't tell the truth about Obama - that he's a socialist.

Here is Exhibit B (strike 2).

It occurred on the Andrea Tantaros show. During the interview, the topic of CPAC came up. Specifically, the group's decision to exclude New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and GOProud - the largest conservative homosexual group - from speaking at the event was discussed. After talking about the cultural underpinnings of our society, Carson bemoaned the exclusion of Christie and GOProud. Take note at the 3:00 mark. This is where Carson alienates social conservatives while championing fiscal conservatism.

Then, at about the 4:47 mark, Carson utters words that conservatives are simply loathe to hear:

"You need to make the tent as big as you possibly can."

Ah, the hypocrisy of the big tenters... They always seem to bemoan the alienation of groups that are socially liberal but never seem to care about alienating social conservatives.



In Exhibit C (big fat strike 3), we find Carson with a fork stuck in him.

During an interview with Glenn Beck, the talk show host asks Carson about the second amendment and whether people like Beck should be allowed to own a semi-automatic weapon. Carson's answer is so ridiculous, you just have to see it for yourself.



h/t Hot Air

Videos: How about the Obama tapes Breitbart had?

Three weeks before Andrew Breitbart's death, he was at CPAC and dropped a bombshell that he had videos of Barack Obama during his college days. As I watched him lower the boom, I thought he was planning to release the videos in October. However, according to his close friend Steve Bannon, the tapes are going to be released in a couple of weeks and are from Obama's time at Harvard. Not sure if releasing the tapes in March instead of October is the best strategy but perhaps plans changed with Breitbart's death. Or, perhaps their so damaging that it won't matter.

Here is Bannon on Hannity's television show via MediaIte:



Here is the video of Breitbart at CPAC less than one month ago. Fast forward to the 5:30 mark to see him make the announcement.

Audio: John Bolton on Fast and Furious

Yeah, I know John Bolton endorsed Mitt Romney but if you can, check this out. The former UN Ambassador talks Fast and Furious with Dana Loesch at CPAC. In short, as someone who worked in the Reagan administration, Bolton said there's no way that Holder's counterpart at the time would not have known about the operation, especially since it involved another country.



h/t Sipsey Street

Video: Meet Jose Peoples; he got paid $60 to Protest

It's really a shame that things this despicable transpire without any real consequence. Here, Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields approaches OWS protesters protesters for hire outside the CPAC conference. The guy who gives her the most time is Jose Peoples. He tells Fields that everyone was paid $60 by the local union to show up. Peoples didn't know who or what he was protesting, just that he was given three Andrew Jacksons and told to show up.

Via Breitbart:

Donald Trump's Abortion Problem

Business tycoon and staunch capitalist Donald Trump is apparently running for president of the United States. His success, his background, and his message are all resonating with many on the right as capitalism itself is under attack; he's one of its biggest proponents. However, if he has even the slightest chance of winning the nomination, it will have to come with a Road to Damascus experience on abortion. So far, it looks like he's simply being political in appealing to social conservatives.

Via CNS News:

Before Trump entered the ballroom at the Marriott Wardman Hotel to speak, CNSNews.com asked him, “Do you think your pro-choice stance will affect your run for president of the United States?”

“Who said I’m pro-choice?” Trump replied before being pulled away by handlers.

In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump said, “I support a woman’s right to choose, but I am uncomfortable with the procedures."

On Nov. 18, 2010, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Trump, “Are you pro-choice?”

Trump said, “I am -- well, I don't want to discuss right now, but you will be shocked when I give you that answer. … Well, you will be very surprised when I give you -- I'm going to make a decision [about running for president]. And when I make a decision I'll let you know about that. But, I think you'll probably be surprised.”

Then, in an interview yesterday with talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, Trump said, “I am pro-life.”

Trump knows he needs the social conservatives to get any traction. Indications are that's why his position on abortion appears to be more than just slightly malleable. In the past, someone like him might be able to massage his message enough to satiate the conservative base. Not today, however. the Tea Party is too politically savvy to fall for it.

Sorry Donald. Damascus is this way.....

Video: Pamela Geller Calls out Muslim Brotherhood Infiltraitors at CPAC

In the run-up to CPAC, various groups and individuals boycotted the largest Conservative political conference for its allowing GOProud to attend. Others stayed away because of the reports that a man with Muslim Brotherhood ties - Suhail Khan - was on the Board of Directors. I must admit, my inclination was to adopt that view as well, mainly because I didn't think people who opposed Khan - along with the guy who helped put him in the position, Grover Norquist - wouldn't call them out at the event.

Boy, was I wrong. David Horowitz named names as did Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs. Geller took it a step further and explained why it is important for those who know the truth to show up at CPAC and take it back rather than stay away and let it go to the wolves.

Via The Blaze:



Go HERE to watch Suhail Khan deny the Muslim Brotherhood exists in the United States and then watch Horowitz call out both Khan and Norquist during his speech.

Awesome.

Video: Muslim Infiltraitor Busted at CPAC

Suahil Khan is a Muslim who is on the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which operates CPAC. His father was a leader in the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and founded the Muslim Students Association (MSA). At CPAC, Khan was confronted about the Muslim Brotherhood and issued a bald-faced lie, saying that 'there is no Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.' One look at the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial will disprove that completely.

HERE is the list.

The MSA is a Muslim Brotherhood group that Khan's father founded. Its objective is the educate Muslim college students how to move up the ranks of political systems and institutions. It would appear that Khan may have gotten a little too bold in trying to infiltrate the conservative movement during the Tea Party movement.

Folks, this man has been busted as a liar who is sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Via Pajamas Media



In light of Khan's lie, the speech at CPAC given by David Horowitz, in which he lays it out, even naming Suhail Khan's father before naming Suhail. Hats off to Mr. Horowitz.

Video: George W. Bush Stood with CAIR after September 11th

In light of what we now know about the nefarious intentions of groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), this is an extremely disturbing video of George W. Bush in the days after 9/11 speaking at a Saudi mosque in Washington. Standing directly behind him is CAIR Executive Director, Nihad Awad (you can see him at the end as Bush moves away). The days after 9/11 were absolutely critical when it came to setting the direction for this country against our Islamic enemies and this speech may have been the catalyst for setting us in the direction we're now on.

That Bush shouldn't have known about CAIR requires a suspension of belief because six days before 9/11, on September 5th, Federal Authorities raided an office belonging to the Holy Land Foundation and found evidence that implicated CAIR. How did the message that CAIR had these ties with Hamas not reach the president? HLF had been under investigation for five years at the time.

Via Discover the Networks:

Suspicious of its terrorist ties, U.S. federal authorities began monitoring the Holy Land Foundation in 1996. On September 5, 2001, federal anti-terrorism agents raided InfoCom Corporation, the company that ran the HLF website. According to defectors from the conspiracy, the HLF web server was used also by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students’ Association of the U.S. and Canada, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and American Muslims for Jerusalem. As Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz writes, “All these organizations drew from the common financial and technical pool at HLF. All shared a single administrative and technical contact for the maintenance of the web server. They had been erected as political shells around the Hamas hydra-head represented by HLF.” (Support for Hamas had become illegal in 1995 as the result of an executive order by President Bill Clinton and subsequent congressional action.)

In fact, a man named Suhail Khan may have had a hand in this speech taking place where and when it did. According to a report by Frank Gaffney, Khan is a Muslim who has infiltrated the conservative movement with the help of Grover Norquist. Moreover, Khan is also on the Board of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which runs CPAC. Khan worked in the Bush administration's Department of Transportation.

HERE is Gaffney's report on Khan.

Jim DeMint Boycotting CPAC - Is Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrating GOP?

Two mildly related stories involving CPAC's loss of conservative figures and groups. CPAC is having quite a few problems this year, with groups boycotting over GOProud's participation and others over the prominence of a Muslim with questionable ties, Suhail Khan. On top of that, the head the group behind CPAC - the American Conservative Union (ACU) - had been mired in a messy financial scandal. The statement from DeMint's office is somewhat vague about his reasons for deciding not to attend but in light of his adherence to socially conservative principles, it's likely the GOProud issue.

Via POLITICO:

"With leading conservatives organizations not participating this year, Senator DeMint will not be attending. He hopes to attend a unified CPAC next year," DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton said in an email.

The larger issue very well could be the alleged infiltration of the Republican Party by the Muslim Brotherhood. While appearing on CNN's Anderson 360, Frank Gaffney debated Suhail Khan, a Muslim on the Board of CPAC. Video speaks for itself.

Via TPM:

OUTRAGE: CPAC FEATURING ISLAMIST THIS YEAR

The annual conservative conference known as Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has some serious explaining to do; at least it's sponsoring organization does. The American Conservative Union (ACU) is being exposed fiscally, socially, and now apparently as sympathetic to an Islamic extremist.

Via World Net Daily:

With the Conservative Political Action Conference under fire for allowing participation by a homosexual activist group called GOProud and for a financial scandal in which some $400,000 was misappropriated under the watch of current leadership, Frank Gaffney, a leader of the conservative movement for the last 30 years, charges that CPAC has come under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to bring America under Saudi-style Shariah law.

Gaffney, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is founder and president of the Center for Security Policy and co-author of the new book "Shariah: The Threat to America." He 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.

Khan is a member of the ACU board and, according to Muslims for America, will assist the group's presence at CPAC during the 2011 meeting Feb. 10-12.

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy has done incredible research on Suhail Khan's background.

Via CSP:

Suhail Khan's father was the late Mahboob Khan, a PhD in solid-state physics. His biography claims that he helped establish the Muslim Student Association (MSA) while a student in Boulder (presumably, this refers to the MSA chapter at the university as the parent organization was established in 1963). The MSA is present on scores of American campuses and serves to recruit, proselytize and indoctrinate on behalf of Saudi-backed Islamists. [1] It is pro-Hamas – the MSA at UC Irvine even demanded that its members be allowed to wear Hamas armbands at graduation – and openly sympathizes with terrorists. Dr. Khan held the post of MSA vice president and Western Zone representative.

The elder Khan also served as member of Majlis a'Shura (the governing council) of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which was created by the Muslim Student Association (MSA) in 1977 to promote the Islamist agenda among Muslims and the general population. Another MSA arm is the North American Islamic Trust, the Saudis' vehicle for providing the financing of, by some estimates, as many as 80% of the mosques in America.

Interestingly, John Ziegler went to Western CPAC in 2009 and confronted ACU head David Keene of questionable finances. At the time, attendees rejected Ziegler en masse as a agent provocateur. More than a year later, Ziegler appears to have been onto something.

Ziegler is also doing media interviews on this subject.

Click HERE to see his exchange with Keene in 2009.

CPAC DIVIDED BY HOMOSEXUAL CONSERVATIVES

Here we go. The battle between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives is heating up within the largest annual meeting for Conservatives - the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In a classic case of one step up, two steps back CPAC extended an invitation to GOProud only to see two prominent conservative groups, the Family Research Council (FRC) and Conservative Women of America (CWA), drop out.

Via WND:

"We've been very involved in CPAC for over a decade and have managed a couple of popular sessions. However, we will no longer be involved with CPAC because of the organization's financial mismanagement and movement away from conservative principles," said Tom McClusky, senior vice president for FRC Action.

"CWA has decided not to participate in part because of GOProud," CWA President Penny Nance told WND.

FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud.

The American Conservative Union, longtime organizers of CPAC, disclosed just before Christmas that GOProud would be considered a "participating organization," the second highest level of participation. As a "participating organization," GOProud has a voice in planning the conference.

The decision followed two hotly contested CPAC board votes over GOProud. The first vote ended in a tie. The outcome of the second vote has not been officially disclosed, but a source at ACU leaked the decision favoring GOProud to the media.

I seem to remember when Barack Obama and Bill Ayers were targeted for heading up the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) in 2008, the left came back with the argument that CAC's founder - Walter Annenberg - was a conservative. What we're seeing happen at CPAC could perfectly illustrate what could have happened to Annenberg's legacy; it was incrementally tarnished until it was smeared by the likes of Bill Ayers. HERE is an article from The Swamp from August, 2008 on that very subject.

Besides, I'm partial to what Jim DeMint has to say about fiscal vs. social conservatism:

"You can't be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative. A large part of the expansive government is to make up for a dysfunctional society because our culture is falling apart; the family is falling apart."- Jim DeMint, November 2010.

The Blaze has more on the CPAC controversy as well as this video of Ryan Sorba at CPAC last year, in which he condemned the conference for inviting GOProud.

VIDEO: BREAKING DOWN ANDREW BREITBART'S MELTDOWNS

**CONTENT WARNING: LANGUAGE** Andrew Marcus posts a video montage of Andrew Breitbart's run-ins at CPAC in which the latter was visibly angry. However, language aside, it is extremely refreshing to see someone like Breitbart go on offense. He does so, in part, because he understands the tactics of Saul Alinsky. In particular, the Alinsky tactic that applied at CPAC is Rule #5, which states:

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

In the twisted mind of the Alinsky-ites, that's a "heads I win, tales you lose" tactic. In the mind of someone like Breitbart, who knows what they're doing, it's an invitation to Layeth the Smaketh Down and finish it off by calling them out for using Rule #5.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Breitbart is THE MAN!



via Big Government