There's a lot to digest in this Washington Post report on videos obtained of the meetings of the arch-conservative Council for National Policy, videos that show the organized—and in some cases possibly illegal—coordination of a host of top conservative leaders as they planned out and advised each other on how to best push Trump and Republican allies over the top in the November elections.
We're talking about Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, members of Trump's administration, leaders of the most toxic "nonpartisan" "charities" in the country, and outright conspiracy weirdos—but I repeat myself—all getting together to strategize on coordinated plans to help Republicans win. The Post quoted a few of the requisite experts in order to point out that technically it seems like the charities could be committing some rather blatant tax criming in doing so, but YOLO, nothing matters, and so forth.
One takeaway from the Post-excerpted tapes, certainly, has to be that the leaders of today's Trump-devoted conservatism are absolutely the same crackpot conspiracy nuts they appear to be in public. Hoo, boy. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, a Fox News regular, warned the crowd that da left has a plan in the works to sabotage the election and install Nancy Pelosi as president—and that it is "not an insignificant concern." Longtime crank Brent Bozell said the left plans to "steal the election." These are not people interested in hiding behind Alex Jones notions that maybe the nutty things they say are just performance art once lawsuits start flying: They are the squeezings of two decades of Fox News insanity, distilled and poured into expensive suits.
Aside from everyone's insistence on standing knee-deep in those pools of Every Possible Conspiracy, though, the private goals of the Council for National Policy seem well agreed on by its members. The Council for National Policy's goal is to suppress votes. As many votes as possible, using whatever means are necessary.
- Turning Point USA youth fascist leader Charlie Kirk was there to celebrate the good news of nationwide closures of universities—you know, because of the deadly pandemic—which he estimated would keep as many as half a million students from voting. "Please keep the campuses closed," he urged. "It's a great thing."
- Fitton told the audience that blocking mail-in voting was essential. "We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do."
- "Be not afraid of the accusations that you're a voter suppressor, you're a racist and so forth," Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams weirdly told the assembled members.
Buddy, I think your audience is way ahead of you on that last one.
Coupled with this coordinated agreement that everyone needed to focus on voter suppression was, of course, the “except for us” part. Lifelong conman and crook Ralph Reed promised the crowd that his fake-Christian Faith and Freedom Coalition absolutely would be "ballot harvesting" in churches around the nation, despite Republicans and Trump continuing to publicly condemn "ballot harvesting" as nation-breaking ultrafraud.
(Whether this has anything to do with the California Republican Party's own illegal ballot harvesting is unknown, but it's pretty clear both Reed and the party don't intend to abide by the laws on such things if the laws are getting in their way.)
So there you go. The top conservative lobbyists, conservative "charity" heads, fascists, conspiracy cranks, and a few Trump administration members are all meeting together to break laws and have the lawyers "tell us" what coordination needs to be done to most effectively block Americans from voting.
In case anyone, anywhere was unclear on what "conservatism" is all about, now that it's been stripped of every other pretended-at ideal.