While the world watched, puzzled and disturbed at the selection of Sarah Palin as the running mate for John McCain, one group of people sat back and smiled. The Council for National Policy, a right-wing "Christian" conservative organization could finally support McCain.
According to Bruce Miller in the blog "The Blue Voice", http://thebluevoice.blogspot.com (in its archives from the week of 8/31), Sarah Palin was vetted - by the Council for National Policy, a right wing organization with membership including the likes of James Dobson and Grover Norquiest.
Quoting Michelle Goldberg in her book "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006)", Miller notes:
The organization is the stuff of liberal nightmares - it meets thrice yearly in secret, bringing together powerful evangelical activists, Republican politicians, and wealthy donors to make plans to pull the country to the right. Over the years, its membership rolls have included James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Michael Farris, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and former Senator Jesse Helms, along with forthright theocrats like R.J. Rushdoony [founder of the ultra-reactionary Christian Reconstructionism]. The CNP still exists and remains powerful. George Bush has refused to release a copy of the speech he gave to the group in 1999, and during his presidency, both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have attended CNP meetings.
As noted by Miller, this meeting took place in September. As reported by Max Blumenthal in "Talk to Action", the vetting took place in late August.
http://www.talk2action.org/...
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"Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC's spectacle in Denver, the country's most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.
So as many of us thought that McCain was trying to attract Clinton supporters (and perhaps he was also trying for thi), it's clear that the Palin pick was an effort to gain support of an entirely different nature.