WaPo:
Some of the nation's most prominent conservative leaders will gather Wednesday to unveil what they propose as a manifesto for a growing movement against the political establishment.
The "Mount Vernon Statement,'' to be signed on an Alexandria estate once owned by George Washington, is billed as a declaration of conservative values and beliefs.[...]
"We don't talk about specific issues or parties or the current political situation,'' said Alfred S. Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator magazine. He helped draft the statement as part of the Conservative Action Project, a new group seeking to coordinate the chorus of voices. "It's a philosophical foundation, based on the concept of constitutional conservatism. It's written so most conservatives can say, 'Yeah, this is just what I think.' "
[...]
The statement emerged from a working group set up by the Conservative Action Project, which is chaired by Meese and has been circulating influential memos "for the movement" on issues such as health care and judicial nominations. The project is an offshoot of the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization of conservative leaders and donors.
Right Wing Watch:
now there is something [called the] Conservative Action Project which has been sending out "memos for the [conservative] movement" on a regular basis.
[...]
The Conservative Action Project doesn't seem to have a fixed membership, though the memos usually carry the names of people like Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Gary Bauer of American Values, among others.
[...]
This new group seems to have some sort of link to the Center for National Policy, considering that the contact info listed on this memo uses the email address: @cfnpaction.org. The Council for National Policy's URL is cfnp.org, and it has an affiliated c4 known as CNP Action.
Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthopy Undermines Democratic Pluralism (Cambridge, MA: Political Research Associates), 36-40:
One of several key rightist groups that has long been supported by the Coors Family is the Council for National Policy (CNP). The Council is a secretive group of the foremost right-wing activists and funders in the United States. Morton Blackwell of the CNP has said, "The policy [of CNP] is that we don't discuss who attends the meetings or what is said." Its membership, meetings, and projects are all secret, even though the group enjoys tax exempt status. It focuses on foreign policy issues.
[...]
Joe and Holly Coors were early members of the CNP. Their names appear on a 1984 confidential list of members. Also on the list is Colonel Oliver North, retired generals John Singlaub and Gordon Sumner, and other Contra network supporters.
[...]
Tom Ellis succeeded LaHaye in 1982 as president of the CNP. Ellis is a top political operative of Jesse Helms, running various political organizations that make up the Helms empire. Ellis was a director of one of the groups which supports the Helms network--the Pioneed FUnd, a foundation which finances efforts to prove that African-Americans are genetically inferior to whites. Ellis has said, "The eventual goal of this movement [racial integration] is racial intermarriage and the disapperance of the Negro race by fusing into the white." While Ellis has since disavowed his segregationist position, his associates in the Helms organizational network are still tied to the Pioneer Fund board and receive Pioneer Funds.
Recipients of Pioneer Grants have included William Shockley, Arthur Jensen, and Roger Pearson. Pearson has written that "inferior races" should be "exterminated." All three, and others, were funded during Ellis' directorship on the Pioneer board. Yet Ellis served on the CNP's thirteen-member executive committee with Holly Coors, Paul Weyrich, and Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulnet until June 1989.
[...]
BOARD MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL FOR NATIONAL POLICY
Richard Shoff is the owner of Lincoln Log Homes in North Carolina. A former Ku Klux Klan leader in Indiana, Shoff is a financial supporter of High Frontier, a Star Wars group allied with a tiny occult group allied with a tiny occult group headed by Elizabeth Clare Prophet called Church Universal and Triumphant. Shoff also supports the Conservative Caucus, a group which cheerleads for the apartheid regime in South Africa. Shoff was recently implicated in a questionable fundraising scheme shut down by the Attorney General of Illinois. Funds collected under the name "Children with AIDS Foundation" were slated to support a homophobic right-wing religious activist, Rev. H. Edward Rowe, and a group of private investors, but the fuinds were allegedly paid to investors and fundraisers, with no funds spent on any actual projects.
John McGoff was exposed as a partnet in a secret South African government attempt to buy newspapers in the US as covert propaganda outlets. [...]
Don McAlveny, a frequent traveler to South Africa, has held meetings with South African military and police groups to organize pressure to get the South African government to disavow the Alvor accords that ended warfare against Angola and SWAPO on April 1, 1989. While in South Africa, McAlveny suggested that someone might want to kill Archbishop Desmond Tutu but immediately retracted the statement. He is a contributing editor to the John Birch Society's weekly, New American.
James McClellan is a Helms associate active in repealing civil rights legislation. He is also an associate of racialist Roger Pearson.
[...]
Gary North [...] Since the CNP is deeply involved in foreign policy issues, it is worth noting that North believes:
The so-called underdeveloped societies are underdeveloped because they are socialist, demonist and cursed. The Bible tells us that the citizens of the Third World ought to feel guilty, to fall on their knees and repent from their Godless, rebellious socialist ways. They should feel guilty because they are guilty, both individually and corporately.
You get the idea.
Really though, the entire chapter of this book is worth reading just to see some of the roots of what we are dealing with today. The CNP is itself an offshoot of the John Birch Society and was considered at the time to be the far-right answer to the Council of Foreign Relations.
I've always thought that the whole Tea Party Movement had a Bircher-tinge to it. This confirms my suspicions.