澳彩开奖

Longtime Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of the far-right Breitbart News operation, were named on Aug. 17 as, respectively, the Trump campaign鈥檚 manager and its chief executive officer. The appointment of Bannon was by far the more controversial choice, given his role at a 鈥渘ews鈥� outlet known for bashing immigrants, Muslims, women and others.

The CNP is an intensely secretive and shadowy group of what The New York Times once described as 鈥渢he most powerful conservatives in the country.鈥� It is so tight-lipped that it tells people not to admit their membership or even name the group. Revealing when or where the group meets, or what it discusses, is also forbidden. The organization, which can only be joined by invitation and at a cost of thousands of dollars, strives mightily to keep its membership rolls secret.

The 澳彩开奖 (澳彩开奖), which publishes Hatewatch, obtained a copy this spring of the CNP鈥檚 2014 membership directory, a closely held document. It shows that Conway was a member of the CNP鈥檚 executive committee that year, and that Bannon was a regular member. It is not known if they remain.

The CNP is not controversial so much for the conservatives who dominate it 鈥� activists of the religious right and the so-called 鈥渃ulture wars,鈥� along with a smattering of wealthy financiers, Congressional operatives, right-wing consultants and Tea Party operatives 鈥� as for the many real extremists who are included.

They include people like Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate who for years was on the board of the white supremacist League of the South; Jerome Corsi, a strident Obama 鈥渂irther鈥� and the propagandist hit man responsible for the 鈥淪wift boating鈥� of John Kerry; Joseph Farah, who runs the wildly conspiracist 鈥渘ews鈥� operation known as WorldNetDaily; Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel leader who has worked to re-criminalize gay sex; Philip Zodhaites, another anti-gay activist who is charged with helping a self-described former lesbian who kidnapped her daughter from her former partner and fled the country; and a large number of other similar characters.

As the 澳彩开奖 noted when it published the 2014 directory in May of this year, the CNP has every right to keep its membership secret. But, as the 澳彩开奖 wrote then, 鈥渋t also provides an important venue in which relatively mainstream conservatives meet and very possibly are influenced by real extremists, people who regularly defame LGBT people with utter falsehoods, describe Latino immigrants as a dangerous group of rapists and disease-carriers, engage in the kind of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing for which the John Birch Society is famous, and even suggest that certain people should be stoned to death in line with Old Testament law.鈥�

Bannon was already controversial. His Breitbart news operation has specialized in extreme-right propaganda that is summed up in some of the headlines it ran while under his stewardship: 鈥淏ill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,鈥� 鈥淭here鈥檚 No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck at Interviews,鈥� 鈥淏irth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,鈥� 鈥淟esbian Bridezillas Bully Bridal Shop Owner Over Religious Beliefs鈥� and so on. Breitbart also recently published a defense of the 鈥淎lternative Right鈥� that included defending well-known white supremacist ideologues Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer.

It鈥檚 not known how their contacts within the CNP may have affected Conway and Bannon. But as the 澳彩开奖 concluded in its May report on the CNP: 鈥淎t a time of extreme political polarization in our society, in the middle of an ugly presidential contest which has featured an almost unsurpassed record of ethnic, racial and sexual insults and lies, Americans deserve to know who their ostensible leaders are mixing with as we collectively decide our country鈥檚 future.鈥�

That is as true of campaign leaders as it is of political candidates.