Rachel Maddow let Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan have it for showing up in the middle of all of the turmoil going on right now in the Middle East and Africa and just after the death of our ambassador in Libya, at the Values Voter Summit 2012. As she noted, if anyone wanted to know why Hillary Clinton was being attacked along with her aid Huma Abedin, look no further than the wingnuts appearing at this event.
Here's more with a rundown of that from Right Wing Watch: Who's Who at the Values Voter Summit 2012:
This weekend Republican and conservative leaders, including GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, are set to address the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Last year, nearly every single Republican candidate for President addressed the conference, where speakers denounced gay rights, secular government, legal abortion and the Mormon faith.
This year, Ryan will be speaking at a conference that is playing host to some of the most extreme activists in the Religious Right who have made careers demonizing gays and lesbians, attacking the freedoms of Muslim-Americans and promoting wild conspiracies about President Obama. [...]
Jerry Boykin
Family Research Council vice president and retired Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin sparked a controversy when, as a high-ranking official in the Bush Defense Department, he framed the War on Terror as a holy war against Islam. He has since built a career as a Religious Right speaker, specializing in anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Obama conspiracy theories. He:
- asserted that “Islam is evil”;
- rejects religious freedom for American Muslims, claiming that Islam “is not just a religion, it is a totalitarian way of life.”
- wants to ban mosques;
- warned Obama is using the health care reform law as a cover to establish a private army of Brownshirts loyal just to him;
- accused the Obama administration of showing “support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government”;
- claimed the bailout of AIG led to the establishment of Sharia law;
- said that American Jews were misled into supporting Democrats by wrongly thinking Adolf Hitler was right-wing extremist;
Along with his role at the FRC, Boykin is also a leading member of the dominionist group The Oak Initiative. In a speech at the group’s conference last April, he declared that George Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations conspired to collapse the U.S. economy in order to help Obama get elected. [...]
Kamal Saleem
Kamal Saleem tells audiences at Religious Right conferences he is ex-terrorist, yet he refuses to provide any details substantiating his claims, and his story has been repeatedly debunked as a myth. Saleem is using his phony story to claim that President Obama is likely a secret Muslim who wants to change the laws so “terrorism will be legal” and everyone will “be wearing ragheads” as part of his twenty year plan to bring about Sharia law. According to Saleem, Roe v. Wade is part of a plot to “bring Sharia law liberally in our face” and that U.S. currency in some parts of the country now reads “In Allah We Trust.” Along with the Obama administration and the judiciary, Saleem says radical Islamists have penetrated the education system, medical and banking industries, the church and the U.S. military, claiming that “many generals who swore to destroy the United States of America are generals in the United States” and that the hate crimes law and contraception mandate are part of a plan to instill Sharia law and to try and go about “legalizing terrorism.”
Frank Gaffney
Frank Gaffney tries to pose as an intellectual to promote his own anti-Muslim and anti-Obama conspiracies, and has significant sway over Republicans in Congress who believe them. Frank Gaffney is a proud birther and has called President Obama “America’s first Muslim president,” while suggesting that Obama is out to become a dictator by using similar tactics as Adolf Hitler. He accuses Obama of simultaneously pushing Sharia law and the “radical homosexual agenda” and also asserting that George W. Bush’s inner circle and the conservative movements were also penetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. His outrageous conspiracies got him banned from the American Conservative Union’s CPAC and a weekly meeting of top conservative activists . He continues to smear even Republicans, including John McCain and John Boehner, who don’t sign on to his anti-Muslim conspiracies.
You can read about the rest of the speakers at the link above, but these were the few Maddow featured in the clip above. This is just one more sign that Romney and Ryan have given up completely on independents and are still desperately hoping to get their base out, or Ryan wouldn't be anywhere near this event.
