Pawlenty, CPAC and the John Birch Society

In February, Gov. Tim Pawlenty will take his undeclared campaign for the Republican presidential nomination back to Washington, D.C., for the Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC, as it is always called, is a  major annual gathering of conservatives and an opportunity for Repub candidates and might-be candidates to strut their stuff before various elements of the party base (although CPAC, which is put on by the American Conservative Union, is technically non-partisan).

Among the co-sponsors of the conference one finds a name one hasn’t heard much since the mid-20th century — the John Birch Society. As a refugee from that century, I can tell you that when your mom and I were kids the “Birchers” (I use the term I grew up using and mean no offense by it) were a leading symbol of right-wing extremism.

So this is an obvious set-up to play the always popular “dissociate yourself” card. Under the rules of that card game, everyone involved in CPAC (including Pawlenty, as a speaker) has to repudiate the Birchers or be tainted by association with the most extreme thing the group ever said or did. It’s fun and easy to play (see Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) but also stupid and demeaning (ibid). A letter-writer to the Strib played the card early this week, asserting that Pawlenty’s attendance would amount to an endorsement of Bircher views.

I actually did inquire of the spokester for Pawlenty’s undeclared campaign whether the governor might want to comment on whether his willingness to speak at an event co-sponsored by the John Birch Society implied any association between his views and theirs, but the calls and emails (over several days) received no reply. Still, I cannot bring myself to play the card.

I was surprised and interested to learn that the John Birch Society was still in business. But, as this recent NYTimes where-are-they-now feature indicates, they are still kicking, based in Grand Chute, Wis., (near Appleton, Oshkosh, Green Bay), still believing in what its leaders call a satanic conspiracy to take over the world. In Birch’s heyday (the late 1950s and early ’60s), the conspiracy was pretty much Communism, with its quest for global domination. The JBS was famous for a tendency to see communism everywhere. It’s leaders back then opposed the civil rights movement on the grounds that it was a Communist front, and that the spreading movement to fluoridate water (as a cavity-fighting measure) was also a Communist plot.

The great writer of satirical political songs of that era, Tom Lehrer, wrote a song about the JBS that included the couplet:

“You cannot trust your neighbor, or even next of kin
If your mommie is a commie then you gotta turn her in.”

A long list of prominent American leaders — including many top Republicans, by the way — were considered by the Birchers to be Communist dupes. The Society’s founder and early leader, a retired candy manufacturer named Robert Welch, asserted that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a conscious agent of international communism. Crazy as that sounds today (and it really sounded crazy to a lot of people then, too) the New York Times described the JBS as “by far the most successful and ‘respectable’ radical right organization in the country.”

The Birchers were also isolationists who started a movement around the slogan “get the U.S. out of the U.N.; and the U.N. out of the U.S.” They believed the United Nations represented a conspiracy to do away with individual national governments.

The modern day Birch Society still subscribes to the idea of getting the U.S. out of the U.N. (and vice versa) and it still believes there is a conspiracy to do away the the United states as a separate nation (the current theory revolves around the so-called North American Union, that would merge the United States with Canada and Mexico).

So, back to the present. If Tim Pawlenty wants to be president, he certainly must say what he thinks the U.S. relationship to the U.N. should be, but he doesn’t have to start from any particular that he agrees with the long-standing JBS position just because he spoke at a conference co-sponsored by the JBS.

Lisa DePasquale, CPAC director, told me Thursday that the conference will have 90-some cosponsors. To become a co-sponsor, she said, all an organization has to do is agree with the core principles of the American Conservative Union Foundation, outlined in a series of articles on its website, and buy an ad in the Conference’s program. Co-sponsorship gets you an exhibition booth in the hall and the right to participate in meetings to plan the event. The JBS has not been a co-sponsor of previous CPACs, but DePasquale said they met the crieria, they “seem to be on our side,” and she didn’t think they should be shunned over things they said and did 50 years ago. “Most of the people on both sides of those arguments are dead,” she added.

She agreed with me that wasn’t reasonable to assume that Pawlenty’s participation as a speaker implied any agreement with JBS’s explicit positions, part or present. “If every speaker had to agree with every position of every co-sponsor, we wouldn’t have very many co-sponsors,” she said.

Of course, Pawlenty is no more implicated in JBS’s beliefs than any of the many other speakers, which includes other leading undeclared presidential candidates such as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Mike Huckabee was scheduled but has canceled. Sarah Palin was invited but has declined. The current list of speakers, co-sponsors and exhibitors is available here.

Other possible candidates — U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, former Sen. Rick Santorum — will also speak and their names will be included on the famous straw poll, taken most years at CPAC, in which attendees indicate who they would like to the Repubs nominate. Romney has won the last three years running. Last year was the first year that Pawlenty’s name was on the straw poll and he finished ninth with 2 percent. (Romney won with 20 percent.)

Pawlenty needs to improve on that showing more than he needs to repudiate the John Birch Society, but he really needs to return my calls anyway.