I don't how to say this more simply and emphatically: Conservatives need to stop listening to liberals.
There are many liberals around these days who masquerade as conservatives and offer advice to make conservatism more relevant, more hip, more acceptable in polite company, more mainstream and, of course, ultimately, less conservative.
Hoover is a pampered, upper-crust elitist, married to John Avlon of the Daily Beast, who portrays himself as a raging moderate, but only seems to find venom when writing about conservatives. (See his book "Wingnuts," which attacks Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sarah Palin and me. Then he gingerly scolds Keith Olbermann to establish his moderate bona fides.)
Hoover is reportedly positioning herself for a run at statewide office in New York in the near future – as a Republican, of course.
In her latest missive, Hoover hails Bernard Goldberg as a "reformed liberal" for denouncing a "strain of bigotry" within the conservative movement. What's he talking about? He's talking about an American Family Association campaign to get JC Penney to find a new national spokesman – somebody other than the highly successful, professional lesbian Ellen DeGeneres.
Hoover quotes Goldberg, whose reformation as a liberal is far from complete, as saying: "[T]here is a strain of bigotry, and it goes against gay people. … Reasonable people may disagree on gay marriage, that's fine. But to call on somebody's dismissal, to be fired, to lose her job because she is gay, is bigotry. And I don't care how many people listening to us right now don't like that. It's bigotry."
Of course, there's a problem with this conclusion by Goldberg. DeGeneres just doesn't happen to be "gay." She has chosen her public gayness as her identity. Without it, DeGeneres ceases to have a brand. So it's perfectly legitimate for the American Family Association and its affiliate organizations to wonder why JC Penney, which could choose any celebrity to be its spokesman, chose DeGeneres. DeGeneres is a political activist as well as a celebrity and entertainer. It is perfectly within the AFA's First Amendment rights and civic duties as a pro-family organization to suggest to JC Penney that it is losing customers through its association with that kind of controversy.
That's not bigotry. It's politics. And if conservatives and Americans who believe in marriage and the family don't start playing it more effectively, they will lose the cornerstone institutions that made America great.
Hoover uses this example of "bigotry" to attack the Conservative Political Action Conference for excluding as a sponsor the faux conservative organization GOProud, which actively promotes same-sex marriage, hate-crimes laws and open participation in the U.S. military by lesbians, transgendereds, transvestites and, yes, homosexuals.
Hoover proudly serves on the advisory board of GOProud.
Why wasn't GOProud allowed at CPAC? According to Hoover, it's because conservatives are bigoted. It's what she calls "the politics of hate."
I have to tell you, people who use that kind of language about the conservative movement are, by definition, not conservatives. Let's just be honest about it.
She's particularly upset that I was allowed to be involved in CPAC – but, of course, that's not bigotry on her part. She knows I played no small role in challenging GOProud and challenging what CPAC had become under the old leadership – a politically correct event hungry for great press reviews.
Here's where she gives herself away: "In a week where a circuit appeals court in California upheld that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, and where acceptance of homosexual Americans are increasingly accepted as full members of our society, where discrimination written into our military is being dismantled, some key leaders of the American conservative movement embrace the opposite trend."
Hoover knows nothing of the principles of American conservatism.
She certainly doesn't embrace them.
Having a few conservative ideas, like believing in free enterprise rather than socialism, does not make one a conservative. Someone who doesn't embrace the biblical, eternal truths that undergird American conservatism can never really make the complete journey from the left.
I should know. I made that journey long ago.