TO: Republicans in Name Only

FROM: The American Conservative Union

RE: What’s not in your mailbox

As you are no doubt aware, we have chosen to be more selective this year in issuing invitations to speak at our Conservative Political Action Conference, the nation’s premier gathering of “Americans who are concerned with liberty, personal responsibility, traditional values and strong national defense.”©

This is CPAC’s 40th anniversary, and we are quite proud of our lineup.

We have invited speakers who’ve played major roles in the Republican Party’s greatest successes in recent years, including Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Allen West and Rick Santorum.

We’re also featuring some of our party’s rising stars, including Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is valuable again because he speaks Spanish and his son George P. Bush might someday prove electable.

We’ve invited many of our old friends, including National Rifle Association President David Keene and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. (They’re such a hoot after hours in the piano lounge! We hear they’re planning a Ted Nugent medley this year!)

We’re welcoming back our longtime emissary to women voters, Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, who has some excitingly familiar ideas for outreach efforts.

And we’re proud to announce that we’ll be joined this year by Donald Trump, “an American patriot and success story with a massive following among small government conservatives.”©

There are, of course, some notable absences from our guest list. This has drawn inordinate attention from members of the liberal media, who relentlessly weave the handbaskets in which President Barack Obama is carrying us all to hell.

We had not intended to address our guest list any further until our good friend Newt Gingrich — who, as of this writing, is still an invited speaker — raised concerns about it on our good friend Laura Ingraham’s radio show.

“I don’t know how they define who gets to come in and who doesn’t get to come in,” he said. “And my sense is the board is not very open and not very clear about, you know, whether it’s personality decisions or what they’re thinking.”

Let us be very open and very clear.

We’re on a safari, and we’re hunting RINOs.

You read that correctly.

We don’t care how popular you are with unions in a historically blue Northeastern state or how much you cut spending or how tough you talk to unions — if you put your arms around this president and do anything remotely close to hugging him, we don’t want to hear from you.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, meet former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. You’re Democrats to us.

And we don’t care how popular you are in a vital swing state or how strongly you stand with us on social issues or how great a job you did on your master’s thesis about the proper role of women in society — if you raise taxes, we don’t want to hear from you.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, hit the road. And take your quisling chief jobs creator, “Independent Republican” Bill Bolling, with you.

We are not moderate. But, to be clear, we are not unforgiving.

After Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal referred to us as the “stupid party” for the 6,574th time after the election, we were inclined to strike him from our speaking list, too.

But we’re giving him one more chance.

We are, after all, a big tent. Sitting in the middle of a big ol’ safari.©

Weather Journal

16 hours ago