Little-Known Group Draws Some Big-Time Conservatives · 16 February 2010
Frontenac — Far from the media glare of the Tea Party national convention taking place in Tennessee, and hours before TV personality Glenn Beck was to appear at a St. Louis arena, Phyllis Schlafly got up to speak in the hotel ballroom.
About 400 people waited for her Friday morning beneath the glass
chandeliers. The 85-year-old activist wore a sharp pink jacket and
skirt, a golden eagle pin on her lapel.
Schlafly is decades removed from her brightest turn in the limelight,
back in the 1970s when the St. Louis native's opposition to the Equal
Rights Amendment gave her something approaching the conservative star
power of a Sarah Palin or a Bill O'Reilly. But Friday at the St. Louis
Frontenac Hilton, Schlafly struck a note that showed she still
resonated with her audience. She got a standing ovation before saying a
word.
She criticized the nation's public schools. She warned of a connection
"between a slide into socialism" and "the left-wing indoctrination in
our schools." She dismissed global warming. "The polar bears are doing
just fine." She said students were being trained "to be cheerleaders
for Barack Obama."
And then she was asked a question that cuts to the heart of what had
drawn this audience on a snowy day in February: "How long can
conservatives hold out against the leftist ideology spreading in the
schools?"
Schlafly's talk was the opening for the first full day of the two-day
Constitutional Coalition's Educational Policy Conference. "They need to
change the name. It sounds so boring," Susan Holden of Olivette said
with a laugh, attending the event for the second time.
But this conference with the stodgy name has been around for 21
years. And the St. Louis-based Constitutional Coalition was started
even earlier — in 1978 — by a small group worried about Soviet missiles
and national defense, said one of its founders, Donna Hearne, who has
deep Republican credentials of her own.
"As you can see, we are not the Tea Partiers," Hearne said, scanning a serious-looking crowd sipping morning coffee and water.
The Tea Party, renowned for town hall shout-downs and flashy protests,
emerged last year as a revolt against President Barack Obama's economic
policies and health care plan. It has gained considerable clout with
conservatives and is trying to establish itself as a national political
force. Groups like the Constitutional Coalition are its less-famous
ideological forebearers.
The conference has changed some with the times. It was once
invitation-only. Now anyone can come for $200 to $500. While the
coalition is nonpartisan in name, the conference, as it unfolded
Friday, is a place where a liberal would feel acutely uncomfortable.
Last year, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham was the featured
speaker. Attendance spiked. And this year, the conference landed Glenn
Beck, bombastic host of the nation's third highest-rated TV talk show.
His talk for Friday night was moved to Chaifetz Arena to accommodate
anticipated demand.
Hearne said she was delighted to land Beck, even if he gets a little
too aggressive. "He does get a little into your face at times," she
said.
The speakers on Friday focused on problems in the schools and media.
Ted Baehr, publisher of a popular family- and Christian-friendly film
guide, picked apart Michael Moore's movie "Capitalism: A Love Story."
He played a clip of Moore saying, "Capitalism is evil. And you cannot
regulate evil." The ballroom groaned.
"Oh my," said one person.
Baehr described how Moore dismissed Ronald Reagan as a Wall Street
stooge. "If you think that's bad, you should see what he does to
Jesus." Gasps filled the room.
Baehr flashed through pie charts. One showed heavy TV viewers were more
likely to be socialist. Another reflected a study reporting 90 percent
of children were abandoning their parents' values.
But Baehr offered the audience some hope. Hollywood was producing more
family-friendly movies. Religion-themed films were gaining attention.
The focus on film continued with Ann McElhinney, an Irish moviemaker.
She was there to plug her film "Not Evil. Just Wrong," which dismisses
global warming and specifically, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."
McElhinney opened with a confession. She used to be "a leftist" —
something several speakers and some attendees admitted to. "It's a
default position for nice people," McElhinney told the crowd to laughs.
She warned about the teaching of "green religion" in the schools, where
environmentalism trumps all other concerns, and Gore's film is an
unquestioned part of the curriculum. And she feared that all this
global warming news was just depressing U.S. schoolkids "because it is
all bad news. Because it is all caused by capitalism. And it is all
caused by humans."
She left to a standing ovation.
Faced with a short break, people streamed out of the ballroom and into
an adjourning bookstore. A stack of 100 McElhinney DVDs, selling for
$19.50, was whittled down to two.
"Anybody who's spoken, there's an immediate rush afterwards," said bookstore volunteer Sheryl Watts.
State Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, introduced a former
Missouri State University student who clashed with professors over
support for gay foster adoption. Cunningham also said there has been a
jump in sexual abuse by teachers, leading her to declare the classroom
as a place "that indoctrinates you, sexually abuses you and where
you're just plain not safe."
Perhaps the biggest name to talk Friday morning was David Horowitz, the
conservative activist who has made headlines for accusing universities
and instructors of being anti-American.
Last year, St. Louis University — worried about how Horowitz would
depict Muslims — withdrew an invitation for him to give a campus talk
titled "Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights." On Friday, Horowitz
said Islam is a "political religion ... not comparable to Judaism or
Christianity or Buddhism for that matter." Heavy applause broke out in
the ballroom.
And Horowitz warned the audience not to trust people on the opposite
end of the political spectrum. "People who are leftist do not respect
you," he said. "They hate you."
It was a little heated for Beth McNamara, a Kirkwood mother of two
teenagers. She was most drawn to concerns about national educational
standards and the loss of local control of school districts. She said
the conference opened her eyes.
"And I don't consider myself this far-right person," she said.
The dour economy has her worried. Her husband owns a small business. He
has had to cut back. And Obama's policies, McNamara said, were not
helping.
"The silver lining of all this," she said, "is that people are waking up."
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