Radical right-wing Moms welcome 5 top GOP 2024 hopefuls to weekend summit in Philly

UPDATE: Saturday, Jul 1, 2023 · 8:15:22 PM +00:00

The coverage from Moms for Liberty’s weekend hate camp is pouring in, and as you might expect, some outlets nailed it while others lost the plot.

First, an accurate take from The Daily Beast:

The incendiary rhetoric directed toward LGBTQ people and their advocates on stage was certainly hateful, but it also serves to justify a host of behaviors and policies that don’t actually help parents or their children. It also works to cast Republicans’ political opponents not just as people who disagree but as immoral villains who must be defeated by any means necessary, let alone compromised with.

The establishment conservative movement has long sought to undermine public education, and some of its biggest players have predictably rushed to support Moms for Liberty and groups like it. Its founders have discovered allies in a host of conservative movement groups with large bases of support and dollars. Heritage Foundation and Liberty Institute, two of the most powerful and well-funded think tanks in Washington, sponsored Moms for Liberty’s summit this year.

Now, before you get too comfortable, peep this fluff-festooned fuckery from ABC So-called News:

They call themselves joyful warriors — but this group of conservative moms are mad.

They’re mad at their teachers, their principals, their president. And now they’re fighting back through school boards, local elections and — if they get their way — their next president.

This weekend’s Moms for Liberty conference showcases how local issues like education can have tremendous, galvanizing national influence, as Gov. Ron DeSantis, former President Donald Trump, and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley tried to woo nearly 700 attendees of the over 150,000-member group Friday.

Hmm, way to make them sound like normal, concerned parents, ABC!

Finally, enjoy this photo essay of LGBTQ+ folks and allies showing Moms for Liberty what democracy really looks like.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Moms for Liberty is a radical and dangerous right-wing extremist group. Which means it still has a ways to go to catch up to the Republican Party—a fringe political organization that now rejects freedom, democracy (here and abroad), the rule of law, and the American dream in favor of virulent, flag-humping troglodytes like Donald Trump.

And because Republican primaries have long since devolved into a vapid ~~beauty~~ ugly-racist contest, several GOP presidential candidates are traveling to Philadelphia this weekend to be feted and/or vetted by the M4L group, which might be more accurately dubbed Moms for Banning Pretty Much Every Book in the Canon Except the One With All the Rapes and Genocides (aka M4BPMEBCEOWRG).

Among those attending are Donald Trump and four other GOP “candidates” who are pretending to run against him, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose idea of running for president is promising to pardon his top competitor—and maybe hold down Attorney General Merrick Garland as Trump gives him a raging pink belly—if elected.