Mitt Romney Legitimizing White Nationalists By Speaking At CPAC Today

Our guest blogger is Daniella Gibbs Leger, Vice President for New American Communities Initiatives at the Center for American Progress.

Today, GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich will kiss the ring of CPAC, the annual gathering of hundreds of conservative activists in Washington, DC. This is a must-do pilgrimage for anyone running for president on the GOP ticket; in fact this is where Romney ended his 2008 campaign. There are usually a host of controversial panelists and topics, but this year they’ve outdone themselves.

As noted by PFAW, this year, among the participants in the conference is Peter Brimelow and Robert Vandervoort. Brimelow is the founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE, a site known for publishing the works of racist and anti-Semitic authors. Robert Vandervoort is the director of ProEnglish, an English-only group, and is a former leader of the White Nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance.

These aren’t just your average conservative activists. They have actively pushed the idea that our diversity is killing us, that Jews are destroying the American white majority, and that non-white immigrants are the cause for our economic problems.

We’ve already seen a GOP more than willing to use racially-coded language throughout the primary season. But is presumed front runner Romney really going to appear at the same conference as people who spew such hatred towards people of color and ethnic minorities? If he wants to be the president of ALL Americans and not just white Americans, Mitt Romney should refuse to speak today. And if he feels he must go on stage, then he needs to denounce Brimelow and Vanervoort’s odious beliefs from the stage. Anything less is tantamount to agreeing with what they say.