Washington's annual Conservative Political Action Conference is always a major audition for Republican presidential candidates, who show up and tell interest groups whatever they want to hear. But in 2011, will the gays scare everyone away?

GOProud, the ultra-conservative gay separatists from the Log Cabin Republicans and noble defenders of Willow Palin's tragic Facebook typing, caused a skirmish at 2010's CPAC, too, when some twat from California's Young Americans for Freedom denounced organizers for giving GOProud its first invitation. The CPAC crowd did boo this twat though. GOProud was promoting a "draft Dick Cheney for president" campaign at the time, so the crowd — and most of America, presumably — sided with them.

GOProud will be back at CPAC again this year, of course. So which entrenched members of the Republican coalition will pick a stupid fight over this again? The Religious Right, you say? How goddamn predictable:

Two of the nation's premier moral issues organizations, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are refusing to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in February because a homosexual activist group, GOProud, has been invited. [...]

FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud.

Few things would be better for CPAC than all of these old social conservative hack groups sitting it out. Republicans won't win shit in 2012 if they can't keep the focus on the terrible economy. Social conservatives will always vote in solid numbers for Republicans in presidential election years, but this is one where flaky promises about constitutional bans on gay marriage or the existence of unwed vaginas would just scare independents away more than anything else.

[via Wonkette]