The GOP's Muslim Connection

WASHINGTON -- As conservatives try to journey back from the political wilderness, will they take Muslims along for the ride? One speaker during the weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference said the party must embrace Muslims to regain the hearts and minds of more American voters.

Ali Hasan, founder of Muslims For America, took the stage at the Omni Shoreham Friday as part of CPAC's roundtable of state conservative activists. The '08 CO state legislative candidate (he lost with 47% of the vote) and one-time media darling believes the conservative message needs to change.

"If you're against labor unions, you're a conservative," he said. "If you're against bailouts, you're a conservative. It doesn't matter if you're gay, Mexican or Muslim."

There wasn't much of talk during the conference of those divisive social issues once commonly associated with American conservatism. The man who won the most support for the 2012 nomination in the CPAC straw poll, former MA Gov. Mitt Romney, didn't mention gay marriage in his keynote address. Other than a reference to "defending religious freedom," he didn't include references to religious faith either. Instead, Romney focused on the economy, warning the crowd "this is going to get a little thick, but bear with me," before he dived headlong into proposal to tie social security benefit levels to the consumer price index ("and not the wage index").

The shift comes as no surprise to Hasan. "I've never understood why being for low taxes and limited government automatically makes you anti-gay, ant-immigrant or anti-Muslim," he said in an interview. "To me, conservatism is about open mindedness."

But he said the shift away from the social conservative message evidenced by the Romney speech and others given at CPAC isn't necessarily permanent. "I think they're reducing the rhetoric on the anti-stuff" in favor of an economic message, he said. "But I'd hate to see us fall back on the xenophobia."

After the jump, Hasan on the danger of Ann Coulter and why he says Sarah Palin is the best candidate for Muslim conservatives.

Hasan traces the nation's recent bout with "xenophobia" to 9/11, which he said turned a "tolerant" conservative message used by George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign into "paranoia" against Muslims on the part of some. He said he hopes to use Muslims for America to educate conservatives about Islam and what he said are "the more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide who aren't against America."

Hasan says the conservative negativity toward Muslims reached a peak during the 2008 election cycle, when then-candidate Barack Obama's Christian faith was questioned by some on the right. During the homestretch of the election, GOP nominee John McCain tried to put a damper on the faith questions by saying "no, ma'am, he's not. He's a decent, family man" when a supporter declared during a campaign event that Barack Obama was "an Arab." At the time, Arab-American and Muslim groups said the statement may have actually served to reinforce conservative fears that Muslims were dangerous to the nation.

Hasan said McCain lost because Americans weren't interested in some of the anti-Muslim language utilized by the GOPer's campaign. In the end, he said that talk of Obama palling around with terrorists fractured GOP electorate rather than uniting it behind their nominee.

That's where Muslims For America comes in, Hasan says. He hopes to use the organization to build a base of conservatives opposed to the kind of social message that arose in the '08 cycle. It's the only way, he said, that conservatives can hope to return to power. Sitting in his group's large, brightly-decorated booth in the CPAC exhibition hall, Hasan said he was well-received. He said more than 100 people joined his "nearly" 1,000-person membership list and that many more than that were open to him.

"The majority wants to be open-minded," he repeated.

"When we continue to invite speakers like Ann Coulter who promote anti-Muslim stuff...I think we lose more people by doing that than gain people," Hasan said. If the economy ceases to be issue #1 in the minds of most politicians, Hasan said there's a strong chance things could shift back to a combative and divisive Coulter-style message. "How do we prevent that? By having a booth here, by doing what we're doing," he said. "Will it work? Ask me in a year."

The signature straw poll of attendees suggested that many young conservatives were already investing their 2012 White House hopes in Romney. The '08 and '07 straw poll winner beat the rest of the potential 2012 GOP field in the poll by more than 10 points.

But Hasan said that Romney is not his favored candidate. "Sarah Palin," he said quickly when asked who he supports in '12. The AK gov. energized the deepest corners of the GOP when she was selected as McCain's running mate late last year, and many observers said her appearance was the beginning of much of the anti-Muslim rhetoric entering the mainstream debate. Hasan acknowledged that it was a surprising answer on its face -- and agreed that Palin's "palling around with terrorists" talk was at least partly responsible for the anti-Muslim fervor found among some at McCain rallies near the end of the race.

"I'm giving her a pass on that stuff," he said. "I think [the McCain campaign] didn't use her right. They didn't allow her to be who she is."

Who she is, Hasan says, is a conservative governor who has focused fiscal issues and corruption during her time in AK. Ironically, he claimed, Palin stayed away from the social issues as governor that have become her signature on the national stage. "I've never heard her say anything purely anti-Muslim," he said. "If she keeps it focused on fiscal corruption, we'll be with her."

Hasan's still clearly a GOP outsider -- one only had to look across the exhibit hall aisle at the crowds gathered around Joe Wurzelbacher -- aka Joe the Plumber -- to see that. But there is evidence that his call to leave social issues on the sidelines for now is being heeded.

(EVAN McMORRIS-SANTORO)