By Paul Waldman The American conservative movement is a cult.
Its core beliefs are antithetical to the principles that animate many conservative movements.
That means that even though the party’s base is conservative, many in the party do not subscribe to the party orthodoxy.
The Republican Party is a party of ideologues.
The Party is the party of bigots.
The GOP is an ideological sect.
And the cult is all too often a source of anxiety for conservatives.
That is the message that has been conveyed by many conservatives, and by many Republicans in Congress, in recent weeks.
They have heard from some of the most conservative members of Congress.
Some of the loudest voices in the GOP, and in the House, have been calling for an end to the cult.
And they have been heard from the GOP leadership.
They are heard in the corridors of power, in the halls of the Capitol.
They echo the call of conservative activist leaders, such as Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, and the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, to end the “cult of personality” and “get to the bottom of the issue of sexual harassment and abuse.”
The most recent example comes from Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who is among the most prominent figures in the conservative movement.
Meadows has repeatedly called for a complete and immediate investigation into the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood producer and film mogul.
He is also among the loud voices in Congress calling for a full accounting of what happened to Ashley Judd, a former Playboy Playmate, who says she was sexually harassed and assaulted by Weinstein.
He has said he has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the allegations.
But the Senate GOP leadership has refused to take up Meadows’s request.
Meadows’ calls for a bipartisan investigation are a symptom of a broader problem: that there is a growing, if sometimes unspoken, fear among many Republicans that they are being watched and that their voice is being listened to, or that they could be held accountable.
The question is whether these fears are rooted in fact or have grown into an entrenched belief that the GOP establishment is conspiring to obstruct the investigation and silence the voices of conservatives.
“It’s the cult of personality,” said Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
“There’s no question that the culture of the Republican Party has been hijacked by some people who think that if you do not agree with them, you are somehow bad, you’re not as good, you should be silenced.”
In some cases, the establishment is acting in ways that are not necessarily the interests of the conservative community.
“The Senate’s failure to investigate sexual harassment has left me in disbelief,” said one top Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
“I’ve never heard the Senate do anything about the culture or the party.”
In one instance, Senate Republicans in 2010 voted to block an investigation into how sexual harassment cases are handled in the Senate.
That vote was based on a report by a Senate ethics committee that concluded that Senate rules did not require a separate inquiry into the sexual misconduct allegations against Judd.
The report, issued by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, noted that while the Senate ethics process requires committees to investigate misconduct cases, it also requires committees “to report findings of the committee to the public and the public to the committee.”
It concluded that the ethics investigation should have been launched into the behavior of Judd.
That same year, a Senate committee investigating sexual harassment in the U.S. Senate decided to not investigate a complaint of sexual misconduct by former Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. It noted that the alleged misconduct was a “disgrace” and that the Senate Ethics Committee had no jurisdiction over Gillibrands behavior.
A former Senate staffer who was on the Ethics Committee staff told The American that the decision was made to not pursue the matter, based on the fact that GillibrAND’s behavior was not directly related to the Ethics investigation.
That staffer said that the committee was aware of the Gillibranders behavior, but that it decided to defer to the ethics probe and not to pursue the case.
A spokesperson for the Ethics Commission said that they did not respond to The American’s request for comment about Gillibrandi behavior.
But it is not clear if Gillibrandan’s actions were covered by the Ethics Act, and that was the case for Gillibrande’s behavior.
The Ethics Commission also concluded that there was no basis to investigate Gillibrando’s behavior, which is why it did not conduct an investigation.
But in the end, the Ethics Office concluded that Gillberts behavior was an issue for the Senate to investigate, despite Gillibrard’s behavior being unrelated to the investigation.
The Senate Ethics investigation is not the only instance of GOP obstruction.
In September, the Senate voted to cut off $2 million in federal funding to
