I have, for me, shown an amazing amount of restraint in keeping my mouth shut on an issue about which I can stay silent no longer — GOProud and CPAC.

RedState’s parent company, Eagle Publishing, Inc., is a long time sponsor of CPAC. RedState itself is helping FreedomWorks sponsor Bloggers Row. We were the sole sponsor of Bloggers Row last year. I will be speaking at CPAC at the Young America’s Foundation luncheon named in honor of Tom Phillips, my friend and also the big boss at Eagle Publishing, Inc.

I have done my best to stay out of this business, keep my mouth shut, and appreciate my friends on both sides of the CPAC divide. Had I not seen this particular attack by GOProud against long time solid conservatives I’d continue keeping my mouth shut. But this is too much. And my guess is that there aren’t many if any willing to call foul, so I will do it.

As someone who spent time trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, I accept this as conclusive proof that, while it is a Republican organization, GOProud is not a conservative organization.

Let me tell you why.

What has my blood pressure up is this particular bit from the article:

Of the Heritage Foundation’s decision, he says, ”They’ve chosen to – and it’s a mystery to me why – but they’ve chosen to align themselves with the losers.”

Asked to explain, Barron places the blame at the feet of Cleta Mitchell, the big-name Republican D.C. lawyer who was the attorney for the groups trying to keep marriage equality from coming to the District. Mitchell did not respond to multiple requests from Metro Weekly for comment.

”I think there’s a couple people in Heritage who, at the behest of Cleta Mitchell – who is just a nasty bigot … she got some of the people at Heritage early on fired up about this,” Barron says. ”We tried very, very hard to smooth this over and to avoid any public fight with Heritage and then when Heritage came up with their excuse about how this wasn’t about GOProud – first of all, we knew it was, we knew it was six months ago – but we were willing to publicly let them.”

You really should read the whole thing. You’ll learn that should you disagree with GOProud, you are a bigot too. In fact there are lots of delightful quotes. GOProud has taken one of the favorite leftist bullet points and brought it straight into CPAC. You oppose affirmative action? You’re a racist. You oppose gay marriage? You’re a bigot.

Wonderful trick. Sadly, it is being used on real heros within the conservative movement, including Cleta Mitchell, a board member of the American Conservative Union.

According to the dictionary, a bigot is a person “obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of [their] own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions.”

Chris Barron might want to look in the mirror.

Cleta Mitchell is not just my friend and lawyer, she is one of the keystones of the conservative movement in Washington, D.C. When Sharron Angle’s campaign seemed off the rails right after the primary, it was Cleta who went in to help right the ship. It was Cleta Mitchell who stepped up to defend Christine O’Donnell when no one else would. It was Cleta Mitchell who exerted pressure on wavering conservatives to get on board Marco Rubio’s campaign. It was Cleta Mitchell who helped organize defense and offense for a host of conservative causes headed to court. It remains Cleta Mitchell who does not hesitate to give advice for new conservative organizations and pick up the phone to raise money for conservative causes and candidates.

In fact, let me now fully disabuse you of the notion that GOProud is a conservative organization.

While Cleta Mitchell was fighting for children, Chris Barron was signing up to work for the champions of child killing.

While Cleta Mitchell was fighting for people’s right to work, GOProud was aligning itself with the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.

While Cleta Mitchell was helping the Senate Conservatives Fund get people like Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and others elected, GOProud was attacking Jim DeMint.

While Cleta Mitchell was in super secret meetings of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy this week, GOProud was attacking Tim Pawlenty for daring to defend conservative positions on don’t ask-don’t tell.

Those groups and people who have sat out CPAC this year have done so not because they hate the gays, as Grover Norquist and GOProud would have you believe, but because GOProud is not a conservative organization and its agenda is not a conservative agenda.

For that, they are called losers and nasty bigots.

These losers and nasty bigots have done a lot more for the conservative movement than GOProud. And I am very happy to call them my friends.

This week, I’d much rather be with them than be at CPAC.