The CNP was founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders who would gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and candidates to advance the far-right agenda. Twenty-five years later, it is still secretly pursuing those goals with amazing success.

Since its founding, the tax-exempt organization has been meeting three times a year. Members have come and gone, but all share something in common: They are powerful figures, drawn from both the Religious Right and the anti-government, anti-tax wing of the ultra-conservative movement.

It may sound like a far-left conspiracy theory, but the CNP is all too real and, its critics would argue, all too influential.

CNP’s first president was Tim LaHaye famed millenialist preacher and writer of the Left Behind series of popular books about the “end-times” and the Second Coming of Christ. LaHaye,like the whole of the nation’s Religious Right leaders, nurtured a strong contempt for the First Amendment principle of church-state separation, because it seriously complicates their goal of installing fundamentalist Christianity as the nation’s officially recognized religion.

Many members of the CNP are part of the Christian Recon­struc­tionist movement. Reconstructionists espouse a radical theology that calls for trashing the U.S. Constitution and replacing it with the harsh legal code of the Old Testament. They advocate the death penalty for adulterers, blasphemers, incorrigible teen­agers, gay people, “witches” and those who worship “false gods.”

Some well-known figures affiliated with the CNP include Rev. Jerry Falwell, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and the Rev. Pat Robertson. But its the lesser-known CNP mainstays that are more indicative of the organization’s politics. They include:

* Richard Shoff, a former Ku Klux Klan leader in Indiana.
* John McGoff, an ardent supporter of the former apartheid South African regime.
* R.J. Rushdoony, the theological leader of America’s “Christian Reconstruction” movement, which advocates that Christian fundamentalists take “dominion” over America by abolishing democracy and instituting Old Testament Law. Rushdoony’s Reconstructionalists believe that “homosexuals . . . adulterers , blasphemers, astrologers and others will be executed,” along with disobedient children.
* Reed Larson, head of anti-union National Right to Work Committee.
* Don Wildmon, TV censorship activist and accused anti-Semite.
* Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other principals from the Iran-Contra Scandal.

The idea of an African-American like Blackwell speaking to a racist cabal like the CNP may seem incongruous. But Blackwell has been courting extremist right wing support for a long time. Most importantly he has been embraced and supported by Rev. Rob Parsley of the powerful World Harvest Church. Parsley is a wealthy right-wing extremist with a powerful grassroots network throughout the state, and a major stake in Blackwell’s taking to the governorship. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio. With Blackwell’s continued control of the voting apparatus, the CNP and Republican Party could well step into an era of unchallenged national domination.