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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann Thursday likened the conservative movement to the Civil Rights movement, a comparison that some may find offensive.

"Of any election, this is the one where conservatives don't have to settle," the candidate said at an Orlando rally organized by Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition.

"President Obama's approval numbers are the lowest they've ever been, and I am here to tell you, they are going lower further," she added. "So we don't have to go to the side, we don't have to sit on the back of the bus in this election. We need to stand up and be counted and have a candidate who is truly a social conservative who will stand for our issues."

The phrase "back of the bus" is associated with African Americans' struggle for equal rights. In the 1950s, Montgomery, Alabama reserved the front of public busses for white riders, while blacks had to move to the rear. Rosa Parks sparked a bus boycott when she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger.

In 2009, the polling organization Gallup found that only 2 percent of the Republican Party identified themselves as black.

Using the phrase "back of the bus" wasn't a one-time slip for Bachmann. She repeated it again the next day at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.

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During his speech at this years CPAC wingnut gathering this year, Newt Gingrich tries to blame the consequences of the last thirty years of trickle-down economics on the Obama administration. Got that everybody? Republicans had absolutely nothing to do with destroying the economy, it's all Obama's fault and everything that went wrong just happened in the last two years.

And he also decided to pretend that he or any other Republican has any use for the working class and unions. As I posted earlier this week, Robert Borosage explained Germany's economic model as did Robert Kuttner on CNN yesterday. If Newt Gingrich actually believes that's a model for good government he might want to inform his fellow Republicans and ask them to quit trashing unions at every turn and doing everything in their power to bust them.

He might also want to ask them to do something about our trade deficits, outsourcing and our tax codes which reward businesses for shipping jobs overseas. I'm not holding my breath.

Transcript via Clips and Comments below the fold.

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After NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre attacked MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell at this year’s CPAC, O’Donnell responded in his Rewrite segment and pretty well ripped LaPierre to shreds for his part in contributing to the number of deaths after that tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona.

O’DONNELL: Time for tonight’s Rewrite. In Washington during the Conservative Political Action Committee better known as CPAC, I actually made an appearance of sorts. It happened while Washington’s lobbyist in favor of murderers’ rights to always use the gun of their choice, Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the NRA, was speaking about the calls for gun and ammunition control in the aftermath of the Tucson massacre.

(cut to video)

You just heard the NRA’s lie, now some facts. A Justice Department study on the federal assault weapons ban, which was law for 10 years found “Gun murders declined 10.3 percent in states without preexisting assault weapons bans.” 10.3 percent. Another study by the Justice Department in 2004 concluded “If the ban is lifted, gun and magazine manufacturers may reintroduce assault weapons models and large capacity magazines, perhaps in substantial numbers.”

And that is exactly what the merchants of death did; reintroduced assault weapons and the high capacity magazines that allowed Jared Loughner to take 31 shots, 31, before he had to stop and reload.

On the NRA’s web site, gun violence cheerleader Wayne LaPierre says “It’s time to acknowledge what we know in our hearts to be true.” That “The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”

Wayne, there was a good guy on the scene that day, in Tucson with a gun, but there wasn’t anything he could do. It was too dangerous to fire. He could have hit an innocent bystander. A good guy with a gun did not stop Jared Loughner.

It was the moment that Loughner had to reload that he became stoppable and he was stopped by a 61 year old woman who wrestled another high capacity magazine out of his hand as he tried to reload, and an unarmed 74 year old man, who had already been grazed by one of Loughner’s bullets. The second, the second Jared Loughner had to stop and reload, he became an unarmed man.

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Anderson Cooper brought on fearmonger Frank Gaffney -- who, as Right Wing Watch reported, has been attacking the other guest during the segment, Suhail Kahn, as someone who has ties to "radical Islamists". I'm not sure why he thinks Gaffney needs any more face time in the media, since he surely gets enough over at Fox. But to his credit, Cooper did call Gaffney out for how weak his claims are and allowed him to be confronted by Kahn.

Cooper mentioned Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Peter King's appearance on Gaffney's radio show. Our friends at Think Progress have more on that, and the witch hunt we get to look forward to now that King has taken the gavel there.

Rep. Peter King Says Muslims Aren’t ‘American’ When It Comes To War:

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has promised to launch a series of investigations of Muslim Americans beginning in February. “I’ve made it clear that I’ll focus the committee on counterterrorism and hold hearings on a wide range of issues, including radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorism,” he told Newsday. King has repeatedly said that he only wants to single out “Islamic terrorism” in his hearings on domestic security, and has even claimed that there are “too many mosques in this country.”

Joining anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney on Gaffney’s radio program last week, King doubled down on his promise to launch a witch-hunt against Muslims. He repeated a falsehood that he stated earlier — that American Muslims never cooperate to combat terrorism. But in addition to this claim, King made the extraordinary smear that American Muslims aren’t “American” when it comes to war. “[W]hen a war begins,” King said, every ethnic and religious group unites as “Americans.” “But in this case,” King continued, referring to Muslims, “this is not the situation. … Whether it’s cultural tradition, whatever, the fact is the Muslim community does not cooperate anywhere near to the extent that it should”.

More there from Think Progress, so go read the rest. Here's a portion of Right Wing Watch's reporting on Gaffney, much of which Cooper mentioned in his opening.

Right Wing Boycott Movement Links CPAC to the Muslim Brotherhood:

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As David informed us earlier this week, CPAC is losing significant chunks of the gay-bashing right over their invitation for GOProud to attend their convention this year. Cenk Uygur attempted to get their chairman, Christopher Barron to explain why he's a Republican in the first place given the way the party benefits from attacking the LGBT community.

UYGUR: All right. President Obama has said many times if you want to go forward, you put it in "D." If you want to go backwards, you put it in "R." Get it?

All right. Now, the president and the Democrats made history last week. They repealed "Don`t Ask, Don`t Tell," and that is a huge step forward for gay rights.

But, as always, the "Grand Old Party" is stuck in the stone age. Two major conservative groups, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council, are boycotting the conservative political action conference this year. They`re out -- they`re sitting it out because GOProud, a national organization of gay conservatives, was invited to the event.

For more on this, let`s turn to the chairman of the board of GOProud, Christopher Barron.

All right, Chris. First, let me get it out of the way. Why on God`s green earth are you even a Republican?

CHRISTOPHER BARRON, CHAIRMAN, GOPROUD: Why am I a Republican? Well, first off, I`m not just a Republican, I`m a conservative Republican.

And I`m a conservative because while I was born gay, I wasn`t born to believe that government has all of the answers. In fact, I`ve seen throughout my life that, in fact, government is often the problem, because I believe in free markets, because I believe in a strong military defense, because I believe in the power of the individual. That`s why I`m a conservative Republican.

UYGUR: Right. I understand that. And are gay people -- do they have opinions that range from liberal to conservative on economic matters and other matters? Of course.

BARRON: Absolutely.

UYGUR: Right. I get that.

But what I don`t get is how you can, with a good conscience, vote for a party that does not like you? They don`t like who you are. They don`t like your identity.

BARRON: First off, I completely and totally reject that. We`re, for the second year in a row, participating in CPAC, the largest --

UYGUR: Congratulations. Two years in a row. How about all the other years?

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From The Daily Show Feb. 22, 2010:

CPAC calls its conference the conservative Woodstock, but Dick Cheney turns it into Altamont.

Check out part two here -- Rage Within the Machine - Progressivism.

Logan posted a report on this yesterday but it's worth watching the video for how well the news was received at the CPAC convention. And also how the announcer puts it into perspective that many of them are not happy with the list of prospective Republican candidates. That of course begs the question of how are they going to win the White House in 2012 without a candidate?

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Oh what a lovely crowd, huh? Bob Barr is booed and yelled at loudly by the crowd until the moderator, Jay Sekulow, calms them down, for daring to point out that waterboarding is torture. This is from one of the CPAC 2010 panel segments, the topic of which was, "Does Security Trump Freedom?" The panelists included Barr, Jim Gilmore, Dan Lungren and Viet Dinh. Rep. Lungren got a nice little cheer out of them for saying he was for "enhanced interrogation" as well. There's your conservative base, folks: Torture lovers.

h/t David

Rachel Maddow had a bit of fun and visited the 2010 CPAC Conference. She was really disappointed that she was not included in the floor mat that had her colleagues Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on it. She tried to get Liz Cheney to talk to her and Cheney headed for the hills as soon as Rachel got near her...lol. I would love to see either of the Cheney's ever have the nerve to come on Rachel's show but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen any time soon. They're happier functioning in a fact-free zone like this convention or the loving arms of ClusterFox.

As Rachel notes if the Democrats had an ounce of sense, they would be using the Republicans aligning themselves with the type of extreme rhetoric which was all too common at this conference and making a campaign issue out of it. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen any time soon either. They're way too busy making bipartisan happy talk while the Republicans fling poo at them.

From our friends over at Media Matters for America, Erick Erickson at the 2010 CPAC Convention talking about right wing media infrastructure. He basically says out loud here what we already know, which is that Fox is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. Apparently ClusterFox isn't good enough for Erickson since CNN has made him part of their "best political team on television".