THE DAILY BEAST READ THIS SKIP THAT The Heresy Hunters of CPAC by Michael Moynihan Mar 13, 2013 Ideological purity! Patriots only! The heresy hunters of this week's Conservative Political Action Conference sniffed out and rejected those who aren't 'suitably' right wing, like Chris Christie and GOProud. It'll ensure the same losing result, writes Michael Moynihan. Every year the doyens of the Conservative Political Action Conference issue a series of indirect proclamations on who qualifies as an echt conservative. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie? Not one of us; too chummy with the president during Hurricane Sandy and too squishy on gun control. The gay conservative group GOProud? We're open to sinners—Newt Gingrich is a scheduled speaker, after all— but not ones who have contempt for the institution of marriage. Donald Trump? A sinner too, on wife No. 3 and pro-abortion rights to boot, he believes that President Obama might have been born in Kenya. Nevertheless, Trump is an "American patriot" popular with conservatives, said one conference organizer. It's hardly surprising that CPAC is interested in ideological purity, considering the right-wing confab is organized by the American Conservative Union, a group that provides "legislative rankings" to those in Congress who insist on differentiating between those "who protect liberty as conservatives and those who are truly liberal." As its website explains, "ACU defines conservatism" (emphasis in original). And that definition seems rather narrow these days. This big-game hunting of RINOs ("Republicans in Name Only"), the replacing of unreliably conservative candidates with the undereducated and unelectable ones, lost the party a number of safe seats in recent years. And as anyone who has attended a recent CPAC has witnessed, the "grassroots activists" of the right—a rather different species from the average Republican voter—seem increasingly incapable of calmly arguing that America is being forced