The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

#CPAC2016: Trumpsters and RINOs and Immunity for Witnesses, Oh, My!

Posted on | March 3, 2016 | 11 Comments

 

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
Last night, the annual “RINOcon” party gathered at the Public House here, and I arrived late, having first stopped by National Pastime to have refreshments with Jazz Shaw and Ed Morrissey of Hot Air. We discussed the latest news:

Justice Dept. grants immunity to staffer
who set up Clinton email server

That certainly adds a new dimension, eh? Ed writes: “Gee . . . does the Department of Justice offer immunity to potential witnesses for routine ‘security reviews’? Bryan Pagliano, who declared his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent when the FBI sought to question him about Hillary Clinton’s secret e-mail server, will have to start talking soon.”

Anyway, this morning I got up and read Matt Lewis’s Daily Caller column about CPAC and there’s this:

Robert Stacy McCain deserves mad props for dubbing it the “Mardis Gras of the Right”

Thanks for the hat-tip, Matt. The Lonely Conservative is coming to hang out and Da Tech Guy examines the problems faced by Marco Rubio.

The Trump campaign is all anyone is talking about here:

Donald Trump’s speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturdayis prompting an acrimonious backlash from the conservative critics desperately trying to mount a last-ditch campaign to block the GOP presidential front-runner from winning the party’s nomination.
A top aide to Trump rival Marco Rubio has accused CPAC organizers of being in the tank for Trump and clearing the way for his acceptance into mainstream conservatism, while an anti-Trump super PAC is pressuring organizers to rescind their invitation to the surging GOP front-runner.
Potentially complicating matters further, sources tell POLITICO that Trump has made multiple donations totaling more than $100,000 ? including a $50,000 check last year ? to the American Conservative Union, the group that organizes CPAC. That dwarfs the amounts donated in recent years by allies of Trump’s rivals, all of whom are also scheduled to speak at the annual gathering, and seems likely to fuel already percolating suspicions among his opponents that the ACU has its thumb on the scale for Trump.

Can he be stopped? More to the point, should he be stopped?

Republicans in Washington are divided over how to handle Donald Trump, who after Super Tuesday is a step closer to becoming the GOP standard-bearer this fall.
Trump’s rise has stunned establishment Republicans, who have been grasping for any strategy that might deny Trump the nomination.
But with the businessman’s delegate lead growing, a number of GOP lawmakers also say they’re preparing to work with whoever the Republican nominee is.
“Either we trust the primary system or we don’t. We trust the primary voters or we don’t,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), who had endorsed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) before he dropped out of the race. “I will be supporting our nominee against Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton.”
Among Senate Republicans, there’s a growing feeling that opposition to Trump would backfire, given voter distrust of the GOP establishment.
“My impression is the voters are voting with their own minds and they’re not looking for direction or guidance from me or anybody else,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

My concern is this: If the GOP Establishment could stop Trump, he would the likely run third party, and that’s game, set, match. The #NeverTrump movement is therefore problematic, if your goal is to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, which certainly should be your goal.

Today there will be a 4:30 p.m. CPAC panel by Protect Internet Freedom about the growing threats to online free speech.

 

+ o + o +

BANNED BY TWITTER!

The #FreeStacy movement, a grassroots response to Twitter’s Feb. 19 decision to suspend my popular @rsmccain account, has received international attention. You can help support this movement by including the #FreeStacy hashtag on your Twitter messages, by retweeting messages in support of this movement, and by signing up at PublicStatus.org, which is dedicated to defending free speech rights on social media. Thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word.

— Robert Stacy McCain




 

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Category: CPAC

Comments

11 Responses to “#CPAC2016: Trumpsters and RINOs and Immunity for Witnesses, Oh, My!”

  1. Quartermaster
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 10:13 am

    You met with Morrissey? My, you’ve been slumming.

  2. Daniel Freeman
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 10:38 am

    They suspended you just in time to keep from commenting on Twitter on Super Tuesday. Also, just in time to raise your profile internationally right before CPAC, the people your book was actually targeted at, IIRC. If they didn’t realize that they were doing you a favor — well, it’s too late. You’re a walking, drinking cause célèbre.

  3. DrGreatCham
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 10:45 am

    Indeed, he pulled a Twitter move by forcing Facebook comments on Hot Air, thus passive aggressively getting rid of unwanted commentators who’ve moved over to hotgas.net.

    The comments section at the old site is a howling wilderness by comparison.

  4. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 11:11 am

    http://blog.promotion-us.com/blog.promotion-us.com/html/wp-content/uploads/Morrissey-2014.jpg

    I am sure no meat when meeting with Morrissey!

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 11:12 am

    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-As2M87YzF6I/VtgvWIjbgFI/AAAAAAAA4NA/ndO6ua7traA/s1600/il_570xN.628906139_ohcw.jpg

    Immunity and Flipping Witnesses on Hillary!

  6. Fail Burton
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 11:41 am

    If Anita believes in free speech she can say if it were up to her Stacy would be reinstated. She’ll do that when the sun coughs and dies.

  7. DrGreatCham
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 2:38 pm

    -That- Morrissey would be worth meeting, even with the leftism and rabid veganism.

    Captain Bligh, not so much.

  8. Obama: You Can Get Obamacare Policy For Less Than A Cell Phone Bill – The Lonely Conservative
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 3:44 pm

    […] McCain arrived last night and brings us what everyone at CPAC is talking about. Be sure to check it […]

  9. Quartermaster
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 4:42 pm

    I didn’t comment that often at the site that shall no longer be named, but I’ve even deleted the link from my book marks. The site is dead as far as I’m concerned.

    Forcing Facebook comments sent the site to the dark side and outed the idiots running the place as a libtard and fraud.

  10. DrGreatCham
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 4:51 pm

    Good move, they only care about clicks, not comments. Visiting them for any reason rewards them. As you say, they’re utterly fraudulent.

  11. DrGreatCham
    March 3rd, 2016 @ 8:26 pm

    The kicker was that Ed actually acted like he didn’t know that creating false name FB accounts was against their well-known TOS policy.