The Other McCain

Every year, there are two CPACs: The one I attend, where conservatives get together and have a wonderful time — as at the scene (above) inside the late-night “Kruiser Cabana” party hosted by Stephen Kruiser of PJTV — and the (allegedly) divisive and controversial hatefest reported by the liberal media. How more transparently biased could the media possibly be? Pamela Geller calls attention to the lede of a Time magazine feature about CPAC:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, a three-day carnival of Republican ladder-climbers and red meat throwers, convenes Thursday in Washington.

One of the reasons I spend most of my time covering the behind-the-scenes fun at CPAC — rather than chasing the pack of media jackals in pursuit of a “gotcha” quote from the speakers on the big ballroom stage — is because their coverage provides such a warped funhouse mirror distortion of what this event is really all about.

Yes, there are would-be 2012 GOP presidential contenders speaking at the conference. Yes, there will be controversial things said from the main stage in the ballroom — “controversial,” that is, by the standards of liberal reporters who find any blunt expression of fact to be controversial. But CPAC isn’t about the political stars up on the stage, it’s really about the thousands of conservative activists in attendance. And this year, there are a record 12,000 of those, including more than 5,000 college students for whom this event is a rite of passage.

When they aren’t merely distorting CPAC, liberal reporters do not hesitate to lie about it. Michael Shear of the New York Times:

Egypt Captivates World’s Attention — Except at CPAC
Three weeks of historic protests in Egypt upended President Hosni Mubarak’s regime on Friday with the world looking.  But here at the Conservative Political Action Conference, no one took any notice. . . .

There is a word for that kind of reporting: Bullshit.

Egypt: Mubarak Resigns

That’s the headline on an item I filed from CPAC moments after Mubarak’s resignation was announced. And here’s a headline that apparently the New York Times didn’t see fit to print:

Ron Paul: U.S. ‘propped up’ Mubarak in Egypt

So how is it that one of the biggest draws at CPAC can address the Egyptian crisis from the main ballroom stage and yet the New York Times insists that “no one took any notice” of the crisis?

We could ponder that puzzle at length, but why bother, when we can just ignore the liberal media and have fun? Speaking of which: What’s crossing the mind of this man in a pirate hat?

That’s DC new media legend Matthew Keller, but things aren’t always what they appear. That’s not actually a pirate hat, but a festive colonial tri-corner, and the woman reclining on the bed behind him? Continue reading CPAC Day 3: Fear and Loathing and
Tri-Corner Hats in the Kruiser Cabana →

Yesterday’s incident in which some Ron Paul supporters shouted “war criminal” at Donald Rumsfeld and his surprise guest Dick Cheney gets explained by Dave Weigel:

The ballroom for big events fills up many minutes in advance. In this instance, the people who wanted to hear Rand Paul speak at 3:45 had to arrive around 2:30, and stay there. If they did, they sat through a speech from Donald Trump (a surprise to attendees who weren’t checking the news frequently), and used every possible moment to yell “RON PAUL” at the Donald. When Trump responded to one of the heckles, and said that Paul “can’t win” the presidency, there were loud and righteous boos.
It takes a while to exit the ballroom. This means that hundreds of Paul fans — recognizably younger and sometimes beardier than the median CPAC attendee — are in the room or in lines as Donald Rumsfeld is introduced.

Total CPAC attendance is more than 10,000, among whom are hundreds of Paulistas — more than 10 percent of the total attendance, due not only to the fanaticism of Paul’s following but also because Campaign for Liberty has paid the way for his student supporters to attend the conference.

As might be expected, the Paulistas are at odds with most conservatives on foreign policy and this coincidence of scheduling that had many of the anti-war libertarians in their ballroom seats during the Rumsfeld recognition is just typical of the unexpected happenings at CPAC. And this unfortunate incident of inexcusable rudeness should help put the whole GOProud “controversy” in perspective. Are conflicts between anti-war libertarians and pro-war neocons really any different than the clash between gay Republicans and pro-family social conservatives?

Grant that these would seem to be what might be called irreconcilable differences, and yet if the broad coalition of the Right is to cohere — as it was powerfully coherent in 2010 — the disagreements must be tamped down. Courtesy and forebearance would seem to be requisite to the endeavor.

As I was explaining to friends at dinner last night, my main idea nowadays is that the GOP’s problems are not so much ideological as they are systemic and structural. The key battle is between the grassroots and the party elite — whether Republicans are to be a bottom-up or top-down party — and not between differing ideological factions of the rank-and-file. So as long as you’re fighting the elitist GOP Establishment, I’m on your side, without regard to any specific policy-oriented  litmus test.

My idea of an important policy debate: Should John Cornyn be tarred-and-feathered or would it be a sufficient gesture to burn him in effigy?