CPAC: Come for the Crazy, Stay for the Party

This is not to suggest that there wasn’t much, much, much slamming of the enemy: President Obama, Harry Reid, Obamacare, the media, the IRS, Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, Obamacare, unions, Big Government. (Did I mention Obamacare?) Marco Rubio, strutting his foreign policy stuff, went on at length about the administration’s global failures. So did Bushie-turned-AEI-fellow John Bolton. (God, I love that mustache!) Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, talking education reform, expressed dismay that the Department of Justice is opposing his state’s school-voucher program. Playing to the crowd, Jindal compared Attorney General Eric Holder to Alabama’s segregationist-loving former Gov. George Wallace: “We’ve got Eric Holder and the Department of Justice trying to stand in the schoolhouse door to prevent minority kids, low-income kids, kids who haven’t had access to a great education, the chance to go to better schools.” Well played, Governor: Nothing tickles conservatives more than being assured that Democrats are the party of intolerant racists.

I take that back. The one thing that may have tickled them more was when Mitch McConnell showed up on stage brandishing a rifle. (It was a gift for colleague Tom Coburn, who is retiring this year because of health problems.) The crowd was delighted. Alas, that was pretty much all that McConnell did that delighted them, because a) everyone at CPAC knows the minority leader increasingly loathes the right-wing of the party and is desperately smooching their backsides only because of that unfortunate primary battle brewing back in Kentucky, and b) McConnell is about as charismatic as a box of stale prunes.

But these are pretty much the standard antics you’d expect at CPAC. And, for the most part, the major speakers stayed even keeled and non hysterical. Every now and again, you got the sneaking suspicion that party leaders had all gotten the same memo, generated in the bowels of some unseen uberconsultant’s office, warning that the party needs to stop being seen as so negative and critical and scary and mean and anti-everything.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *