The exhibition hall downstairs featured every bit of right-wing goodness you could hope for, with booths by longtime players and scrappy newcomers alike: the Heritage Foundation, AEI, the 2nd Amendment Foundation, the National Taxpayers Union, Regnery Publishing, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Regent University, the Ayn Rand Institute, proenglish.org, the Charles Koch Institute, Accuracy In Media, The Blaze. Tchotchkes ranged from tote bags to candy to bumper stickers to a bright red T-shirt cheekily announcing, “I only sleep with Republicans.” The Sportsman Channel was touting its upcoming new series, “Amazing America with Sarah Palin.” (Airs April 2014!) The anti-tax HowMoneyWalks.com was drawing attention with a not-entirely-intuitive Star Wars theme. (Not that one really needs a reason to dress up like Chewbacca or a Storm Trooper.) Another particularly lively booth was by WarOnYouth.com, whose primary cause was not immediately evident, but which was staffed with a dozen or so young people decked out in military-green T-shirts and bandanas. At one point, they held a noisy tug-of-war with a giant rope in the middle of the exhibit hall. And, of course, the NRA had a vibrant presence, with multiple booths, the hands-down best of which featured a virtual shooting gallery that let folks test their rifle skills at 10, 25, and 50 yards. There was a bookstore in the back, a guy playing the guitar at a stage near the front, sofas and closed-circuit TVs scattered about, and a photo-tainment booth at which giddy attendees could get their pictures taken in funny hats.
Even in the midst of all the merriment, however, were reminders of the ongoing tensions within conservatism. In between display booths, two guys were handing out pamphlets explaining “Why GOProud Does Not Belong at CPAC.” Bottom line: embracing the gay-rights agenda will destroy “the conservative movement’s three-legged stool” of “fiscal,” “social,” and “defense” conservatives. (The brochure helpfully featured an illustration of a guy in a blue suit precariously perched atop a “conservative” stool as a ferocious, rainbow-hued beaver gnawed at the “social” leg of the stool.) Throughout the day, you would overhear chit-chat about the ongoing tug-of-war between libertarians and social conservatives. (“We’re in a war within our own party!” one CPAC straw-poll worker marveled to a student attendee.) Standing in line for coffee, Joey Kalmin, head of the University of Maryland student Republicans, fretted to me that he wasn’t even sure he should be at the convention, given that he didn’t agree with social conservatives on so many key issues.
Indeed, addressing this internal uncertainty and discord seemed to be on the mind of many of the morning’s A-list speakers. Taking the stage around 9:30, Rep. Paul Ryan assured the crowd that all of the “creative tension” roiling the GOP these days is a good thing. We’re the party of ideas, he cheered. “The Republican party is where the action is!” A little before noon, Chris Christie, in full-throttle let-daddy-give-it-to-you-straight mode, similarly lectured the crowd: “We’ve got to start talking about what we’re for and not just what we’re against. And the reason for that is very simple,” he explained. “Our ideas are better than their ideas!” This, as it happens, is the very same message that Sen. Mike Lee, who spoke a half hour after Christie, has been test-driving for a couple of months now—along with the corollary that the party needs to work on being a little more Pope Francis and a little less Torquemada: “We as conservatives have got to be far more engaged in finding converts than discarding heretics!”