On the road to CPAC

Somewhere way back in the fuzzy parts of my memory'I don't remember quite when, exactly'we here at Daily Kos got the idea to send me, of all people, off to cover CPAC. In person. For the uninitiated, CPAC would be the Conservative Political Action Conference, a yearly get-together that gathers together the cream of the conservative movement, from legislators to think tank pundits to avid theocrats, and puts them all under one big circus tent of unapologetic corporatism, legislative nihilism, and crabby godbothering. This is the rough summary of how the conversation went:

Hunter: This is an interesting and not at all terrifying idea. You do realize that spending three full days shuttered inside a dark convention center listening to an unending parade of conservative Deep Thinkers like Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Allen West, Wayne LaPierre, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and others while being preached to earnestly by all comers that these are the brightest lights conservatism has to offer, the true intellectual heft of the party and standard-bearers of its most serious themes and ideas, will leave me a hollow husk of a person, dead inside and despairing of any hope for a better future, and will possibly result in intellectual traumas that may haunt me for all of my remaining life, traumas which will cause me even decades from now to break out in a cold sweat whenever I see a man wearing a business suit and a conspicuously patriotic tie?

My Editors: I know! It'll be hilarious!

And so it was that I found myself on a cross-country flight to Washington D.C. on this fine mid-March day, a suitcase full of clothes and sundries and power cords tossed together and thrown roughly into the cargo hold, my Official Reporter Hat pulled tightly onto my already-withering soul and my last will and testament seriously contemplated but in the end left unwritten because I am fairly certain all those that know me would figure I was already not of sound mind and body after agreeing to this thing.

CPAC is a deceptively difficult thing to fully explain. On one hand, it gathers together Anyone Who Is Anyone in the conservative movement'an ideological lovefest, and little more. The schedule is fairly crammed with prominent national politicians. The lion's share of the rest of the space goes to think tank denizens and others of that ilk; it's not exactly a grassroots affair, in other words. The American Conservative Union holds the shindig; prominent names among the sponsorship and speakership lists include The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Leadership Institute and (omnipresent, this one) Citizens United. The Tea Party Patriots are quite prominent as well; a bit surprising, given their apparent non-entity status in these last elections, but as the closest thing to an actual grassroots constituency, outside of the various college and young conservative groups, the movement may have good reason to keep them visible.

On the other hand, the ideological debate takes place in the smallest of tents, and listed those who are not welcome this year has counted for most of the pre-convention news. The conservative gay advocacy group GOProud is distinctly not invited, for the second year in a row; their past inclusion in the conferences led to an apparent ultimatum from irritated social conservative groups; if they are invited, we're not coming. The notorious and vicious anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller is out as a speaker, but not for her links to anti-Muslim extremists in this and other countries. Instead, she and compatriot Robert Spencer are persona non gratin in the wake of an increasingly cheesy conspiracy theory as to whether conservative godfather Grover Norquist is in secret league with the Muslim Brotherhood. (No worries, though: Dire warnings of impending Sharia can still be expected, with similarly conspiracy-minded luminaries like Sen. Ted Cruz still held in high regard.)

Current New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will not be speaking; when asked, a "source" muttered that Christie was seen as having a "limited future" among Republicans, an immediately eyebrow-raising sentiment given the inclusion of such bright future go-getters as Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and, of all people, Donald Trump. No matter; between the gun control thing and the being seen with the president of the United States in the wake of a hurricane thing, the shine is off that particular star.

In this context, CPAC (and the crowd that makes it up) this year faces a prickly problem. The stated post-election desire is to widen the movement, a.k.a. a big tent; in practice, however, the number of things that can get you booted from that tent (or, rather, primaried right out of your current government office) is large and encompassing. The Republican Party has finally latched onto the notion that in order to remain viable it must broaden its base to include, at the very least, both young people and brown people; how to do that without bending an inch on the statements and policies that have put them in their current dim position with those voters has not been fully worked out. Indeed, the post-loss battle over conservative direction extends even to CPAC itself, with some conservatives grumbling that the group has vaulted the large carnivorous fish.

This will be an interesting week.