Dispatch From CPAC: Day 1, Mitt Romney Called a Mexican
Washington DC - I arrived at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, around 9:30 a.m. People snaked around turnstiles waiting to get their badges certifying they had paid the $195 adult entrance fee.
Upstairs, the student line was much longer. They only had to pay $35. It's important to get young blood into the Grand Old Party.
They had paid to see the stars of the conservative movement. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt, Marco Rubio, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, even Sarah Palin has come out of hibernation and is scheduled to speak on Saturday.
There was talk of an Occupy infiltration and the finely dressed attendants were on the lookout. One man, wearing a cowboy hat and wielding a digital camera approached a police officer outside, "have you seen any occupiers?" he asked. "No," the officer responded.
Around noon I was sitting in a chair near the VIP room. Rick Perry was scheduled to speak at 1:20 p.m. in the Marriott ballroom. Three tall white men wearing suits and earbuds were seated across from me. One was standing. They briefly discussed security.
"I asked him if he wanted a walkthrough... and he said, 'I'm drunk, I don't care,'" said the older looking gentleman, who had apparently talked to the person he was securing.
Another one said, "Thanks for taking one for the team Rick."
After Perry gave his speech I attempted to ask him if he preferred bourbon or scotch, but he ignored me.
At the beginning of the day, I started off at an event called "How to raise money... the easy way" put on by the Leadership Institute, a Republican training organization.
The speaker, Joel Mowbray, told the audience of mostly young men that "You make up a lot of ground with one $10,000 donation."
He said that there's no such thing as altruism and when a big donor cuts a big check the donor is looking for access.
"Asking for money bestows a level of credibility onto the campaign," said Mowbry, "It says I believe in my campaign." He told the audience the only two things a candidate should be doing is asking for money or asking for votes. Noted.
From there, I went to the massive Marriott Ballroom, which has been adorned with giant television screens, a huge stage and thousands of chairs, all filled, for Marco Rubio's speech.
The Florida Senator took the stage to loud applause. He made a speech about American Exceptionalism, how important it is that the U.S. remains the most powerful country in the world, a point Republicans often make.
"What happens if we diminish because we can no longer be the greatest country in the world?" asked Rubio.
"The greatest thing we can do for the world is be America," said Rubio. He added that we have to be an example for other countries, "the shining city on the Hill" he said, quoting Reagan, who took the line "city on a hill" from the Bible and made it shiny.
Reagan symbolism is all over CPAC. Pictures of him hang in the main lobby, stickers of his face are handed out and many speakers tied their speeches back to him.
Male CPAC attendees almost universally wore suits and females wore dresses. There were booths for ALEC, Tea Party.net, Hot Air, the NRA, Citizens United Productions, the Washington Examiner and Newt 2012, among others. One booth was selling Santorum sweaters. Surprisingly, I didn't see any Ron Paul supporters, despite the fact that his fans rushed the event last year to give him a strong victory in the 2011 CPAC straw poll.
I saw a number of people sporting Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum stickers, but I didn't see one person outwardly supporting Mitt Romney. In fact, during one speech in the Marriott Ballroom a speaker mentioned Mitt Romney and a female in the audience yelled out, "Mexican!"
In another room, much smaller than the Marriott Ballroom, I attended a panel discussion on labor unions. At this one, four men discussed the repeal of SB5 in Ohio, Scott Walker's actions in Wisconsin and heaped praise on Chris Christie. I arrived a little late, but I caught the gist of the conversation.
"I don't think revolution is too big of a word to use to describe what Chris Christie is doing," said Kevin Mooney, a reporter for the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, 'the leading voice for free markets in Louisiana.'
F. Vincent Vernuccio, a speaker from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that after the repeal of SB5, an-anti collective bargaining bill, Ohio would have to build a Berlin-style wall to keep people in. He said they'd flock to Indiana and Wisconsin, two states that have fought unions.
He said the failure in Ohio was the messaging, "We have to get our messaging together, we have to get our funding together and we have to break up the bills."
I walked out and went up the escalator to get a late afternoon lunch. As I rode the escalator up, Hot Air was interviewing Michelle Bachmann. She was in an all white dress.
As I was leaving I caught this guy talking about the tea party:
I don't think humoungus is too big a word to describe the New Jersey Governor's massive ego or his equally massive ass.
Where's the donut hole?
"...Money Trumps Peace..." G.W. Bush, 2007
It's between his 7th and 8th layer of flab.
to watch an Empire unravel. I wish the Democratic side was as active in trying to find a new leader...
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
about plans to reincarnate Ronald Reagan? Maybe some stem cell research where the hope is that they can clone him from a lock of his hair?
Inquiring minds want to know.
It's really sad that they're still worshiping him going on thirty years now.
I'll bet there wasn't a single picture of George W. Bush in evidence though.
to see that person dressing up like it's 1776, it's not. the system is closed, ruled by the UPC and multi-national capital. the only way the mythical free market could ever have existed is if people had the option to opt out.
ronald raygun was a criminal just like so many of our presidents, he violated the boland amendment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boland_Amendment
he tripled our debt (yes, i remember when we talked about debt in terms of billions, not trillions), a little semantic trick they used to use, a thousand billion, not a trillion.
unfortunately it is not just the pukes who are living in the past, wish it wasn't so.
We now know the actual shape and appearance of an asshat.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Well, if you turn it upside down it does bear a striking resemblance to a bedpan.
Hey Teapartier morons, conservatives were Tories during the revolution of 1776. You know, the guys Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams........................etc...., were fighting against!
The Founding Father's were all about LIBERTY. You know, liberals.
I love pointing this out to wing nuts and watch as their tiny little pea brains meltdown.
For this clueless idiot to be wearing a colonial uniform at a CPAC conference, is about as out of place and historically inaccurate as one can be.
Typical conservatard dumb ass.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
they really regret leaving the "grace" of a monarchy...
Mike Wiggins, Guadalupe County Judge and a former DPS sergeant, has been arrested for having weed in a College Station hotel room.
Wiggins, a Republican first elected in 2006 to lead the county, which is east of New Braunfels, was attending a convention there when the cops were called because a staffer smelled burning marijuana about 11 p.m. Monday.
Cops found a silver grinder, rolling papers and a plastic bag containing 20.1 grams of dope in Wiggins duffel bag after he consented to a search.
Donaldd
"What happens if we diminish because we can no longer be the greatest country in the world?" asked Rubio.
I'm going out on a limb and guessing that English is not Rubio's first language. And except for military power, that ship sailed a long time ago.
American exceptionalism GOP style:
Torture is wrong, except when America does it.
Stolen elections are wrong, except when they happen in America.
Illegally invading other countries is wrong except when America does it.
Crushing non-violent dissent is wrong, except when America does it to law abiding citizens.
Developing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Agreement is wrong, except when America's bestest little buddy Israel does it.
a mass exodus from Ohio is pure fantasy. GOP big boys in Oregon made the same prediction a few years back of economic mayhem when Oregon passed a bill to increase taxes on big business and land owners. The jobs and money were supposed to leave the state in droves. What happened in the aftermath of the passage? Absolutely nothing. Somehow, we all survived the will of the people.
"...Money Trumps Peace..." G.W. Bush, 2007
I have always wondered what hell would be like if there were one. Thank you Andrew for giving me a preview. I don't know if you drink adult beverages but if you do I will buy you a cocktail as a reward for what you are going through at CPAC. I wouldn't go there for anything. Sounds like a miserable place for a sane person to be.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
reminds me of a quote by the famous philosopher Foghorn Leghorn:
"That boy's about as sharp as a bowlin' ball."
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
My Aunt Dolly would say, (in her deep south drawl), "Bless his heart....his brain must roll around inside his head like a b.b. on a six-lane highway."
Cheers!
FB
99%
"Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice"
Boy's got more nerve than a bum tooth.
The only thing exceptional about America is how exceptionally deluded we are in thinking we are exceptional. We were a nation blessed with unspeakable good fortune in our early days; frontier expansion opportunities that extended for more than a century, the security of an ocean on either side that kept us disproportionately isolated during the tumultuous 19 century (Civil War, yes, we'll get to that in a minute), a victory in World War II that left us the only economy of substance on the planet, and the only manufacturing base capable of supplying pretty much the world's... everything, and last and most critically, we had access to cheap energy until the 1970s. The end of that cheap energy also marked the beginning of Reaganism, when the Republican Party busied itself destroying the only financial engine of consequence in America, namely its middle-class. Since then, and with a very, very brief and not statistically remarkable interruption during the 1990s, we have had an unbroken string of tax cuts designed to bankrupt the government, which is precisely what they did. Now that the government IS bankrupt and that the middle class has weathered to a husk –exactly what the Republican platform has intended all along – we have exposed America for what it is, a mediocre member of the developed nation class, with actually worse than mediocre results as far as life expectancy and educational performance are concerned.
One of the most defining pathways to this mediocrity was actually our victory during the Civil War. If we had simply allowed that Southern institutional racism and pseudo-theocracy to break away and do it own thing, I think we would see a northern nation reasonably adept at governing itself, and not cursed with the legacy of its pre-Civil War philosophies, compounded by the STILL palpable, "boo hoo, we lost and so we're going to hate the federal government forever," meme of a great, great many of our Southern citizens.
Actually, I'll amend that: We did had one exceptional constitutional idea, namely that the state should be free of religious poison. The trouble is that at least half the nation now seems to desperately want to corrode and ultimately eliminate that provision, so that we can all have the dancing baby Jesus gumdrop wonderland they imagine will be the result of making the halls of power and the local church indistinguishable from the other.
Exceptional? You must be kidding.
I might have to rethink that whole Breitbart might be an idiot drunk thing. I'd be a drunk if I had to hang out with these people all the time.
While merely having to be around these mouth-breathers would certainly be a trigger for swilling mass quantities of the alcohol, I suspect for most of them it's more the need to fill the spot where their conscience should've been.
"CPAC is always like an inverted Nuremberg, with the Party of Personal Responsibility playing the Nazi defendants. Imagine what Nuremberg would've been like if the Nazis had somehow taken control of the courtroom then condemned the Jews and the American military tribunal in absentia after bunkering themselves in. That's essentially what CPAC is: a gilded sub-Reichstag bunker with 5 star food and chandeliers. And endless entertainment."
JP
http://giveusthisdayourdailtydread.blogspot.com
If people are allowed to believe that the Flintstones is historical documentation then I'm allowed to believe Mittens was born in Mexico. I've never even seen his birth certificate. Just saying.
Silly question. Everybody knows he loves his bourbon and vicodin.
Wouldn't most normal people feel like a complete idiot showing up at an event; any event; dressed like that fool?
I mean really..........does he think this helps make his point?
He actually wears that getup on the airplane when he travels to these circle jerks.
CPAC is just another way for GOPiggies to get together and lie. That's all.
One of the biggest lies I heard was Crazy Shelley claiming that Obama said America was no longer a Christian-Judeo nation. Trouble is, he never said that. But it doesn't matter. The GOPiggies will continue to lie and hate. It's what they do.
We became an independent nation not because of conservative element with the American Colonies but because of radical self governing elements of the population. Most of whom were to be found in the North. Our Revolutionary war has also be called, by some historians, our first civil war. Thie is because the population was decided roughly into three camps. These in favor of overthrowing the rule by England and establishing our own country, thoses in favor of staying with England but with a newer and fairer relationship with England and the last, silent group, in favor staying out of it and just moving forward regardless of which group won. The conservatives of the period were called Loyalist because they were loyal to the Crown and England.
a Mexican.
With apologies in advance.
Who is that Tea Partier in the second video that is at all these GOP events? Here he is pictured at one of the GOP debates wearing the same get-up: http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/27/...
Does anyone know?
.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
These Reslug racist groups are just an excuse to get drunk as a skunk, like Perry constantly does and even stupidier than they already are if that's possible.
Right -- they don't hate Romney because he's a _Mormon_, they hate him because he's a _Mexican_. Oh, I'm sorry my mom didn't live to see this primary season. She would have laughed till she cried. Daily.
that America is exceptional...and important. But thinking it's exceptionally exceptional is looking too much into a mirror and seeing only narcisisstic beauty in the reflection.
Thanks for the dispatch from the circus!
Washington DC - I arrived at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference,
Also known as Pre-school
People snaked around turnstiles waiting to get their badges certifying they had paid the $195 adult entrance fee
Yes folks! Get your badges right here! Let everybody back home know that my (father, son, brother, sister, Mom) is a total fucking schmuck!
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.
George Carlin
"I don't think revolution is too big of a word to use to describe what Chris Christie is doing," said Kevin Mooney, a reporter for the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, 'the leading voice for free markets in Louisiana.'
7 years of special ed down the drain! I'll bet his parents are sooooo proud of him.
"I don't think revolution is too big of a word to use to describe what Chris Christie is doing,"
There really isn't anything bigger than Chis Christie.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.
George Carlin
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