I just flew back from this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held Feb. 9-11, and boy, is my brain tired (ba-dum-bum)!
Yours would be too if you'd spent three days listening to a mix of Republicans and (usually pseudo-) conservatives griping about what's wrong with the country and setting out their plans to make it right – usually ignoring the fact that they're the ones who've screwed it up in the first place.
To be fair, there were a couple of speakers who made sense; notably Rep. Bob Barr, who made an excellent case for impeaching President Bush (without ever calling for such impeachment) over the current warrantless wiretapping scandal, and Phil Giraldi, a 16-year veteran of the CIA, now retired, who explained why it would be stupid to attack Iran even if it actually acquired a nuclear weapon or two – a position diametrically opposed to that of the three other speakers on the "What About Iran?" panel.
The drug-law reform advocates were also a good break from the administration cheerleaders, but their main presentation was scheduled opposite one of the panels on my "must see" list – "Life in the Mainstream: Abortion and the Politics of the 21st Century" – and after all, I already knew that the federal and state drug laws were Judeo-Christian morality wrapped in a quasi-legal blanket.
There may have been a couple of other speakers who had something worthwhile to say – I didn't hit every panel, skipping four of the five dealing with "immigration reform" (aka "how to keep the foreigners out"), one on "Energy Security and Energy Diversity" (which, one suspects, eventually got around to extolling the joys of nuclear power) and "The Entitlement Crash" (undoubtedly decrying the percentage of the federal budget earmarked for anti-discrimination enforcement and taking care of the elderly and the poor) – but they would have been few and far between. For anyone with a liberal or even libertarian philosophy, CPAC 2006 was truly a trip through the looking-glass.
I mean, any conference that goes to the trouble of clearing the hoi polloi out of the first four rows of seats – roughly 250 chairs altogether – in the Omni Shoreham Hotel's Regency Ballroom so the convention's "Diamond" level members could get "up close and (not too) personal" with syndicated psycho-pundit Ann Coulter clearly has a problem with its priorities – and considering the often wildly favorable reaction to her talk, the audience has a few issues it should work on as well.
In the days to come, I'll be reporting in much greater depth on the seminars I attended, but for now, here are just a few quotes and observations to set the mood:
•"Liberals have no consistent political values except to breach the peace." – R. Emmett Tyrell, founder and editor-in-chief of the ultraconservative American Spectator.
•"If Marbury v. Madison [the 1806 case that established the Supreme Court's constitutional powers] has any validity, just because the President is commander-in-chief and has an intelligence-gathering ability doesn't mean the President can decide whether he wants to follow the law." – Bob Barr, former congressman from Georgia's 7th District.
•Van Hipp, a D.C.-based defense consultant charged that, "We lost Iran on Jimmy Carter's watch," and also attributed the 18% inflation rate and gasoline shortages of the early '80s to Carter, though they occurred months after Ronald Reagan took office.
•"Our troops need to know that the Congress and us stand up for them, because they stand up for us every day." – Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), former P.O.W. during the Vietnam war, who also said that it was the "peaceniks [who] started saying bad things about what was happening over there."
•"It's better to fight the war on terror as an away game, because as a home game, it'd be a disaster." – Lt. Col. Oliver North, USMC (ret.), Fox News Channel commentator and former convicted felon, who also claimed that Middle Easterners plotted his assassination during the Iran-Contra hearings.
•"Conservatism is ... the politics of reality. Conservatism is common sense." – Doug Schneider, director of institutional marketing for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative think tank and book publisher.
•Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) described Sen. Hillary Clinton's child-rearing philosophy as contained in her book "It Takes A Village" as the "top-down approach" to creating society, whereas conservatives believe in the family-centered "bottom up approach" – without once mentioning conservatives' belief in the propriety of dominant father/subservient mother roles.
•"If you want to fight voter fraud, the first lesson is not to feed the beast." – John Fund, op-ed writer for the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that the federal government cut off funds to groups that promote voter registration.
•"Some journalists ought to be threatened with jail" for revealing classified information – Cliff Kincaid, editor of the right-wing Accuracy In Media Report.
•"What Kelo [v. City of New London] said was, everyone's home, everyone's church is up for grabs." – Steven Anderson, from the right-wing Institute for Justice, commenting on the effects of the Supreme Court's ruling that municipalities could claim eminent domain over properties if another use would increase tax revenues.
•"The Endangered Species Act has hampered border security." – Peyton Knight, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for the National Center for Public Policy Research, a right-wing think tank.
•"You have to hand it to President Bush; they did a lot of background on these guys." – Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also described the Clinton presidency as "the longest eight years of my life."
•"I assure you it is no accident that we haven't been attacked since September 11th... The war on terror has protected America from 9/11 to today." – Sen. Mitch McConnell, paying homage to the work of Vice President Dick Cheney.
•"Trust me: If they're calling from Bora Bora, it's not for pizza." – Sen. Mitch McConnell on why Americans shouldn't complain about warrantless eavesdropping on international phone calls.
•Radio talk show hostess Martha Zoller apologized to the audience for once having been a Democrat, noting that "In the South, we all were at one point in time." She also said that the Democratic Party is "not the party for the upwardly mobile."
•"One of the biggest things deteriorating communities is the lack of a moral structure. Kids need parents to say 'This is right' and 'This is wrong.'" – Gary Cobb, a Philadelphia-based sports radio host, who went on to claim that marijuana "opens the door" to other drug use.
•The abortion issue is "the key to the next elections." – Connie Mackey, former vice-president for governmental affairs for the religio-reactionary Family Research Council.
"The question of whether abortion should be a constitutional right should have been left to the American people." – Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America
•"It's my belief that you never solve an act of violence with another act of violence." – Jan LaRue, on why women who have been impregnated by rape should not be allowed to have abortions.
•"The Democrat Party is just a subsidiary of the party of death." – Ramesh Ponnuru, writer for the conservative National Review.
•Muslims are "the only group who kill because other people call them violent." – the inimitable Ann Coulter, who, when asked what had been the most difficult ethical or moral decision of her career, responded, "There was one time I had a shot at Clinton."
•"I think we'd take them more seriously if they stopped talking about legalizing drugs so often." - the inimitable Ann Coulter on the Libertarian party.
Well, there's lots more, since the limits of the attendees' (and especially the speakers') capacity for self-deception are difficult to fathom – but assessing those limits will have to wait for another day.
This is the first part of a series based on Kernes' trip to Washington.
