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Back home from CPAC. I’ll probably post a gallery of photos from CPAC later this week, when I have the time.
Also, I should have a column coming out in TCS shortly on my impressions of the event generally.
I’ll take this chance to say thank you to Tech Central Station, which hosted CPAC’s Bloggers’ Corner and which sponsored me in particular down to D.C. to cover the little conservative monkeys in their little conservative monkey suits.
Winter breakdown…
…believe you would betray our readers like that, Stephen. This is Miscellaneous fucking Objections. The in-flight blog of Marine One.
My apologies to M.O.’s readers. Stephen will never be heard from again. At least until the movie comes out.
…going anywhere with you.
…drive me to the airport? I’m scared what will happen if I’m alone. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.
…but you still have to leave.
…Ryan. I’m not a criminal, Ryan.
…the fuck is Chuck?
…a criminal, Chuck!
…leave everything right where it is, Stephen, and back away from the laptop.
…go back and erase all of my posts?
…you have to leave.
I’m increasingly beginning to think I may have been duped by my sources.
…I don’t respond to “are you mad at me?”
…mad at me?
Stephen, there are major inconsistencies throughout your story, which I find very troubling. First of all, Trent Lott and Alan Keyes didn’t speak at CPAC this year — thus, it’s extremely unlikely anyone ditched their speeches.
Furthermore, Adam Penenberg from Forbes Digital informs me there’s no such company as Jukt Micronics.
Wizbang has another clue in the Ann Coulter-Matt Drudge mystery that I was covering yesterday.
Do I hear wedding bells?
Just listened to a debate on gay marriage. Well, not so much a debate as two people on opposite sides giving three-minute speeches.
A lot of the kids are gone now. Mostly the adult activists here now. They REALLY don’t like gays.
Patrick Guerriero of the Log Cabin Republicans didn’t get a lot of applause. But a smattering of us clapped hard.
I’m getting so, so, so fucking tired of hearing the phrase “homosexual lobby.” There is a side of the conservative movement that I hate profoundly.
Well, it’s no secret that immigration is a big point of contention in the conservative movement.
It shouldn’t be. And thank God Bush is on the right side.
I say it shouldn’t be because of just how antithetical everything the anti-immigration folks say is to the American and Republican philosophies.
My jaw was honestly on the floor listening to the following Phyllis Schlafly quotes:
“The idea of giving any job to any willing worker is absolutely unacceptable.”
“The idea of offering a job to any willing worker is so offensive.”
“Americans won’t work for these wages… companies need to pay more.”
These quotes, I assure you, are not in any way out of context. This woman is actually righteously offended that Americans should have to work for the wage the market sets for their labor.
This is how far we’ve come as conservatives, that our leaders will passionately defend the minimum wage — a hugely destructive, intrusive government regulation.
Schlafly, amazingly enough, also blamed unemployed software engineers on illegal immigration. Now, first off, I haven’t heard anything about a huge herd of unemployed software engineers. If there is any such phenomenon, look to the dot-com crash as to blame. Second, WHAT!?!?!? Does she think that software engineers are sneaking in illegally from India to take American jobs?
After Schlafly talked, Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute came up to the dais to defend President Bush’s guest-worker proposal. She was booed loudly.
“That’s really polite,” Tamar responded.
She went on to give a fiery speech to scattered applause. Basically, she argued that our current immigration laws invite disrespect because they’re unrealistically strict. In the Q&A, she used a good metaphor. She said our current laws were like a 20 MPH speed limit on the freeway. How many cops would it take to enforce that? How many people would observe it?
Roy Beck of Numbers USA gave the most outlandish speech. I’ll just give you the nice, outrageous quotes:
“Too many of our elected leaders think illegal immigration is a victimless crime.”
“Illegal immigrants are similar to most burglars.”
“Illegal aliens are wage thieves. They steal our jobs.”
Actually, one more thing about Beck. He made one really revealing comment. He said that he actually is not in favor of massive deportation of illegal immigrants. Why? Because it would cause a huge economic displacement — and thus a huge backlash among the American public against the crackdown on illegal immigration.
Instead, Beck supports a very gradual crackdown — apparently so that Americans won’t realize what’s happening. But won’t that just damage the economy in slow motion?
Sounds an awful lot like it.
Of course, Stephen Moore made the important political point: Bush won, to some extent, by getting better Hispanic support than other Republicans. Can we expect to succeed as a party if we tell Hispanics that we don’t want more people like them coming to our country?
Hmmmmmmm… Let’s see… No, we can’t.
No.
But could you please just bring me your notes?
at me?
Stephen, I got a call from Adam Penenberg at Forbes Digital about your CPAC posts. They want to do a follow up. They’re just having some trouble reconciling your account to this year’s CPAC schedule.
Do you have your notes?
As the night drags on, two people begin snorting what looks like cocaine in the bathroom. Several bottles of vodka are brought in. By 1 a.m., more than half the guests have paired up and are making out. The fog of marijuana and cigarette smoke gives the scene an unfocused, almost slow-motion quality. Two women wearing Buchanan buttons, and swaying to a beat only in their heads, move from man to man along the windows, kissing the men and rubbing their breasts against them. One of the partygoers invites “everyone who wants to get naked” to his hotel room. Five men and four women, all college students, high and drunk, follow him to the elevator.
In the get-naked room, everyone disrobes immediately, without a hint of embarrassment. One couple fondles each other in the corner. A muscular man, apparently hallucinating, prances around the room like a ballet dancer. A woman locks herself in the bathroom, crying and shouting out the name “Samuel. ” No one knows who Samuel is. The rest lounge on the beds, watching television and eating pretzels. They stare glassily at the screen, and, when they speak, they sound like they are talking through Jell-O. Among the naked bodies on the bed is Cynthia, a Dole supporter who lives less than a mile from the hotel. “What would give you the idea we’re having problems? Huh? Why do you think that?” she asks me. “What was I saying? Oh, yeah. This is, like, just how the movement is now. Get used to it.”
Kids at cpac have always gotten drunk and laid, but that wasn’t always the primary reason they came. This year, it seems, it was. “Yes, of course we’re here to have fun,” explains 19-year-old Jon Segura, a Vermont student who shakes hands with everyone who walks by the College Republicans’ booth. “We like to say that up in Vermont there are more cows than girls… And sometimes you can’t tell which one is which. It’s not the same here.” Several college sophomores standing around the Christian Coalition booth say that they party so hard because partying is all that the event–all that conservatism–really
offers them. “Our problem is there is no defined torchbearer,” explains Jason Burgen, the treasurer for North Carolina’s College Republicans. “Now there is no Reagan, no one to lead us. So, there’s a cynicism and a depression that has set in.”
On Friday night, forty of the young conservatives ditch Lott’s speech and pack a sweaty hotel room on the second floor. On the door someone has taped a sign that reads: “The lost ones–in here.” Again, the bathtub is filled with beer, and a thick cloud of marijuana smoke hangs above the crowd. A red- headed guy whose name tag only says “Greg” tries unsuccessfully to program the pay-per-view to show an X-rated movie. Almost everyone in the room says they supported Phil Gramm or Pat Buchanan in last year’s election.
“Look around, you’ll see we’re wandering,” says Chuck Reingold, a College Republican from California. “I didn’t even sign up for the conference this year. What’s there to learn? You see that? That’s why I come now.” Reingold points to the bed. A short, busty woman is standing on the foot of the bed to kiss a very tall man. One hand is wrapped around his torso, the other is holding a cigarette with an ever-extending and fragile ash. When the two come up for air, the woman tucks her cigarette-free hand into the man’s front pocket. She is, it turns out, a 22-year-old Marylander, and a big fan of the Republicans’ chief moralizer, Bill Bennett. “He has some good morals to impart, and I really like his book,” she says. “Is that an okay answer? I’m not really sure what else to say.”
The repellent scene I described earlier was only a little beyond the norm of the conference. A wash of despair and alcohol and brutishness hung over the whole thing. Everywhere I went, it seemed, something sad or sordid was underway, or just finished, or about to begin. Halfway through the Keyes speech, I leave to go to the men’s room. Inside, a wiry mustached twentysomething is getting to second base with a svelte blonde. The woman is sitting on the sink counter, her white blouse unbuttoned and hands above her head, pressed against the mirror. His face is buried between her breasts. I ask them why they ditched Keyes.
“Get out of here. Can’t you see we’re busy? This is way not cool,” the man snaps back.
“Since I’ve already interrupted you, could you please just quickly answer the question?” I ask politely.
“Get out. Get out. Look, it’s just not interesting listening to all them. I was having fun here. Now get out,” he yells.
The blushing woman starts buttoning up her shirt to leave. But the man pleads: “Come on, stay. Please stay. You know this is what it’s about.”
A hotel janitor says he discovered two college students having sex on the dais in the middle of the night. At 4 a.m., in the hotel’s empty garage, three students smoke pot. They explain that the sidewalk is too public, and they don’t want the professor who came with them to smell it in their rooms.
And now, finally, Stephen has returned with the rest of his blockbuster story from CPAC. It seems to have been a wild night.
OK, last thing on Perkins. He made a point that reminded me of Santorum’s: “You get what you promote.”
I just don’t remember what government used to do to promote marriage. And I just don’t see what barring a class of people from marriage does to promote it.
If half of the effort that’s spent on persecuting gays were spent on finding ways to lower the divorce rate, these people would have credibility.
As is, they’re an unfunny joke.
Deroy Murdock decided to cause some trouble during the Q&A by asking whether the Republican Party was sending mixed messages by embracing leaders like Newt Gingrich.
If you don’t know about Newt, ask the many wives he’s left behind. And the subordinates whose brains he’s subordinated out.
OK. That’s an unpleasant image.
I apologize.
Here’s an interesting claim I hadn’t heard:
Perkins says that Canadian gay-marriage forces are being funded by Americans. The Americans who are doing this, Perkins says, are doing so because of the extent to which U.S. courts have begun looking to foreign legal precedents in their decisions.
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