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The American Conservative Union’s annual CPAC conference kicks off today in Washington, so you can expect three days of incendiary headlines as pols throw big chunks of red meat to a large and ravenous crowd. Even boring old Mitch McConnell, not known as an oratorical wizard, is reportedly planning to tear the President a new one and complain about “liberal thugs.”
Indeed, on a speaker’s agenda that begins with Jim DeMint today and ends with Sarah Palin on Saturday, it won’t be easy to stand out. That’s a problem for Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who will be angling for a good showing in the presidential straw poll that is traditionally held on the last day (Ron Paul won the last two years, and Mitt Romney, in his “movement conservative” phase, won the two years before that). Strangely enough, Ron Paul won’t be there, citing a scheduling conflict; in recent years, a sizable percentage of the CPAC attendees have been Paulites, many of them students from Washington-area colleges. But Ron’s son Rand is speaking, so maybe the Paulite hordes will turn out for him.
Scanning today’s agenda, my personal favorite events are a couple of movies. There’s Fire From the Heartland: The Awakening of Conservative Women, “Starring the Honorable Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Ann Coulter, and an all-star cast.” But for sheer cinematic excitement, I don’t think that can top another flick later in the day: Nullification: The Rightful Remedy.
Even at a deadly serious conference aimed at taking back America from secular-socialists, there has to be some socializing. Fortunately, for the single set, TheTeaParty.net is hosting a presentation on “Conservative Dating.” Check out this description:
Learn everything from how to avoid scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart in the first five minutes of the conversation, to whether Tea Partiers and Occupiers can share something more than a dislike for bailouts.
I can just feel the excitement.
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Danp on February 09, 2012 8:32 AM:
TheTeaParty.net is hosting a presentation on “Conservative Dating".
Conservative dating? Is that what they call teabagging these days?
walt on February 09, 2012 8:47 AM:
Imagine Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand doing the nasty. Or Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy. Or Andrew Breitbart and Roy Cohn.
hells littlest angel on February 09, 2012 8:49 AM:
Danp: Ha! I'll be chuckling all day, thank you very much.
c u n d gulag on February 09, 2012 8:56 AM:
They may be charges for the cheese and crackers, but the whine will be endless and free.
Al on February 09, 2012 8:57 AM:
I'm looking forward to the tailgate party and the wet T-shirt contest.
martin on February 09, 2012 8:57 AM:
Learn everything from how to avoid scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart in the first five minutes of the conversation
Hmmm, if I recall my Ayn Rand correctly, the trick is to let him rape you on the first date. Sounds lovely.
DAY on February 09, 2012 8:58 AM:
Caesar was told to "beware the Ides of March".
Mitt would do well to beware the Eyes of Apple. -Cell phones have been known to capture off the cuff remarks, and find their way into campaign commercials.
And we have seen that Mitt is a disaster when he goes off script.
James on February 09, 2012 9:02 AM:
You're in prime snark mode today, Ed. This promises to be a really, really entertaining weekend.
stormskies on February 09, 2012 9:05 AM:
My favorite will be Mitch McConnell pole dancing with his favorite tu-tu .............
T2 on February 09, 2012 9:07 AM:
any event that combines the words "Honorable" and Michele Bachmann has to raise major concerns.
Okie Twang on February 09, 2012 9:10 AM:
Nullification? If memory serves, that did not work out so well the last time they tried it.
kevo on February 09, 2012 9:19 AM:
Oooohhh, let the titillation begin!
The missionary-styled ones among us are about to rock their own world! -Kevo
This Guy on February 09, 2012 9:30 AM:
I hope the hotels of Washington DC and Crystal city get their hotel fees up front as the Charlston Palace in SC found out These so called conservatives run out on their bills with out paying. Of course most people already know republicans are good at not paying the bill.
sick-n-effn-tired. on February 09, 2012 9:40 AM:
These people make parody impossible ;
Check this out:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2012/02/nullification-rightful-remedy
Might as well put on hoods and just hoist the confederate flag
This Guy on February 09, 2012 9:45 AM:
I am sure that last line was mis-spelled
I can feel the excrement.
There I fixed it for you.
T2 on February 09, 2012 9:53 AM:
apparently DeMint had this to say to the Crazies: "we're also at a point where half of Americans are getting something from government, and the rest are paying for it."
Using the decoder ring......."we're also at a point where black and mexican Americans are getting something from government, and the white people are paying for it."
R on February 09, 2012 9:57 AM:
"Heartland" and "Ann Coulter" don't go together either, unless Fairfield County has been moved from southwestern Connecticut to Kansas, bringing along all of the adult women who never grew out of the Mean Girl (preppie edition) phase.
exlibra on February 09, 2012 10:07 AM:
Lovely Ann Coulter will be there only in the celluloid spirit. Her emaciated body will be here. The debate between her and equally emaciated James Carville is the opening act of the Mock Convention which our university (Washington and Lee) is conducting this month, starting today (9-10-11).
I was looking for a little film to give you a visual of what the debate would look like, but then realised that, in fact, prescient Disney had filmed (in 1929!) this year's CPAC event, not the Coulter/Carville debate here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h03QBNVwX8Q
jpeckjr on February 09, 2012 10:26 AM:
Dagny Taggart was a strong, smart, determined, woman who stood up to one man after another. I thought conservative women were supposed to be meek, submissive, obedient, barefoot, and pregnant. Conservatives are so confusing.
T-Rex on February 09, 2012 10:32 AM:
Dagny Taggert was also responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people because her company hadn't properly vented a railroad tunnel, but it didn't matter because they were all bourgeois Untermenschen. As for Rand getting it on with Grover Norquist, no way -- that ugly old chicken hawk went for boys young enough to be her grandsons.
Danny on February 09, 2012 10:52 AM:
Yes, I do believe that the Teabaggers and Occupiers are indeed a bit tsundere for each other.
Sgt. Gym Bunny on February 09, 2012 11:08 AM:
Learn everything from how to avoid scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart in the first five minutes of the conversation
OOOH-Kay!!! What the hell?!!! Is this a dating forum for serial killers? If you need to learn how to not "scare away" a potential date, you really don't need to be dating--PERIOD. Spare us all.
So that's the state of conservative, tea-party dating--how to not come off like the creepy, conspiracy-theorist axe-murderer who lives in his mother's basement that you probably are... WTF?
Phoenician in a time of Romans on February 09, 2012 11:18 AM:
If I wanted to date wingnuts, I'd prefer using core samples...
Geds on February 09, 2012 11:45 AM:
It occurs to me that everything about that dating description is terrifying. It's implicitly sexist, for one, since it's all about not "scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart," which reduces the female to an object. And Objectivist object, no less.
Moreover, I've avoided anything by Rand, but I've seen the "sex" scenes in Atlas Shrugged and they play out a lot more like "rape" scenes. And they play out more like, "I respect and love him so much now that this great captain of industry has proven he's stronger than me and can force me to have sex with him any time he wants." I find this truly disturbing.
Steve P on February 09, 2012 11:56 AM:
The dating session would be great to watch from overhead--heads swiveling after a minute to see if there's someone else in the room who can do them more good.
RepublicanPointOfView on February 09, 2012 12:03 PM:
You are overlooking the highlight of the entire CPAC convention! A panel discussion of why multiculturalism is bad for ameriKKKa - hosted by the leader of a White Nationalist organization!
TCinLA on February 09, 2012 12:17 PM:
The conservative dating forum will likely be followed by massive over-use of the hotel's pay-cable system for the porn channels (particularly the gay and S&M ones), since Little Mary Palmfuck and her use of the cat o' nine tails for the crime of spanking the monkey is likely the only "date" most of these bipeds lacking frontal lobes and opposable thumbs have ever had. And that's assuming they actually know what's going on inside their underwear.
Quatrain Gleam on February 09, 2012 12:25 PM:
"your own Dagny Taggart"
Because of course all people are men. Or lesbians.
g on February 09, 2012 12:51 PM:
A panel discussion of why multiculturalism is bad for ameriKKKa - hosted by the leader of a White Nationalist organization!
What could possibly go wrong?
Bj Smith on February 09, 2012 2:55 PM:
I couldn't even get passed Mitch.
Teresa on February 09, 2012 4:47 PM:
"your own Dagny Taggart" Ewwww.
Crusader1 on February 09, 2012 4:56 PM:
Do most wingers even actually read any of Rand? Dagny Taggert slept with each of the "Telemachus Winced" male protagonists in turn-D'Anconia, Rearden, and Galt; it is ambiguous as to whether she ever took a turn with Ragnar Daneskold (Rand's Viking archetype).
Not exactly a traditional values girlfriend/wife material.
Then again, Rand was pro-union (see the relevant passage in the Fountainhead), agaist trans-national corporations which dealt with authoritarian governments to make a profit, pro-choice, pro-open marriage, anti-organized religion, etc. etc. I think she's just a fetish object to cons, like Reagan (or negatively, Alinsky). No real understanding, just invocation.
Crusader1 on February 09, 2012 4:59 PM:
Sorry about the "agaist" mispelling just now. Serves me right for stinting on the sleep yesterday.