If you think you’ve seen more than enough crazy from the Republicans since the election of Barack Obama, I have news for you. It’s about to get a lot crazier as the party’s most influential nut-jobs convene this morning at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC for the opening of CPAC 2009. One look at their agenda tells the story. You can attend Breakfast with Phyllis Schlafly: “Doing the Impossible”. You can join Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Rep. Connie Mack to answer the question: Will Congress Take Your Guns? You can attend a book signing with Jack Abramoff-fellow traveler Ralph Reed. You can attend three events with Newt Gingrich tomorrow alone. Don’t miss this: Bailing Out Big Business: Are We All Socialists Now?
And that’s just a taste of what’s available. If you want to soak in the wisdom of John Cornyn, Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, or Ron Paul, there are stand-alone forums you can attend. Tomorrow night they’ll be awarding the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom and Ronald Reagan awards. You won’t want to miss that. Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina will perform the Keynote speech. The entertainment will be provided by Jim Worthing, who is described as an ‘accomplished songwriter in gospel and patriotic music.’
Settting aside the dismal lineup of speakers, the few substantive forums indicate that the Republicans are operating from a defensive crouch. They want to discuss how to avoid national health care, how to keep their guns, how to combat creeping socialism, how to prevent new taxes from killing entrepreneurship. They have whole forums to discuss mass delusions like: Al Franken and ACORN: How Liberals are Destroying the American Election System, hosted by (I shit you not), Hans von Spakovsky. That’s some serious crazy.
If you can make it through the full three days, you’ll be rewarded at the end when they wrap things up by awarding Rush Limbaugh with the Defender of the Constitution Award. Nuff said.
The Republicans are just indulging their own paranoia. There is nothing in this whole conference of any potential value to the conservative movement except a couple of forums on using new media and state/local organizing. Even on foreign policy, where they do have some ostensibly serious forums, they’re just going to frighten each other into spasms of pants-wetting. It’s going to be a sad, sad spectacle.