At CPAC, shirts are red, people are very predominantly white and “blue lives” matter. From a record attendance of well over 10,000, here are a few portraits of people who paid between $70 and $5,000 to cheer wildly for Dinesh D’Souzas’ new movie trailer and boo about “the Donald Trumps of the left,” whoever they might be.
Ted Cruz today spent a chunk of his time onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference wistfully recalling how muscular and sexy he looked in a photoshopped poster.
Following a disastrous showing at the GOP debate in Detroit Thursday, Donald Trump just unceremoniously pulled out of a scheduled appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, citing a rally in “Witchita, Kanasas.”
At the heart of the Conservative Political Action Conference is the swag room called the CPAC Hub. Inside, the American Enterprise Institute is one of a few dozen groups handing out free branded items. Today, I learned they’re hiding a horrible secret.
Here at CPAC—the premiere conference and networking event of the conservative movement, which I’ll be attending for the next two days—most things are free. The NRA beer koozie? Free. An “I’m Ready For Freedom, Not Free Stuff” poster? You guessed it—free. A gold-plated, life-size pin of a fetus’s feet? Free, and I took two. But the conference is selling one thing for money: Books.
Greetings from Conservative Political Action Conference, the nation’s premiere conservative meeting place for politicians hawking books and young Republicans looking to have a good time. What better place could there be from which to cover tonight’s GOP debate, live from Detroit? Ostensibly Detroit, but that’s a lot further away and frankly I doubt we’d get credentials anyway.
The group behind CPAC—the nation’s favored gathering for white conservatives who want to take a selfie with a GOP candidate—today issued a statement calling Marco Rubio’s decision to skip the annual mutual admiration conference a “rookie move.”
And on the third day of CPAC there were women.
During his Thursday speech at CPAC, the conserva-palooza, vice presidential also-ran Paul Ryan used a touching story about an undernourished child to argue why free or reduced-priced school lunches were a bad thing. Touching, but false. And he continues to perpetuate the falsehood.
The first thing you notice about CPAC, the conservative answer to Comic Con, are the lines.
[Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stands with Sen. Tom Coburn after giving him a rifle, on stage at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference in National Harbor, Md., on Thursday. Image via Susan Walsh/AP.]
Today starts the three-day annual circus known as the Conservative Political Action Conference, in which Washington journalists scurry like wounded, hungry cooing doves in search of crazy bite from right-wing presidential hopefuls, and also Rick Perry. Gawker is there, too.
This morning, Ben Carson spoke at the CPAC conference, a day after a panel on 'the race card' failed spectacularly, with some audience members defending slavery. Carson is a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins and a conservative who gently criticized Obama's healthcare policies while speaking in front of him at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. Since then, he has become a sensation among conservative bloggers and today at CPAC, announced his intention to leave behind medicine to focus on education initiatives, and possibly a future in politics.
A panel on rebutting charges of racism at a conservative political conference went exactly was well as you might expect when one audience member suggested slaves should have been thankful to their masters for "feeding... and housing" them, earning scattered applause and a collective chorus of "Ooooooohh....!"
Herman Cain, listed in the official program as "Former CEO, Godfather's Pizza," took the stage at about 4:30 on Thursday at the Woodley Park Marriott in Washington, D.C. It was day one of the Conservative Political Action Conference, and he was the main attraction. There had been a long line throughout the lobby before his scheduled appearance. It was an earnest crowd. The prevailing concern at the conference (I overheard one college student saying) was with showing people it was cool to be an American.
Everyone's favorite pundit and reality star Sarah Palin has yet to endorse a Republican presidential candidate. (But Sarah, there are so many great options to choose from.) The Washington Times has an article about Palin's appearance on Fox News Sunday, where she (predictably) pondered the question of Romney's conservatism.
