For the last few days, some of the Very Best Beltway Media People have been sitting on the porch, passing the jug around and remembering the days back when CPAC was a nice little gathering of intellectual giants who sipped port and debated Burke in front of a small, well-behaved audience of star-struck kids who just lurved Murrica so god damn much it'd just make you cry.
And them Trump and Milo came along and fucked it all up which is why Conservatism can't have nice things.
From Ezra Klein, former Liberal turned Important Media Executive:
From Kathleen Parker, nationally-syndicated conservative Pollyanna who has recently taken to feigning shocked when conservatives behave like conservatives:I've been to CPAC many times. I admire conservatism as an intellectual tradition. The descent into Trumpism and Miloism is bad for us all.— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) February 20, 2017
At CPAC, conservatism betrayed
By Kathleen Parker Opinion writer February 21 at 8:05 PM
Remember when conservatism meant deep thinkers and big ideas? Get over it.
Today, conservatism means get your Miley (Cyrus) on and show us your tongue, shout Trump to the rafters, pay up for the privilege of “free speech,” and young — very young — “love.”
Or so it would seem, judging by this year’s lead-up to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that begins here Wednesday. If young conservatives came looking for mentors and for values confirmation, they may have wasted their ticket...
You get the idea.
But here'e the thing.
You know what actually fucked up the annual gathering of the wingnut tribes at the Conservative Political Action Committee?
Conservatism.
And you know when Conservatism was officially FUBAR?
Decades ago.
Of course you're not going to hear that from media professionals whose stock-in-trade is hawking the comforting fairy tale of Conservatism's glorious Pre-Trump/Milo days to the rest of their Beltway friends, which is why I feel I must take it upon myself to once again take you back...back...back in time.
Back to when Donald Trump was just another rich, loud, racist real estate asshole gaming America's bankruptcy courts and screwing the people who worked for him out of an honest day's pay.
Back to when Milo was just a cluster of cells being cultured in a Petri dish by a handful of lunatics in Paraguay:
Back to when I wrote this in 2008...
Big Fucknozzle Trade Show
hits D.C. this week.
For all nine-minutes of bullshit, faux-introspection chin-music that came from the Right about change, future and vision after they got hog-slaughtered in the last two elections, if you want to know what is really at the corrupt, oozy heart of the American Conservative movement (and its filthy little avatar, the Republican Party) look no further than their ideological trade show: the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.
How do I know?
'Cause Dick Cheney tells me so (from the CPAC website):
“CPAC has consistently over the years championed those ideas that have made America great: limited government, free enterprise, low taxes and a strong national defense."
– Vice President Dick Cheney
“CPAC has never been more important!"
– Amb. John Bolton
“… A showcase of the heart and soul of American conservatism”
– Los Angeles Times
“CPAC is the preeminent yearly gathering of conservative activists."
– The Washington Post
And since bullshit walks and money pays the piper and calls the tune, who finances this freak show? Who lays out genuine coin of the realm for this three day Course in Wingnut Miracles, and what do those sponsors believe is the real problem with America?
The American Conservative Union: who believe that OSHA, commies and liberals are destroying America.
Accuracy in Media: who believe that liberal control of the media is destroying America.
Advocacy Ink : who believe that bad wingnut PR is destroying America.
Alliance Defense Fund: who believe that non-Christians, queers, unregulated vaginae and porn are destroying America.
American Civil Rights Union: who believe that militant atheists are destroying America.
American Federation of Senior Citizens: who believe that liberals are destroying America.
American Future Fund: who believe that non-Limbaugh-approved thoughts are destroying America.
American Service Council, Inc.: who believe that "socialized oil" is destroying America.
American for Tax Reform: who believe that taxes are destroying America.
Americans for Limited Government: who believe that Evil Gummint things are destroying America.
Americas Majority: who believe that non-Judeo Christian morals are destroying America.
AT&T: who believes that iPhones are destroying America.
Black Republican PAC: who believe that the 99.7% of African Americas who are not self-loathing enough to join the GOP are destroying America.
BMW Direct, Inc.: who believe that not hiring BMW Direct is destroying America.
Campaign for Liberty: who believe that any and all regulations of corporate interests are destroying America.
Capital Research Center: who believes that ACORN and labor unions are destroying America.
Catholic Family Caucus: who believe that people who point out their site is full of broken links are destroying America.
Center for Individual Freedom: who believe that people who point out that a site festooned with screaming eagles, flags and links to wingnut causes and spokesmodels is hardly "non-partisan" are destroying America.
Citizens in Charge Foundation: who believe that non-plebiscite-based Gummint thingies are destroying America.
Citizens United: who believe that things that don’t smell like Reagan's underpants are destroying America.
Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute: who believe that smelly liberal feminists are destroying America.
College Republican National Committee: who believe that "unions and leftist interest groups" are destroying America.
Competitive Enterprise Institute: Site offline, which can't be good for competitiveness.
Concerned Women for America: who believe that non-"Biblical values" are destroying America.
Congress of Racial Equality: not sure who they believe is destroying America, but its leader has great love for that pallet-truck-o-wingnut-crazy, Alan Keyes.
Congressional Effect Management: who believe that "the negative effects of Congressional deliberation on investor wealth" are destroying America.
Council for America: No site available, so America must remain dangerously uncounselled.
Culture 11: who seem to believe that doctrinaire wingnuts and plutocrat asswipes like virtually everyone else at CPAC are destroying America.
David All Group, LLC : who believe that the wingnut widget gap is destroying America.
David Horowitz Freedom Center: who believe that "All conservative action groups agree that" "the tenured radicals who have taken over America’s universities" are destroying America.
Eagle Forum: who believe that liberals, Messicans, a lack of ballistic missiles, non-Christians, queers and unregulated vaginae are destroying America.
Eberle Associates, Inc.: who believe bad wingnut PR is destroying America.
FairTax: who believe that the 16th amendment and its commie fellow travelers are destroying America.
Family Research Council: who believe that non-Christians, queers, unregulated vaginae and "ultraliberal judges" are destroying America.
Freedom Alliance : who believe that non-bomb-first/ask-questions-later policies are destroying America.
FreedomFest: who believe that not jamming the words "freedom" or "liberty" into every fucking sentence fragmentis destroying America.
Freedom's Defense Fund: who believe that "the radical left and their elitist allies in the mainstream media" are destroying America.
FreedomWorks: who believe that taxing rich people and evil gummint are destroying America.
Google: who believe that Yahoo and YouPorn are destroying America.
Hasan Family Foundation: who seem pretty cool.
Hispanic Leadership Fund: hard to tell but I'm guessing that if vouchers, free trade and tax cuts will save America, then unions and liberals will doom us all.
House Conservatives Fund : who believe that taxes, gays and non-Reagan-approved "conservatives" are destroying America.
HowObamaGotElected.com: who believe that the Evil Liberal Media who destroyed Sarah Palin and brainwashed America into voting for Obama are destroying America.
HSP Direct LLC: who believe that bad wingnut PR is destroying America.
Human Events: who believe that ideas that haven't passed through the colons of ""Robert Novak, Michelle Malkin, L. Brent Bozell, Terence Jeffrey, Bruce Bartlett, Thomas Sowell, David Limbaugh, Oliver North, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, etc." are destroying America.
Intercollegiate Studies Institute: who very probably would believe that people who point out that a site that's a tossed salad of commentary and books about "traditional values", liberal "tyranny", Conservative though, and the wit and wisdom of Robert Bork is hardly "non-partisan" are destroying America.
Intermarkets, Inc.: who believe that bad wingnut PR is destroying America.
Islamic Free Market Institute Foundation: who believe that taxes and regulations are destroying America.
Jim Worthing Productions: who believe that bad musical production values are destroying America.
John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs : who believe that all the usual suspects are destroying America.
Judicial Watch: would probably believe that people who point out that a site with a "Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2008 list that includes
but cannot seem to find the time or column inches to include war criminal, traitors and terrorists like George Bush and Dick Cheney really shouldn't be calling themselves "non-partisan" are destroying America.
- Barack Obama for his "alliance with the sleazy ACORN operation's 'voter registration;" and 'get out the vote' efforts" and his "corrupt dealings with convicted felon Tony Rezko and unrepentant terrorist William Ayers"
- Hillary Clinton for, among other things, "paid sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, cattle futures fraud, and stealing White House furniture"
- Some unwhitewashably-convicted Republican criminals like Ted Stevens thrown in for "balance"
Legacy List Marketing: who believe that out-of-date GOP mailing lists are destroying America.
Let Freedom Ring: Watch their ad
and then take a wild fucking guess at what they think is destroying America.
Libertarian Party: who believe that not letting wingnuts smoke pot is destroying America.
Liberty University School of Law: Hmmm. Jerry Falwell's Holy Fundy Law School? Let's take a moment and try to guess where it will come down on every single fucking thing.
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research: who very likely believe that people who point out that "Conservative think tank" is semantically equal to "Lemming 10K Cliff's Edge Fun Run to find a Cure for Death by Deceleration Trauma" are destroying America.
Media Research Center: who believe that the Sekrit Liberal Media Cabal are destroying America.
National Rifle Association: who believe that any opposition to a person's right to keep and bear ballistic missiles just like the Founders intended is destroying America.
National Right to Work: who believe that any attempt to organize working people out of debt peonage is destroying America.
National Taxpayers Union: who believe that any attempt to tax the beneficiaries of work class debt peonage is destroying America.
New York State Conservative Party: who believe that poor people, liberals and so forth are destroying America.
Pajamas Media/TV: who believe that those who mock the omniscient genius of Joe-the-Plumber/War Correspondent/Economic Analyst are destroying America.
PM Direct Marketing: who believe that anyone threatening to raise the price of wingnut junk mail is destroying America.
Politics Magazine: who believe that people who don’t get that politics is just a fucking business -- like farming, or plastics -- are destroying America.
Radio America: I don't know exactly who Radio America thinks is destroying America, but I'm guessing that any outfit which gives six hours of air time smack in the middle of every weekday to a stone sociopath like G. Gordon Liddy would have a list of America destroyers that wouldn't be too hard to figure out.
RegularFolksUnited.com: who believe that "elitists (yes, they are on both sides of the aisle) pretending they were doing things to help 'regular folks'" (while drooling over all thing Reagan and pumping out post after post about the Evil Left) are destroying America.
Save Our Secret Ballot: who believe that organized labor is destroying America.
Shirley & Banister Public Affairs: who believe that bad wingnut PR is destroying America.
Strategic Campaign Group: who believe that poor "Republican Campaign Consulting Management" are destroying America.
Susan B. Anthony List/Team Sarah: who believe that unregulated vaginae are destroying America.
Terra Eclipse: who believe that misaligned synergisms in the paradigm-shifting topography. Of new media. Platforms. Or something. Are destroying America.
The Heartland Institute: who believe that anti-tobacco and global warming kooks are destroying America.
The Heritage Foundation: who believe that The Left and all the lefty things we do are destroying America.
The Leadership Institute: who believe that a shortage of conservative leaders who understand the misaligned synergisms in the paradigm-shifting topography. Of new media. Platforms. Or something. Are destroying America.
The Poker Players Alliance: believes that regulations on internet gambling are destroying America.
The Republican Majority is a password-protected site. Hehehe. Big tent my ass.
The Washington Examiner: believes that those wacky liberals are destroying America.
The Washington Times: believes that the infidels who do not yet recognize the Most Reverend Sun Myung Moon's godhead are destroying America.
Townhall.com: believes that those who will not take advantage of their fabulous of one FREE copy of Ann Coulter's latest steaming slop bucket of bile and viper-head soup for every 12-month subscription to Townhall Magazine are destroying America.
Tradition, Family, Property: believes that the failing and "discredited" Theory of Evolution, Teh Gay and those damned unregulated vaginae are destroying America.
TV Watch: who believe that swill on the tube are destroying America.
Vernon K. Krieble Foundation: who believe that people who refuse to let the Free Market run buck wild are destroying America.
Victory Solutions LLC (whose website is currently and unironically down) believes that barriers to technologically-empowered the Right are destroying America.
Young America's Foundation: who believe that frivolous youth who are not "preserving and protecting Ronald Reagan’s Western White House—Rancho del Cielo—and using this historic presidential property and our newly renovated Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara, California, to pass on to future generations the ideas and lasting accomplishments of this great American President" are destroying America.
Young Americans for Freedom: who believe that Evil Gummint things are destroying America.
Youth For Western Civilization: who believe that Godless liberal multiculturalists who want defile to flower of our Southron Womanhood are destroying America.
And so, like any other catastrophically failed business being run by inflexible, third-generation, inherited-wealth-rich/brain-poor imbeciles, the GOP is absolutely incapable of coping with the fact that it’s core product is now less popular than road-kill-on-a-stick in the marketplace of ideas.
Because baby, to everyone Left of Genghis Khan, the headlong-into-the-abyss direction Party of God has been monstrous obvious for years now (from the late Steve Gilliard in 2005):
A note to our conservative friends:
WE TOLD YOU SO
Ever wonder why New Yorkers detest George Bush?
Because we experienced his incompetence up close and person. We knew this guy was full of shit, absolutely full of fucking shit, after they started to play games with the funding and gave Wyoming terrorism money. We knew he was an assclown then.
We thought DC 9/11 was a comedy, because the Bush we saw hid in AF One like the scared bitch that he is.
But did you listen?
Fuck no. Until last week, Ann Coulter was calling New Yorkers cowards for not endorsing Bush's folly in Iraq.
We have been screaming for two years that Bush and his team sucked. That they had no clue. They sent soldiers to be wounded in Iraq without armored anything. And you idiots cheered him on from the safety of your keyboards. We told you he was fucking up Iraq. But no, we supported Saddam, we were racist, we blamed America.
You say this isn't about politics? Fuck you, this IS politics, real time, real life politics, where the insanity of all your ideas are exposed to the world for the fraud that they are. Tax cuts kill. Ask the relatives of the dead of the Gulf Coast.
Well, motherfuckers, the alligators are feasting on dead nigger and there isn't an Iraqi in sight. And Bush is trying to gladhand his way through a mess which has stunned FOX reporters. I mean, Shepard Smith is calling Fox's talking heads liars ON THE AIR.
CNN rips Bush in print and online after nearly five years of sleep.
Instead of hearing what we had to say about Bush, you called John Kerry a coward, mocked Max Cleland, blamed everything but herpes on Bill Clinton. You enabled Bush into this mess and now you're shocked?
...
Instead of growing, learning or adapting, the same moral flatliners at the helm of the GOP have been staring at this arc of catastrophe year after year and using their media and money to hammer home the same mantra over and over again:
This. Can. Not. Be. True.
Like Big Finance and Big Auto, the Party of God has fallen.
And fallen.
And fallen.
Have fallen from Pepsi to Diet Shasta to Sam’s Choice Mountain Lightning.
To a boutique/nostalgia political-market loser that no one but double-wide dwelling Confederate States of America Re-enactors will swill.
So, like every other flailing, trust fund wannabe-J.P. Morgan with too much dough and not enough sense, the GOP is now doubling-down on its worst ideas
‘cause that’s the way Daddy built the franchise!
Ignoring the fact that They Are The Fucking Problem, the brain-wizards on the Right – cursed with far too much power and not a lick of common sense – continue to fall like Lucifer, screaming louder and louder on the way down that it was all the fault of the fucking unions. Or taxes.
Or foreigners.
Or liberals.
Or wild vaginae.
Or gays.
Or atheists.
Or Darwin.
Among all the earnest mole rats that pay to put on this farce -- among all their pathetic sites encrusted with screaming eagles, garish flags, glowing crosses and Reagan-on-black-velvet paeans to the delusions of their youth -- you'll not find a single idea that hasn’t been as dead as disco for 20 years.
Not a single bogey man that wasn’t already long in the tooth back when drunken fiasco Joe McCarthy was using them to terrorize a different generation of Americans into giving up their freedoms.
And so, like every other gold-plated imbecile CEO, since the problem can’t possibly be as simple as your product sucks ass and kills people, it must be...marketing.
Which means we have reached that Exciting Moment in their death-spiral where the Party of God cries out for Madison Avenue to save them from oblivion and from being forced to face their own dead hearts and crippled souls, and they start drawing high-priced, jiggly-vocabularied consultants and marketing parasites
like a dead coyotes draws flies.
UPDATE: Welcome C&L visitors.
8 comments:
Back in around spring of 1971 when I was a fresh faced young Journalism major at University of Wyoming (don't ask), I was inveighed upon to run sound for the campus radio station (KUWR, 10 watts FM in all the best dormitories) at a breakfast meeting with William F. Buckley, Jr. I wasn't supposed to be putting in any cents, let alone two of them, but I kept bugging my reporter to ask Buckley this or that question until Buckley himself directed a response to me and had me stand and discuss with him. I have no idea what the issues were or why I was so frustrated and it's been way too many years and several too many martinis ago to remember.
What I do remember is that he spoke in a very measured and well reasoned way that was like so much maple syrup on top of an underdone pancake. That was the last conservative "thinker" that I can remember, and yes, I got my ass chewed by the program director for interfering in the press breakfast.
In those days, the outer edge of right wing expression was coming from people like the John Birch Society and their ilk and all the right thinking Republicans were virulently anti-Communist, terrified of Russia on one hand and freaking out over communist dominoes threatening them from the west.
Even then, right wing mantras had to do with "limited government" (meaning government couldn't be effective in protecting the public at large from ravaging corporate interests) and "the welfare state" (meaning that they were terrified someone brown might get a dollar of undeserved assistance), school integration, and all the usual resentments.
The point of this screed is that the only difference between pre-Reagan Republicans and the current mudslide is that there used to be some Republicans who were at least willing to actually participate in governance. The post-Nixon Republican party was gradually taken over by the very ideologically extreme element that William F. Buckley basically banned from the party. Under Cheney, Rummy, and the rest of the Nixonian band of right wing outlaws, the party has skidded ever further into the right wing weeds until there is no thinking left, only hollow repetition of meaningless but melodic ideological points.
Unlike Kathleen Parker, though, I think the GOP young who go to CPAC in search of mentors and confirmation of values will find exactly that, mentors and values espousing bigotry, white supremacy, patriarchal autocracyl, and a fetish for ignorance. For that, after all, is what the Republican party, and has been since the Reconstruction.
". . . they started to play games with the funding and gave Wyoming terrorism money"
Just want to point out again that Wyoming has a smaller population that Washington, DC [and more white people, but I'm sure that's a coincidence].
Wonderful , thank you
Dick Cheney was once the Congresscritter for Wyoming (they get one only because that's the minimum), and his daughter wanted that seat. The Dickster has always been really good at capturing public money to spread around among his friends.
It has been my experience in life that most vaginae are self-regulating, at least as far as only letting the right ones in.
nature can be instructive,
After observing no breed of Vulture will feed on it.
Even the rat displays enough self worth of its survival not to eat what the Vulture does not.
Even the Dung Beetle has never been drawn to CPAC.
This guy Trump seems to be holding CPAC at the white house and only venture to say, he intends to perform CPAC in the house after hours continuously for his entire term.
Come to think about it. The Ann Coulter hasn't been seen at the Tower of the White House. kellyGirl must be like those mosquito repellent strips
only it repels the Coulter.
Got to get me some and put it on top of my Television. To wart off the Coulter like Garlic for Vampires.
Excellent journalism on fuckhead Yiannopolous and his nitwit posse: https://psmag.com/on-the-milo-bus-with-the-lost-boys-of-americas-new-right-629a77e87986#.oxhw4tj1d
Literally a generation has come up under Hate radio and the Stupid and Viscous Republican party. Republicans Michael Sweeney discusses above, who were willing to work to make the government better, are in the history books. That's 25-30 years ago. These current bastards only know how to break things. Young adults have been allowed to grow up completely misinformed about what has transpired over that time. And for some, 'because it makes women, minorities, gays, liberals mad' is the only idea they need. And until yesterday, these were some of the big idea they were going to showcase at Cpac.
CPAC = Amway + crystal meth.
They already put out a table for the fucking Birchers a few years back so I hardly see what taking away Horst Wessel 2.0's big speech is going to achieve this late in the freak-show.
Maybe Combover Caligula can sub in for him!
"I have the greatest fans! Thank you! I can't believe you guys, you're so great. My fans only lick the best windows. Good American windows ... America First!"
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