Following LaPierre, who warned elites don't care about children, media root for mass shootings, and liberals are engaged in a subversive plot to claim authoritarian control, Pence laments "a time of too much division and too much anger in America"
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) February 22, 2018
Daniel Dale, at Toronto’s The Star:
… For decades, CPAC was a gathering Republicans attended to rail against long-standing conservative villains like overreaching government. In the Donald Trump era, they have largely been superseded by other enemies.
This year’s CPAC still offers moments of old-fashioned conservative orthodoxy. But it is being joined by a large dose of the loose philosophy that might be best called Trumpism.
On Thursday, speakers griped about the FBI. They darkly warned about Muslims. They made fun of transgender people. They held a panel on “fake news.” And, one after the other, they hailed the wondrousness of a year-old era that Vice-President Mike Pence claimed was “the most consequential year in the history of the conservative movement.”
At a gathering normally heavy on Republican legislators, only one, Sen. Ted Cruz, was on the speaker roster. In their place this year were Trump administration officials and Trump-friendly others: Fox News hosts, a Breitbart News editor, campus rabble-rousers fighting “political correctness,” far-right Europeans…
Just as it was a hallmark of Trump rallies, media criticism was a prominent feature of the new CPAC. The first video of the day was a compilation of clips of television anchors admitting errors or being mocked by Trump and Fox personalities as “fake news.”
The first panel was titled “An Affair to Remember: How the Far Left and the Mainstream Media Got in Bed Together.” In a sharp reversal from the usual Republican argument, which holds that cloistered media elites do not leave their northeastern bubble to speak with average Trump supporters in forgotten communities, one speaker, Candace Owens, complained that CNN too frequently interviewed Trump supporters who “had no teeth.”
They wanted to make Trump supporters look “stupid,” she said…
*Not* a heavy lift, lady. Easy enough even for effete coastal BothSiderists!
every year I ask why CPAC gets so much media attention and no liberal equivalent ever did/does and no one has an answer
— Ätriós (@Atrios) February 22, 2018
related, if a liberal used rhetoric like any of the CPAC speakers do there would be lots of coverage, and not good coverage
— Ätriós (@Atrios) February 22, 2018
Think the DC location is pretty key for CPAC press coverage and an impediment for Netroots, don't really know enough about Take Back America to speculate about their coverage.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) February 22, 2018
That's true too. Netroots has a ton of different panels and trainings that are geared toward activists, CPAC is built around a much smaller number of higher-wattage events, and almost everyone featured is at least cable news famous.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) February 22, 2018
Friday Morning Open Thread: CPAC, Reliable Point’n’Mock Post TopicPost + Comments (199)