Laughing At CPAC

(typical CPAC reptile)

Ah, the CPAC convention, where conservatives and republicans unite to promote their message. Or at least make fun of liberals and progressives, like all "real Americans" do.
Except there seems to be a mix-up in the message. Everybody agreed that Obama's use of teleprompters is hilarious because they got great laughs when they read the jokes off of their teleprompters. And health care reform is bad, and will probably kill us all. Tim Pawlenty advocated taking a "nine-iron" to the government, and Human Events editor Jed Babbin Cracks Jokes About TX Suicide Attack, showing that conservative humor is alive and well, sick.
But after that, things got a little more divisive. One of the co-sponsors was the John Birch society, a group so extreme and toxic that almost no one at the convention admits that they exist. Another co-sponsor, GOProud, the gay republican group, was strongly condemned by the group California Young Americans for Freedom, whose main cause is opposing the "gay agenda" (yeah, they're for 'freedom' as long as it's not 'gay'; semantics is not a republican value). "Man on Dog" Rick Santorum lashed out at the military leaders who want to repeal DADT, which was somewhat in contrast with the usual reverence the right has for the military. They had panels discussing how to get rid of immigrants and how to recruit more minority support on the same day. Good luck with that pairing.
But the best part was the "straw poll" on who they would support for president in 2012. And the winner was...Ron Paul (Read the full poll here. PDF), who beat out Mitt Romney (winner of the last three CPAC polls), 31% to 22%. And judging from the boos from the crowd when the results were announced, the CPAC'ers don't agree with their own. In fairness, only 2,395 straw poll votes were cast by what organizers said was 10,000 attendees at this year's CPAC., which makes me wonder how much of a political force they expect to be. If you can only get a 24% turnout of attendees who are physically in the house, do you really think that you can motivate your "base" on election day? When it might be raining? Or 'American Idol' might be on TV?
If these wackos ever actually got organized, I would be frightened. But as long as they remain a circus of clowns, I do find them amusing.