Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Not-quite undercover at CPAC

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The Nation’s Max Blumenthal went to the infamous CPAC conference, and tried to get Michelle Malkin (“In Defense of Internment”) to autograph a picture of a WWII-era concentration camp for Japanese-Americans. She didn’t like that very much. And the rest is pretty choice, too.

Have Republicans ever looked so pathetic? (Thanks to Michael Forbes Wilcox for the tip.)

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  1. …was the stuff he chose to include in his “documentary”.

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    He erred GREATLY in saying that Tom Tancredo was the only one there with a consistently conservative record.  Between him, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, John Cox (ha) and Jim Gilmore (double ha), Ron Paul…the list goes on. 

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    I think the stuff that was selected for this video shows how pathetic the left is to make us look like a bunch of racists and pigs. 

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    Maybe I’ll go to a liberal conference and only show snippets of when you guys break up into focus groups to talk about feelings and smoke pot and try to claim that this is the face of the Democratic party. 

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    Would it be BS?  Of course.  So is this video.

    • Joe, I think you better look at the CPAC folks and convince me that many of them are not “racists and pigs.” I don’t know what else you’d call the likes of Malkin and Coulter. Interesting that Grover comes off pretty decently in that respect — not actually surprising, since he’s a Wall-Street-Journal pro-immigration conservative.

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      You, JoeTS, are the future of the GOP, whether these clowns realize it or not. I would be thrilled if folks like you and Porcupine would take over the party. You’ve got your work cut out for you.

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      Were there drum-circles and bong-hit-breakouts at Yearly Kos? Didn’t hear about that. I’m sure you could find your kooks there, though.

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      (BTW, Ron Paul is a libertarian, hardly a down-the-line conservative.)

      • …About a decade or so ago, we received a fund-raising letter than had been signed by Ron Paul.  It was to support raising funds for Jesse Helms’s re-election campaign, of all people.

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        A self-described libertarian helping to raise funds for Jesse Helms?  I don’t believe that a libertarian would do a thing like that.

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        Paul might like you to believe that he’s a libertarian, but no, he isn’t.

        • purity tests aside, Ron Paul consistently break away from GOP rank and file on issues of liberty.

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          So, is he a “perfect” libertarian?  Of course not.  Would Libertarians claim him?  Some yes, some no.  Is Ron Paul a “conservative” based on the 90s and 00s definition?  Nah.

          • …but what that showed to me yet again was the fact that self-described “libertarians” are little more than Republicans who want to smoke marijuana.

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            BTW, I actually voted for Paul in the 1988 presidential election.  It was a protest vote, of course.  Pardon me for my surprise that he would be whoring for political contributions for Jesse Helms, and what that tells me about self-described libertarians.

      • By inviting you to come along with us next year.  We’d be proud to bring you along with the rest of the UMass Dartmouth Delegation. 

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        You can see for yourself the Conservative Muslims Booth.  You can see for yourself the black people at the booth Max showed (he caught them at a lunch break, ha!).  You’ll be glad to see that no candidates are anti-immigration.  Everyone stressed that they only sought to make it a fair, level playing field and wanted everyone to follow the law. 

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        You can meet the throngs of people who want to lower taxes to help remove the burden of working families.  You can meet Republicans who want civil unions, Republicans who want assault rifles, Republicans who hate the war, Republicans who love Bush, you can meet people whom are day in day out stereotyped in print but breaking the mold in person. 

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        A point that Ann brought up later in her Q&A, although this gets no air time, was that Bush appointed 2 blacks, one a woman, to the 3rd highest ranking level in the Executive Branch.  Who’s the highest black in a Democratic government?  When the time came to select a DNC chairman, did they pick Donna Brazile?  Nah, they went for “the white man in the green pants”. 

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        I was there for Ron Paul’s entire shabang.  I’ve never heard a real libertarian call for Roe v Wade being overturned and saying that changing the definition of marriage as “confusing.”  He might have been a libertarian at some point, but I don’t think he is today.

        • Joe, I think your perspective is great and adds value to the discussion. 

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          Let me quibble with one point —

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          You’ll be glad to see that no candidates are anti-immigration.  Everyone stressed that they only sought to make it a fair, level playing field and wanted everyone to follow the law.

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          To be fair, on RMG, you wrote in an excellent round-up of your trip, including:

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          Tom Tancredo, the one-trick pony of anti-immigration law gave a speech that made the crowd want to go lynch a Hispanic rather than vote for someone. 

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          It’s hard for me to see Tancredo as “only seeking a fair level playing field” — and seemingly hard for you to see him that way. 

          • He participates actively with groups that want to help expedite the process of legal immigration.  He is not against immigration or immigrants, just the illegal kind. 

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            However, his delivery was pure demagoguery (best word I can think of)that overshadowed the good things he’s been attempting to accomplish.  He speech was a crowd-riler.  Contrast with: Mike Huckabee.

  2. that I thought this video was a mighty mixed bag.  Two things in particular bugged me about it.

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    • Trying to get a “gotcha” moment with Ann Coulter’s three broken engagements.  First, who the fuck cares how many boyfriends she’s broken up with?  What possible connection does that have with her views on whether marriage should or should not be restricted to straight couples?  And second, how does that exchange do anything other than create sympathy for someone who deserves none?
    • The Tancredo guy who reacted angrily when Blumenthal tries to turn the conversation to one of “white culture” or whatever.  Frankly, I think the angry guy comes out looking pretty decent in that exchange — if he had reacted any other way, the obvious conclusion would be that he really was a white supremacist of some kind.  (Of course, the guy trying to cover up his confederate flag didn’t do the Tancredo cause any favors.)

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    I’m not a big fan of these kinds of “gotcha” clips, particularly where, as here, they don’t accomplish their goal very successfully.  If you go to Yearly Kos, you’d better be prepared to face videographers trying to do the exact same thing, knowing full well that they’ll edit the crap out of whatever footage they take to try — probably successfully — to make you look like an idiot.

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    The Malkin bit is pretty good, though.

  3. …What it is, is an issue of the people who hire her and why they hire her.  CPAC hired her to speak–and probably paid her lots of money–because they knew her appearance at their convention would bring in lots of attendees who paid lots of money to attend.  CPAC knew what they were getting.  And they got it in spades.  What they ultimately got was a lot of attention, probably some attention from people who otherwise had never heard of them.

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    Ann Coultergeist and CPAC are laughing all the way to the bank.  Coultergeist isn’t going to stop unless and until the people who are ultimately supporting her–Faux News, the people who pay to attend conventions like CPAC, companies and “belief tanks” (self-described “think tanks”) stop paying her to come tell them what they want to hear.  It is the latter who should be villified–she’s only telling them what they want to hear.  If I was half the actor that Coultergeist is, I could do the same thing that she’s doing.

  4. the CPAC video as part of a larger look at Coulters place in the modern “Conservative” movement:

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    Observe in the superb CPAC video produced by Max Blumenthal how Coulter immediately mocks his physical appearance as soon as she realizes that he is a liberal. And the crowd finds it hilarious. That is what she does. She takes liberal males, emasculates them, depicts them as “faggots” and weak losers, and thereby makes the throngs of weak and insecure followers who revere her feel masculine and strong. There is no way that the right-wing movement can shun her because what she does is indispensible to the entire spectacle. What she does is merely a more explicit re-inforcement of every central theme which the right-wing movement embraces.

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    Greenwald has rapidly become a ‘must read’ for me, along with Digby, and of course BMG.
    IMHO he’s just consistently good, and this is one of his better  pieces. It’s bad news for wingnuts that he’s now on Salon, because he’s getting much wider play there, and his writing exposes their creeping facism.

    • Did he just try to psychoanalyze me?  I’m Irish…doesn’t work.

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      She did what every woman does.  A guy makes a pass at her, or refers to her relationship/sexual history and she thereby responds by mocking his appearance to denote that “If I was going to get with someone, it wouldn’t be you.” 

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      You wanna talk creeping fascism?  Every time someone criticizes DP, a lot of people here scream bias and whatnot and fail to acknowledge any problem with his actions.  That’s the beginnings of fascism right there.  Would we talk of the party that got rid of Mark Foley as soon as his story broke into the news or the party that continued to elect Gerry Studds term after term after they found out he was into playing with underage boys toys. 

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      One of the most prevalent signs of 1940s fascism was closing your eyes when wrong was done.  Have the Republicans done it?  Sure.  Democrats?  Of course.  Are either parties trying to creep fascism into the American home?  No.

        • I was referring to the unwavering defense he gets despite anything that happens.  Kudos to you, though, David.

          • i wondered if i’d see unwavering support of DP on BMG after the election.  but honestly i don’t see it thus far.  i think there are maybe 2 regulars only who are fawning. 

      • there, LOL.

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        Read Greenwalds entire piece, and be aware that guys like him are enemies of the modern GOP, because they exposes the ‘Conservative’ movement for what it is.

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        Here’s another quote that I came across the other day from Ann :

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        “We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.” 

          – Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

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        Internment camps, torture, executions, so many fantasies (and policies) from the party of moral scolds. Be careful though, the fantasy might give way to the reality that some of us liberals fight back.

        • which means I’m also ardently anti-death penalty.  Executing John Walker won’t intimidate liberals, but it’ll sure as hell embolden terrorists.

      • Just so we’re clear, the Republicans didn’t “get rid of Mark Foley as soon as his story broke”.

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        He resigned with no (known) pressure from his party.

      • …between 1973 (when Studds’s event occurred) and 1983 (when it was brought to light)–which I doubt–the page with whom Studds diddles was of legal age when the diddling occurred.

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        One can argue whether it was appropriate for a man of his age and position to have diddled with the page, but the page was apparently not “underage” in a legal sense.

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        The voters in Dan Crane’s district in Illinois, who was censured at the same time for a similar action with a female, chose not to re-elect him.  The voters in Robert Bauman’s district in Maryland chose not to re-elect him in 1980 after it came to light that he was propositioning male prostitutes. 

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        The voters in Studds’s district chose to re-elect him.  Probably in part because the page with whom he had diddled came to Studds’s defense.

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        Foley chose not to stand for re-election.  His choice.  He would not have had to have the Republican party’s imprimature if he had chosen to stand for re-election.  I suspect, but cannot prove, that there is more in that story than has been made public, and, if he had stayed in office, it would have probably come to light.

        • it is still age 16 for boys and girls.

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          Mark Foley was not a lone wolf in this—-look at how many people looked the other way or outright covered for him in that they never called the cops to investigate.

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          The question on everyone’s minds is what are republicans up to in this whole activity? 

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