Quote of the Day: Sean Hannity at CPAC

"I can look out in the crowd, I kinda have Fox X-ray vision, and I can see that some of you women, you don't even know it yet, but you're pregnant. It's not your fault. It's not his fault."

Sean Hannity, at CPAC.

I think this was Sean Hannity's attempt at humor. I'm not offended by it. It is fascinating that Hannity thought talking about sex to a conservative audience was the way to go.

No Love For Jeb Bush and Chris Christie At CPAC

Fake journalist Sean Hannity ran off names of potential presidential candidates to the crowd at CPAC. Scott Walker and Rand Paul got the biggest cheers. The crowd booed when the names of Jeb Bush and Chris Christie were mentioned. Christie has avoided talking about immigration reform. Bush has shown an openness to some dorm of immigration reform in the past. The crowd at CPAC is booing because Christie and Bush aren't racist enough for their tastes.

Republican Party Minority Outreach At CPAC

As you can see the CPAC minority outreach wasn't a fullhouse.

Paul Ryan's Brown Bag Story at CPAC

Rep. Paul Ryan spoke at CPAC and made this bizarre statement.

He then told an anecdote he said was relayed to him by Eloise Anderson, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) Department of Children and Families secretary.

"She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program," Ryan said.

"He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids," he continued. "He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand."

I previously wrote before about a 60 Minutes piece on homeless children in Florida suffering with hunger. These children need a free lunch. Ryan offers these children no solutions.

The Wire reports Ryan's story may not have happened. Ryan's story is very similar to a scene in author Laura Schroff's book An Invisible Thread." Here is the excerpt.

This reminds me of when Ryan showed up to a soup kitchen unannounced and washed already clean dishes for a photo-op.

I agree with Cenk Uygur in the second video. Ryan is a fraud.

Sarah Palin Hypocrisy

Only former reality show star Sarah Palin would attack Washington elected officials of both parties as being reality stars.

“We don’t have leadership coming out of Washington. We have reality television.”

Are these the great rhetorical flourishes the reason CPAC booked Palin? It can't be for her drinking a Big Gulp onstage or wearing a hoodie.

No Big Tent With the GOP

House Speaker John Boehner tells Martha Raddatz, of ABC News, that he will not compromise his position on gay marriage. There are no exceptions in Boehner's world.

MARTHA RADDATZ (HOST): Can you imagine yourself in a situation where you reversed your decision as Portman has on gay marriage if a child of yours or someone you love told you they were gay.

BOEHNER: Listen, I believe marriage is a union between one man and one woman. It’s what I grew up with, it’s what i belive, it’s what my church teaches me and I can’t imagine that position would ever change.

The conservative LGBT group, GOProud, has not been allowed into CPAC. The simple reason GOProud is not allowed is because GOProud supports gay rights. MSNBC conservative pundit SE Cupp boycotted CPAC because GOPRoud was not allowed to attend.

"It just became increasingly uncomfortable to align with an event, a great event in many ways, that had nonetheless attempted to marginalize a really important group of conservatives working on our behalf," Cupp said. "For us to sort of slap them on the face and say, we no longer want your services or we're embarrassed by you and ashamed of you and we'd like to put you in the back of the tent just felt really dismissive and disrespectful."

Sen. Marco Rubio said at CPAC that the Republican Party doesn't need new ideas. If the Republican Party wants to stick to the old ideas of marginizing gays, women and brown people than they can expect to keep losing elections. The Democratic Party will take the voters that the Republican establishment casts aside.

Update: when Republicans have to defend their position on gay marriage by saying they are not bigots, you know they are losing the argument. Case in point is Marco Rubio.

"Just because I believe that states should have the rights to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot," Rubio said during his Thursday speech. While the line drew applause, it was tepid compared to the reaction to his statements on abortion that followed.

Write A Caption: Allen West & Pat Boone

Only the hilarity of CPAC could provide a photo of Pat Boone and Allen West together. I wonder if CPAC was created to provide The Daily Show and bloggers with endless comedy material.

John McCain At CPAC

Last year, Tas covered the lunacy that is CPAC. Nowhere present was John McCain. The Maverick knew the the base hates him. This year, conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham made no effort to hide her dislike of McCain.

"Here's another little nugget for you. I don't think it's enough to say that you were a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution," Laura Ingraham told the CPAC crowd. "I think the question is... what have you been doing for conservatism lately?"

Ingraham took one more swipe at McCain: "An obsession with endless bipartisan compromises does not keep us free."

McCain was forced to speak at CPAC this year. McCain was booed when he brought up the touchy subject of immigration. McCain needs these activists to help get him in the Oval Office. Their enthusiasm is underwhelming.



The base would rather lose in 2008 than have the Rockefeller Republicans take over the party. What is fascinating is the base would rather rally around a phony like Romney than McCain. Romney's record is more liberal then Nelson Rockefeller's. The base would rather hear sweet lies, grind Congress to a halt, and get nothing accomplished than get part of their agenda passed. These take-no-prisoners policies made Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay and George W. Bush lose power.

The GOP base wants government Armageddon. If they can't drown government in a bath tub then they take their water torture victim home.

Coulter continues to beam with pride over the fact that she called John Edwards a "faggot"

Ann Coulter spammed me with an email a few days ago, telling me her new book is coming out soon. And it'll be great. So great, in fact, Ann belts out this line to compare it with her other work:

For liberals who enjoy exclaiming, "This time, she's gone too far!" the quotes in this book will make that crack about Edwards look like a frosty beer on a hot summer day.

Classy.

I must admit, Coulter knows her target audience. I was there when Coulter uttered her infamous crack about Edwards. And despite all the token repudiation from wingnut bloggers who like to try and make us think that Coulter doesn't espouse the values of the conservative movement, the conservative base spoke for themselves. As I collected my jaw from the floor directly after Coulter's bombshell, everyone around me -- and I mean everyone -- were cheering as loud as they could. And I was surrounded by thousands of conservatives.

Coulter knows that what she said is wrong, but instead of offering an apology or even trying to distance herself from the Edwards crack, she's using it to pimp her new book.

No recantation, no shame. No recognition of any wrongdoing. How so very... Republican.

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

Newt Gingrich Inserts Foot In Mouth

"How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."

Newt Gingrich does realize he is saying that the people in predominantly black New Orleans are stupid? Gingrich's remark remind me of Wolf Blitzer's "so poor and so black" weirdness. What is it with how Beltway people view minorities?

Mitt Romney Wins CPAC Straw Poll

Mitt Romney won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll. Romney received 21 percent of the vote. Rudolph Giuliani won 17 percent Sam Brockbeck was in third with 15 percent.

The big (and unsurprising) news is John McCain came in a disappointing fifth. McCain did not attend the event. Which is probably just as well. Besides no solid Republican support and independents fleeing because of the Iraq war; the McCain campaign is doing great.

Update: Taz makes a point about the straw poll.

Actually, Romney got the most first place votes in the CPAC07 straw poll, but the poll had a semi-Instant Runoff Voting quality to it where they asked particpants to vote by ranking their first and second choice for preisdent. When these votes were combined, Rudy came out the victor with 34%, followed by Romney and Newt Gingrich, both with 30%. I was on location at CPAC in DC when the results were annouced and I'm taking all of this from my notes, so I know it's accurate. Leave it to the MSM to screw up simple reporting jobs like this...

Max Blumenthal at CPAC

Max Blumenthal of The Nation interviewed several people at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Highlights are Michelle Malkin admitting to the several factual errors in her book and Tom Tancredo repeating his Miami is a third world country rant.