Blowback from McCain's CPAC Snub

As you may recall, John McCain was conspicuous by his absence at this year's CPAC. The American Conservative Union, which sponsored the conference, today features an article (reprinted from The Hill) by ACU chairman David Keene, who scolds McCain for the snub. He also mentions - which I hadn't been aware of - that, consistent with McCain's flip-floppy record, the Senator's aides did try at the last minute to work something out, but they were snubbed in return. The whole thing was a blown opportunity:

McCain’s people reacted to questions about how [skipping CPAC] fit into his strategy of courting conservative support with blank stares and finally began claiming that CPAC was not representative of anything, as it is attended mostly by “Washington insiders.” What was apparent to reporters and others, however, was that the 6,300 conservative activists streaming in from outside Washington were, in fact, from everywhere but Washington. As it turned out, they had come from all 50 states and were crowding the halls of the Shoreham and a couple of neighboring hotels that had been booked solid weeks in advance.

When the senator’s people realized this wouldn’t fly they tried to go around the organizers to get a room to host a separate reception for attendees, but were told quite accurately that every function room and suite in the host hotel were sold out. They satisfied themselves in the end by telling reporters that the senator would have come but for scheduling difficulties.

In fact, had McCain attended, he would have been well received. He finished fourth anyway in the straw poll won by Mitt Romney, but was booed every time his name was mentioned for the way he and his ham-handed managers handled the whole thing. There is much about his record that conservatives don’t like, but a good bit they admire as well. That is something that can be said of the other wannabes as well … and all of them were well received.

I'm not one of those liberals with a soft spot for John McCain; he's an unprincipled war hawk with a much more conservative record than many would like to admit. Still, I was counting it as a plus for him that he skipped out on this year's Coulterized hate fest. But it should come as no surprise that he in fact made a rather pathetic attempt to get on board at the last minute.

One thing that does sound odd to me is the assertion, from both sides, that McCain simply didn't know how big a deal CPAC would be. It's the major event on the conservative calendar. It's a big deal every year. McCain wasn't avoiding it because he was misinformed; he was avoiding it, most likely, because he knew what a cesspool of right-wing fanaticism it can be. And yet he still flip-flopped and tried to get in under the wire.

As it stands, McCain's relationship with the conservative base has taken a blow, not just for missing CPAC, but for making its organizers feel bad:

The loser, of course, was John McCain—not because he wasn’t there, but because of the essentially mean-spirited manner in which he and his staff dismissed the very people whose support he claims he is seeking.

And that just seems to be the line on McCain generally: nobody actually likes him very much.

Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, John McCain, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:04 PM 0 comments

  Elephants: "Forget...Forrrgeeeeet..."

Good post by Matt Browner Hamlin at The Right's Field about this excellent Tom Schaller piece in the Baltimore Sun. Both Hamlin and Schaller note the astounding dearth of references to the Iraq war by presidential candidates at CPAC. Schaller suspects that the omissions may be rooted in the same factor that has so far made Rudy Giuliani the frontrunner:

Here's my theory for why Mr. Giuliani is ascendant: It's not so much because he triggers memories of the horrific day in the fall of 2001 when the terrorists attacked, but that he reminds Republicans of the fall of 2002.

That autumn, the Republicans were at their zenith. In September, President Bush had given a moving speech on the first anniversary of 9/11. The next month, the Republican-led Congress passed the Iraq war resolution. A month later, Republicans won the midterm elections. Mr. Bush was popular, Democrats were scrambling for cover, and Republicans controlled the entire national government for the first time in a half-century.

Then came the war in Iraq, which Mr. Bush insisted was the central front in the global war on terror. By coupling Iraq with the broader war against terror, "The Decider" eventually turned the GOP's advantage on terrorism into a liability.

Mr. Giuliani is presenting himself as "The De-Coupler" - the candidate who allows Republicans to magically transport themselves back in time to a pre-Iraq era, when their terrorism credentials could still be wielded as a lethal, single-edged sword.

This is, of course, pure fantasy on the part of Giuliani and his supporters - but as I've said many times before, fantasy is Giuliani's strong suit. The entire Republican party seems ready to slip back into happy illusions about the days when Americans believed that the GOP was the party of national security and they're hoping the general public is willing to come along for the ride - Iraq be damned. As Hamlin puts it:

Not only are Republicans forced to run away from Bush, they have to deny that the last five years have taken place and whitewash the results of their failures of leadership in the war against Islamic terrorists.

Et viola! If you want a Grand Unifying Theory of This Week's Posts at A&S, it's this: Rudy Giuliani commands the Republican field because he is a champion in the war of perception. Schaller makes the same observation:

Pretending Iraq never happened is tough. It was abundantly clear at last week’s conference, however, that the conservatives’ capacity for self-deluding, avoidant behavior may prove to be Mr. Giuliani’s greatest asset.

It's a depressing scene, like watching a balding and pudgy 40-year-old man squeeze into his high school letter jacket. But there you have it.

Incidently, Schaller mentions a strange thing Rudy said at CPAC (strange given the audience, that is):

He suggested that, much as America's former enemies from World War II are now allies, and the former communist states are rapidly becoming our friends too, the goal of the war on terrorism should be to win the hearts and minds of the terrorists who hate us.

"We have to stop them, and then we have to persuade them," Mr. Giuliani said.

Remember how in 2004 all the conservatives were insisting that it wasn't enough for John Kerry to say we'd stop the terrorists - he had to say we would "kill" the terrorists. Imagine if he'd told people that "we have to pursuade them"! We'd still be hearing about it!

It really is all about perception, I guess.

Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, The Right's Field, Tom Schaller

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:53 AM 0 comments

  CPAC: Heart of Darkness

Now that the CPAC attendees have had a chance to unpack (and to advise us on hotels to avoid in DC), we're getting more comprehensive reports on how it all went down.

According to the right-wing Washington Times,

Michael S. Steele and Newt Gingrich were the biggest stars according to activists who attended the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani pulled off CPAC's biggest coup, former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III was the biggest surprise, and Ann Coulter was the biggest loser.

Steele, of course, is a two-time loser (for U.S. Senate and RNC Chair) and isn't running for President, but he was well received at the Conservative Summit and at CPAC, and it seems clear that he's going to be hanging around as a conservative movement star-in-waiting. That kind of status generally comes with an expiration date, since you eventually have to do something to justify the buzz, but Steele's window may be larger than others, since he seems to have become the nation's most prominent black Republican (besides Condi). Considering the alternative, conservatives seem pretty happy to have Steele around - and who can blame them?

Gingrich, continuing his non-campaign campaign, was on his home turf.

"I got more bang for my buck than the other [2008 presidential hopefuls]," a smiling Mr. Gingrich told The Washington Times after he marched from the back of the Regency Ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, amid stirring music nearly drowned out by applause and cheers.

Now, Newt hasn't announced yet. He's been coy, keeping himself in the public eye while criticizing the long campaign season. So I'd like to know exactly what words he used in place of "[2008 presidential hopefuls]".

At any rate, the straw poll - reported in the post below - seems to be surrounded by a pretty sophisticated expectations game. For instance:

Mr. Gingrich was the only top-tier potential contender for the Republican nomination who hadn't formed a presidential exploratory committee or bought any CPAC banquet tables for supporters. Yet in the largest presidential preference straw poll in the conference's history, he placed fourth (14 percent) -- ahead of Arizona Sen. John McCain (12 percent), who rejected an invitation to address the event.

Mr. Giuliani made his decision to accept CPAC's speaking invitation four days before the conference, yet managed to place second (17 percent) in the straw poll behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (21 percent), who had invested heavily in pre-event organization.

I've been praising Romney's legwork for a while now, but how much does "pre-event organization" really have to do with the straw poll results? Do contenders try to pack CPAC the way local pols might pack a Democratic club to win its endorsement? Does the CPAC straw poll really measure the temperature of the conservative movement, or does it mainly just reflect a petty test of the candidates' early organization?

My sense is that there's an element of both, that for instance the Romney vote reflects more organization than enthusiasm. But at the same time, Newt has done plenty of organization himself - just not in the name of a presidential run. He's been building his mailing lists, he's got his 527, and he has spent the last decade cultivating his conservative fan base. I'm guessing that a few banquet tables, give or take, weren't going to make much difference anyway.

Reports on Giuliani have been mixed. The Washington Times article suggests Rudy did well:

"I think Giuliani is doing much better among conservative audiences than anybody could have imagined six months ago," said Michael Toner, a Federal Election Commission member appointed by President Bush.

Following Mr. Giuliani's Friday speech, several previously skeptical conservatives stopped a reporter to express their admiration for how thoughtful Mr. Giuliani appeared and to say they liked the way he conveyed a sense of leadership.

Other reports have indicated that Rudy "fell flat," delivering a long, rambling speech with little red meat, leaving the hall "to significantly softer applause than what he was greeted with at his entrance." An MSNBC article interviews New York Conservative Party chairman Mike Long, who offers a mixed assessment:

Long has known Giuliani for years and knows Giuliani is no conservative. “In his heart, he’s a Democrat,” Long said in 1994 when Giuliani supported Democrat Mario Cuomo in the governor’s race. The Conservative Party provided the margin of victory for Republican George Pataki that year in his upset victory over Cuomo.

Giuliani ran three times for mayor of New York City; not once did he run on the conservative party line; in fact he ran on the liberal party line.

At this past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington sponsored by the American Conservative Union (ACU), Long said, “There’s a clear separation (between conservatives and Giuliani) on important issues that a president has to embrace to win conservative minds and hearts.”

He added, “In all fairness to the mayor, he’s starting to go through an evolution, so we have a long way to go. We haven’t talked to him about anything yet at this stage of the game; we have not had a sit-down on issues.”

Long, of course, has his own calculations to make. Never a great ally of the mayor, Long nonetheless has an opportunity to thrust his increasingly marginalized party into the spotlight and maybe play a little bit of the kingmaker. Moreover, the only hope for Republicans and Conservatives to avoid a wipeout in New York's state and local elections next year may be having Rudy Giuliani at the top of the ticket. So it's no surprise that Long was making friendly noises about Giuliani at the Conservative Party summit last month. On a larger level, it's indicative of the attitude conservatives seem to be taking toward Rudy: he's not perfect, but he sure is electable.

The WaTimes suggests that Gilmore - who is trying to overcome his obscurity by claiming the "true conservative" mantle - did pretty well for himself:

[W]hen questioned Saturday night after both Mr. Gilmore's and Mr. Gingrich's speeches, more CPAC attendees remembered the former Virginia governor's address and said the Virginian -- a former RNC chairman who headed the Gilmore Commission to assess terrorism threats -- got all the nuances right on foreign policy.

On the other hand, Erick of RedState called Gilmore "a non-starter":

Gilmore proclaimed himself the only conservative, but he did not mention Brownback. He threw lots of punches to claim the mantel for himself and in the process barely got any applause from the crowd.

In fact, Jim Gilmore, in his efforts to go all out at CPAC, might have done himself in. He failed to attract a lot of enthusiasm from the student activists and his largest applause lines were about Ronald Reagan -- not himself.

He also tried mightily to remind people that Virginia, under his watch, suffered an attack on 9/11, just like Rudy. The difference, of course, was that Rudy was in the thick of it and Gilmore was not. And judging by his showing the straw poll, Gilmore did not get any traction with his late effort.

The last paragraph makes me chuckle. Seems that, in the battle to be President of 9/11, proximity counts for a lot.

Finally, on the subject of Coulter, I'll give a little - a little - bit of credit to the right: they have indeed been busy denouncing her. From the WaTimes article:

"No question -- we shouldn't give Coulter a serious platform when she is seriously out of line," said Mrs. Mitchell, an Oklahoma native whose clients include many top Republican candidates. "She is the Howard Stern of so-called conservative commentators, and we should take her off the list in my view."

Former Republican congressional staffer Gil Macklin agreed.

"Every time Ann Coulter opens her mouth, taste takes a holiday," Mr. Macklin said. "No blow is too low for Coulter to throw."

From RedState:

Ann Coulter's remarks at CPAC were crass and bigoted, and she dropped them into her schtick so that she could end with a bang and get some cheap publicity at the expense of everyone at CPAC.

From the New York Times:

Three of the leading Republican presidential candidates on Saturday denounced one of their party’s best-known conservative commentators for using an antigay epithet when discussing a Democratic presidential contender at a gathering of conservatives here.

The remarks by Ann Coulter, an author who regularly speaks at conservative events, were sharply denounced by the candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona, Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Their statements came after Democrats, gay rights groups and bloggers raised a storm of protest over the remarks.

We asked for denunciation, we're more or less getting it. Of course, it's hard to give the right too much credit here. For one thing, their pique seems to stem more from the damage Coulter has done to the conservative movement than from the hatefulness of her remarks. For instance, RedState:

Perhaps the worst thing Coulter did with her bigoted tongue, though, was to hand the Democrats yet another free pass, over a weekend when the stories should have gone completely in the other direction. [...]

It's indisputable that it's Coulter's right to say any vile, harebrained thing she can come up with. It's a free country, and she's got a big mouth, after all. Nobody is going to put her in jail for being an idiot. But it's not indisputable that we have to put up with it, and it's especially galling because were it not for her antics, this CPAC would have been an unqualified and unsullied success. If we continue to make tactical mistakes of this kind, the Democrats will win.

Of course, it's fair to complain when the idiocy of one of your own hurts you politically. But the bigger problem is that it's not like they didn't know who Ann Coulter was. For God's sake! This is a woman who has essentially called for the bombing of the New York Times, the assassination of a president, and the murder of her political enemies. CPAC's organizers - and attendees, including the presidential candidates - knew what Ann Coulter was all about when she was booked. She's a nasty, vicious bigot - and she was one of the big draws of the conference. As the Houston Chronicle's "Blue Bayou" blog puts it:

Here's what's I find funny: conservative friends will tell me that nobody really looks at Coulter as a serious person. With her calls for assassinations of public officials, general name-calling, and highly casual relationship with anything resembling facts, she's the court jester, a source of entertainment whom nobody really thinks of as one of the grown-ups.

But there she is, a featured speaker at this event... and there are the attendees, clapping for her.

Conservatives who like to get worked up about what they call "Bush derangement syndrome" (which is just an odd term for "disagreeing with Bush's failed policies"), or rude bloggers hired by Democratic campaigns, or anonymous comments on liberal blogs, should be asked to hold their thoughts until they can explain Coulter's presence in anything resembling serious - or even just adult - conservative circles.

News reports described the crowd's reaction to Coulter's "faggot" remark as a brief moment of stunned silence, followed by laughter and applause. I think that pretty well helps us calibrate how the bulk of conservative activists feel about this kind of bigotry: they know at some level that it's repulsive - enough to give them pause - but ultimately, they either agree with it, or they don't want to be caught disagreeing with it. A moment of silence, followed by laughter and applause. And scrambling denunciations later, when they see how much damage their center-stage bigotry has done to them. So they're not exactly the Klan, but it's still pretty ugly.

And out of this muck we're meant to get a clearer picture of the Republican presidential field. John McCain did not attend, so he looks a little less muddy - if also less viable. Rudy seems to be running on "electability" juice, while Romney is powered by organization. Gingrich, it seems, is biding his time, hoping to jump in to fill the conservative void at the heart of the GOP field. But he may find that conservatives, unwilling to tolerate such a void for so long, have sutured themselves around a Romney or a Rudy, imperfect as either one may be, in order to keep that heart beating.

Tomorrow I'll take a look at some of the other CPAC goings-on - those related less to presidential horse racing, and more to policy, strategy, and communication.

Labels: 2008, CPAC, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:49 AM 0 comments

  Mitt's Triumph

Apparently the Ann Coulter endorsement did him good: Mitt Romney won the CPAC straw poll by four points. The AP reports:

Despite his record of inconsistency on some social issues, the former Massachusetts governor got 21 percent of the 1,705 votes cast by paid registrants to the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference. They were asked who their first choice would be for the Republican nomination.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor whose moderate stances on social issues irks the party's right wing, was second with 17 percent.

Brownback got 15, Gingrich 14, and McCain, who didn't attend the conference, only 12.

Labels: 2008, CPAC, Mitt Romney, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:31 AM 0 comments

  Faggot

That's a seriously ugly word up there. It stands out pretty clearly, doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

Hello?

Anyone?

Wow, it's just that I would have thought, after all that nonsense about a couple bloggers ... Y'know, Coulter was a featured speaker at the major event on the annual conservative calendar. She was introduced by a presidential candidate. She did use a vicious, bigoted slur to refer to another presidential candidate.

Ultimately there will be plenty of other sticks with which to beat Romney and all the other GOP candidates. The 2008 election is never going to won or lost by what Ann Coulter said at CPAC 2007.

But, reapeating some of what I said in the previous post, let's not be too surprised by the extremism and the hate on display. That's who these people are - maybe not all of them, but enough of them. And considering their moral obsession with demanding that Democrats denounce every semi-controversial statement made by anyone on the left - whether connected to the party and mainstream liberals or not - we can assume that the general conservative silence (albeit with a couple of notable exceptions) - indicates assent. These are indeed the kind of people who think it acceptable - indeed, applause-worthy - to publicly call a presidential candidate "faggot."

That's who they are.

UPDATE: I emailed Adam Nagourney, who's covering CPAC for the New York Times, to ask why he had omitted any mention of Coulter's remark. He replied:

> I was not there when it happened, having left the
> room to write a deadline story about the
> presidential candidates, which was what I had gone
> there to cover. Heard about it much later; will
> figure out what to do about it this morning. Thanks
> for writing.
>
> P.S. I'm pretty certain she was not introduced by
> Mitt Romney; he had left the room at the same time I
> did.

As to Romney's connection, I don't know if "introduced" would be the precise word, but Hotline's blog did report it this way:

Mitt Romney faces the biggest burden: he spoke right before Coulter and praised her... not knowing what she planned to say.

At any rate, we may yet hear more about this.

I'll look at CPAC in more depth later this weekend.

UPDATE #2: Nagourney covers the fallout at the Caucus (the Times' national political blog)

Labels: Ann Coulter, conservatives, CPAC, Mitt Romney

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:02 AM 1 comments

  You Can't Keep a Bad Movement Down

This weekend the leading lights of the right will gather in DC for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual right-wing hootenanny sponsored by the American Conservative Union. I would love love love to be there, but as much as I enjoyed the National Review's Conservative Summit last month, I can't make it to DC for this one.

Which is a shame, because the year before the presidential election would be a good time to go. The contenders will be pandering at a fast clip, while the activists talk strategy for the upcoming fight. Rudy Giuliani - fresh from yesterday's talk at the Hoover Institution - will be making one of his first major campaign appearances at CPAC, and Mitt Romney will be hoping to make up for his damp squib at the Summit.

Another speaker will be Newt Gingrich, still fully engaged in his campaign to bring an intellectual renaissance - by force, if necessary - to the conservative movement. Newt recently sent around some thoughts on the 2008 election to those of us lucky enough to be on his email list. Some excerpts:

There are two big facts about the 2008 election.

FACT #1: Running as a bland, business-as-usual Republican will be a dead loser. In 2006, the American people repudiated the GOP, because the idea of Republicans' trying to manage the liberal welfare state they inherited from the Democrats was a dead loser. I am not sure many Republican consultants have come to understand this. Certainly the elite news media want Republicans to run as non-ideological "centrists" who will then have no persuasive appeal to the vast majority of Americans that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 and '84 and the Contract with America House Republicans in 1994.

FACT #2: Focusing on an anti-Hillary campaign will also be a dead loser. The Clintons are the most determined and intense politicians of our lifetime. I just read Ambassador Bill Middendorf's A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement (read my review here), and he reminded me of the ferocity of the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign. It reminded me of the Clinton campaign style.

If a campaign is going to degenerate into a mud slinging contest, the Clintons will always win because they are vastly more ready to jump into the pit. The recent attacks over David Geffen and Barack Obama are just a sample of how quickly and fiercely the Clintons will attack if the campaign is simply about who can "out negative" whom.

Emphasis mine. Newt seems unable to escape the Great Conservative Fallacy of 2006, which holds that, somehow, Americans voted for Democrats because the Republicans weren't conservative enough. But then again, having invested all that energy in 'revitalizing' conservatism, Newt's probably not going to up and admit that the GOP should move to the center. So: be more conservative, get rejected again, purify yourself even more, etc. etc. This could be a most entertaining vicious circle.

Oh, and the Hillary thing never fails to crack me up. You spent eight years calling her a lesbian Nazi who murdered Vince Foster and you're saying she's a mud-slinger? If conservatives like Newt were projecting any more obviously, they'd be Imax theaters.

But our mission is to observe, not to editorialize. Here's what Newt thinks the '08 election should be about:

THE KEY to victory in 2008 is for conservatives to communicate three big messages:

1. America is faced with historic challenges that require historic responses. That is a much different style and approach than we get out of traditional politicians and their traditional consultants.



2. If we do the right things and implement the right changes, we can build a better, safer, freer and more prosperous America. We should have the nerve to go into every neighborhood and every community and explain why our better future will work. The liberal welfare state has failed, and its bureaucracies cannot be defended if we focus on the human costs of their failures. It is our challenge to focus on the big choices, the big truths and the big contrasts, not on the petty politics of personal viciousness that characterize so much of the current system.



3. This choice between a failed liberal, welfare-state future and an exciting, successful, conservative, opportunity- society future requires transformation at all levels of American elected office (511,000+ elected officials) and not merely the oval office [this refers to Newt's new 527, American Solutions for Winning the Future, about which more later- ed.].

These are the themes and the call to action I will outline Saturday at CPAC. I hope to see you there.

Again, emphasis mine. So, the lesson of six years of disastrous conservative government is that... liberals have failed? You have to admire his chutzpah.

Still, don't underestimate Newt. Note how he mentions the so-called "human cost" of the welfare state. That's a big flashing sign that he and his minions plan to be out there telling stories about how ordinary people - they'll have names, hometowns, biographies, adorable children, everything - have suffered at the merciless hands of big government. Again, do not underestimate this. It doesn't matter if it's garbage - if the right is out there telling personal stories, and the left is up its own behind with laundry lists and vague rhetoric, we're going to find ourselves caught off guard and mystified, once again, by how such patent conservative nonsense suddenly seems so politically potent. We need to be telling the stories. And the thing is, our stories will make more sense, because they're real and they represent the opinions and experiences of most Americans. But we need to be out there telling them. Because if we don't, Newt and his crowd will.

Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:44 AM 0 comments