On CPAC Day 2, the Libertarian Wing Takes Over

[DonViejo]

By Michelle Cottle

As hangovers cleared, on panels and in booths, Day 2’s momentum drained away from the GOP’s aging “values” peddlers—in favor of the young, energetic followers of Rand Paul.

Day 2 of CPAC got rolling with a more subdued crowd than Day 1. Not because folk weren’t having fun. Quite the opposite: More than a few attendees clearly had stayed up too late having too much fun Thursday night. Throughout the convention center, you heard people asking variations on the questions: “So what time did you get to bed?” In the downstairs exhibit hall, attendees of all ages slumped on the white sofas like bleary-eyed rag dolls. Standing in line at the hotel’s sundries shop, one young Citadel cadet groaned to his buddies: “I’m hung over harder than I deserve.”

For much of the day, the main ballroom was drawing less action and attention than it did on Thursday. Most of the program lineup was slightly lower wattage (Rick Perry instead of Ted Cruz; Mike Huckabee and John Cornyn instead of Chris Christie and Marco Rubio), tilted more toward values issues (Rick Santorum and Ralph Reed), and, perhaps as a result, more sparsely attended. Which was a shame, because there were some sweet sparks flying, courtesy of the ongoing battle for the soul of the movement.

The morning panel on national security may have been the feistiest discussion of the entire convention. Libertarian lawyer Bruce Fein went mano a mano with former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, who took a traditional strong-defense, Edward-Snowden-is-a-traitor stance. Voices were raised. The combatants got snarky. Charges of naivete, cluelessness, and “nonsense demagoguery” were hurled back and forth. And that was mild compared to the audience pushback. Though the crowd was tiny, it was fierce—and firmly in Fein’s corner. Most words out of Gilmore’s mouth drew boos and loud grumbling. At one point, an outraged audience member cut loose with a Joe Wilsonesque “You lie!” When Gilmore took a swipe at Rand Paul by name, I feared for his safety. By session’s end, I wanted to give the former governor a hug, a Band-Aid, and a big glass of Johnny Walker Black.

A couple of speakers later, Mike Huckabee revved up the crowd with his just-plain-folks sermonizing. Starting out, he trotted out a four-decade-old quote from Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth: “If God does not bring a fiery judgment on America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” Huck then proceeded to list all the ways that Obama’s America is so much worse than the one poor Mrs. Graham was talking about, before ending on this cautionary note: “It is time for conservatives to focus on how we will lead America, not just how we will bleed each other in the context of our conservative world. Too much is at stake. The future is too important for us to spend our time fighting each other.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/08/on-cpac-day-2-the-libertarian-wing-takes-over.html

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. You can bet the strip clubs were raging on Thursday and Friday nights

with all those "family values" types.