Right-wing Party Animals (by Michael Scherer)

[norml]

Right-wing party animals

At this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, Boone, Cheney, Coulter and other luminaries of the far right gathered to glory in their victories over liberal America.

By Michael Scherer




Photos by AP/Wide World

Pat Boone, Ann Coulter, Bill Frist, Ken Mehlman and George Allen

Feb. 11, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- By the time Pat Boone began singing a karaoke version of his own ballad "Under God," several journalists in the back of the ballroom had already poured themselves glasses of pilfered chardonnay. The U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. donated hundreds of bottles of the stuff to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a petty bribe from a leading purveyor of mouth cancer to the leading lights of the right wing. At the time, the journalistic ethics of sniping a snuff company's right-wing booze did not seem so important.

The Jumbotron screens on both sides of the stage flashed a montage of American flags, sunsets and crashing waves. Boone, who tans his face the color of a penny, rhymed the word "God" with the word "God" as a prerecorded chorus of children's voices played in the background. About an hour earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney had appeared from behind the blue curtains to wow the thousand or so diners with a bulldog version of the president's last State of the Union, bluntly daring Democrats to continue opposing the war in Iraq. The night's emcee followed with a joke about how French people screw in light bulbs. Now the diners were digging into their chocolate raspberry torte and enjoying a musical interlude. Next came Virginia Sen. George Allen, a Southerner who once hung a decorative noose from a tree in his law office. He was going to tell the diners why he should succeed George W. Bush as president of the United States. It was, by any rational measure, a good time for a drink.

The newspaper reporter sitting to my left leaned over to acknowledge the obvious. "They do need a new act," he muttered. But do they? The crowd of intellectuals, donors, students and operatives represented at this annual conference had overseen a string of three consecutive electoral victories. They controlled much of the House and the Senate. They had easy access to the White House, and a growing portion of the Supreme Court. Along the way, they might have betrayed some of their founding principles, by expanding the size of government at a record rate and exploiting the perks of power. Yet despite it all, they had good reason to celebrate. "Through every path we've trod," Boone crooned, "we can now live in freedom under God."


With its eccentric mix of power brokers and true believers, the annual CPAC is an odd duck, even by the standards of Washington's never-ending political conference cycle. In recent years, it has been seen by the outside world as a time of celebration for the nation's right-wing leaders, a chance for sitting politicians to rally with the base. Indeed, the event draws big names. Over three days, a cavalcade of the powerful would pass through the basement ballroom of the Omni Shoreham Hotel -- not just Cheney and Allen, but Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman (to bait John Kerry, again), Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (to bait Hillary Clinton, again), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (to condemn gay marriage, again) and Ambassador John Bolton (to bait the U.N., again). These headliners drew the nation's top political reporters, but they represented only a sliver of the action.



http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/11/cpac/

[Craig3410]

1. With free Nazi armbands being handed out at the door. -nt-

[norml]

2. And Fundraising