Thoughts on CPAC 2010...

Over the past few days, the annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) was held in Washington D.C. I followed the events/speeches at CPAC via my favorite blog, Hot Air. Ed Morrissey, one of Hot Air's two main bloggers, won Blogger of the Year, an award that he very much deserved. Ed had lots of good interviews with various political figures and activists on the Right, and the Hot Air coverage of the event was terrific. I highly recommend checking it out.

From what I've seen, the gathering was a success. Politicians, alternative media figures (bloggers, radio/TV people), and activists showed up en masse to offer up a healthy amount of criticism aimed at the Left and to speak about the challenges that conservatives face moving forward.

Perhaps the most important thing that I took away from CPAC was the difficulty that the Right faces in projecting a unified front. People like to say the Republican Party is a big tent that (ideally) incorporates social/religious conservatives, small-government libertarians, and national security hawks...but CPAC made it clear that "conservatism" is potentially even a bigger tent than that.

There were social conservatives dedicated to opposing abortion and gay marriage. There were economic conservatives whose main focus is lowering taxes and reducing the size and scope of government. There were national security conservatives who argue for a strong national defense and an aggressive/interventionist foreign policy. There were pragmatic conservatives like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Tim Pawlenty, who have spent time doing the dirty work of governing and working for bipartisan solutions. There were enthusiastic Ron Paul Revolution supporters, who turned out in large numbers to cheer on their guy when he spoke and propel him to victory in the straw poll. These Paulites tend to be small-government, isolationist libertarians who stand directly opposed to national security hawks like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich (both of whom ALSO spoke).

So there was considerable diversity at CPAC, and that diversity was simultaneously encouraging and troubling. Encouraging, because it speaks to the fact that the Right has a philosophy of governance that has broad appeal to the American electorate and can elicit support among people of all ages, people with divergent foreign policy views, and social conservatives, moderates, and liberals. Troubling, because the diversity of opinion on the Right means it will be difficult to bring everyone into the Republican fold without alienating key constituencies.

With all the foreign policy differences and the disagreements over social issues, there is one single theme that unites those on the Right: opposition to Barack Obama. Left-wing commentators have repeatedly (and perhaps somewhat disingenuously) painted this opposition as a personal antipathy toward the president driven by racism. That's both untrue and despicable. This isn't about skin color. Barack Obama is the latest ideologue to join what was formerly a triumvirate in American politics: Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. All three of these men worked for and achieved drastic expansions in the size and scope of government. But their progressive, big-government agenda has fallen out of favor with the majority of Americans, as Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress found out during the health care debate (and to a lesser extent, the bailouts, the stimulus plan, and the cap and trade legislation).

It is opposition to this president's AGENDA, not his skin color, that has unified the Right in favor of smaller government. We saw this at CPAC.

I'll close with this: there was one moment at CPAC that was for me both a low-light AND a highlight. Ryan Sorba, the leader of a group called the California Young Americans for Freedom, was introduced to talk about his involvement in an investigation of ACORN (a worthy endeavor indeed), but instead Sorba changed the topic and launched into a minute-long, moronic tirade against gay people. He offered up a condemnation of CPAC for inviting a conservative, gay rights group called GOProud to attend the conference. Sorba, who seemed much more like a dumb jock high-school baseball star than a thoughtful college graduate, responded to the jeering audience by stating that "the lesbians at Smith College protest better than you do."

The Sorba spectacle was a sad one. It's the 21st century. Those who oppose gay marriage are unquestionably fighting a losing battle. Times have changed, as the military brass's decision to end Don't Ask Don't Tell shows. Still, we should have a civil debate in this country about legalizing gay marriage, because altering the traditional definition of marriage is a big deal. It needs to be done carefully and respectfully. But what Sorba did was inexcusable. He didn't get up and articulate why he feels gay marriage ought to be opposed. He instead engaged in the same sort of ugly name-calling and shouting that the Left so often does (and I so often criticize).

There's no place for people like Sorba at CPAC or ANY gathering of intelligent Americans who are interested in solving the real problems our nation faces. As far as I'm concerned, those problems are skyrocketing deficits, an enormous national debt, unions that are too powerful, onerous regulatory/tax burdens that are preventing real economic growth, the continued shrinking of our individual liberties, and the very real threat that radical Islamic terrorists pose to our way of life. It's time to stop worrying about what people do in the privacy of their own homes, so long as they're not hurting anyone else.

So while Sorba's rant first seemed like a low-light, it was also a highlight, because the crowd at CPAC made it clear that they didn't support his views. At a time when our president and our Congress are threatening to take this country in a direction that so many of us reject, we need to stand together. And if a gay individual wants to stand with us against the disastrous Obama-Pelosi-Reid big-government agenda, it seems the height of folly to tell them, no, we don't want you on our side.