RELATED: Brad Stine Tells Fox and Friends: Political Correctness Made Americans Too Lazy To Work Tough Jobs

Stine’s routine seemed to GO OVER WELL with the audience. Certainly better than OTHER COMEDY ROUTINES AT CONSERVATIVE CONVENTIONS. You can watch the set below although YOU MIGHT WANT to turn down YOUR SPEAKERS. If the CAPS LOCK hasn’t clued YOU IN. There’s a lot of YELLING. A lot of YELLING.

Watch the video from CSPAN below:

It’s possible that Mr. Woolery thought I was pulling his leg, but in four years of covering CPAC, I don’t think I’ve been this excited to meet someone, not even Rachel Maddow (mainly because we were already acquainted online, but still). As a kid, I was a huge game show fanatic, and Chuck was the best, possessed of a true wit. Am I disappointed that he’s on the other team? Maybe a little, but maybe it’s some kind of epidemic with game show hosts; Pat Sajak is another well-known conservative.

Chuck graciously sat for an impromptu interview, in which he described the Reset Congress project, talked a little Universal Health Care, and tried like hell to think of one thing President Obama has done right. As for the current Republican presidential field, they will have to wait for the Woolery Bump. He’s not endorsing.

Here’s my interview with Chuck Woolery, followed by some brief notes and pictures from my first few hours at CPAC:

This is my fourth CPAC, so by now, it’s a lot like summer camp, re-connecting with people I haven’t seen since last year, and keeping an eye out for stray content. I’m used to it by now, but it is worth noting that despite my well-known liberal leanings, this conference has always been very welcoming to me.

The vibe this year is upbeat compared to last year, which is a bit of a surprise. Following closely on the heels of the 2010 midterms, CPAC 2011 had an ugly, decidedly non-triumphant feeling, yet now, with a chaotic presidential primary race, everyone’s looser and lighter.

Here’s a slideshow of some of the sights at CPAC 2012 so far:

Jennifer Rubin (1 of 10)

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Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post's Right Turn blog, hanging out in the CPAC Blogger's Lounge.

“Cal, let’s talk about this religious–this is serious, we laugh about it, but this is serious in terms of, if they get away with this, what would happen in a second term?” Wood questioned. “If that outrage doesn’t turn to action in November, what are we looking at here?”

“I’m really glad, Genevieve, that you played the Rachel Maddow clip. I think that she is the best argument in favor of her parent’s using contraception,” said panelist conservative commentator Cal Thomas. “I would be all for that! And all of the rest of the crowd at MSNBC, too, for that matter.”

RELATED: Keith Olbermann Says S.E. Cupp’s Parents Should Have Used Planned Parenthood

Wood laughed and the CPAC audience applauded Thomas’s comments.

Watch below via CSPAN:

(h/t TPM)

Have a look at today’s talks — which are set to cover such topics as the constitution, foreign policy, multiculturalism, the future of conservatism, and actor Kirk Cameron — via Fox News:

RELATED: Coulter: Without Chris Christie GOP Forced To Nominate Mitt Romney And ‘We’ll Lose’

That’s right, the same Ann Coulter who told a cheering CPAC crowd that “if we don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose” now praises Romney in his new ad, on exactly the same basis she trashed him on, his chances at beating President Obama. “I think Romney is the strongest candidate,” Coulter said. “And I think Republicans want to beat Obama. And Romney is the best one to do that.”

Here’s that clip from Romney’s new ad, followed by her CPAC declaration, just for comparison’s sake:

Now, this is not a knock on Coulter so much. She’s certainly not the first conservative commentator to do a Linda Blair when it became convenient. Big Journalism Editor Dana Loesch praised Mitt Romney (and voted for him) in 2008, only to turn around and scrub the evidence four years later so she could claim she was against Romney in 2008, and still is. Rush Limbaugh went from calling Romney the “embodiment” of the conservative stool, in 2008, to saying “Mitt Romney is not a conservative” in 2011.

RELATED: http://www.mediaite.com/online/rush-limbaugh-2011-mitt-romney-not-a-conservative-rush-2008-mitt-embodies-conservative-stool/

What’s really baffling about this is that the Romney campaign chose to include a quote from Ann Coulter in their own ad. Surely, they were aware of what Coulter told that CPAC crowd, and would realize how including her praise in the ad would look. Set aside the fact that a Coulter flip-flop serves as a comical reminder of their own candidate’s chief weakness. What does it say about Mitt Romney that he’s willing to accept praise from someone who so completely trashed him just this year? At best, it seems desperate, and at worst, it demonstrates that not only will Mitt Romney say anything to get elected, he’ll allow other people to say anything they want about him, as long as it helps him get elected.

Update: Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch wrote up an error-filled “correction” to her tiny part in this post. Real quick, let’s tick ‘em off:

(1) Christopher recently wrote a post attacking Rush Limbaugh and later Ann Coulter for criticizing Romney at CPAC and then “praising” him; her remarks were used in a recent Democrat attack ad.

First of all, that would be “Democratic attack ad,” except that Coulter’s remarks were not used in a Democratic attack ad. That’s the whole point, and it’s in the headline. Coulter’s remarks were used in an official Romney campaign radio ad. RIF, Ms. Loesch. RIF.

(2) I didn’t “scrub” any “evidence.” In fact, I’ve never deleted a single post. It’s all still there.

No, it’s not. Here’s the url to her post. Nada. Here’s a screenshot of her blog’s archive. No Feb. 2008. Here’s the Wayback Machine link. Voila!

(3&4) Christopher’s bias leads him to omit this discussion I had of the situation, wherein I discussed voting for Romney as a strategy to eliminate John McCain in the 2008 primaries.

3. I omitted nothing. The response she refers to is linked and thoroughly fisked in the original post that I linked to in this article. 4. Here’s what it said:

Dana Loesch, in her response, explains that she wasn’t for Romney in 2008, she just opposed John McCain more strongly, and cast her vote for Romney to prevent McCain from securing the nomination. After her first choice, Fred Thompson, dropped out, Loesch says “We were, at that point, faced between choosing Mitt Romney or John McCain. I did not like Mitt Romney.”

Now, you would never know that from her blog post, a fair reading of which would lead you to conclude that she at least liked Mitt a little. “I think he’s the best candidate of change,” she said. A fair person would acknowledge that, based on that post, no one would conclude that she was “against” Romney in 2008. A cynical person might think Loesch was just trying to backstop an embarrassing contradiction.

The plot was foiled when conscience-stricken O’Keefe associate Izzy Santa warned Boudreau, minutes before the “caper” was to take place. Even conservatives were quick to denounce O’Keefe, whose antics were already wearing thin with them.

O’Keefe later said that he had rejected some elements of the plan, but Boudreau stood by her reporting, and O’Keefe offered no evidence to support his claim. In our interview, I asked O’Keefe why he hadn’t released emails or other evidence that would show he rejected the plan. O’Keefe told me that such emails do exist, but that he doesn’t plan on releasing them. Despite having agreed to discuss it, O’Keefe then refused to comment when pressed on the issue.

I also asked O’Keefe about the racial subtext of his pimp costume, the same question that caused Andrew Breitbart to blow up at CPAC in 2010, but which he calmly answered a year later. The choice of the pimp costume served multiple purposes in the ACORN videos, one of which was to bait a trap for liberal defenders of ACORN, who would surely point out the symbolism of coupling such a stereotype with a primarily black organization. O’Keefe could then turn the tables and accuse them of being racist (as his friend Christian Hartsock did with me) for equating “pimp” with black man. Unfortunately for O’Keefe, he exposed his own pimp equation when he told Fox & Friends that he couldn’t believe anyone would think he was a pimp because “I’m the whitest guy I know.”

That quote, by the way, doesn’t occur in a vacuum, but rather, within O’Keefe’s history of racial antagonism. While in college, O’Keefe famously held an “affirmative action bake sale,” selling baked goods to minorities at low prices, while charging whites exorbitantly. Abstract object lesson, or expression of racial resentment?

Then, there was his satirical objection to Lucky the Leprechaun, a hideous equation of a character from Irish folklore with dehumanizing Sambo stereotypes. The fundamental problem with this sort of mockery of “political correctness” is that it trivializes very real, very reasonable grievances.

There are other hints at O’Keefe’s racial issues, such as his removal from a college dorm after he was accused of using racial slurs. O’Keefe said the accusation was a lie, but his writing about the subject contains some illuminating inconsistencies. He says he “volunteered” to move out of a room with a gay roommate, and was transferred to an “all-black floor,” yet he describes his two roommates on that floor (in strictly racial terms) as “an Indian who smelled like shit,” and a “Greek kid” named Paul. Finally, he bemoans the fact that he must defend himself to the dean, saying he was “forced to go in front of a black man,” the implication being that a black man couldn’t possibly act impartially in such a situation.

None of this is conclusive proof of what’s in James O’Keefe’s heart, but it does provide reasonable people with a means to judge statements like O’Keefe’s “I’m the whitest guy I know,” and decide whether it’s being taken “the wrong way.”

I asked James to explain that quote. He chalked it up to “naivete´…it was one of my first times on TV and it wasn’t meant in that sense. It was maybe trying to be cute.”

Fair enough. It seems as though O’Keefe is expecting some benefit of the doubt here, and as he’s fond of saying, the viewers can decide for themselves.

Here’s part three of our interview, followed by a transcript. Tomorrow: James O’Keefe On Mainstream Journalism.

NEXT:Transcript Of Tommy Christopher’s Interview With James O’Keefe: Part Three

Since Blumenthal and Breitbart had argued over allegations that O’Keefe is a racist, I decided to ask Andrew to respond to the criticism that O’Keefe’s choice of a pimp costume was racially charged. He was still pretty keyed up from his argument with Blumenthal, and I was struggling to be heard over the crowd of several hundred CPAC attendees that had formed around us, so the result, while entertaining, was not very illuminating:

The choice of the pimp costume served multiple purposes in the ACORN videos, one of which was to bait a trap for liberal defenders of ACORN, who would surely point out the symbolism of coupling such a stereotype with a primarily black organization. O’Keefe could then turn the tables and accuse them of being racist (as his friend Christian Hartsock did with me) for equating “pimp” with black man. Unfortunately for O’Keefe, he exposed his own pimp equation when he told Fox & Friends that he couldn’t believe anyone would think he was a pimp because “I’m the whitest guy I know.”

At this year’s CPAC, I had the rare chance to redeem my previous encounter with Breitbart, and finally get an answer to the question that ended our last interview. Breitbart, Mike Stark, Lee Stranahan, and I all had lunch at a crawfish place, and did about an hour-long interview, most of which I accidentally deleted while transferring it to my laptop. Fortunately, I was able to recover some of the footage, including our exchange over O’Keefe. While he doesn’t exactly agree with me, Breitbart does concede that a reasonable person could infer racial overtones if they “took it the wrong way.”

Mike Stark brings up an interesting point, the idea of a conservative “blind spot” on race. This is what I believe leads Breitbart to think I’m taking O’Keefe the “wrong way,” because he’s not factoring in O’Keefe’s history of racial antagonism. While in college, O’Keefe famously held an “affirmative action bake sale,” selling baked goods to minorities at low prices, while charging whites exorbitantly. Abstract object lesson, or expression of racial resentment?

Then, there was his satirical objection to Lucky the Leprechaun, a hideous equation of a character from Irish folklore with dehumanizing Sambo stereotypes. The fundamental problem with this sort of mockery of “political correctness” is that it trivializes very real, very reasonable grievances.

There are other hints at O’Keefe’s racial issues, such as his removal from a college dorm after he was accused of using racial slurs. O’Keefe said the accusation was a lie, but his writing about the subject contains some illuminating inconsistencies. He says he “volunteered” to move out of a room with a gay roommate, and was transferred to an “all-black floor,” yet he describes his two roommates on that floor (in strictly racial terms) as “an Indian who smelled like shit,” and a “Greek kid” named Paul. Finally, he bemoans the fact that he must defend himself to the dean, saying he was “forced to go in front of a black man,” the implication being that a black man couldn’t possibly act impartially in such a situation.

None of this is conclusive proof of what’s in James O’Keefe’s heart, but it does provide reasonable people with a means to judge statements like O’Keefe’s “I’m the whitest guy I know,” and decide whether it’s being taken “the wrong way.”

The other takeaway, of course, is that it is possible to disagree strongly with someone, yet still get along, and Breitbart certainly deserves credit for being willing to surround himself with liberals, and let the cameras roll. If there’s one thing we do agree on, it’s that a world where everyone agreed would be a very boring place.

In an adorable iMovie-looking photo and video slideshow, Greg Gutfeld, Bill Schulz, and Andy Levy shared their experiences last weekend meeting, greeting, and answering tough questions about how hot the ladies were (“I don’t see gender,” answered Levy) and why they didn’t do college campus rounds (Gutfeld is “not allowed” for mysterious reasons). While, as on the show, they did answer a good number of serious questions on their panel– particularly about youth involved in politics and what sort of hurdles conservatives face in recruitment, they also got to remind the crowd that there was a stereotype that “you guys are not fun,” and they were there to break it. They discussed Levy’s cats, Meghan McCain, and the aforementioned Bieber, who got significant discussion time as a result of Gutfeld’s constant Twitter heckling of the singer. Asked what he would say to Bieber if he were a guest on Red Eye, however, Gutfeld appeared to be looking for something a bit too friendly: “What are you doing later?”

Following the recap, they played the clip of Ann Coulter explaining that her voice had been sabotaged the night before her speech by the Red Eye boys taking her to a bar. This gave guest S.E. Cupp a chance to note that she, too, was a victim. Cupp had “Ann’s disease” the next morning despite having attempted to take care of herself, she explained. The bad influences themselves took no credit, and Levy argued that he didn’t even remember the event at all, except for a champagne bottle Cupp apparently “held on to” that night. Despite the alleged thievery, Levy concluded that “it looks like we had a good time.”

The segment via Fox News below:

Fox News’ Bill Hemmer, who interviewed Paul in the original segment in question, said delivered this statement on air:

“It was clearly a mistake. We used the wrong videotape. There are similarities in the shot between last year’s event and this year.

…

Ron Paul won both years. However, there were audible boos in 2010 while you heard a lot more cheering this year. It’s an honest mistake. We apologize for the error and we look forward to having Representative Paul back on our show very soon.”

Is it notable that Fox News mentioned the booing instead of just making the correction? Again, though, it’s doubtful this will satisfy the Paul supporters, many of whom already believed the network had a bias against the Congressman.

Watch the clip from Fox News below:

In both years, CPAC pollster Tony Fabrizio can be seen announcing Paul as the winner while wearing a dark suit and a light blue shirt. However, in the 2010 video, the booing is much more pronounced, forcing Fabrizio to vocally address it, raising his hands and trying to calm the attendants with a “Now…” During the 2011 announcement, the cheers and boos seemed much more equal (not to say that he didn’t get a lot of boos again this year, they just weren’t as easily distinguished).

Yesterday, Fox News aired the 2010 footage and incorrectly identifies it as 2011. Bill Hemmer then begins his interview with Paul by asking him about the booing. Once the error was noticed, Paul fans quickly took to the Internet, flooding YouTube with video proof of Fox News’ “deception.” However, Fox News claims it was completely accidental. Mediaite received the following statementfrom Senior Vice President of News Michael Clemente:

“We made a mistake with some of the video we aired, and plan on issuing a correction on America’s Newsroom tomorrow morning explaining exactly what happened.”

Considering the similarities in Fabrizio’s outfit as well as the fact that there are plenty of videos from this CPAC that feature a healthy amount of booing, it’s certainly plausible that Fox News merely made a mistake in pulling up the wrong video. Not knowing how their digital footage storage works, we won’t make a guess either way. However, it might be hard for Fox News to regain the trust of many ardent supporters of Rep. Paul.

Below is the footage of the 2011 announcement from C-Span’s live feed followed by the Fox News clip with the 2010 footage and Paul’s interview:

For example, even though the Republican Party still lags on gay rights, there’s been a consensus among influential conservatives, for years, that marriage equality and the repeal of DADT are/were inevitable, and no big deal. Turn off the cameras, and they’ll tell you that the only obstacle to sensible gun control laws is the NRA-concocted specter of a slippery slope.

This year, the big surprise was the degree to which conservatives support Obama’s handling of terrorism. I’m not talking about grudging respect here, but actual, full-throated praise, made all the more surprising by the movement’s consistent effort to portray the President as weak.

In this section of our exclusive interview, I shared my observation with Major Garrett, and asked him how the issue of terrorism might play out in the 2012 campaign:

After opening his show with an odd jab at Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned his attention to Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump (among others), none of whom will be opening at the Secaucus Chuckle Hut in the coming weeks. Watch the video, courtesy of Comedy Central below.

Matthews was amazed at how much Republican candidates have to kiss butt with the CPAC crowd and concluded “this is the sad thing about the Republican party – credible people, like [Tim] Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota, have to act zany to get the nomination.” Most humorous throughout though was when Matthews attempted to fake laugh at a clip of Pawlenty making an awkward joke about Obama being from another planet. Since Pawlenty is no Ann Coulter, maybe refraining from joke-telling isn’t such bad advice for Pawlenty.

After completing his humorous review of CPAC, Matthews pivoted to discuss the appeal of Republican Congressman Ron Paul‘s brand of libertarianism. Although Matthews liked the sound of it on paper, he doubted it could ever work in reality.

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

Instead Limbaugh wondered where was a conservative that actually embraced all elements of conservatism and didn’t attempt to brush aside social conservative issues? Rush believed that the Tea Party movement itself was under assault at CPAC and that social conservatives were specifically dissed. Given that it was just two years ago that Rush himself appeared at CPAC and gave a rousing closing speech, his disappointment with the conference is noteworthy. And given that next year’s conference will be much more relevant to the 2012 presidential election, maybe Rush is making his opinion heard now so that next year’s conference is tailored more to his liking?

Listen to the clip from The Rush Limbaugh Show below:

Paul was surprised and flattered by the strong support he received at CPAC and admitted the victory encourages him to consider running for President again. He believed his talk of freedom and his views on foreign policy are what makes him most appealing, saying “look at the failure of our foreign policy today. We’re trying to impose our goodness around the world by force – it doesn’t work.”

Regarding Trump’s prediction that Paul is not a viable candidate, Paul argued that he’s won eleven times in a very conservative district and responds to Trump with his own verbal smackdown, “I don’t know whether he’s earned the right – you know – for criticizing someone for not winning an election, when I don’t know how many elections he’s won so far himself.” Although if Trump does run for President, Paul did not go as far as suggesting that he couldn’t win.

However, given that Paul proudly states his views have not changed in his entire political career, and given that his freedom message didn’t help him perform well in the 2008 presidential election, the real question is whether in four years the country has moved far enough in Paul’s direction to now make him a credible contender?

Watch the clip from CNN below:

Some of Coulter’s choice bits include a general warning about liberals:

“The big news this week is liberals favor democracy in the Middle East. Liberals could not have been less interested in democracy when we were taking out the guy who gassed his neighbors . . . when we went to take out Saddam Hussein. . . . Do not allow Democrats anywhere near foreign policy. Not even to keep them away from domestic policy. It’s a mistake to ask those who don’t even like democracy to defend it.”

And on healthcare reform:

“[President Obama] turned over our entire healthcare system to the Department of Motor Vehicles. You know those interminable lines at the DMV. Now imagine you’re standing in one of those lines, but this time you’re in a hospital gown that’s open in back. That’s Obamacare.”

No one at CPAC entertains the crowd quite like Coulter does every year. Sure other speakers get loud applause and cheers, but none leave them simultaneously laughing and thinking quite like Coulter does. Watch her performance below and judge for yourself.

Watch the clip from C-SPAN below:

Within her comedy though lies some harsh truth, and hardest for the conservative audience to swallow may have been Coulter’s warning to Republicans that “if we don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose.” She even reminded the audience that she similarly warned them that Senator John McCain could never win a general election, and now is sounding the alarm bells regarding the presidential prospects for former Governor Mitt Romney. Too bad Governor Chris Christie has made it clear he has no intention of running for President in 2012.

Later an audience member asked Coulter who her least favorite Democrat was, and she responded “it’s like asking my least favorite disease.” Thus proving Coulter might not be too upset if Obama does in fact serve another term, because with Democrats in power, Coulter always has tons of material.

Watch the clip from CPAC below:

(h/t The Hill)

Paul, who received ebullient praise from the crowd with a speech slamming nearly every important social and neo-conservative policy point, is used to this sort of praise at CPAC, so his win is not particularly surprising. Plus, with the boycott from family values groups and the inclusion of more civil libertarian/diversity groups like GOProud, the population voting in the straw poll was necessarily tailored to this sort of outcome. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Gary Johnson in the top three– a sort of “Ron Paul light” who openly advocates for the legalization of marijuana– and tying with a diametric opposite in both style and substance like Gov. Christie raises some eyebrows.

The most upsetting results for social conservatives attention, of course, will be how their most prominent potential candidates fared: Mike Huckabee and Santorum managed a paltry 2%, and Palin only beat them by 1%. While Romney is himself somewhat of a social conservative, and deserves mention for find himself sandwiched between far-right libertarians like Paul and Johnson, his stances on many financial issues may prove troublesome, and those are the core issues on which both conservatives and libertarians agree.

The full results here, and a report from Fox News below:

“Olbermann” (actually comedian Steven Crowder) was happy to sit down with O’Connor, he explained, because he “believes in voices of dissent”– except “on my show.” He thanked the CPAC attendees and noted that he was “very grateful that the conservative racist constituency has allowed me here and I look forward to working with them in the future. Mostly berating them.” When asked about his new job, faux-Olbermann grew enthusiastic, particularly excited about being on “the information superhighway” AKA “the interwebs.” He then painfully provided viewers with the full URL to CurrentTV.com– “http://www– let me finish this– .currenttv.com.” “That’s a very thorough URL,” O’Connor added somewhat feebly.

The interview didn’t get any better– “Olbermann” begins to plug Maybelline products, suggests everyone at CPAC lives in a trailer, and ultimately refuses to shake O’Connor’s hand (perhaps O’Connor will be the inaugural “Person of Whom I Disapprove.”) He is also shocked by O’Connor’s affiliation with Andrew Breitbart, which seemed to elude him despite the fact that the venue for which he was interviewing is called “Breitbart.tv”– though, to be fair, this Olbermann seems not to have what one could call extraordinary computer skills.

How it took this many years for someone other than Ben Affleck to adopt the larger-than-life Olbermann roles seems a mystery, but Crowder’s take– and, particularly, vocal intonations– are quite impressive. The interview via Breitbart.tv below:

Back in July, I posited that, if done right, the Atlas Shrugged film series could be the most significant political film to be released since Fahrenheit 9/11 and, if the timing is right, could cause a shift in the American right that would put a nail or two in the coffin of social conservatism. In fact, calling it the Tea Party’s Fahrenheit 9/11 doesn’t seem entirely like a stretch. Yet for this movie to not end up in the bargain bin– the quality of product here had to be astronomically high, especially given the lack of big names in production.

The trailer only halfway delivers. It’s got explosions and sleazy congressional types and, perhaps, way too many John Galt references. Hank Reardon, the steel entrepreneur who unites with the protagonist’s railroad company to use his new metal prototypes to build rails gets a ton of face time, but he’s also the most believable actor in the two-minute endeavor. The main characters seem to constantly be flanked by scrawny-looking skeptics telling them they are ruthless and dead inside, though the dramatic music implies otherwise (in one scene, a character who vaguely resembles disgruntled Wikileaks employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg warns Reardon to not be so open about his love of money. It’s not exactly a De Niro moment.). There is, sadly, a lack of the film’s best character, Francisco d’Anconia, an Argentine copper heir who disguises his superhuman mental and physical abilities by pretending to be a drunken, gambling playboy of loose morals and judgment– and takes up most of the first third of the book. Perhaps this is, again, simply because the the Reardon character is the most believable, or maybe it’s that Argentina actually does have an heir by the name of Ricardo Fort (textiles and chocolate industry) who behaves uncannily like the Rand character. And, of course, John Galt is nowhere to be found– he’s not in the movie. In short, the trailer feels a little like the trailer for The Social Network– loud, melodramatic, wildly over-the-top, and heralding either of one of the best or worst things ever recorded on film.

As for its political merits, this trailer doesn’t exactly promise the quality of acting or screenwriting that it would require to convert a nation to objectivism, but this project was never really about conversion. It was about preaching to the choir. That, at least, it appears those promoting the film know, as Dave Weigel reports that FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-affiliated group, is distributing “Who is John Galt?” signs and the filmmakers themselves have been airing clips at the conference, which every year seems to lean more and more libertarian. Whether the enthusiasm for the film will stretch out all the way to the film’s release is as yet unclear, but one thing is certain– being the first of a trilogy, if this film is even remotely mediocre, the series won’t last until 2012. Yet given the reception Ron Paul received this morning, it may not even need to.

Watch the trailer (and make up your own minds) below:

Opening with a jubilant recognition of the results of last November’s midterms– and, especially, the election of his son Rand to the Senate– the tenor of Paul’s speech was mostly combative towards the more military wing of the American right than anyone else. “We’ve given up our devotion to liberty,” Paul lamented, appreciating that, while the PATRIOT Act was now history, the fact that it passed at all was infuriating enough. “The PATRIOT Act has nothing to do with patriotism– they always name it the opposite of what it is,” he quipped. “The PATRIOT Act is literally the destruction of the Fourth Amendment.”

Rep. Paul also spoke to the situation in Egypt, and had a simple solution for U.S. policy: stay away. “We need to do a lot less, a lot sooner, not only in Egypt but around the world,” he noted, railing that “they’re upset with us for propping up that puppet dictator for 30 years,” and the Egyptian people should be. “Foreign aid,” he argued, “is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.” The speech also ran the gamut of Ron Paul “greatest hits,” so to speak: cutting defense spending, getting troops out of Germany, auditing the Federal Reserve, and observing civil liberties.

Sure, CPAC has a history of being welcoming to the Congressman– he won the presidential straw poll last year– but in light of every other major news story surrounding the conference so far, the warm reception is particularly telling. So far, this has been a CPAC whose hallmarks have been disgruntled boycotts by family values groups due to the presence of gay conservative group GOProud and the scuttling away of a certain red-blazered conservative icon. That Rep. Paul’s was one of the most well-received speeches there, and it made more of an enemy of neo-conservatives than it did liberals, speaks volumes as to the evolution of a conservative convention that is now more libertarian than ever.

Paul’s full speech below:

First some background. In an interview earlier this week with conservative pundit SE Cupp, former Senator (and possible presidential hopeful/wishful) Santorum ticked off several reasons why he thought Palin is skipped CPAC, chiefly citing “financial benefit,” but also that she’s “the mother to all these kids.” In reporting the story, Christopher defended Palin, writing “Santorum’s remarks are not only unfair and offensive, they’re also completely unfounded.” This lead to a rhetorical back and forth between he and Palin. In an exclusive interview with Mediaite, when asked about the kerfuffle, Santorum chided the media (Mediaite) in how it was reported:

There was a controversy created by a media story that had no basis in reality. They took some comments…and not only did they take them out of context, they then implied things that I didn’t say and then wrote a headline on the implications. Its about as poor a journalistic effort as I’ve ever seen. There’s no problem between me and Sarah Palin. She understands what the mainstream media is doing and I understand it too, so let’s move on.

There is a lot to break down in this brief clip. First of all, its pretty clear that Santorum is unaware that he is speaking to on of the journalists who he claims to have wronged him so. Christopher’s opinion piece entitled “Rick Santorum Says Sarah Palin Skipping CPAC For The Money or Because She’s a Mom or Something” that started the kerfuffle between the former Governor of Alaska and Santorum (which lead to Palin to infer that Santorum was a knuckle-dragging neanderthal.)

When pressed by Christopher why Santorum reasoned that Palin turned down the CPAC keynote speaker spot because she “wasn’t the mother to all these kids,” Santorum defending himself by saying that he only spoke about Palin’s home in Alaska as a reason for not coming to CPAC. That may have very well been what he meant, but he did mention “mother to all these kids” in his comment, so the original report was entirely fair.

Watch the exclusive interview with the oddly bespectacled Christopher at CPAC:

Norquist argued that those on the left believe the role of government “is taking things from some people and giving it to other people.” The left, he says, is a “dependency movement” where lawyers, labor unions and big city political machines keep people dependent by “making sure none of them get jobs and become Republicans.”

Zing!

As for the claim of being parasites, Norquist says the logic there is simple. “If we say no to tax increases, stop throwing money, they will cheerfully gnaw at the guy sitting next to them.”

Watch it here, from C-SPAN:

(h/t Towleroad)

After a few walkbacks, and some Twitter combat, McCain and I reprised the debate Wednesday night at CPAC.

The outrage stemmed from McCain’s critique of a piece by Feministe blogger Jill Filipovic, in which she uses the Julian Assange case as a starting point for a discussion about withdrawal of consent. McCain bolds the portions of Filipovic’s post that he finds to be “unadulterated nonsense,” isolated here:

If you consent to sex but then at some point during sex withdraw that consent by telling your partner to stop, your partner should stop, and if your partner doesn’t stop then that’s assault. . . .

…Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do;

As simple as that sounds, McCain sees a mid-intercourse cry of “STOP!” as the basis for complex “negotiations,” and papers over his disturbing premise with cutesy euphemisms for sex:

In an era when some 40% of U.S. births are to unmarried women, in a culture where “Girls Gone Wild” and “hook-ups” are normative, where threesomes, bisexual experimentation and amateur video-porn orgies have become a virtual rite of passage for many young Americans, where chlamydia and herpes are pandemic — in this era of rampant sexual decadence, I say, does Jill Filipovic (J.D., NYU) seriously expect horny strangers to negotiate consent calmly on an act-by-act basis while they’re knocking boots, making the beast with two backs, in flagrante delicto?

Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride.

One thing you can say for McCain, he’s definitely cutting edge, rolling out this controversy weeks before the now-infamous Keith Olbermann/Michael Moore-fueled #MooreAndMe protest.

We feuded pretty hard about this on Twitter, so I wasn’t sure how our reunion at CPAC would go. The most interesting stuff at CPAC always occurs on the drink-lubricated margins, and this was no exception. I caught up with McCain (or he caught up with me) outside the Marriott Wardman, and we hashed it out. Here’s a short clip of McCain’s apology, in  which he specifically apologizes to Jill Filipovic::

In the interest of not taking McCain out of context, here’s the entirety of our interview, also featuring commentary and camera work by Angel Fleming of Fleming and Hayes. (There’s a little bit of NSFW language in there)

As you can see from this clip, McCain still holds many opinions that I find objectionable, but I also think that it places the “character” that is RS McCain into a context that simply reading him does not.

Here’s the video from Thursday afternoon. I’ve also included some pre-roll of Gingrich pressing the flesh, and getting his photo snapped with former SNL-er Victoria Jackson:

Honestly, it never even occurred to me at the time, but given the Speaker’s own personal history, it’s little wonder that he didn’t have much to say. Silence may be golden, but sometimes, it speaks volumes, as well.

The Paul supporters eventually walked out in the middle of Rumsfeld’s speech as way of protest. Talking Points Memo managed to nab a quote from one of them:

“‘Uh, Defender of the Constitution?’ Justin Bradfield of Maryland scoffed when I caught up with him after he walked out of Rumsfeld’s speech. ‘Let’s see: he expanded the Defense Department more than pretty much any other defense secretary and he enforced the Patriot Act.’
‘[Speaking] as a libertarian, that’s not really the type of person who should be getting Defender of the Constitution,’ he added.”

So far, plenty has been written about the rift between classic GOP members and the Tea Party, but we shouldn’t forget about the old fashioned Libertarians. Somehow, all of these groups are going to have to come together to choose a leader. They’re going to have to put aside their ideological differences to choose someone who’s better than all the rest. Someone who’s better than anyone. Better than anyone that they’ve ever met. Someone who’s, to put it plainly, simply the best.

Check out the video from C-Span below:

Trump fired off a series of tough talking points including declaring that “the world is treating us without respect,” we are “missing quality leadership” and that the “United States is the laughingstock of the world.” Additionally he had some harsh words for President Obama, who Trump declared “came out of nowhere” and didn’t even make an impression on any of his classmates when he went to school, because nobody ever heard of him. Most humorous was watching a large amount of supporters for Republican Congressman Ron Paul who chanted Paul’s name get smacked down by Trump who, with his trademark candor, broke the news to them that “Ron Paul cannot get elected, I’m sorry to tell you.”

Instead, Trump was eager to inform everyone “if I ran and if I win, this country will be respected again.” He declared he was pro-life, against gun control, and would fight to end Obamacare and replace it with something that won’t bankrupt the country. With the new season of NBC‘s Celebrity Apprentice right around the corner, will Trump himself still be considered a serious candidate when he ultimately makes his decision in June?

Watch the clip from C-SPAN below:

Originally from Puerto Rico, Labrador joked that, yes, he is an American citizen by birth and he even has the birth certificate to prove it. (Insinuated: Unlike some people wink, nudge, cough, somersault.)

Cue Bill Maher‘s response in 3, 2…

Check out Labrador’s joke:

h/t Right Wing Watch via Huffington Post

The executive vice president of the Trump organization, Michael Cohen tells The Caucus that CPAC is “a tremendous forum to espouse [Trump's] views” and that Trump is seriously considering a campaign for President because “he’s disgusted with how the country is being run.” In addition to telling Piers how he thinks China is our enemy and that he would immediately put a heavy tax on all Chinese products if he was President, Trump is outspoken on many issues.

In the clip below, when Piers asks Trump if Congressman Christopher Lee needed to resign for morality issues when all he did was send someone a picture of himself on craigslist, Trump responded, “well I think he should resign because he’s stupid, can you imagine . . . these are the people that are representing us in negotiations with China and then you wonder why are we losing to China and OPEC?” Might this blunt tone be exactly what will get the conservatives at CPAC excited?

Watch the clip from CNN below with Trump’s response at 2:15:

Santorum continued by complaining about the state of journalism today and how the reporter who originally reported on his interview didn’t call him for comment. In an attempt to ingratiate himself further with Palin, he claimed that he and his wife like Palin a lot and are even fans of her reality show Sarah Palin’s Alaska. And to prove he was not in any way belittling her family obligations, he exclaimed that he also has family responsibilities, that he changed three diapers that morning, and in fact has a bigger family than Palin. Uh-oh, is Santorum now calling out Palin and bragging about having a larger family?

While some of this controversy may have been overblown, one simple lesson for Republicans generally and especially any potential 2012 candidate for the Republican nomination is indisputable: do not ever even attempt to mess with the Mama Grizzly.

Watch the clip below from Fox News below: