The Conservatives’ Lost Decade: CPAC Reset Political Clock to 1993

[struggle4progress]

By David Weigel 3/2/09 12:19 PM

John McCain, the 2008 Republican Party nominee for president, was not invited to speak at this past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Neither was former President George W. Bush, and neither was former Vice President Dick Cheney ...

The 36th annual meeting of the conservative movement .. was marked by its rejection of the past decade of conservative government. The name of the president who left office one month earlier, and who had won the CPAC presidential straw poll back in 1999, rarely escaped the lips of speakers. When it did, it was a token of praise for Bush’s foreign policy or — more often — a knock at his economic record ...

The only images of George W. Bush that CPAC attendees could find in the crowded exhibit hall appeared at a booth for The Washington Times, which was offering, at a discount, a new book about his presidency titled “W.” A few steps away was the booth of Muslims for America, a Republican political committee founded in 2004 as “Muslims for Bush.” The only politician pictured in the group’s display was Newt Gingrich ...

Anger at President Obama was open and, occasionally, paranoid. While there was little anti-Barack Obama merchandise on display, speaker after speaker and attendee after attendee spoke openly of the new president as a “socialist,” a “Marxist,” and a threat to the country’s traditions. Cliff Kincaid of the conservative Accuracy in Media, a co-sponsor of the event, used his time at the dais to further a discredited conspiracy that the president was born outside America’s borders. “At least in the 1980s,” said Kincaid. “We knew our president was born in the United States!” ...

http://washingtonindependent.com/31999/the-conservatives-lost-decade