CPAC Day Three, Part One: Stayin' Alive
| By Conventioneer - Feb 11th, 2006 at 1:16 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog | Undercover at CPAC 2006 |
After a few beers and a bath in rubbing alcohol (to thoroughly cleanse myself of the Coulter speech) I made up on some lost sleep and got up, ready to tackle my last day at the CPAC. And what a long strange trip it's been. The first thing I need to report to you guys is a theory that I've been playing with over the last few days, and something that I saw quite a bit in the first discussion I attended today. I've talked about this before, but:
A large number of speakers at this conference tie their ties so that their knots lean to the right. Coincidence? I think not.
I haven't been able to get deep enough into the organization to know if this is a principle method of indoctrination yet, and I don't know if I will. But rest assured, reader, that I'll do everything in my power to get to the bottom of this.
I checked out a panel entitled "Opportunities for tax reform," which featured some pretty entertaining speakers, despite the fact that I don't necessarily agree with the things they said. I enjoyed it--especially Grover Norquist, who gave me what is quite possibly my favorite quote of the CPAC. In a speech where he talked about the necessity of a single rate tax, Grover (I waive formality because his first name is Grover) he used an example about stock tax, and discussed how nearly 60% of people today have stock tied into their retirement. When a legislator told "the people in the room" (a metaphor for the US populace) that he was going to tax the people with stocks, 60% say (I love this): "Excuse me, that's my retirement you're looting, I hate you forever." Well done.
The next speaker got up and made a lackluster speech in which he advocated for the removal of the death tax. In it, he equated the philosophy of the "other side" (not sure if he means liberals or Dems here, he was bashing both) to that of Marxism. He also cited the communist manifesto and said "I'm sure everyone here has read it." Perhaps I was just tired, but I didn't detect any sarcasm--so that was a bit WTF moment for me.
The next speaker was incredibly boring, so I left and hit the exhibit room for my first swag run of the day. It was pretty good too, because it's the last day and so the exhibitors are trying to dump all their stuff on people. It was kind of an interesting practice because for some exhibitors, I felt kind of bad to be faking enthusiasm when they talked about conservatism--because they were generally nice people. Others that weren't so nice, well, lets just say I hustled them a little more than usual.
That's all for now, an NRA rep is set to speak in about 5 minutes and you know that I'm not gonna miss that. Conventioneer out.
More to come…
A large number of speakers at this conference tie their ties so that their knots lean to the right. Coincidence? I think not.
I haven't been able to get deep enough into the organization to know if this is a principle method of indoctrination yet, and I don't know if I will. But rest assured, reader, that I'll do everything in my power to get to the bottom of this.
I checked out a panel entitled "Opportunities for tax reform," which featured some pretty entertaining speakers, despite the fact that I don't necessarily agree with the things they said. I enjoyed it--especially Grover Norquist, who gave me what is quite possibly my favorite quote of the CPAC. In a speech where he talked about the necessity of a single rate tax, Grover (I waive formality because his first name is Grover) he used an example about stock tax, and discussed how nearly 60% of people today have stock tied into their retirement. When a legislator told "the people in the room" (a metaphor for the US populace) that he was going to tax the people with stocks, 60% say (I love this): "Excuse me, that's my retirement you're looting, I hate you forever." Well done.
The next speaker got up and made a lackluster speech in which he advocated for the removal of the death tax. In it, he equated the philosophy of the "other side" (not sure if he means liberals or Dems here, he was bashing both) to that of Marxism. He also cited the communist manifesto and said "I'm sure everyone here has read it." Perhaps I was just tired, but I didn't detect any sarcasm--so that was a bit WTF moment for me.
The next speaker was incredibly boring, so I left and hit the exhibit room for my first swag run of the day. It was pretty good too, because it's the last day and so the exhibitors are trying to dump all their stuff on people. It was kind of an interesting practice because for some exhibitors, I felt kind of bad to be faking enthusiasm when they talked about conservatism--because they were generally nice people. Others that weren't so nice, well, lets just say I hustled them a little more than usual.
That's all for now, an NRA rep is set to speak in about 5 minutes and you know that I'm not gonna miss that. Conventioneer out.
More to come…
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