I pushed open the doors to the tabling area at America's biggest conservative conference. Behold, a veritable cave of wonders.

Every organization that could remotely appeal to anyone on the right side of the political spectrum was there, in full force, and with candy. 



All the usual suspects were there--the NRA, the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum, and a variety of right wing radio hosts. Naturally, there was a worship of all things Reagan--old campaign buttons, posters, dolls....I snagged a 2007 calendar of Reagan in provacative diplomatic poses with prominent world leaders. There was a NASCAR car, and even the Truckers' Association. 



Many tables served to promote books, such as "The Truth about Muhammad," "The un-P.C. Guide to Science," and "Liberal Lies and Conservative Comebacks" (which sounds like a desperate right -winger's book of Yo Mama jokes). The makeshift book store held nothing surprising, with the occasional exception (i.e. "The American Myth of Religious Freedom"), and interesting juxtaposition ("Terror in the Skies" next to Ted Nugent's "Kill It and Grill It").


Campus Progress' rivals were in full force. There was the Luce Institute, whose Horowitzian hate for liberal professors' "soapbox performances" fuels its effort to counter universities' shameful waste of YOUR tuition money on leftists speakers by hosting patriotic conservative ones. The Leadership Institute ("for conservatives who want to win!") gave me a pamphlet in which they anxiously encourage me to "Conduct Exciting Events!" next to a picture of a student in a giant chicken costume, complete with a sign that reads "Chirac, Le Chicken." This is meaningful student activism. They are hosting a blogging workshop, and, seemingly stuck in the earlier part of the decade, they plug it with "Learn how to start a blog and get people to read it!"

I focused my perusal on items and tables that revealed the unexpected fissures in the Conservative movement. Essential reading was the widely dispersed pamphlet "He's No Ronald Reagan: Why Conservatives Should Not Vote for John McCain," as well as several fellow attendees with "No Rudy McRomney" stickers. This isn't exactly surprising; McCain publicly declined to attend the conference, and perceived centrists like he and Guliani do not have the ground support here that Sam Brownback ("Support a true conservative") and even Jim Gilmore have. Similarly, it is a testament to the disunity of the Right that here at their biggest annual event, they chose as opening speaker one Dick Cheney--a figure most conservatives would place on the margins of their movement.

“Does everybody here think conservatives have good ideas? Good. And does everybody here think liberals have bad ideas. Well you better, this is the Conservative Political Action Conference, we’ll just throw you out.”

And with that, The Leadership Institute’s seminar on conservative college activism departed from the battle for young minds, and became a case study in the irrelevance of conservatism to young people. The Institute’s Director of Student Publications, Jeff Fulcher’s, maintained the philosophy was that, if your ideas are good, all you need is money to win. Convincing ones peers seemed beside the point, and the words “college campus” were never mentioned. He did, however, frequently repeat that the “average donor is 77 years old.” The training was about how to get checks.

The audience, just barely kept engaged by weak humor and the occasional toss of a Starburst (a bizarre Pavlovian reward for any response not totally off-base), seemed to turn on only when the lecturer mentioned one group that received a $300,000 check. The lecture, which took an entire hour to cover all the minutia of direct mailing, from the appropriate choices of envelope, paper stock, and stamp assortment, to the proper length of sentences (18 words) and paragraphs (under 6 lines), was grueling.

The seminar wasn't much of a skill-session. It was a demonstration that the single-minded pursuit of money and appeasement of old white men is not just the conservative political platform, but their entire political strategy as well.