The empire he left behind is riven with bitter internal disputes, as BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins detailed, and there is a dearth of young up-and-comers. James O’Keefe happily played this role for a while, but his star has since fallen as his legal troubles have mounted. Dana Loesch, the brash radio host who briefly helmed one of the Breitbart sites, has also been pushed aside (and sued over it).

Continue Reading...

Of Palin, Stewart opined: "I know where Sarah Palin came from. Someone cast a spell on a YouTube comment and it came to life":

Continue Reading...

"Now, this would be much ado about nothing, if not for the fact that trivial attacks on President Obama are obscuring serious problems in this country," O'Reilly said, also noting that "every other president in history has lived in comfort, and it looks like President Bush the younger had a bigger White House budget than Barack Obama does."

"This is a trivial pursuit, and Michelle Bachmann made a mistake pursuing it," he added.

Bachmann had slammed Obama last week in her CPAC speech for his presidential "perks" that waste taxpayer money, specifically citing the Secret Service, the White House dog-walker, and movie nights.

Watch:

Continue Reading...

Priebus’s thorough-going investigation and its 200 pages of recommendations leave the modern GOP dismembered, its diseased vital organs cut out, their toxicity examined, and the patient lying dead on the table. Some of the recommendations are surprisingly substantive, urging the party to rethink its harsh stands on gay rights and to back comprehensive immigration reform, for instance. It admits many voters see the party as “scary” and “out of touch.” But with the far-right crackpot CPAC convening as its backdrop – Exhibit A in scary and out of touch -- it’s hard to see any organized GOP constituency for such changes, while there’s plenty of party opposition.

Continue Reading...

"Question about CPAC last week, where a panel on African-American voters dissolved into a shouting match with at least one activist saying that -- talking about voters being systematically disenfranchised. How, given that sort of backdrop in the party, do you plan to overcome those challenges in your role at the RNC?" said National Press Club president Angela Greiling Keane, reading from a written question, during a press conference with Priebus at the National Press Club.

Continue Reading...

But Republicans have one very big problem when it comes to recruiting the talent needed to modernize the party's digital infrastructure: its hostility towards gay people.

That's according to Liz Mair, who was the RNC's online communications director in 2008 before leaving to start her own political consulting firm. Since then, she's worked with Carly Fiorina on her 2010 California Senate bid, with Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, and with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s successful reelection effort after a recall attempt last year.

Continue Reading...

Presented, in no particular order, are 10 statements worthy, at least, of an eyeroll.

1. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana: Torture is funny. A featured speaker on CPAC's main stage, Jindal chose to make light this way of the barrage of political rhetoric CPAC attendees signed up to subject themselves to:

If the choice was to hear 70 political speeches or to gowaterboarding, well, I’d have to think about that.

Continue Reading...

That’s the question I got everywhere I turned these past few days. I suppose it was a natural question to ask, seeing as I had been a high profile speaker at the conference in 2009 as a thirteen year-old conservative wunderkind, before renouncing conservatism last year. So my return this year was an object of fascination to many.

The answer to the question is: No, it didn’t feel weird. I mean, I guess it should have, but it didn’t. In a way going back to CPAC seemed like going back home and visiting your old libertarian friend from high school: it’s pretty predictable, there’s a familiarity to the situation, you know the kind of stuff she’s going to say, you never know exactly how (or why) she says the stuff she says (and neither does she, in all likelihood), and so long as you don’t talk politics and just listen, you’ll be fine.

Continue Reading...

Cruz made drones and civil liberties the cornerstone of the speech, using the issue both to take a stand for something he believes in and to hammer President Obama. It played such a prominent role in his speech that one has to wonder if Paul, who won the straw poll just moments earlier, would resent Cruz's attempt to steal a bit of his thunder.

Cruz also relished the opportunity to take a shot at Sen. John McCain, who sharply criticized Paul and Cruz's filibuster, calling them "wacko birds." “If standing for liberty and standing for the Constitution means you’re a wacko bird, then count me a proud wacko bird. I think there are more than a few other wacko birds gathered here today," he said to cheers.

Continue Reading...

After Paul (25 percent) and Rubio (23 percent), came Rick Santorum (8 percent), Chris Christie (7 percent), Paul Ryan (6 percent) and Scott Walker (5 percent). After that, a surprise: Ben Carson, the black neurosurgeon who is a rising star in the conservative movement and spoke earlier today at the conference. Carson tied Ted Cruz for 4 percent, and they were in turn followed by Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, who tied with 3 percent each.

There were 23 candidates listed on the survey, and 44 more who were written in. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Allen West and Fox News Judge Andrew Napolitano each won some votes, but none got over 1 percent. Jeb Bush withdrew his name from consideration.

The issue questions showed a strong year for libertarians. About 50 percent said the U.S. should take a step back from foreign policy interventionism, while just a little over a third said they think we need a more muscular military and foreign policy. Eighty percent said they oppose using drones to kill U.S. citizens, while 70 percent said they oppose using them to spy on Americans.

Continue Reading...

Geller said the reason she and the other panelists -- including fellow anti-Muslim activists Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer -- were barred from CPAC because of the nefarious influence of board members Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan.

The three anti-Muslim activists have for years accused Norquist and Khan of being members of the Muslim Brotherhood and secret Islamist agents, but Geller took her rhetoric against Khan, a Republican consultant and former Bush White House official, to new heights today.

“Am I saying that Suhail Khan is as bad as Awlaki? He’s worse!” she said, referring to Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen jihadi who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

She added that it was a "crime" that she and the others panelists were not invited to CPAC, warning that the snub is a threat to the freedom of speech. “Free men will have to resort to violence in the absence of the freedom of speech," she added darkly.

Continue Reading...

"I think there's enough substance on this panel, I mean how many topics can you handle," Pamela Geller, the blogger for Atlas Shrugged, shot back. "Inappropriate. really."

"We are not a birther site," the moderator, from Breitbart.com, told Taitz before she was shushed by the crowd. She left the room shortly after.

Here's the video, by Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald:

Continue Reading...

“I want to thank CPAC for making this panel necessary," said the Bush-era attorney general, taking a sarcastic swipe at the organization for frowning on the panelists. "And thank Breitbart.com for making this panel possible."

The "Uninvited" panel, organized by Breitbart media, brought together anti-Muslim activists like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, and Mukasey fit right in.

"The vast majority of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims adhere to a view of their religion that agrees on the need to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the world," he said.

Mukasey criticized the Obama administration for being too soft on radical Islam, saying there's been a "systematic purging" in the government of the notion that radical Islam is dangerous. Why? Because of pressure from civil society groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) -- "both of them a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

Continue Reading...

On gun control, Palin was of course against it, arguing that saying that "that chunk of metal did the crime, is like saying that fork made me fat." She added: "Background checks: A dandy idea Mr. President, should have started with yours!"

"We don't have leadership coming out of Washington, we have reality television," she continued, saying that "they're being too scripted, too calculated. They're talking about rebuilding the party, how about rebuilding the middle class?"

"We're not here to re-brand a party, we're here to rebuild a country," Palin added.

On Obama, Palin said: "Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration ever: Barack Obama, you lie!" And no Palin speech these days is complete without a teleprompter joke: "Mr. President: We admit it. You won. Accept it. Now step away from the teleprompter and do your job."

She wrapped up the speech with: "If we the people have one message to send to Washington, it's this: Get over yourself."

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

The panel, which took place Friday afternoon, broke down when a liberal black woman, a reporter for Voice of Russia, was shouted down and told that she's "not welcome here" when she objected to Smith's portrayal of Democrats as the ones who started the KKK and pushed to keep slavery in place. Another audience member, Scott Terry, bemoaned the "disenfranchised" white Southern demographic, and implied that slaves should not have to forgive slaveowners, as they were provided with "shelter and food."

In a statement put out through TPP, Smith called the woman "disruptive and coercive" and said she "rudely interrupted" his remarks.

Smith did allow that Terry, "made some racially insensitive comments," but noted that in the end Smith "further explained to him the Frederick Douglass Republican Message which [Terry] embraced, bought a book, and we left as friends."

Here's the full statement:

Continue Reading...

"People don’t dream about growing up and becoming dependent on the government. Immigrants don’t come here to be dependent on the government," Walker said. "It is precisely why we take a day off to celebrate the 4th of July and not the 15th of April."

In comments that could become controversial, Walker suggested that he doesn't approve of people being dependent on social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. Walker said we "need real entitlement reform" in order to move "people from government dependence to true independence."

The sentiment was reminiscent of Paul Ryan's "makers and takers" rhetoric or Mitt Romney's 47 percent comments.

He added that the reason he didn't go along with the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act that would give health coverage to over 200,000 Wisconsinites is because he didn't want to increase dependence.

Continue Reading...

" I didn't run on jobs and the economy," King told CPAC, adding that he "stood on life and stood on marriage," unlike some of his colleagues in the House. "A bunch of people who have backed away from these challenges don't realize that I'm still here standing."

"Our job is to step up and defend our values and the full spectrum of constitutional conservatism," he said.

King is thinking about a run in 2014 to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin.

Continue Reading...

It’s a myth.

But expect to see plenty of it. It was a widely circulated myth during the last cycle, and the nomination of Mitt Romney will surely entrench the myth even more. But still, it’s a myth.

Of course it is true that parties – all parties – are most likely to nominate a candidate who enters the fight as the clear leader. But if “next in line” is more than just a trite statement that strong candidates usually do well, then it doesn’t help to predict anything.

Continue Reading...

The panel was run by K. Carl Smith, of the Frederick Douglass Republicans, who mostly advised the predominantly white audience that if they're "sick and tired of being called a racist and a sellout" they should join the Frederick Douglass Republicans. You "can't play the race card on him, you can't play the class warfare card on him," Smith said of Douglass.

"Race-baiting comes off the table" when you say you are a Frederick Douglass Republican, he said, noting that there are both black and white members of the group. "How are you going to call a Frederick Douglass Republican racist?"

One audience member, Scott Terry, a self-professed white Southerner,  asked why members of "my demographic are systematically disenfranchised," and why it's "anathema" to be proud of Southern heritage. When Smith told him that Douglass forgave his slavemaster, Terry replied: “For giving him shelter? And food?”

Continue Reading...