Say Goodbye to Bachmann's Tea Party
Does the Tea Party still exist? Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus has been all but dormant for months, while new Republican stars are stealing the limelight.
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As the 2016 contender, GOP libertarian spokesman, and son of Ron prepares to give a speech at Howard University about the history of black voters and the Republican Party, it's impossible not to be curious about which story he decides to tell: the one in which the GOP just forgot to campaign for black votes, or the one in which the GOP made a bad bet on racism and is trying to fix it.
Does the Tea Party still exist? Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus has been all but dormant for months, while new Republican stars are stealing the limelight.
There were really two CPACs this weekend: official CPAC and angry CPAC. This is where you could see the conflict between the party's attempt to get new voters and the rebellion of its old ones.
After three days of panels and speeches about what the GOP can do to make a comeback, the idea that no comeback is necessary must have been refreshing to the CPAC attendees. By the end of Cruz's closing keynote speech, they were on their feet. Of course, that was because he asked.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul won the presidential primary straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday with 25 percent of attendees' votes, just ahead of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who also got 25 percent.
President Obama is hurting the country by abandoning his responsibilities in order to run a permanent campaign, Sarah Palin told CPAC Saturday. Then she took a sip from a Big Gulp. At the close of her speech, she carried it off stage like a trophy.
Like many of the politicians at CPAC with ambitions for higher office, Michele Bachmann offered a vision of a new path forward for Republicans. Bachmann's was unique in that it combined a more inclusive message — "We care about people!" — with her signature cable news-ready attacks on President Obama.
A panel about how conservatives can fight back when liberals call them racists descended into shouting when an actual segregationist joined a CPAC panel titled "Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You're Not One?" We're not making any of this up.
That was quick: The governor of Louisiana apparently no longer thinks his party is stupid. He reused lengthy portions of a January speech on Friday at CPAC, but left out the most controversial remarks, like calling his own party "stupid."
Taking the CPAC stage to cheers for his first major speech since November, Romney did not in any way name what his mistakes might be, instead reprising a 2012 stump speech for a 2013 version of the party that he left necessarily vague.
Why did Republicans lose the 2012 elections when so many Republicans really didn't like President Obama?
All that attention the National Rifle Association leader has gotten since the Newtown shooting might be getting to him.
The conservative provocateur was the coolest thing at the first day of the annual conservative gathering, even though he died a year ago.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has some news for Paul Ryan and House Republicans: Obamacare was a losing battle.
He was a controversial pick for a speaking slot at CPAC, with organizers saying Trump was wildly popular with attendees. But it's hard to say why. He doesn't know how to give a political stump speech, and that was evident on the floor Friday morning.
Even when answers seem to arrive on the controversial Benghazi attack, the questions never fade away: Faraj al-Shibli, a man thought to be involved in the September 2012 attacks on the American consulate, has been captured in Libya, according to two sources speaking to CNN, as Republicans back home refused to let the issue fade.
Rand Paul presented old ideas as new ones in his I'm-the-future-of-the-GOP speech to CPAC Thursday, while Marco Rubio presented newish ideas as old ones.
The marathon filibusterer brought his invigorated libertarian stump speech to an enraptured audience (and Metallica), inveighing that the GOP needs to change by returning to the classical principles spelled out in the country's constitution.
Explaining that he wanted to preempt liberal critiques of his speech, one of which (he predicted) was his lack of new ideas for the Republican Party, Rubio declared, "We don't a new idea. The idea is called America, and it still works." Also: water joke.
The Conservative Political Action Conference, scheduled for March 14 in National Harbor, Maryland, will host a gay rights panel — but not in the way you might think.
Until Donald Trump's invitation was announced on Tuesday afternoon, this year's Conservative Political Action Conference was mostly in the news for the uninvited guests — their sins were unforgivable. But what do the forgivable CPAC invitees say about the conservative agenda right now? That's where things get weird.
Republicans have been going through a civil war since they fared much worse than they expected in the 2012 elections. Actually, it's a lot of civil wars. So many that it's hard to keep them all straight. We've created a chart of GOP infighting to help you sort them out.
Mitt Romney will give a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, his first public speaking appearance since conceding defeat on election night, the National Review's Robert Costa reports.
There are both costs and benefits to denouncing the conservatism that made you famous at 13.
Like so many teenagers, Jonathan Krohn says he cringes when he thinks of some of the deeply uncool things he said when he was 13. Unlike most teenagers, Krohn said those things on camera in a speech at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, making him a YouTube sensation.
In an over-the-top confrontation, Andrew Breitbart screamed the phrases "behave yourselves," "you are freaks and animals," and "stop raping people" for several minutes at Occupy D.C. protesters outside the hotel hosting CPAC. Here's what people are saying about it.
Poor Callista Gingrich was forced to tell terrible jokes as she introduced her husband at CPAC Friday, and even her punchlines played to her husband's extremely high regard for his own intelligence.
Republicans have long denounced the liberal fixation with victimhood while embracing all its tropes, arguing, as Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have, that it's those in the Christian majority who are really being persecuted in America. Mitt Romney bested his opponents by going one step further, saying he would stand up for the fabulously wealthy.
The Republican Party is not known for promoting casual dating, so naturally the Conservative Political Action Conference's panel on conservative dating drew more reporters -- like NASCAR fans rooting for a crash -- than small-government singletons ISO same.
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