Yesterday, a CPAC breakout session on reaching out to black voters broke down in shouting and acrimony as a handful of ‘disenfranchised whites’ attacked the premise of the session (along with black complaints about slaveholders), got into a verbal fight with a black female attendee and with all that managed to unite the crowd against the black woman as the one who somehow spoiled all the fun.
TPM’s Benjy Sarlin was there right as it was all happening and wrote this eye-popping account in more or less real time. (If you’ve already read Benjy’s piece definitely also check out fellow TPM scribe Pema Levy’s companion piece just filed this morning on her effort to find out from CPACers why they think Romney lost.)
Already this morning, I’ve watched on twitter the birth of a mini-conspiracy theory that the slavery defenders were liberal agents provocateurs, presumably sent by whoever sent Todd Akin and the rest of the plants who now are ruining the conservative brand. Read More
Sarah Palin used her appearance at CPAC to comfort conservatives that messaging, not politics, is hurting the movement — then unleashed an avalanche of familiar, grievence-soaked cliches.
Pema Levy reports that no clear consensus has emerged among CPAC attendees for the GOP’s showing at the polls in November.
Maybe it’s too early to expect that, and there is no one explanation for the defeat. On the other hand, blaming external factors outside of the party’s control — the media, Hurricane Sandy — is the kind of denial that can thwart constructive change.
Democrats have been through this before, too, and I’m not sure a consensus on what went wrong truly emerges until the next winning streak comes along, when the winner gets to define, rightly or wrongly, what caused all the losing.
That Reuters Deputy Social Media Editor charged with conspiring with Anonymous has a long strong past on the Interwebs.
After first publication, we greatly expanded Benjy Sarlin’s original report on the blow up at the CPAC racial tolerance event with a lot of additional reporting he did from the scene. There’s just so much there. It’s hard to imagine that when the CPAC planners came up with the idea for the special panel on outreach to blacks that one of the attendees would defend the slaveholding class from complaints by blacks. And yet it happened. Here’s our full report.
CPAC session on outreach to black voters spins out of control when “disenfranchized” whites demand that their voices be heard.
One of this afternoon’s panels at CPAC was “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?” It was sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. TPM’s Benjy Sarlin was there, and things got pretty out of hand. Story coming soon …
Things seemed to be going the NRA’s way this week. Even though gun control measures passed in committee, chances of seeing a bipartisan deal in the full Senate were looking ever more slim.
But if you listened to the organization’s chief, Wayne LaPierre, on stage today at CPAC, you might not be so sure that a deal is dead. That was not a victory lap. It was a rallying cry. Pema Levy has the story.
At CPAC, Trump explains the importance of getting more white immigrants to come to America.