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.
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
Amazing little story: last survivor of plot to kill Hitler dies at 90. Best part, what his father told him when he asked whether he should wear a suicide vest in the plot to kill Hitler.
Winnie Mandela, ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, expressed “surprise and shock” that she might be charged with murder in the death of two young ANC activists 24 years ago.
Drunken federal prison guard shoots finger to remove his wedding ring during fight with wife.
Needless to say, one of the happier outcomes you can imagine when you mix a domestic dispute, alcohol and a handgun. The ring remained on, notwithstanding substantial damage to Alfredo Malespini’s finger. Police say they’d been to the Malespini home “a couple times” for domestic disputes. Police Lt. Steve Caskey said the suspect “had been drinking quite heavily throughout the day and he and his wife had been arguing throughout the day about an affair he had had several months ago.”
In cas you missed it, here’s my quick take from this weekend on why that CPAC racial outreach event spun so out of control.
We’ll have more on this soon, but the big news of the morning is the RNC’s formal embrace of comprehensive immigration reform as a pillar of redefining the Republican Party post-2012.