CPAC board member Grover Norquist is busy launching a new project in support of the Obama administration’s plan to grant another amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens.
It’s that time of year again. Pundits, pollsters and lobbyists are gathering in the nation’s capital to tell conservative activists how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, is meeting in Washington, D.C., this weekend to hear well-known political leaders like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich talk about prospects for electoral victories in 2010. This is an annual event dating back to 1974, and I have been there as a speaker myself a few times. But CPAC 2010 is different.
This year, the Beltway leaders of conservatism are racing hard to catch up with a parade they did not launch and cannot control. Across America, grass-roots patriots and anti-Obama protests have changed the political landscape in ways conservatism’s entrenched Beltway Politburo did not anticipate.
The small Beltway Politburo that runs CPAC is worried. They arewitnessing a growing conservative populism that owes its strength toordinary people who have “had enough,” not to policy wonks andlobbyists who must work at the margins of political compromise. The newcitizen activists take their moral bearing from the Constitution, notfrom pollsters and focus groups.