Reagan Palooza 2010 kept cranking into the wee hours of Sunday
morning on Capitol Hill. Young right-wingers were jammed onto the
upstairs dance floor of the Hawk ‘n’ Dove where they partied past
midnight after the final day of the annual Conservative Political
Action Conference.
The fire-code capacity crowd was drenched in sweat as they
writhed rhythmically to the thunderous bass beats pumped out by
the sound system beneath the strobing disco lights. Several of
the 20-somethings were singing along to the lyrics — “This is
all so crazy, everybody seems so famous” — when investigative
reporter Matthew Vadum nudged me and shouted into my ear, “This
is that Hannah Montana song.” Further research (which is to say,
a phone call to my daughter, a college junior) confirmed that the
reggae-inflected tune was in fact performed by Miley Cyrus, the
teenage star of the popular Disney TV series.
“Party
in the USA” was certainly appropriate as the soundtrack for
this year’s CPAC, where conservatives signaled that they have
regained the confidence they lost in the debacle of 2008.
Young and old at CPAC seemed energized by harbingers that
the 2010 mid-term elections will produce a GOP triumph, but at
least one middle-aged Republican was hesitant to accept the most
favorable interpretation of the auspices and omens.
“Frankly, I’m worried,” David Frum said at an earlier
Saturday gathering at Murphy’s Grand Irish Pub near the Marriott
Wardman Park Hotel that hosted the record-breaking three-day
conference. “But then again, I’m always worried.”
It was a self-deprecating jest
with strategic significance. For months,
Frum has been pessimistic about the conservative movement’s
confrontational strategy to sparking a quick Obama-era
bounce-back, similar to the GOP’s historic gains in the 1994
“Contract With America” campaign. This has put the former Bush
speechwriter at odds with most on the Right. Last year’s CPAC
keynote speech by Rush Limbaugh was enthusiastically applauded by
attendees but denounced by Frum as “rancorous.”
Little rancor was in evidence at Murphy’s Saturday evening,
where Frum and his wife Danielle Crittenden provided free draft
beer for a diverse collection of young conservatives. Obviously,
CPAC organizers hadn’t heeded Frum’s criticisms — following up
on last year’s Limbaugh appearance with a keynote spot for Glenn
Beck — but if Frum has lost an argument over the conservative
movement’s rhetorical tone and strategy, he at least was
determined to be gracious in defeat.
There still remains the question of whether the past year’s
Tea Party uprising can be translated into GOP victory this
November. If the populist approach fails to produce major
electoral gains for Republicans, Frum and others who have
consistently criticized those figures beloved by the grassroots
Right — Beck, Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sarah Palin and others —
will be quick to say, “We told you so.” So far, however,
conservatives demanding head-on confrontation with the Obama
agenda have every reason to believe that their strategy is
working.
Over and over on the CPAC stage, speakers referenced last
year’s Republican wins in the New Jersey and Virginia
gubernatorial elections — and especially the
emphatic punctuation of Scott Brown’s
Massachusetts victory in January — as proof that voters are
ready to elect GOP candidates who offer a conservative antidote
to the poison of progressivism.
Beck’s Saturday chalkboard talk on that topic involved
blunt criticism of a Republican establishment. In his
closing-night speech, the popular Fox News host accused the GOP
of having become “addicted to spending and big
government.” Beck’s diagnosis was applauded by the
crowd at CPAC, swollen to record levels this year by the addition
of many first-time attendees from the Tea Party movement. This
injection of new blood may have had something to do with the
conference’s presidential straw-poll result, in which Republican
Rep. Ron Paul scored a surprising 31 percent plurality. The Texas
libertarian is almost certainly not going to be the 2012 GOP
nominee, but his support in the CPAC poll was
indicative of conservatives’ desire to return to a message of
limited government and fiscal responsibility.
Finding the right messengers for that message was one major
task that the conference aimed to accelerate. Congressional and
senatorial candidates were ubiquitous at CPAC, shaking hands and
passing out business cards, a process that continued even amid
the Reagan Palooza crowds.
Les Phillip, a primary challenger to party-switcher Parker
Griffith in Alabama’s 5th District, also showed up at the Hawk
‘n’ Dove to meet and mingle with the young activists. (One
Republican National Committee staffer was required to point out
that party rules strictly prohibit interactions between RNC staff
and candidates in contested primaries.) Phillip didn’t go
upstairs for the disco scene, however, and there were no such
rules forbidding him from chatting up Christopher Malagisi of the
Young Conservatives Coalition, which sponsored the Saturday night
event.
Malagisi was proud to display the slogan on the back of his
Reagan Palooza T-shirt — “Drink One for the Gipper” — and that
mood of cheerful celebration was in spectacular abundance
upstairs where the lights pulsed to the bass-heavy rhythm.
Somewhere in that throbbing mass of humanity was another
GOP candidate. He’d earlier explained to me that he had worn out
three pairs of shoes during his campaign so far. He was breaking
in his fourth pair on the dance floor.
A couple hours later, the lobby of the Marriott was nearly
deserted, and a few conservative college students clustered at
one table. In their midst was one recent graduate, Will Gregory.
At the ripe old age of 24, Gregory is a Republican candidate in
Connecticut’s 4th congressional district.
Can such a youngster actually win? That would be the kind
of shocking upset that only happens when one party scores a
massive electoral landslide. If that’s what happens this
November, it would spark a GOP celebration more frenzied than
even that crowd at Reagan Palooza could imagine.
Election Day is still eight months away, and there will be
a lot of hard work required to make that kind of “Party USA”
happen.
