In the olden days, back when radio was considered high-tech and Herbert Hoover was a great president, small-town America was often entertained by an annual event that brought the exotic and the bizarre to the upright citizens of Main Street, USA. Its coming, anticipated for weeks by old and young alike, would be heralded by playbills and buskers and a parade of surreal characters and animals, culminating in the ceremonial raising of the Big Top near the town square. The circus, everyone would cry, had come to town again!
While the circus’ lions, tigers, acrobats, clowns, other sundry characters made Main Streeters squeal with excitement as they cavorted in the center ring, it was the midway shows and their menagerie of the grotesque that was the real draw for those seeking to be shocked by the truly strange. For two bits, the price of a haircut, thrill-seekers could gaze upon bearded ladies, conjoined twins, dwarves, giants, hermaphrodites and everything in-between – if they dared.
Today’s America, of course, is a much more kind and sophisticated place. We no longer pack those who are physically disabled or different into circus sideshows to be gawked at by slack-jawed yokels yearning to be shocked by that which is different. No, for that we turn to cable television and, in particular, its political news coverage – and last week, the greatest conservative show on Earth, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention – like the circus of old only far more sad and frightening, once again made its way to town. So what did political circus goers find under the CPAC big top this year?
A good ringmaster knows that while crowds come to be entertained by the unusual and the exciting, for the main event the truly bizarre is best kept under wraps. It’s a family show, after all, and what works best is often what the audience already knows – only given a slight tweak to keep the marks coming. CPAC’s ringmasters followed this script perfectly by offering a host of acts by Republican has-beens and up-and-comers who recited the sacred trinity of low taxes, family values and a strong military like the well-practiced act it was.
Marco Rubio, fresh off his less-than-stellar performance at the State of the Union, riled up the crowd with some good, old-fashioned China bashing, got some laughs with an Obama teleprompter joke, and laid into the administration for daring to think contraception should be covered by insurers. Newt Gingrich preached conservative purity and attacked apostates in the GOP establishment and “consulting class” who called for Republicans to change direction to reflect the devastating defeats they suffered in the past election.
Not to be outdone, Rubio rival and Tea-Party darling Rand Paul intoned that Republicans should focus more on “liberty” in both the personal and economic spheres, but did little to articulate how he would differentiate himself from his equally conservative rivals. He seemed exciting, though, which was enough to win him the CPAC presidential straw poll. Then there was the trio of losers masquerading as leaders – Romney, Ryan and Palin – who wowed audiences with more of the same.
Romney, who has apparently not been upgraded with new manufacturer software since the election, urged conservatives to look to the leadership provided by Republican governors which, like him, had dealt with real problems and provided “real” leadership. Paul Ryan, in turn, presented a budget that that was most likely lifted directly from a Romney-Ryan campaign speech, while Sarah Palin, Queen of the Conservative North, engaged in petty “birther” jokes and all but declared that the nanny-state Gestapo could come and take her extra-large soda from her cold, dead, corn fructose-laced hands.
The true entertainment, however, wasn’t to be found amongst the center ring’s headlining acts, but the sideshows which simultaneously entertained and repulsed. Conservatives own bearded lady, Ann Coulter, for instance, drew in the rubes with her old-timey jeremiads against Bill Clinton’s womanizing. Meanwhile, on the final day of the conference, another Tea Party femme fatale likened America under Barack Obama to be like the Hunger Games – a dystopian nightmare state where youngsters are brought from across the country to fight to the death for the entertainment of a ravenous liberal mob. That’s just like Obamacare, you see.
Then, CPAC’s fire-breathing gun swallower, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, raged against the idea of placing restrictions on our right to own military-grade small arms. Background checks, he warned, was a potential plot wherein lists of gun owners could be turned over to invading communist hordes a la Red Dawn. Not to be outdone by a mere gun merchant, a clown from the Orwellian-named Competitive Enterprise Institute, an oil-industry cat’s paw, warned that the wholesome, America-loving plastic sack was under assault by those in liberal America who wanted to replace the ubiquitous, millennia-lasting, grocery-holding field decorations with disease-ridden cloth sacks. Left unsaid was the supposition that dastardly enviro-communists were plotting to kill off American consumers with E. Coli tainted bags in the same way White settlers killed off Native Americans with small pox-laden blankets.
But the best bits, by far, were the comments on slavery made in the deepest, darkest recesses of the CPAC freak show. At a panel on minority outreach entitled, (yes, it was actually called this) “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?” an audience member got in on the act by declaring that slavery wasn’t all that bad because slaves were provided food and shelter by their masters.
Dinesh D’Souza, a family-values conservative ousted from a cushy position at a New York Christian college because of an extra-marital affair, was more subtle on the slavery “issue” by arguing that since, slavery was, “in a sense, seen as stealing the free labor of African Americans,” liberals as a whole see the story as America as a story of oppression and theft writ large.
Good times. CPAC, as political entertainment, never disappoints. It takes all the crazy in the conservative movement, distills it down to pure, white-lightening talking points, and puts it on display for all to see. It is a carnival for the initiated and invited and those in the media and the opposition seeking to be amused by the rhetorical tricks performed inside. It is a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey extravaganza that absolutely cannot be missed.
It does not, however, rebrand or rebuild a party that has sunk to such record or near-record levels of unpopularity that its future is actually in doubt. The day after the CPAC show left town, the Republican National Committee chairman and Star Wars villain Reince Priebus released a report dissecting the GOP’s defeat in the November elections. It is refreshingly frank in terms of its assessments – the ultra-conservative Republican Party is literally dying as young people and minorities flee from an organization seen as increasingly bitter, bigoted and out-of-touch by those observing it. Unless it changes, it cannot hope to win national elections going forward and, indeed, only holds on to power today via a thoroughly gerrymandered U.S. House of Representatives and easily corrupted statehouses. Aside from stealing elections through voting shenanigans, the GOP’s future as a viable political party looks grim.
Which means little to the agglomeration of circus acts that is CPAC, for they are there to preach true religion, entertain and rake in the donor dollars. They are Circus for a mass of aging, disgruntled and angry privileged White voters who want little more than to see someone, anyone, voice the hateful, insane opinions that they themselves hold dear but which have nonetheless gone out of fashion in the wider culture. Circuses are fun and exciting, to be sure, but a political party cannot indefinitely live on Circus alone. There has to be bread in there, too – but you won’t find any of substance at CPAC, or anywhere else on the conservative right, anytime soon.