The Best CPAC Ever!

Today on NRO

JONAH GOLDBERG: Liberalism may not be dead, but it looks mighty worn out. Is Liberalism Exhausted?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The addition of a sunset clause has made an already bad Iran deal much, much worse. The Fatal Flaw in the Iran Deal.

IAN TUTTLE: San Francisco archbishop Cordileone is predictably blasted for a commonsense policy. Catholic Schools Should Be Catholic, Even in San Francisco.

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: A cartel falls in North Carolina. Toothy Tyranny.

PHOTO ESSAY: Preview: House of Cards Season 3.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

February 27, 2015

The Best CPAC Ever!

This is not a subdued CPAC crowd, but I think it's a serious-minded one. Sure, the applause lines still work, but I think the attendees are hungry for more.

Conservatives worked hard in 2014 to elect a Republican U.S. Senate and strengthen a GOP House . . . in hopes of putting the brakes on the Obama agenda. The country was moving in the wrong direction. The president was out of control.

And now . . . there's no coherent plan to stop the executive-order amnesty. There's not a clear sense of what the GOP Congress should do if the Supreme Court throws a monkey-wrench into Obamacare in King v. Burwell. Obama vetoed the Keystone Pipeline with the unhinged claim that the bill somehow interfered with his executive authority, and not enough Democrats will vote to override his veto. The Right pummeled the Left up and down the ballot in 2014, and somehow they've managed to make the election results irrelevant by simply ignoring them. It's as if we're being governed by the comments section of a liberal blog.

A midterm election result aiming to rein in President Obama's increasingly radical agenda has instead only driven him to reach even more -- President Bulworth has adopted the slogan of "YOPO" -- "You're only president once." By winning the presidency and controlling the regulatory bureaucracy, the radical Left is now dictating terms to the rest of America.

So the usual CPAC applause lines of "I'm certain our best days are ahead of us" and "I believe in freedom" are a little less than the moment requires. Attendees are looking for a fighter -- a particular challenge for a former Florida governor who's been quiet on the political scene for much of the Obama era -- and a strategist, someone who can out-think and out-maneuver a political opponent that is fearless and determined in its efforts to enact its agenda.

Despite my criticism of one line of his remarks -- and it's just one line! -- there's clearly a broad sense among a lot of CPAC attendees that Scott Walker might be the man for the job.

As expected, the crowd relished Carly Fiorina's blunt dismissal of Hillary Clinton's reign at the U.S. State Department.

Another interesting note from Thursday: The conventional wisdom on Chris Christie is that he's dead in the water in the 2016 field. For example, New York Times columnist Gail Collins just declared, "Chris Christie is political toast," and boy, you don't find a more conventional wisdom than hers.

Thursday afternoon, Christie sat down at CPAC for a question-and-answer session with radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham, who is not exactly a shrinking violet as an interviewer.

Remember, back in 2013, Christie wasn't invited to CPAC, and the suggestion was that he "didn't deserve to be on the all-star selection" and that he has a "limited future" in the national Republican party.

With all of the hubbub about Jeb Bush attempting to assemble a fundraising leviathan, the corner of the political world that's already obsessing about 2016 is writing off Chris Christie. But the non-yelling Chris Christie is a pretty appealing guy. Probably not appealing enough to win those early-primary states, but enough to win over an initially skeptical CPAC crowd with humor, reciting his conservative acts as governor, and a bit of boastful confidence.

Here's Geoff Earle, writing in the New York Post:

"Is the election next week?" he asked at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference when interviewer Laura Ingraham pressed him on his poll slide.

"If I decide to run for president, I'm not worried about what polls say 21 months before we're going to elect the president of the United States," Christie added, pointing to his back-to-back wins in blue New Jersey.

"I'll take my chances on me. I've done pretty well so far."

Asked if the race was Jeb Bush's to lose, Christie responded: "If the elites in Washington who make backroom deals decide who the next president is going to be, then he's definitely going to be the frontrunner."

Our Andrew Johnson notes:

With the auditorium nearly completely full, Christie left the audience with one last crowd-pleaser: He said he'd planned to give up the New York Times for Lent . . . only to have his priest tell him he had to give up something he'd actually miss.

Give the NR Podcasts from CPAC a Listen!

The NationalReview.com/Ricochet podcast interview with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal can be found here, and the one with Senator Ted Cruz here.

Elsewhere, our Jay Nordlinger interviews Representative Bill Flores of Texas, former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey, and chats with Herbert London of the London Center for Policy Research.

Jay, Charlie Cooke, and I offer a short wrap-up of our observations of the first day. My favorite part was when Jay lamented that no one has written a good, recent book about the relationship between conservatives and Libertarians.

Coming Later Today: 'Cultural Fascism Has Arrived in America'

At 9:20 a.m. today, Brent Bozell is scheduled to address CPAC, and the released excerpts indicate that his may be the barn-burner of the morning:

The radicals control the Federal Communications Commission and the FCC is out of control in its zeal to control free speech. The North Koreans would approve of its machinations. Last summer it was making quiet preparations to put a federal monitor in every newsroom to assess stations' "news philosophy," and "the process by which stories are selected." This shocking abuse of governmental authority was exposed and stopped -- but by no means does this mean the radicals have stopped . . .

Webster defines fascism as "a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control." Cultural fascism has arrived in America. Let us understand this soberly and unequivocally.

ADDENDA: I pop up in this Guardian photo. "CPAC is not a circus!"

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