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“Ultimately, I’m a lobbyist for freedom,” a man in a yarmulke tells a pretty girl in the basement of a cavernous Marriott in northwest Washington. The man could have been attempting to network or to flirt — a seminar on how to date conservatives had just wrapped up down the hall — but either way, the description seemed perfectly pitched to the frequency of CPAC, the annual confab at which conservatives converge on the town they love to hate to hobnob with political celebrities, nurture their contacts and bemoan the ruinous state of the Republic over a drink or four. Everyone is a friend of freedom here. Nobody is a friend to Barack Obama. On these matters, they can all agree.

And that’s often all they can agree on. CPAC’s thousands of attendees are a reminder of the vast array of parochial interests cohabiting under the conservative tent: business groups and birthers, social conservatives and survivalists, deficit hawks and neocons. The large contingent of college kids tends to lend the event, now in its 39th year, the feel of a bacchanal.


"People walk past a cardboard cutout of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, Feb. 9, 2012."

This year is a little different. If the conservative movement has sizzled in the age of Obama, the specter of a Mitt Romney Administration leaves much of the crowd here cold. “We’re all divided. We’re not really excited about any of the candidates,” says Brendan Steinauser, the director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, the D.C.-based Tea Party organization. Three remaining contenders will arrive tomorrow, when Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will all address the throngs. (Ron Paul, the two-time defending champion of the CPAC straw poll, decided to sit the event out.) More at http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/10/fears-faith-and-freedom-at-cpac/#
ixzz1lz6uACEk

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