So after that CPAC meltdown how can actual conservatives still consider themselves part of all this?

[Stinky The Clown]

I know more than a few actual conservatives. I disagree with much of what they believe in but at least there was some logic and even philosophy to it. The attendees at CPAC aren't conservative. They are a crazed mob bent on hatred and destruction of anyone and anything not like them. They have no guiding principles. No philosophy. No agenda.

It is long past time for actual conservatives to help clean up the mess they helped unleash.

[C_U_L8R]

1. Selfishness justifies a lot of things.

They refuse to see what Trump is costing them.

[wryter2000]

3. Not sure what he's costing them

Their bank accounts are getting fat with him. So far, his shtick is still working, with the help of the Russians and voter suppression.

Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of right wing politics that began with Reagan. Sure, the appeal to racism started with Nixon. But the blatant hypocrisy began with Reagan, along with the complete disregard for truth, science, and logic. All the CPAC's have worked to bring us here.

I'd like to believe he's destroying it all, but I also still own a book from after the BushII presidency with the title something like "The Death of the Republican Party." We thought it all ended with Bush, because honestly, how could anyone propose to bring back something like that? Eight years later, we're back to the same but worse.

[Lock him up.]

7. Hillary won with over 3,000,000 more votes.

The Russian-mob troll farm made the EC elect that criminal moron.

[wryter2000]

8. Exactly

I wasn't clear on that point. Still, they managed to install their puppet, and I'm not sure that's going to change.

[BigmanPigman]

2. The other night on MSNBC Rick Wilson

made me laugh when he told Brian Williams that the current C-PAC is for the dregs of the GOP since all the rational ones left and now it is a bunch "of incels dancing like prom night" after the speeches are over.

[wryter2000]

5. Rick Wilson is hella funny

I'm afraid we're going to lose all of his type (Republicans disgusted by Trump) back to Reaganesque "conservatism" as soon as one of their ilk but more rational appears. We've already lost Steve Schmidt to the coffee magnate.

[JHB]

20. I'm not afraid that's going to happen. I'm CERTAIN of it.

All the ones getting media time these days -- Wilson, Schmidt, Sykes -- spent their careers in Republican messaging and conservative media. They helped build a Republican base that loves Trump.

Yet they act as if the Republican Party only went down the shitter in 2015, as if it had been perfectly fine but had a stroke or something.

They'll resume their old careers the minute the coast is clear.

[DinahMoeHum]

9. These days it's been called CuckPAC. . .

[BigmanPigman]

11. Appropriate. I like it.

[Eliot Rosewater]

12. What remains in the GOP power structure, and it is many millions, are flat out

deplorable filth who rage with racism, misogyny and xenophobia 24/7.


They would gladly take in royal family from SA and oligarchs from russia and put you and me in prison, or worse. They would do that at the drop of a hat, right now.

Your children go to. My grandchildren. If we dont go quietly, then worse comes into play.

They would do this, right now, if they could and i dont think most of US still get that.

[BigmanPigman]

21. Oh, believe me...I KNOW IT!

In fact yesterday I had this same conversation with my 85 year old dad waiting in the doctor's office. We are both beyond being disgusted with our country and its citizens. The future sure looks grim when you think of what the GOP has been doing for about 40 years. Of course it eventually came down to this level of scum running the show.

[brewens]

4. Most of my actual conservative friends are pretty quiet on FB these days. I went to school

with our local state rep and he disowned me over Trump. I fucked with him though and really had in coming to me. But it was worth it!

Right before the election in 2016, I remembered this anti-Trump rant he posted on FB. It was right after the first republican primary debate. He had been on the Trump bandwagon. After that debate he posted a WTF was I thinking rant. Called Trump and idiot and psycho, said he had to be out of his mind for even considering giving the nuclear football to an asshat like that! It was epic! LOL He then declared his allegiance to Fiorina I think. I think he learned his lesson about not taking sides too early.

So I went back on his FB feed all the way to that post and commented. I praised him to high heaven for calling it like it is, even called it prophetic! I did it late at night too, hoping he wouldn't catch it and delete it right away. That caused a little bit of a shitstorm and I lost a couple other friends over it too. My only mistake was not getting a screenshot of that rant so I could keep torturing him with it!

[defacto7]

6. What I hate is when a conservative confronted by their parties foolishness

and can no longer argue says, "well all polititians are like that" then refuse to continue.

[Eliot Rosewater]

13. yep, for instance

well sure he lies, dont they all?

well sure he is a traitor, arent they all?

well sure he wants to be a dictator and kill liberals, dont they all?

[defacto7]

18. "don't they all" The cheapest most cynical cowardly response possible.

[Generic Brad]

10. CPAC has always been a nut job fest

None of them are actually conservative. All they ever do annually is try to meld authoritarianism with militant Christian evangelism. It’s nothing more than a parade of hypocritical, petty, disingenuous people.

[Eliot Rosewater]

14. That the president of the god damn USA went there at all, let alone did what he did

We should be ENRAGED about now

when will that happen?

[oasis]

15. I agree with OP. 100% (eom)

[RockRaven]

16. The GOP and conservative movement is now a hate movement, in the 1984/Orwell sense.

Remember the description of what happens to people engaged in the Two Minutes Hate:

"The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."

That's the GOP, that's CPAC, that's FOXNews, that is conservatism in the US nowadays.

They are not at all disturbed by the Drumpenfuhrer appearing delusional and disconnected from reality. They are too much in the thrall of Two Minutes Hate to care.

[JHB]

17. Because they see this as a temporary madness...

...when in fact this is the end result of how the "actual conservatives" have acted for the last 40 years.

At last year's CPAC Mona Charen was booed and had to be escorted out by 3 security guards for her own protection.

She later complained "We built and organized this party — but now we're made to feel like interlopers."

My first thought was: Any Rockefeller Republican could have said the same thing 40 years ago, and Charen was one of the people who reveled in that discomfiture.

[toddwv]

19. It's been like that every year.

CPAC gives them a chance to raise their freak flags high and wide and show their true selves.

[SWBTATTReg]

22. Conservatives are actually cowards. All big in talk, but nothing else. That's why you won't

see them do anything, unless it's under the table, while slinking around. That's why they are a minority and will be, for a long time, in this country.

No one thinks like they do. They wouldn't know how to escape a cardboard box if it was open on two sides. Conservative in thought, emotions, and not open to new ideals or concepts, other than those in taking away powers of the government in any and all manner.

They believe that government is not there to help but hinder whereas the rest of us believe that government is here to help all of us.