CPAC is supposed to be the big annual Republican pep rally, where everyone gets together and talks about how great it is to be a Republican and how everything will be all right once Democrats go away. They are supposed to look like the first half of the video on this post, in which Dick Cheney is greeted with cheers and chants of U! S! A! They are not supposed to look like the second half of the video on this post, in which Cheney is greeted with shouts of “WAR CRIMINAL!”
The one thing Republicans have always had over Democrats, since the Reagan days, is the ability to put together a united front. That is gone now. I’m unsure what’s left. TPM has the whole, incredible story:
Rumsfeld is being given CPAC’s “Defender Of The Constitution” award, a concept that apparently rankled [Ron] Paul supporters in the crowd. Many of them got up and walked out en masse at the mention of Rumsfeld, though some stayed behind in the conference hall to heckle the architects of the invasion of Iraq.
One shout of “where’s Bin Laden?” rang out as Cheney spoke of Rumsfeld.
I love it – after the “war criminal” shout it sounds like someone on the podium says, “ooh, a Canadian”.
United front? That’s been an alternating challenge for both parties all along. Nothing is ever ‘gone’.
One or two shouts from the fringe is NOT a fractured party. And the fact that hundreds of people cheered “USA! USA!” to this scumbag makes my stomach turn.
See? We CAN find common cause with the Paultards!
@3: If any people in this supposedly safe, friendly, loyal conservative audience are willing to call Cheney what he is, you can bet there are millions of conservatives in the country who have come to feel the same way.
This is a good sign that our country hasn’t completely lost it’s mind.
Just keep replacing parts old man, just keep living until we put you in jail, that’s all I ask.
They really hustled that Gary Johnson guy off the stage in a hurry. Can’t have a pro pot legalization agenda in the big GOP tent. Then there’s Iowa Taliban neanderthal Steve King in a little room full of haters saying let’s shut down the gov’t if they try to give people more health care, and also we should have more racial profiling. And look! There’s Donald Trump up there saying none of the candidates have a shot except maybe for him because America is the laughingstock of the world and he’s Donald Trump bitches. Time for some more popcorn…
Piranha feeding frenzy! Such mean spirited people mean it’s going to get ugly. But I like the call for Bin Laden’s head. The Bush admin. tried so hard to convince us that Bin Laden was irrelevant. Well, he wasn’t and he isn’t.
Poor Gary Johnson, too libertarian for either party.
Cheney was still calling for support of Mubarak this week:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110206/ap_o…
Cheney looks more like a walking cadaver than ever. I’m not surprised by the negative shouts. He left office with a popularity rating of, what, something like 11%?
@6, Cheney will never go to jail. Obama has been very clear that while other countries must follow the rule of law, even when it comes to their leaders, he will “look forward, not backward,” and ignore the crimes committed by the previous administration, while at the same time prosecuting whistleblowers at a higher rate than the previous administration.
Obama has clearly demonstrated that he cares about the rule of law just as much Cheney ever did.
The one thing Republicans have always had over Democrats, since the Reagan days, is the ability to put together a united front. That is gone now. I’m unsure what’s left.
Unfortunately, “what’s left” includes all the money, the backing of the corporations that still run America, and the whole media still on their side. I don’t think you can rule out the power of those resources.