This Week at CPAC
The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Washington. This annual event typically features a lot of crazy talk mixed in with hatred for the president, immigrants, gays, and various other groups. Chances are there's some reasonable talk, too, but if so it's rarely reported.
We were going to include CPAC coverage by our intrepid TWiA reporters in the regular weekly TWiA, but quickly realized that would make it much too long. Instead, we'll try to do daily CPAC updates.
Here's the first day of CPAC in Tweets and photos.
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Did we mention how CPAC feels about gay people? The gay Republican group Log Cabin Republicans tried (again) to be a CPAC sponsor, and they were once again denied. Meanwhile, CPAC is fine with sponsorship by white nationalist groups and other anti-gay organizations dubbed hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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One of the first speakers was Dr. Ben Carson, darling of the tea party right for reasons that remain unclear, because he literally has no idea what he's talking about most of the time. This week, Talking Points Memo reports, he went after same-sex marriage right off the bat:
"'The Constitution also says that Congress has oversight of all inferior courts. That means the federal courts —only one they don't have jurisdiction over is the Supreme Court," Carson said. "So when these federal judges come in and interfere and overturn the will of the people, the people who have voted for something, Congress has a responsibility to do something about this because it says that those judges serve as long as they are doing a satisfactory job. But it's not satisfactory when they're going against the will of the people.'
"Carson didn't directly say gay marriage but his comments stacked on earlier ones he's made in an interview on Steve Deace's podcast in which he said Congress should remove federal judges who rule in favor of gay marriage."
A couple of problems here, Dr. Carson. First, who decides "the will of the people?" According to all the polling we've seen, allowing same-sex marriage is increasingly popular among "the people." If you were listening to the will of the people, you'd stop opposing it. So you're really arguing that Congress should remove federal judges who go against the will of Ben Carson.
Second, the will of the people often changes. Sometimes it changes depending upon how a question is asked. Federal judges should specifically be protected from the will of the people--they're supposed to uphold the law, not popular opinion. The federal judiciary is not Dancing With the Stars, nor should it be. Anybody who says it should simply doesn't understand the system.
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Carson also doesn't seem to understand how wrong Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about Iraq (more on that in Friday's regular weekly report), or how much his upcoming congressional visit is tied to his reelection campaign and is not about any real concern for what's best for America. He said, "We have friends over there. Let's not turn our back on Israel. Let's listen to Netanyahu."
Israel is our friend. Netanyahu decidedly isn't, and he's not someone who should be listened to on matters pertaining to our national security.
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Here's a way you can always tell if a politician or would-be politician has a clue (hint: Carson doesn't)--when they want to tear down federal agencies just to replace them with federal agencies. One of his big applause lines (because in general, the CPAC crowd also has no clue) was when he said we should have "a fair taxation system that allows us to get rid of the IRS."
Do tell, Dr. Carson. How would this "fair" taxation system work? What precisely is unfair about our current system? And if you got rid of the IRS, who would regulate and enforce the new system? You'd need a new agency for that (and start-up costs for a federal agency eat up a lot of tax dollars). What would you call it? Here's a suggestion: how about the "Internal Revenue Service?"
Carson may or may not have been a good doctor, but when it comes to matters of national policy, he is hopelessly ignorant.
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When Jeb Bush addresses CPAC--where he is not the most popular of figures, by a long shot--he'll make sure to be shielded from the crowd. Although the radical right-wingers who attend CPAC don't like Bush, they do tend to like Fox "News" and radio pundit Sean Hannity, so instead of giving a speech, Bush will answer questions from Hannity. (New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, also no favorite of the CPACers, used a similar tack, being interviewed by radio host Laura Ingraham. Arch-conservatism by association seems to be the theme.) Bush took things a step further, Politico reports, "In response, his advisers have taken steps to pack the room with supporters — a Bush adviser said the campaign would be coordinating transportation for Washington, D.C.-area boosters who’d expressed interest in attending his Friday afternoon presentation."
If you can't excite the crowd that's there, it's always best to bring your own crowd with you. We wonder how he can continue that all the way through the primaries.
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To her credit, Sen. Joni Ernst (R/IA), one of the very few US senators since the South lost the Civil War to believe that states have the power to nullify federal law [we're not sure where Sen. Rand Paul (R/KY) stands on that, but he spent a significant portion of his adult life trying to convince the country that his father, a devout believer in nullification, should be president]--and a military veteran--avoided the loony talk and focused instead of veterans' issues.
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