John Fund reports on this weekend's very interesting 34th annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
In particular, note the item in which 79% described themselves as Reagan Republicans, whereas only 3% called themselves George W. Bush Republicans. (Reagan addressed the CPAC a dozen times while Mr. Bush never has.)
And this paragraph is also quite revealing: CPAC organizers are convinced Sen. McCain did not speak because he didn't want TV footage to show him "pandering" to the GOP's conservative base. Instead, his aides tried to book a room at the Sheraton to host a reception where their man could mingle with attendees behind closed doors. But no such room was available. "It was too cute by half and made people wonder why he campaigns as a conservative but doesn't want to be seen in public with them," American Conservative Union president David Keene told me. Mr. McCain told Fox News he didn't view those at CPAC as representative of conservative voters and said they were "Washington insiders." CPAC staffers shot back that attendees this year came from 49 states and less than 15% were from the D.C. metro area.
Also, this long story over on FoxNews has some interesting items from the CPAC, including:
..."The Republican Party apparently has a death wish, but that doesn't mean we conservatives have to go along with it," Richard Viguerie, a movement veteran who helped elect Reagan, said during his wildly-received speech delivered Thursday. "Let's focus on the conservative movement, not the GOP."
And, Time and again, participants and even some of the presidential hopefuls circulating among and speaking to the large crowd of college students and veteran activists blamed GOP leaders and the Bush administration for scandals, bloated government and impasses on major issues like immigration reform...
..."There is a lot of searching going on, and anger against the Republicans in Congress," said Erick Erickson, a blogger for RedState.org. "Conservatives here are searching for the conservative candidate. A lot of people don't want a repeat of the Bush administration. They like the guy (President Bush), but there is fatigue. There is a vacuum and everyone's trying to fill it"...
