[Rokenn]

Part 2:
They have no doubt that Bush will do their bidding
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To attend CPAC is to crash through the looking glass into a world where passionate worship of the president is part of a brave rebellion against government, where Sweden is a hellish dystopia and Tom Daschle a die-hard Marxist. It's to realize that, despite the conservative hold on the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court and the utter dejection among Democrats, right-wingers still fancy themselves an embattled minority facing an army of wily, ruthless leftists, who they hate with the righteous fury of the downtrodden.

At the "What Are We Fighting For?" talk, Elaine Donnelly, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush I administrations, cautioned that the "destructive legacy of Bill Clinton" remains in the Pentagon and "could still make a comeback. We have to be vigilant." She made the horrifying consequences of such a resurgence clear. Hillary Clinton, she said, is now a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where "she will have more power than we may think." For example, she may tell the military, "If you want those Apache helicopters, you have to put women in combat ... think about 'Black Hawk Down,' the soldier being dragged through the streets. Do we want to see that on a gender-neutral basis?"


Of course, for decades the conservative movement has been defining itself in opposition to the specter of an amok liberalism that, among other depredations, leaves American women vulnerable to ravishment by savage black men. The right needs liberal power, no matter how illusory, as a foil.

That may be why there were so many college students in attendance, since university campuses are perhaps the only places left in America where conservatives might legitimately feel marginalized. Many students spoke of being radicalized by the hostility they face as Republicans at liberal schools, much as David Brock did in his book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative." Given the p.c. hysteria that has choked the intellectual life of so many institutions, it's likely they really have been mistreated. Still, some of the examples they proffered suggested something rather less than an epidemic of college Stalinism. At the panel on campus liberal bias, for example, Roger Custer of Ithaca College's Young America's Foundation spoke of the oppression he suffered when his group advertised a speech by Pat Buchanan's sister Bay with signs saying, "Feminazis beware: Your Nuremberg has come."

"We received a barrage of criticism," Custer said indignantly. "Leftists said they felt physically threatened."

The issue of environmentalism shows much about CPAC-style politics. For CPACers, standing up to environmentalists isn't merely a matter of opposing regulations seen as onerous. Rather, they've framed it as a creationism-style holy war. Speakers at CPAC were livid even at businesses that adopted green models out of self-interest. Nick Nichols, CEO of the crisis management group Nichols-Dezenhall, railed against British Petroleum's attempts to cast itself as environmentally friendly, calling it a "new and improved Neville Chamberlain." David Riggs, who runs the anti-environmentalist GreenWatch project at the Capitol Research Center, took the stage to the sound of jungle roars and declared that environmentalism "has nothing to do with bunnies and bambies. It's about destroying free enterprise and eliminating private property." Floyd Brown of the Young America's Foundation announced, "A lot of people who used to claim their color was red now claim their color is green."

Of course, CPACers are ebullient about the Bush presidency, and they have no doubt that Bush will do their bidding. Their understanding of Bush is very similar to the conventional wisdom on the left: He's seen as a man whose language and image pander to moderates while his actions serve the far right. Tim Weigel, who was manning the Free Republic booth, described compassionate conservative initiatives like Bush's plan to address AIDS in Africa as, "throwaways, put out there to keep the left quiet while he takes care of Iraq." Behind him hung a picture of Hillary Clinton's head Photoshopped onto the body of a pig.

The lobby behind Bush's social agenda was on full display. Austin Ruse of the Catholic Families and Human Rights Institute told the audience about his success working with Population Research Institute, which opposes family planning in all forms, to pressure the White House to withdraw the United States' $34 million contribution to the United Nations Family Planning Fund. Population Research Institute did this largely by fabricating evidence that the Population Fund supports coerced abortion in China, a charge that the administration's own investigators found to be baseless. Ruse offered advice to the crowd about how the U.S. could fully extricate itself from all its international treaties. His was the moderate position; another man on his panel wanted to pull out of the U.N. altogether.

In the exhibitors' hall, Freedom Village USA, an upstate New York-based Christian drug-treatment center hoping to get federal money under Bush's faith-based initiative showed just what faith-based drug treatment really means. "Other programs teach you relief," said Robert A. Neu, assistant to Freedom Village president Fletcher A. Brothers. "Freedom Village offers a cure. It's a one-step program of getting on your knees and accepting Jesus Christ." Neu claims a 75 to 80 percent success rate, which he says measures the number of Freedom Villagers who have become born-again Christians. In addition to literature about drug abuse, the booth was selling videos titled "Harry Potter, Witchcraft Repackaged: Making Evil Look Innocent."