After reading the blogs of Stephen Kruiser and my friend Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, I don’t think I’ll have anything to do with the American Conservative Union or their CPAC conferences. If what happened at Western CPAC is the norm for ACU, then the conservative movement needs to drop them like they’re hot (see what I did there? I used the language of today’s youth. I am truly hip).

First, we go to Kruiser’s post, where he talks about one of his fellow panelists; a fellow who thinks that fax machines are better than using Twitter.

The essence of what I said to the people in attendance yesterday was that conservatives have a golden opportunity to use new media to drive the narrative and control our destiny without having to leave everything in the hands of politicians who continually disappoint us. I also mentioned that I still meet people who tell me they don’t “get it” when it comes to social media…

…So that’s what I said in a funny and preachy way that seemed to have gotten through to people.

Until the douchebag after me spoke.

Christopher Carmouche (rhymes with…) began his thought vomiting by giving Ed Morrissey a hard time for blogging about the impeachment nonsense earlier in the day. He then proceeded to regale us with a tale about his distaste for Twitter and Facebook, complete with a “why can’t we just pick up the phone” line that he pulled out of both his ass and 1989…

…So why was he there? I’ll go out on a limb and say that may have made a donation…

…Carmouche runs something called GrassTopsUSA. Here’s what Mr. “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” and his company do:

This cutting edge organization charges people to send a fax to politicians. That’s right, a fax, by God! If the fax doesn’t do the trick you can order GrassTopsUSA’s premium service where they give you a stagecoach ride to Washington, D.C. and teach you how to churn butter outside your representative’s office until he or she pays attention to you.

Carmouche and his ilk are the kinds of dead weight, dinosaur idiots that conservatism doesn’t need around any more, no matter how fat their wallets are.

Western CPAC: The Douchey | Stephen Kruiser

This fellow probably still has a pager the size of a brick on his hip. I don’t understand why people still fax. I don’t have a fax machine, but some government agencies still choose faxes to send press releases. So I use a service called eFax, which gives me a fax number, but all faxes sent to that number are converted into email attachments and sent to my Gmail. I can send faxes by putting my thing down, flipping it, and reversing it (translation: I can send a fax by attaching a document to a email, and sending the email to the fax number).

Ed Morrissey was involved with one of the more controversial moments at Western CPAC, when filmmaker and radio host John Ziegler got kicked out for asking ACU Chairman David Keene about his attacks on former Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin and Keene’s efforts to get FedEx to pay the ACU, then coming out against FedEx when they refused.

The Western CPAC event is not officially part of the traditional CPAC convention, but the ACU is listed as one of its sponsors, and ACU chair David Keene was in attendance in the entire time. In fact, our friend John Ziegler attended for the express purpose of getting Keene to answer for his pay-for-play shenanigans with FedEx earlier this year as well as Keene’s attacks on Sarah Palin. The situation turned ugly, as Mediaite reports; Western CPAC ejected Ziegler after he followed Keene into the speaking hall, which followed Keene calling Ziegler an “asshole” and saying he wanted to punch Ziegler. I only caught the aftermath, where Ziegler tried to get Keene to write a nice column about Palin for the cash Ziegler on hand:

Unfortunately, this got even uglier afterward. Ziegler had been selling his Media Malpractice documentary as one of the exhibitors, for which Western CPAC got paid, and only one of five such booths at the conference. Ziegler was expelled and removed from his panel, and had agreed to go if the organizers didn’t make a big deal about it. Instead, one of the organizers decided to make it public from the dais during Saturday’s lunch rather than letting the situation go, which prompted Ziegler to grab the mike and answer the allegations, and Ziegler got escorted from the premises…

…I won’t return to events sponsored by the same organizations in the future. The big problem with the conservative movement has been its self-appointed leaders telling others to shut up and follow in lockstep, and I don’t think any so-called movement leaders taking that approach have the first foggy clue about what the New Media and Tax Parties mean.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » A few final thoughts from Western CPAC

There seems to be a real disconnect between Republicans and conservatives. The Republican Party had it way too easy for the past 15 years and seem to have forgotten that what swept them to power in 1994 was the conservative movement. The party stayed conservative until 1999 when House Speaker Newt Gingrich (pictured above having a conversation with me at a coffee shop after his speech in Wheeling, W.Va.) stepped down. After that, they turned back into country club, Rockefeller Republicans, and became more concerned about maintaining power. After being swept out in 2006 and 2008, instead of going back to the old-time religion, they have been only concerned about getting Republicans elected, ANY Republicans.

Take Dede Scozzafava for example, running for a House seat in New York‘s 23rd District. Scozzafava is a liberal Republican supported by ACORN running against Doug Hoffman, a conservative Republican. Which one is getting money from the Republican National Congressional Committee? Not the conservative.

The only real solution to actions like this is for conservatives to mobilize and push out the Rockefeller Republicans. Push them out of their seats, even if it means a Democrat winning. Push them out of their cozy offices in our state parties and the RNC. As much as I’d like to see a viable third party, I don’t think that is the answer. Take the momentum from the TEA parties and the town halls and take back the party.

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