One time at CPAC

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If Andrew Breitbart wasn’t famous enough already, he is now. In an ill-timed breakdown, he screamed and ranted at a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters who were chanting outside of CPAC and one of them put footage of his charming comments on Youtube, where the video has gotten more than 250,000 hits.

“You are freaks and animals!” he yelled at the group. “Stop raping the people, you filthy freaks!”

The problem isn’t just Breitbart, though. His meltdown exemplifies everything that’s wrong with CPAC. This conference does more harm than good to the conservative movement.

CPAC is a coming-of-age ritual for conservatives –– if you’ve never been, you’re kind of a poseur. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at a conservative happy hour and all the other 20-somethings have launched into their favorite stories of getting black-out drunk and losing their hotel keys, wallets, and dignity on the first night of the conference. If you’re a College Republican and you don’t have one of these stories, you should probably make one up –– you’re nothing but a catechumen in the church of conservatism until you’ve made a terrible mistake at CPAC.

Here’s the problem with the conference: It mixes the worst of every brand of conservatism in one dogmatic, inarticulate, hungover weekend. Between hardcore libertarians’ gold-obsessed paranoia and immigration alarmists’ xenophobia, CPAC brings out the Right Wing’s worst and weirdest.

One gentleman spent most of the weekend wearing a bright green inflatable suit labeled “Big Government Gary.” Another, in a top hat and three-piece suit, carried a sign that read “Crony Capitalism.” There were the predictable Tea Partiers sporting britches and faking bad British accents, as well as a lanky mustachioed Marlboro Man look-alike in a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, “COPS SAY LEGALIZE MARIJUANA / ASK ME WHY.”

And, of course, there were the booths. Just about every major conservative organization in the country gets a booth at CPAC. Most are tasteful and understated, but then there’s one in the back corner blasting heavy metal music and plastered with signs about taking down the Taliban. Another sold T-shirts with slogans like “7 Billion People / ONE GOD,” “‘Made In America’ If you don’t like that label, you won’t like my gun,” and “Why the ?!@$#! should I have to dial 1 for English?” And the Clare Boothe Luce table had a sign sporting photos of sexy, pouty-lipped female conservative pundits saying, “I am a Luce lady” and “We Empower.”

But GOProud, an organization of gay Republicans, wasn’t allowed to be at CPAC. I guess its members might have said something offensive.

It should come as no surprise that someone who spent two days in this oasis of civil discourse would march outside and yell that a large group of people he’d never met before were rapists.

Conservatives can’t afford this kind of nonsense. It’s one thing to rally the base, but another to encourage its radicalism, and that’s often what CPAC does. If Republicans are confident that they know what’s best for the country, they shouldn’t have to resort to the right-wing version of the rhetoric that’s made Occupy famous. The facts don’t need theatrics, and if you’re telling the truth, you shouldn’t have to yell to be heard over the riffraff at the door to your hotel.