-By Warner Todd Huston
I am here at the beautiful Wardman Marriott in Washington DC this week for the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC. We will be seeing a whole host of conservative icons coming to speak… and the presidential candidates will be here too (Sarcasm? What sarcasm?). I’ll be covering as much as I can but there is no way to see, hear, do, and talk to it all, for sure.
The Chairman of the Conservative Action Union (ACU), the host organization for CPAC, is Al Cardenas and in his appearance before the press this morning he promised an exciting event.
Cardenas also noted that this year it seems that the contest for supporters being waged by the four remaining presidential candidates is wide open.
“This year there hasn’t been an effort by the candidates to stack the deck by filling seats with supporters,” Cardenas said.
He noted that in years past they’d get a pile of registrations in batches of hundreds or more making it obvious that an organized effort by a candidate had been undertaken. This year registration was steady with no great batches of registrations made all at once.
Cardenas said that because it was perhaps a more disinterested group of participants this year the campaign for their support in the straw poll is wide open.
“It will be the ultimate focus group of 10,000 or so that will see the candidates and make a decision based on what they see from the four candidates.”
Cardenas mentioned that they had to turn away many exhibitors and exhibit space was filled long ago. Some 200 exhibitors are in attendance from the Heritage Foundation, to Herman Cain, many of conservatism’s most well known groups are here to flog their wares and sell their message to the participants.
So, as I am posting they are starting the day’s events and I’ll be checking back in later with more.
The Capitol all lit up last night
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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