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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (353340)	2/4/2003 12:26:01 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Bush's Storm Troops : Part #2 continued: Held at Gateway Marriott in Crystal City, Va. from January 30 to February 1, CPAC drew a crowd of 4,000, 1,700 of them college students. Most of the action took place in a ballroom on the second floor, where speakers lambasted liberals from a stage draped in red, white and blue and backed by 18 American flags and two enormous video screens. It was like a right-wing version of a Workers World rally, with one crucial difference. Workers World is a fringe group with no political power. CPAC is explicitly endorsed by people running the country. Its attendees are Bush's shock troops, the ones who staged the white-collar riot during the Florida vote count and harassed Al Gore in the vice presidential mansion. Bush may not want to embrace them in public, but they are crucial to his political success and he has let them know, in hundreds of ways, that their mission is his. Heralded by the power chords of Survivor's 1982 hit "Eye of the Tiger," Cheney got things off to a roaring start at about noon on Thursday. "CPAC has consistently championed those ideas that make America great," he said, before essentially repeating President Bush's State of the Union address. In the days that followed, one had to wonder exactly which ideas Cheney was talking about. Yes, CPAC explored some crucial questions. One panel asked, "Islam, Religion of Peace?" (Short answer: no.) There was a 40-minute talk on tort reform and 35 minutes on "Safeguarding Civil Liberties in a Time of War," which included a speech by veteran lefty civil libertarian Nat Hentoff, who was treated respectfully by an audience that largely fears big government and holds its privacy sacrosanct. Yet Hentoff aside, one theme overwhelmed all others: a quaking, obsessive hatred of the liberals who are still believed to rule the world. CPACers exemplify what historian Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics" in the 1964 essay of the same name. "Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated -- if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention," Hofstadter wrote. "Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes." And George W. Bush has harnessed their obsession and rage for his own political gain. The conference was packed with events devoted to denouncing the perfidious left. There were panels titled "Modern Feminism: The Bilking of the Taxpayer," "Real Stories of Real Liberal Bias on Real College Campuses," "NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and other Professional Victims" and "Myths, Lies & Terror: The Growing Threat Of Radical Environmentalism." Dan Flynn, author of "Why the Left Hates America," was on hand to sign his book. Ann Coulter, there to push her own book, was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation, after which she ripped into the "treason lobby" -- the Democratic Party -- whose platform "consists in breaking every one of the 10 commandments."