They gathered in Washington from around the nation, but actually all of the attendees were from the same place -- the wilderness, specifically the political wilderness. Your GPS gizmo can't find it, but just look around. It's everywhere for the true-believer conservatives who people the annual gatherings of the Conservative Political Action Committee.
This time, where for years they have convened in triumph, the tone seems to have been more a muddle of hysteria and bravado. On the one hand, the republic is doomed. On the other hand, true-blue conservatism will begin roaring back in the congressional elections just two years off.
The nature of the doom seems a mite unsettled as yet. Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who attracted a geeky, libertarian, Mensa-boy cult while running for his party's presidential nomination last year, said, "We now have moved in the direction of socialism. We're close to a fascist system where the government controls our lives and economy."
Well, then, is it socialism that looms or fascism? Some sort of dread looming is going on.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another castoff from the presidential primaries, contemplated a month's worth of President Obama and the Democratic Congress. "Lenin," he said, "and Stalin would love this stuff." So maybe it's communism outright?
Republicans have taken a shellacking in the last two elections, and while movement conservatives of the CPAC sort insist they shouldn't be mistaken for partisans, in fact there is no other political vehicle with any promise at all of carrying them to power.
For movement conservatives and the bloggers and talk-radio barkers who are their rock stars, the GOP's recent losses are a welcome purging. Happyland lies ahead in a party properly chastened for its occasional lapses from rightist othodoxy and cleared of such ideological chiselers as the wimpy George W. Bush, previously championed but now disdained for not having been nearly as Cheney-like as he should have been.
But where's the new Goldwater or new Reagan the ideological right has to offer? Nowhere apparent. A straw poll of CPAC delegates favored Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for the next presidency. Recent polls find Republicans leaning to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The difference? Well, one's a boy, the other a girl.
