Weigel

At last year's CPAC, the sad task of announcing a Ron Paul straw poll win was handled gingerly. Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio mentioned that the result would be unscientific. So did outgoing American Conservative Union chairman David Keene.

Not this year! "We've gotten so many questions about our straw poll!" said ACU Chairman Al Cardenas, running his first CPAC. After a long build-up by pollster Tony Fabrizio, a consultant newly liberated from the S.S. Rick Perry, we learned that the CPAC crowd had voted this way:

Mitt Romney - 38%
Rick Santorm - 31%
Newt Gingrich 15%
Ron Paul - 12%

The reaction was mixed.

Why didn't Ron Paul win for the third year running? Easy: Paul didn't try. The campaign opted not to rent a booth, and bought no tickets for supporters. Neither did Paul's 501(c)3, the Campaign for Liberty. Young Americans for Liberty, Paul's youth group -- which in the past has packed rooms of 400, 500 people to hear Paul or allies speak -- was nowhere at all.

Why did Romney win? There wasn't much visible support for the candidate at CPAC. Earlier in the day, I'd watched a group of Santorum supporters mock a sad, lone Romney supporter for trying to pass out stickers for a "pro-choice" candidate. But the old trope that "signs don't vote" has a convention corallary: The candidate with the hardcores in the lobby doesn't always win. I asked the Romney campaign if it had purchased tickets, or shipped supporters in, a move that would have contravened its previous pledge not to do straw polls. What did they do to win? The answer: "Gave a great speech."

Steve Bannon stood outside the room where his Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated was screening, sending e-mails with his fun. The item he was trying to put in front of people: This trailer for his new movie about the Occupy movement.

"It's a quick turnaround," he says. "We're putting it together in three, four months. We've got all kinds of underground, inside footage of the movement. It. Will. Shock people."

The rest of the movie, after the expose, consists of interviews with former leftists -- David Horowitz, Anita Montcrief, the former anarchist turned FBI informant Brandon Darby. He'd spent part of the previous night (an hour or so, come to think), arguing with the Occupiers who parked outside the hotel. "It wasn't a very effective action," he says.

The rest of the Occupy movement, though: Actually effective. "If you go back to August 4," says Bannon, "all the discussion was about the debt, the deficit. Occupy begins, and BOOM, for months, it's a discussion of income inequality. The mainstream media was complicit in this. That's in the movie."

I'm old, so I remember CPAC before Andrew Breitbart: Quiet. Since 2010, the first CPAC after Breibart's Big Government released James O'Keefe's ACORN video investigations, Breitbart's appearances at the conference have begun with media interviews, continued with assorted people confronting him on video, and ended with his own speeches, full of nostalgia for the stuff that just happened. This year's Breitbart Moment, captured next to the Occupy CPAC encampment by Emily Crockett:

It makes me wistful for the Breitbarts moments of yore. But I'm in luck! There's a new documentary on the way, Hating Breitbart.

I'm told that one of the scenes is from the 2010 CPAC, and features Breitbart yelling quotes into my notebook. I did not make any typos in that sentence.

We are nearly through the Alternate Reality Week of the 2012 primary. Rick Santorum won two caucuses and one ballot test which assigned no delegates. This gave him "momentum." He joined two other candidates (not Ron Paul; I'll get to that in a bit) at a conference of conservative activists, with a straw poll that, historically, has only fitfully predicted the Republican nominee.

Like magic, it all mattered. Public Policy Polling's latest national poll (there's no some thing as a national primary, etc etc, rabble rabble) puts Santorum in the lead. It's the classic three-candidate* dilemma:

Part of the reason for Santorum's surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney's favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point net decline from our December national poll when he was +24 (55/31). Gingrich has fallen even further. A 44% plurality of GOP voters now hold a negative opinion of him to only 42% with a positive one. That's a 34 point drop from 2 months ago when he was at +32 (60/28).

In a sort of lull, with no debates and minimal advertising, the candidate who's been attacked the least is doing best. So how did he, Gingrich, and Romney, take advantage of CPAC?

Santorum gave a speech that, with some changes, could have been delivered on the night of a primary win. (This was emphasized by the backdrop: His happy family.) It wasn't until after the speech that he told Sam Stein the specifics of his birth control stance: "This is having someone pay for it, pay for something that shouldn't even be in an insurance plan anyway because it is not, really an insurable item. This is something that is affordable, available." In the speech, he placed the contraception issue in a generalized, apocalyptic context:

It's not about contraception. It's about economic liberty; it's about freedom of speech; it's about freedom of religion. It's about government control of your lives and it's got to stop.

This was a comment for a national audience from someone who will not be minimized as the "man on dog" guy.

Romney, who's really just trying to endure the week without more bad spin, has always had a problem completely contradictory to Santorum's. The general electorate doesn't think he's a right-winger; neither does the electorate that wants to nominate a right-winger. With a little distance, the takeaway from Romney's speech was just how many times he said the word "conservative."

With a little distance, the takeway from Gingrich's speech was... boy, I really don't know. The text is here, and if you diagram it against any Gingrich speech of the last year, you hear maybe two new items. Romney and Santorum both embedded subliminal, no-names attacks against their opponents in their speeches. Gingrich barely bothered. He attacked the "Republican establishment," then rattled off some items from his rotating list of ideas. "If you believe that honesty about our enemies, strengthening our defense, and competence in our beliefs is vital to our survival, come join us," he said. "We don’t care who you once were. We don’t care what you once did." There is no advantage, not anymore, to letting Rick Santorum remain the sole high-minded positive candidate.

*and Ron Paul!

I'd rather win the body armor.

This coin, worth $18, was winnable in a raffle.

At the same table, a T-shirt you could buy for $10.

At a booth selling The New Democrat, a parody of the Cat in the Hat (Pelosi and Reid are Thing One and Thing Two), a minor copyright violation:

And a long-in-the-works documentary that will probably appeal to the people obsessively filming, or talking about film, of Andrew Breitbart yelling at various people.

The CPAC event I'm most distraught to have been completely unable to hear over the roar of air conditioners was "Founder Roundtable: Where Did We Go Wrong?" It was what it sounded like: A debate among the founders.

Left to right, you had James Madison (Bruce Fein), Benjamin Franklin (Mark Skousen), unidentified, Thomas Jefferson (Tom Whitmore), and Alexander Hamilton (Bill Nitze).

Here was the key line in Mitt Romney's prepared remarks for CPAC.

I was a conservative governor. I fought against long odds in a deep blue state. I understand the battles that we, as conservatives, must fight because I have been on the front lines.

Here was how he actually delivered the first line.

I was a severely conservative governor.

My theory for why Romney delivered the line with the extra zest: He said "conservative" 26 times overall in the speech, as if using a Jungian mind trick to convince us that he had checked every possible box.

The Occupy movement arrived at CPAC, a little late, building a line of protest in front of the hotel shortly after noon. Media interest, stoked for days, was high. CPACs interest was in stopping 1200 or so reporters from being distracted from the events they were putting on.

This was done by putting a line of police between the "occupation" -- really just a protest, with some kitschy tents -- and the conference attendees and reporters. Protesters moved towards the hotel, were ushered away by police, and settled back down the hill. Anyone approaching them, like conservatives with "STAND WITH [SCOTT] WALKER] signs or bloggers with cameras, was told that he would be arrested if he stayed." I filmed a few bloggers as they tried.

At the moment the video cuts out, you'll notice the cop grabbing his handcuffs and walking towards me. A second later he reached me and said "I already warned you once." He dangled the handcuffs about a foot from my face. "Do you want to go to jail?" I told him that I hope he'd have a nice day. If he was successful, this Occupy protest and another protest at 5 would be pure, ignored sideshows. Back in the CPAC ballroom, Mitt Romney was giving an uninterrupted speech to a packed room.

A radio show was calling me to talk CPAC; I had to head outside. The noted blogger and commentator Robert "Stacy" McCain was walking out as I walked in. "Are you going to Mark Block's office?" he asked.

This was what he meant.

"I'm surprised to see you smoking!" I said.

"The cigarette is smoking," he said. "I'm just here."

His old candidate was still in the hotel, making himself available for photos, inspiring a line that stretched all around the mezzanine. It's quite hard to find CPACers who didn't once like Cain, and now have to settle for a candidate.

"The candidates I've liked have been knocked out basically in the order I liked them," grumbled Nate Schultz, an engineer from Huntsville, Alabama. "Cain did well, and then that dirt got dropped on him."

I got a late start on CPAC parties last night, but it all worked out. Ambling over to the lobby, I ran into Amy Kremer, the chairwoman of the Tea Party Express, who was on her way there with an entourage that had an extra taxi van seat.

"What's more fun to cover?" she asked. "Conservatives, or liberals?"

Given the circumstances, it was a loaded question. The Microsoft offices (on K Street) were clearly marked by the company logo and the gaggle of smokers outside. I said hi to Matthew Boyle, the Daily Caller's scoop-a-day reporter, who was all but sure to lose a prize for best investigative journalist to James O'Keefe, and headed inside to the 11th floor. This was a real party.

The 500-or-so guests had made it in. The various name badges -- sponsor, blogger, guest -- were seated in tagles, sorted out by harried, ponytailed security volunteers. After three minutes, first wave Tea Party activist Michael Patrick Leahy, his wife, and I, were clearly no closer to entry. Ali Akbar, the web strategist behind all of this, walked by and issued a command.

"Let everyone in," he said.

We'd arrived during a pause in bar service, as awards were handed out to bloggers. HotAir's Ed Morrissey accepted a prize on behalf of Michelle Malkin, "the best boss I've ever had." Distracted partiers attacked a table of macaroni and cheese, BBQ chicken, mashed potatoes, and, to a lesser extent, salad. Sean Bielat walked in with some veterans of the Herman Cain campaign, who introduced their laryngitis-plagued candidate to reporters. Nearby, Arizona Speaker of the House Kirk Adams walked among us, explaining why he was fit to replace Jeff Flake in Congress. I put my coat down, went to the bar, and caught up with a friend from the Heritage Foundation, who pointed out a funny-faced guy behind us.

"Wasn't he in Grandma's Boy?"

Indeed, Allen Covert was in Grandma's Boy. The actor was here promoting Cherry Tree, his line of iPad childrens' books. "I love blogs," he said, by way of explaining why he was here. "I read Ace of Spades every day. Instapundit is basically my newspaper."

Worrying about my bag, I went back to the place I'd parked it. James O'Keefe had occupied that corner, chatting with whatever bloggers came by, joined by members of his Project Veritas journalism project. We talked for a while about the nature of journalism, then got into how irritating it is to have to explain all of one's actions to the Feds.

"I'm a political prisoner," he said. "I've left my home in New Jersey three times in six months. I'm a journalist, and it's completely changed the way I'm able to do my work."

On the way out of the party, I grabbed a goodie bag full of items from sponsors -- an ad for Foster Friess's blog! -- and a letter announcing a new coalition of bloggers, Akbar's attempt to turn BlogCon into merely a party for a permanent organization.

I overheard the last batch of awards being handed out. O'Keefe won the journalism one after all. "Fuck the media!" he said. A cab took me back to the Marriott Wardman, over to a tower suite where One Nation PAC was supposed to be midway through its Scotch and Cigars party. The door was closed; the room was mostly empty.

"They shut us down!" explained Dennis Lennox, the main promoter of the event, dressed to the nines. "We had the room until 10 a.m., and someone -- an angry liberal, I'm guessing -- said they could smell the cigars at the seventh floor." We were on the third floor. Grover Norquist had shown up just as they were texting to warn him. Rep. Mike Pompeo was in the elevator when he heard the news, and fled, not wanting to be part of some real-life Stephen Glass story.

Whatever. There was still whisky; there were still cigars.

Most of my time was given over to Tom Grace, an architect/thriller writer who was excited to find out that he'd be sharing a signing booth with Newt and Callista Gingrich in the morning. He passed me a card for his new book, The Liberty Intrigue, about an unconventional conservative candidate."

"It's a lot like the election we're living through right now -- a strong candidate pokes his head up, Obama pushes him back down," he said. "The difference is that the parties' roles are reversed."