Tucker Are You Kidding?

Here's something original (i. e., not from The AP) that we found at Tucker's Daily Caller. The hard-hitting investigative journalism the D.C. has come to be known for:

“It’s great to come here and see that we are not alone,” said Jerad McHenry, a University of Wisconsin student, who paid out of pocket for his hotel room for three nights. “When we all get together like this, there is strength in numbers.”

Registration at CPAC increased 20 percent over last year and nearly half of the 10,000 attendees were students ages 17 to 22, according to event officials.

Jozef Nagy and his wife, originally from Czechoslovakia, paid their way to make the nine-hour drive from the University of Massachusetts-Boston to attend the event.

“It was a nice drive down some stinky New Jersey turnpikes,” said Nagy, a graduate student studying computer science. “Coming from a communist country, it’s a big deal for us to be here every year, because we don’t want to see that happen in this country.

Guess he & the missus just want to see those stinky free-market freeways happen. Czechoslovakia, by the effing way, hasn't existed since 31 December 1992, & stopped the "communist" stuff about 1990.

Katie Duckworth, a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, skipped classes and carpooled two and a half hours from her campus.

“We did this all on our own,” Duckworth said. “All the university did was give us a permission slip saying that we could go.”

Groups such as College Republicans often play a role in sponsoring students’ trips to the conference. McHenry’s flight from Madison, Wisc., was provided by the campus College Republican group.

Nick Hankoff’s flight from California was sponsored by Year of Youth and Campaign for Liberty, two libertarian campus groups. Year of Youth brought 650 students and 50 volunteers to CPAC.

“As a libertarian, it’s fun to be here, because I’m more conservative than the right-wing guy and more liberal than the left-wing guy,” Hankoff said.

Event organizers added XPAC, “Xtremely Political Action Committee,” to the annual conference in an effort to reach out to the younger crowd. XPAC provided a social and entertainment lounge for attendees to relax, enjoy food and watch comedians and musicians.

That didn't turn out well, per TIME

On the other hand, the party wasn't always hopping. The schedule read: "11 p.m. XPAC Rap/Jam Session, live music and special performances by Rappers: Hi-Caliber, Young Cons and many more!" Alas, the reality — as a group of young Harvard conservatives found — was an empty room with a bunch of Wii video games (XPAC was strictly non-alcoholic)

& TPMDC:

I was on a mission: At 11 p.m. I was going to be front-and-center to witness a "Music Jam" (you know, for the kids) featuring not one, but two conservative rappers.

After listening to hours of speeches, and grabbing handfuls of conservaswag, the conservative youth at CPAC were going to let their crew-cut hair down and boogie. There was no way I was going to miss that. There's only thing I didn't plan for -- conservatives, it seems, don't care about rap.

Here's what it looked like inside the site of the rap show:

A few CPACers eventually walked in, looking for rap. They seemed bewildered. No one canceled the show officially, and no one knew what was going on. (For those unfamiliar with CPAC, let me tell you how rare that is. This conference usually goes off with military precision; people are where they are supposed to be according to the schedule.)

We hung around for a while, hoping for some hear some phat rhymes from headliner Hi Caliber, the tea partier rapper we profiled last year. He never showed.

He didn't? Huh. Back to The Cruller's "Perk up, you're not alone" piece:

“It doesn’t surprise me to see so many students here, because grassroots movements are almost always driven by students,” said Jacob Nieuwsma, a trustee with the College Republicans of Hillsdale College in Michigan.

Not all attendees were students, though. Bill McGuire, a retired contractor with the State Department who lives in the Washington, DC, area, attended the event on his own time.

“It’s great to see young people involved,” McGuire said, standing in line waiting to hear Glenn Beck deliver the final speech of the conference. “Living in this city, you begin to think that everyone in the country is a left-wing voter, but that’s really not an indication of the country.”

Retired State Dep't. contractor. And a drooler from Hillsdale College. Stand back, fake Americans, the wave of converts is coming!

Let's also remark that the TPMDC story appeared on Friday the 19th, & the TIME item on Saturday the 20th, while The DC's puff piece appeared on Sunday, the 21st, at 1918 EST. Plenty of time to look at the Google & note that the big "Rap/Jam Session" didn't exactly come off as planned. We know, but even the lame-stream media did a significantly better job on CPAC Youth than the Cruller managed. Gone by 30 June?