"He Wasn't Just A Puppet ..."

From the perpetually delayed New Republic feed, a wk. (Or three days. Do young people know nothing?) at the Nat'l. Conservative Student Conference, which appears to the typist to be more of an exercise in nostalgia than anything else.

Each seat at the banquet came equipped with free Reagan swag, including the DVD, Still Point In A Turning World: Ronald Reagan and his Ranch, directed by Stephen K. Bannon, which screened after a dinner keynote from Senator Marco Rubio. The documentary was pure ranch-fetishism. The film swept through three decades of chintzy stock-footage: gathering socialist storms, firefighters, soviets, steelworkers, and finally, the Gipper building fences. “To understand this great man,” intoned the narrator—Patrick Warburton, the voice of Joe Swanson on Family Guy—“you must understand his beloved ranch.”

Stephen K. Bannon being the creator of the wildly successful Palin hagio-pic The Undefeated.

Unfortunately, the evening’s festivities began with a letdown. The scheduled guest, Senator Jim DeMint, had fled town for an early vacation after the debt deal. Dinesh D’Souza had also bailed. A replacement was found at the last minute: the teutonic blonde-maned Mari Will, wife of columnist George and former Reagan speechwriter.

[...]

“No questions?” she finally sighed. There was a painful silence, until a lone plea rang out from the front: “Will you tell us just one Reagan story?” She sighed and obliged: a quick one about Reagan improvising at the podium. “Remember,” she closed, “He wasn’t just a puppet; he was one of us … . Don’t believe what the liberals say about his Alzheimer’s.” Quickly shifting the subject away from cognitive deterioration, conservative Washington Examiner reporter Tim Carney closed the evening with a popular message: Republicans are selling the conservative movement short. “Move the party to the right!” was his biggest applause line of the night. Spoken in the wake of the debt crisis, it seemed hard to believe.

More like a marionette, but nobody was pulling his strings.

Case in point, Alyssa Cordova, a recent graduate of George Mason University and one of CPAC’s “Stars of the Future.” The title of her speech? “Thank You, Feminism: Six Ways that Feminism Has Hurt Society.” Even here, I sensed, this would be a tough sell. “A lot of guys hate Michele Bachmann,” a guy named John had told me earlier. Why? “Well, look, she has that anti-porn pledge.” He quickly added, “Now, wait, don’t get me wrong, I don’t, like, support porn.”

Meaning he doesn't pay for it.

Never trust anyone under 30: The little ingrates want to take away your Social Security & Medicare so the money saved can be used to murder people on the opposite side of tte world.