God-heroes, Witches, and the Creator at CPAC

A round-up of reporting from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference at which John McCain sought the support of his party’s right flank yesterday: The conservative Human Events remains skeptical, arguing that McCain will hear but not “listen” to conservatives. Case in point? Same-sex marriage, which Mitt Romney, playing conservative to the end, denounced yesterday morning shortly before bowing out. McCain didn’t say a word about it. Nor, interestingly, did he invoke the religious langauge he’s used elsewhere to define what he’s said is the top issue of his campaign: the fight against the “transcendent evil” of “radical Islam.” There were four religion-references in his speech, but they were more along the lines of an abstract civil religion, rights granted by our “creator” and an invocation of Ronald Reagan’s famous “shining city upon a hill” line. Maybe that was enough for those CPACers torn between their disdain for a candidate they perceive as secular and their reverence for the authority and order of, well, everything, including party politics. The moderate conservative Weekly Standard reports that journalists eager for controversy are keeping the dwindling anti-McCain forces on life support. Mother Jones‘ Jonathan Stein must be one of them — he spoke to what seems like a strong sample of attendees “heartbroken” over McCain’s victory over Romney, despite McCain’s almost fetishistic adoration of “the crowd’s god-hero, Ronald Reagan.” Meanwhile, reports leftist blogger Leonard Pierce, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily used CPAC to rally conservatives against witchcraft. Also yesterday: James Dobson endorses Huckabee. More fundamentalist b-listers will follow suit.