Cupp: CPAC Attendees Aren't What You'd Expect

S.E. Cupp, the conservative commentator and author of Losing Our Religion, did not see the Grammy Awards last night. Instead, she watched the Daytona 500 qualifying session, and a new Travel Channel show called “The Wild Within,” about hunting.
 
She chalked her television viewing choices up to exhaustion, having just returned from four full days at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which she is trying to re-brand by pronouncing it “Kuh-Pack.”
 
“CPAC is like Vegas,” she said. “You can only go for so long, and then it gets to be too much, and you have to remove yourself physically from it.”
 
The conference plays host each year to what Cupp called “the GOP celebrities,” allowing often unknown up-and-comers to introduce themselves, and mainstays to reinforce or change their messages.
 
“Especially in a year before an election, it’s a big deal,” Cupp added.
 
This CPAC was Cupp’s fifth, and she shared with Imus today a surprising phenomenon. “It gets younger and younger,” she said, noting that attendees are comprised largely of college Republicans and other young Republican organizations whose members want to “schmooze with their favorite Republican celebrities and media acolytes.”
 
Cupp, who is in her early thirties, agreed with Imus that most young people tend toward liberalism, with its pot-smoking, Jon Stewart-loving, burn-everything-down stereotypes. But the conservative youth attending CPAC are as serious and as knowledgeable about their Party.
 
“I speak on panels at CPAC, and they ask me questions about the budget, and I’m like, ‘Who do you think I am? I don’t know the answer to that,’” she said. “They are really, really wonky.”
 
After all, she added, “It’s probably very unpopular for a young person to be conservative, so it’s a choice. It’s a choice that you think very hard about.”
 
It’s possible that these young, “wonky” Conservatives spent less time thinking about the chance Rep. Ron Paul will actually become President when they voted in CPAC’s straw poll, where the outspoken Republican took first place. Mitt Romney came in second, and even though Cupp said he tried to make himself seem more approachable at CPAC, he wasn’t the real star of the conference, in her view.
 
“Allen West was pretty good,” she said of the last-minute keynote speaker, a freshman Congressman from Florida.
 
But between Paul, Romney, and other potential 2012 contenders like Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich, Imus could only observe, “They all look like you can rope them off and charge admission for kids to pet them.”
 
That’s putting it mildly.
 
-Julie Kanfer