Pun Salad

Mitt Romney comes crashing back to earth this week after his brief stay in third. And since Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Alliance (CPAC) straw poll, we're reluctantly including him. (Even though our gut tells us that, lacking the Iraq issue he had in 2008, he's going to be pretty minor this year.)

• A lot of phony news happened at CPAC. Lefty Alex Pareene, writing at Salon was unimpressed by Mitt's speech there:
  Desperate phony Mitt Romney delivered what amounted to a presidential campaign speech -- though not a very good one. The entire thing was devoted to Palinesque sarcasm delivered without her elan.

  But that's not all:

  A highlight: Shortly after unlovable Mitt finished speaking, he was upstaged by Sarah Palin, who isn't even attending the conference. A Palin look-alike (a pretty good one, actually) entered the ballroom and immediately attracted a massive crowd. For a moment, everyone thought it was a surprise appearance by the one candidate all the (non-Ron Paul supporting) attendees are actually excited by.

  A phony Sarah upstaging actual (but still phony) Mitt? That's the kind of thing phony connoisseurs live for.

  By the way: Pareene's observation that Palin was "one candidate all the (non-Ron Paul supporting) attendees are actually excited by" turned out to be remarkably non-astute. She garnered merely 3% in the poll, compared to Romney's 23%.)

• In other CPAC news, Scott Magill of the group Veterans In Defense of Liberty took to the virtual pages of the Washington Times to write a column headlined: "Defend CPAC from phony conservatives". CPAC, he bemoans, "has become a showcase for the enemies of the American tradition." Oddly, given the name of his group, Magill doesn't much care for libertarians; to be fair, he does a decent job in zinging some of the more zany ideas of American Conservative Union board member Grover Norquist.
  Mr. Norquist serves on the GOProud advisory board and also has advocated legalization of drugs, open borders and amnesty for illegals; supported closing the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay; opposed aspects of the USA Patriot Act; and supports the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque. He is actively promoting the Obama administration's “engagement plan” with Islam, which has the Muslim Brotherhood's seal of approval. He certainly has a right to hold those views, but it is false advertising to call them conservative.

  But if you read that, you might also want to check the rebuttal from Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.

  … it's fascinating to me that the conservative movement can't recognize some elemental facts. First and foremost that the world they're trying to create, especially when it comes to intolerance of alternative lifestyles, is never going to happen. And that by insisting, as Sen. James DeMint and Rep. Jim Jordan have, that you can't be a fiscal conservative without being a social conservative, you're alienating all those independents who just might give the GOP a second chance at running the federal budget. And you're in open denial of reality: A person's choice of sexual partner in no way means he or she can't be in favor of less spending on farm subsidies. There's a stunning knot of bull-dinkey at the heart of the argument that tolerance equals uncritical embrace. Do conservatives, of all people, think that the state allowing all religions to practice means official endorsement?

  Pun Salad is very much in the can't-we-all-just-get-along camp.

• Last week it was Rachel Maddow, this week it's Time, promoting a phony story about a made-up Sarah Palin quote. It's becoming a whole journalistic genre.

  (Time now claims their story "was intended as satire". At least Maddow had the grace to admit she'd been suckered.)

• Finally: couldn't help but checking out the story under this eye-catching headline:
  Freshman Congresswoman Praises Hooters

  As it turns out:

  Congresswoman Julia Hurley (R-32) spent time working at Hooters, where, according to the Associated Press, she was able to hone her business talents and networking skills. During the election campaign, this information was brought to the forefront, but instead of shying away from the news, or giving a typical phony politician apology, Hurley took it all in stride.

  Darn. That's not what I thought it would be about.