Angry and beaten right wingers offer wacky ideas in search for electoral victory

…Conservative activists often find themselves glued together by emotion, paranoia and a firm belief that America is about to turn into a liberal totalitarian state. Tea Party groups promoted themselves with events linked to the Hunger Games, the dystopian sci-fi novel and film, and a video that fantasised about violent revolution. In a giant exhibition hall in the bowels of the centre, dozens of stalls vied for who could be most apocalyptic about the state of America. One contender was Cliff Kincaid’s group called America’s Survival. Kincaid was also promoting a film about Frank Marshall Davis. But this work postulated Davis was not just Obama’s political father but also his biological one: a development that would shock the many conservatives convinced Obama is a Kenyan. “He is a Marxist, though. It is his background,” Kincaid said.

The idea that Obama – whose administration has seen a wild stock market boom and who boasts Goldman Sachs as a major campaign contributor – is to the left of Lenin would seem insane anywhere outside this place. But inside CPAC there is a vast self-referencing ecosystem of media and thinktanks to back up that world view. Corridors are lined with talk radio shows and booksellers all barking up the same tree that says Obama is a nightmare come true, the very embodiment of a leftwing anti-American autocrat. A cinema even beamed films like Frack Nation, America at Risk and Hillary: The Movie. Internal logic is not always a strong point. In one film screening about abortion, an interviewee onscreen declared: “They are attempting to do abortions on women who are not pregnant.”