Here’s the vision for this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference: Outside, Lou Dobbs is waxing cranky on the country’s economic decline. Inside, the hip crowd will be playing video games, watching movies, eating snacks and listening to rap music. 

In a bid to make conservative chic, organizers of the annual meet-up of Republican Party faithful and right-wing firebrands are taking pains this year to gear their summit toward students and the under-30 crowd. Added to the menu are a slew of new media workshops and an entertainment lineup befitting a college campus. 

Organizers say the conference, which kicks off Thursday in Washington, has had a large college-age contingent for years now. But they are making an extra push to attract and entertain that crowd with youth-oriented talks and the addition of something called the XPAC Lounge — a room one organizer dubbed the “hub of fun.” 

That’s where the video games and the junk food will be. 

“We’re gonna have the most popular games. There’ll be Guitar Hero. There’ll be Dance Revolution. There’ll be Call of Duty,” said Kevin McCullough, the radio host who created the XPAC Lounge with actor Stephen Baldwin. ….

Read full piece here.

According to the article, Hannah Giles is scheduled to attend.  Rumor has it, Steven Crowder and Ellen Karis will also be there. 

As CPAC begins in the nation´s capital later this week, the conservative movement has much to contemplate as it attempts to reestablish itself as a dominant force in American political life.

Actually, “relevance” may be a more reasonable short-term goal.

The timing of the yearly Conservative Political Action Conference could not be better suited for evaluating the strategies of the standard bearers of free markets and limited government as free-spending and nanny statist Obamaism runs amok with nary a media check or a legislative balance.

Attendees of the wonky three-day forum should pay close attention to what their ideological counterparts had to say earlier in the week at their annual get-together in liberalism´s capital, Hollywood.

On Sunday night at the Kodak Theater, where Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama debated each other in front of the same prideful crowd a year earlier, the political left convened to celebrate its progressive political agenda. The Oscars communicate post-modern, post-American liberal values more effectively than elected Democratic officials themselves. The liberal establishment understands this and uses the glamorous Hollywood elite and its incessant stream of left-leaning product and promotional vehicles as its proxy messenger.

This year´s cause celebre was not the ailing American work force or the heroic and underappreciated U.S. military, but an attack on California´s just passed traditional marriage amendment – as represented by the white ribbon worn by pliant celebrity throngs. Dissenters in the midst dare not wear their contrarian ribbons for fear of more punitive Proposition 8 backlash.

You can read the column in full here.