CPAC is back! Weirder, shriller, fringier, more paranoid than ever, with many empty seats but God allegedly still on the side of the cranks and zealots. Cue vapid, vicious, fear-mongering goons who, now blithely saying the ugly part aloud, bray about trans health-care, Hillary's evil "village" and looming communists while heralding Christian nationalism, "cool" dictators, the "Bible Uncancelled" and at last the glad "end of democracy." A republic if you can keep it: Welcome to today's forsaken, brutish GOP.

Of course CPAC 2024, in all its shabby lunacy, reflects the increasingly rabid party - Free J6! - from which it sprang. Once a marquee conservative event that drew top GOP lawmakers and presidential contenders, it's become an "emptier, jankier, lower-rent" affair by a party lunging ever further into the wingnut galaxy, its hapless denizens endlessly spouting stupid, awful things. Klan Mom MTG: Judge Arthur Engeron should be "disrobed" for undervaluing Mar-A-Hellhole. Trump lackey: His overlord's "Never Surrender High-Tops" will get him black votes because "Black America loves sneakers, especially in the inner city." DeSantis: Their V.P. should be a white man because "we don't want people representing 10 or 15% of the party to be in the driver’s seat." Tommy Tuberville: "These socialists and Marxists (want) to control our children" like Hillary's "it takes a village" because "she doesn’t like your home (and) she wants to indoctrinate your children"; also, the government "has become the father, they hate Christianity, they are going to come after you."

The creepy avatar for this assemblage of "craven rodeo clowns" is House Speaker Mike Johnson, a smarmy, doe-eyed, coup-plotting, Christian fundamentalist who's spent his career working for hate groups, arguing deviant" homosexuals will destroy democracy, same-sex marriage is like people marrying their pets, and abortion is the killing of both "unborn children" and potential "able-bodied workers in the economy." Boasting the Bible is "my worldview," he took his then-13-year-old daughter to a Purity Ball where she pledged to him and God her "purity of mind, body and soul," he promotes a "Covenant Eyes" app that allows him and his 17-year-old son/ "accountability partner" to monitor each other's porn habits - clean slates all around! - and before he became Speaker God began waking him at night to prepare him to serve as Moses leading the nation through a "Red Sea moment...The Lord impressed upon my heart something was going to occur." And it was: The House was in such chaos they chose a backbench demagogue who thought governance meant saving America from heathens.

Evidently, it doesn't. Teetering with a bare majority and boisterous hard-right clique, having lost another special election, seen its fake Biden impeachment implode and failed to address not just a looming shutdown but in fact anything at all, the bumbling House threw a dim-witted Hail Mary and decided to impeach Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas - a move widely derided as "ridiculous" - for failing to fix the border after they sabotaged a bi-partisan bill to fix the border. Then they holed up at a Miami resort to lick their wounds at a leadership retreat where, rather than giving them leadership, Johnson gave them a sermon complete with Biblical references about America's ungodly moral decline, which made lawmakers worried about keeping their jobs grumble they were "not at church" and what the hell? Meanwhile, with the GOP's SCOTUS-facilitated war on women, IVF, and even "recreational sex" in full swing, Johnson fudges on his past (and future?) efforts to go after contraception - "I really don't remember any of those measures" - and lurches ahead crafting the patriarchal theocracy of his dreams.

In that he's in step with The Big Orange Guy, who says once in power he'll create a task force to fight imaginary "anti-Christian bias" by "Marxists and fascists" (FYI not the same); he's also plotting with a right-wing think tank whose mission is to re-define America as "a nation under God," with a mandate declaring, "Freedom is defined by God, not man." In pursuit of Gilead - and because last month his PAC raised $8,508 as he spent $3.9 million, mostly on lawyers - he just spoke to a gathering of evangelical broadcasters while hawking gold IRAs "to protect your retirement from D.C.'s policies" and Ivermectin: "Make Care Great Again." He decried Dems murdering babies, "taking away knocker fields from children" and creating "dirty roads, crime, graffiti, swastickers." He also boasted "everybody on both sides" agrees Roe had to go, he's beating Haley by 91 points, "Israel is the capital of Israel," and "you're going to say as you want (and) believe in God" through "the love of Christ and the voices of famed...evangell...lllical....people and...eee-vangelis." Ok, so he can't say evangelical, but sure he's your guy.

Big Awful Guy's implausible fervor was dutifully, garishly replicated at CPAC, held at the fantastically named Gaylord Convention Center outside D.C., where his and God's faithful touted "the greatest nation in all the world," except for, you know, the swastickers. Amidst red, white and blue everything and pounding bad music, the meager crowd drifted through a half-empty exhibit hall offering a Jan. 6-themed pinball game, a vibrating board to stand on to magically lose weight, an 18th-century-style booth likening Biden to King George lll, and a mountain of tawdry MAGA merch: "Woke Tears" water - "identifies as transparent" - rhinestone hats blaring "I Love Jesus" and "Fuck Biden," Trump shirts, hammocks, bobbleheads, sparkly gun-shaped purses. Sponsors were fewer and tackier: Moms For America, many groups with the word "liberty," Newsmax with ads shouting "you don't need those woke streaming services," and now they're letting their fascist flag fly proudly, the previously banished John Birch Society. Streaming was by the insurrectionist-favored Rumble; links often didn't work, but went to a donation page.

Attendance was much sparser than previously, down from around 13,000 to the hundreds; when photos emerged of speakers facing a sea of empty seats, a right-wing site wailed, "What an embarrassment." Country singer Natasha Owens sang the national anthem in a huge black dress declaring "2nd Amendment Protects the First," and a banner trumpeted the new theme, tweaked from the........

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