Last Call

Time to make the final rounds tonight.  Matt Osborne has a good recap of CPAC:

In a room sponsored by John Birchers and filled with a high concentration of Ayn Randists, Beck called the progressive movement “designed to eat the Constitution.”

Teddy Roosevelt, who tripled the size of the US Navy in a successful bid for global economic empire, came in for special Beckian scorn once again as a “weird progressive.” The bizarre revisionism came within a veiled stab at John McCain.

Sweating from his chalkboard hustle, Beck opined 2010 would be “a very good year. But it is not enough just to not suck as much as the other side.”

A straw poll elected Ron Paul. The crowd booed.  There was shouting over a gay group’s presence.

“I have not heard people in the Republican Party admit yet that they have a problem,” Beck said at his crescendo before a rapt audience. “I haven’t seen the Come-To-Jesus moment from Republicans yet.”

Last year’s CPAC conference will be remembered for Rush Limbaugh rallying the right-wing media industry to create the teabag terror. CPAC 2010 has revealed the divides within the very inner bastion of right-wing politics: the teabagger fail is happening.

Indeed.  Obama Derangement Syndrome has done a pretty good job of uniting the GOP, but they clearly thought that Scott Brown should have caused the Dems to completely fold.

I really think it was question time that turned it around.  Obama knocked the GOP for a loop, and ever since then they've realized he hasn't been broken like they expected him to be.  That's got them scared.  Suddenly they are on the defensive, when Scott Brown had them all on the same page in the playbook.  Now they're looking for what to do next, and they're going on wildly divergent paths.  CPAC showed us that.

The Teabaggers want to lay into the President even harder.  Obama embarrassed them on national TV and they are pissed.  The old school neocons want the Teabaggers to back off and cool down long enough for the Dems to start making mistakes.  But the Teabaggers keep taking the bait.  They can't help themselves.  Obama is exploiting this weakness and he's doing it brilliantly.

We'll see what next week and the summit brings.  Supposedly Obama will be announcing his health care plan tomorrow and then posting the full plan online.  The plan apparently includes limiting rate increases on insurers as well.  This week will be pivotal.  The GOP is divided on how to proceed here, and that's finally given the Dems the chance to take control of the message and get back in the game.

And finally, finally, Obama is making the most of the opportunity.  It's the last one he has for health care reform and he knows it.