Now that the old-line leaders of the Conservative Political Action Conference have excluded Chris Christie and any groups supporting gay and lesbian rights, is there anyone left to speak “truth to so-called power?”

Will anyone stand up this weekend and invoke Ronald Reagan, not as an ideologue, but as a pragmatist?  Will anyone talk about the accomplishments of other Republican presidents from Eisenhower on?  Will anyone mention past Republican platforms or candidates that supported equal rights for women, a strong civil rights plank, environmental protection, taking on poverty and hunger and homelessness?  

I doubt it.

The ubiquitous opiner Justice Antonin Scalia now insults Hispanics and blacks, as he recently insulted gays while voting rights and gay rights are pending before the court. Then the ubiquitous Dick Morris, sounding like Fredo Corleone, offers a plan to "take down" President Obama. Has Morris read the Ryan budget? Meanwhile the ubiquitous Grover Norquist appears to call Ronald Reagan a "rat head in a coke bottle" because Reagan raised taxes, while the ubiquitous Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in his campaign to fully destroy the GOP brand, insults Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) with constitutionally ignorant and personally condescending comments about guns.

Regarding the conservative crack-up, can you believe that CPAC honors the ubiquitous birther Donald Trump and insults the most popular national Republican, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie? The CPAC convention shows just how far conservatives remain from the American mainstream. CPAC even gives a bad name to ubiquity, seeming to offer a greatest-hits album that recycles those Republicans most responsible for recent victories of Democrats.

The Ryan budget shows just how little Republicans have learned from losing so many elections.

Republicans need to focus their fire on spending, spending and spending. President Obama is vulnerable and exposed and can be taken down over this issue. His recent drop in polling can be directly attributed to his spirited opposition to the sequester cuts.
 
Ever since Obama succeeded in raising taxes, he has been left naked and unprotected on his opposition to spending cuts. No longer can he deflect proposals to curb the massive federal spending and debt by saying that we should first try to raise taxes on the rich. Now that he has had his way, he’s lost his cover.

News flash. Senate Democrats pass a budget out of committee that includes massive tax increases, dramatically increases spending, never is projected to come close to balancing the budget, and in a tip of the hat to George Orwell, they call it “balanced” in its approach.

Is there any doubt why House Republicans found it nearly impossible to find budget solutions with a group so far out of touch?

Paul Ryan is the subject of much criticism because he is tainted as one who has no concern for the poor and the elderly. This is because he has advocated fiscal responsibility and the curtailment of out-of-control entitlement spending.

Why does Mitt Romney appear tonight at CPAC? To carve a future (monarchist) dynastic path to politics like Bush and Kennedy; a final investment for his children, his friends and his aunties here in the 11th hour? Possibly because he can’t let go of the conviction that he is not one of them, when he is not, and sadly, has never been. He has an unearthly, spooky quality, says Noreen, my dental hygienist, among the staunchest conservatives in New Hampshire. He lives here in New Hampshire, kind of, but is among us and not of us. He governed Massachusetts and was not one of them, while Gov. Bill Weld, New Yorker Brahmin, fit in easily. He has tried to be so many things to so many people — a Mormon pioneer and a westerner, a Midwestern industrialist native son, a New England liberal — and has worn so many masks, that he can no longer find his face. And now he is in a panic.

To merely surmise, he feels he can in his “rite of exit” from the political world prop up the Marco Rubio contention, for Rubio is now and always has been and wanted to be the Dan Quayle of our age. He is the immaculate manifestation of the imagining of a passing, geriatric generation which meets in their own reclusive revivalist tent. And there the “stale and moss-covered” visualize themselves again as young: Suppose we were not 66 now with bad knees and expanded prostates, but young, and Cuban too? And tragically for America, Bush the Second, venerable now and a storied painter of dogs, was one as well.

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demonstrated in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting that he lacks the toughness and political courage to be elected president in 2016. By running like a frightened rabbit from his own immigration proposals and refusing to champion them in his speech, Rubio suggests he has nothing to fear except his base itself. If Rubio could not handle this speech, he's gonna have a tough time in roughhouse Republican presidential primaries, and he will look like shredded wheat if he ever faces the inside fastball of the formidable Hillary Clinton if this mismatch ever comes to pass.

The news that Ed Schultz will be leaving prime time weekday television on MSNBC and move to the weekend is not welcome news in this quarter. Don’t get me wrong, Chris Hayes, who will be moving into prime, is first-rate and will do a great job. But Ed is one of a kind, and he is the kind we need on television because on the single greatest issue of our age, the Les Miserables economy with too many jobless people and too much social injustice, Ed Schultz fights like hell for the people who need more voices fighting for them.

Brent Budowsky, yet again, takes to this space to defend President Obama and Democrats in Congress when they fail, lie, and try to pull the wool over our eyes and disregard the truth.