Cockburn

The Conservative Political Action Conference is in full swing. The ACU has upped sticks and thrown its annual shindig in Orlando rather than its usual home in National Harbor, Maryland. Former president Donald Trump is to give his first speech since leaving office tomorrow and the leading lights of the Republican party — Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo — have been making their cases to be 2024 nominee (or Trump’s VP) on the main stage. But you know all that. You’ve seen it on Twitter. That’s not what you read Cockburn for. You want to hear about the cocktails, the ruckus, the maskless flirting, all the unbridled diesel-strength freedom the great state of Florida has to offer.

What will the conservative movement look like post-Trump? Establishment Republicans seem eager to shake former President Donald Trump's influence on the party and the new right would like him to be a kingmaker for years to come. But while pundits opine and politicians dream, three young conservatives are building. American Moment, a new nonprofit organization founded by Saurabh Sharma, Nick Solheim and Jake Mercier launched Wednesday. The organization is dedicated to reshaping the political class to reflect populist priorities. Sharma is the former Chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas, Solheim the founder of The Wallace Institute for Arctic Security and Mercier an independent writer and editor.

Why is Neera Tanden, Joe Biden's nominee to head up the Office of Management and Budgets, stumbling where his other cabinet picks have sailed through confirmation? The senators who say they won't vote for her see her as an obstruction to Biden's efforts to govern in a bipartisan manner. 'Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,' Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said yesterday. 'Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend.

Cockburn has always been a big fan of CPAC. Last year, he strutted around National Harbor with the spirit and energy of a College Republican from a major state school. Things will be slightly different this year: the flagship conservative conference will be held in Orlando, FL due to the intense coronavirus restrictions in the DC area. The change in locale hasn't stopped CPAC from nabbing headline-making speakers. Cockburn has learned from a well-placed source that freshman Colorado representative Lauren Boebert, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Arizona representative and House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs and Louisiana representative Mike Johnson will all be speaking at this year's event.

In a modern romance reminiscent of the classics, two star-crossed lovers found one another on the fair 2020 campaign trail. Biden campaign national press secretary TJ Ducklo and Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, who had been friends for years, reportedly started dating in November. McCammond allegedly asked to be moved off of the Biden beat to avoid a conflict. Axios obliged. Ducklo moved into a new role in the White House press shop. And the pair are now engaged to be married. But the story is a bit more complicated, even tragic than that. Not only was McCammond engaged to another man just last summer, she was still writing stories related to Biden and his administration in the months following the beginning of her and Ducklo’s relationship.

Update 2/15 9 p.m. ET: Over the weekend, a number of senior Lincoln Project figures, including co-founder Steve Schmidt, have stepped back from the organization. The Lincoln Project also issued a statement Monday saying that the PAC is retaining the law firm Paul Hastings to 'investigate allegations of inappropriate behavior by John Weaver as part of a comprehensive review of our operations and culture.' This seems like a step in the right direction...let's just hope none of the five Paul Hastings lawyers who donated to the Lincoln Project are on the detail. Best to keep things independent and fair, right guys? *** Who could have predicted that the Lincoln Project would meet with a messier end than Abraham Lincoln?

Royal summits are often lavish affairs shown to us lowly peasants through photo spreads in Us Weekly and People. Cockburn was surprised therefore to learn of a clandestine meeting between three members of the Californian aristocracy in the British tabloid the Sun. According to the newspaper, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had a video meeting with California governor Gavin Newsom two weeks before the 2020 election. The Sun points out that Newsom was ‘under pressure to replace California senator Kamala Harris…with another black woman.’ Perhaps the purpose of the Zoom chat was innocent enough — as podcasters, Harry and Meghan are essential workers in the Golden State and deserving of the governor’s thanks.

Words have been redefined for political purposes for a long time. In 2021, however, euphemisms are spreading with particular celerity. So Cockburn has decided to proffer the masses a short, handy little guide. Example: the Clubhouse app has become increasingly popular with tech leaders and other mild public figures. But the New York Times’s Taylor Lorenz is mad, because she and other reporters keep getting blocked by the 'far-right' people they want to monitor for potential crimethink. When you don’t want to be perpetually monitored by hostile, frequently dishonest members of the press, it turns out that is an offense against 'accountability.' https://twitter.

America has 330 million people, and not all of them are in complete agreement about what is true and what is false. Misinformation is everywhere. One man’s devastating revelation is another man’s fake news. ‘But wait,’ you ask. ‘Why is that bad? Isn’t America a democratic republic, and hasn’t it had factual disagreements its entire history? Hasn’t the country been just fine?’ Nice try, reader. Those old Americans who could put up with different ideas were mentally ill bigots who had never even heard of ‘transwomen of color’. We have the New York Times to guide us. Technology columnist Kevin Roose has a solution for those stubborn Americans who see the world in a different way.

Last July, Cockburn had this to say: 'Commentators daydream of the moment Trump is dragged out, like Saddam Hussein from his spider hole, and then whisked off to prison to inaugurate the Democratic millennium. In reality, Donald Trump has shown remarkably little willpower in executing his own completely legal campaign promises. Where will he muster the willpower to overturn a 230-year-old electoral system?' Whoops! Why does The Spectator even employ this cretin? Cockburn thought he was living in the merely cartoon reality of President Donald Trump. In fact, we don’t live in reality at all. We live in a fevered NeverTrump fantasy universe, worthy of the Lincoln Project at its most depraved. https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1326652665431007236 https://twitter.