The Clueless Clown Hate Circus

For most Americans, the weather this weekend was a nearly perfect way to say goodbye to the season of winter. With moderate temperatures and mostly clear skies, if Americans were watching TV this weekend, they were likely catching college championship games, and filling out their brackets for March Madness.

That's likely a very good thing for the Republican Party, as the clueless clown hate circus, better known as CPAC - the Conservative Political Action  Conference - was in full-on crazy mode for much of the weekend, showcasing exactly why the GOP lost so badly in 2012. If you were looking for a moderate Republican at CPAC this weekend, you might as well have been hunting for a real leprechaun while stone cold sober.

From Karl Rove swiping at Sarah Palin for leaving her governorship halfway through, to Palin firing back mockingly at Rove, the conference that was supposed to help Republicans answer the question of why they lost the 2012 election became an example of why they might not win in 2014 either.

From attendees at CPAC, there seemed to be no real consensus why the GOP lost the 2012 election. From the media, to GOP consultants, to Hurricane Sandy and Governor Chris Christie, conservatives kept coming up with all kinds of excuses about why they lost the last election. RNC Chairman Reince Preibus even announced a $10 million dollar plan by the RNC to "beef up" their outreach to minorities.

Never once did any of the attendees admit openly and publicly that the biggest problem the Republican Party has at the moment isn't just failed messaging or outreach strategies - it's the outdated, ineffective, and plainly offensive policies of the extremists running the Party.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the CPAC forums.

One particular forum sponsored by the extremist group Tea Party Patriots was nominally on "racial tolerance." It ended up being a primer on how not to handle the topic of racism. During the 'Q&A' portion of the forum, a couple of white supremacists and the panel's moderator stirred the crowd into a frenzy with idea that slaves should have been thankful to their masters for food and shelter.

The intolerance didn't stop there.

Throughout the conference, attendees blasted Ohio GOP Senator Rob Portman's decision last week to come out in favor of same sex marriage, after his own son came out of the closet. Rampant misogyny and patronizing attitudes were also pervasive throughout CPAC, as Ana Marie Cox pointedly noted for The Guardian.

Whether it was the delusional ambitions of Wisconsin's current Governor Scott Walker, or the anti-Muslim rants of George W. Bush's former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, what the Republican Party and the conservative movement proved this weekend is that they haven't learned anything from their massive losses in the 2012 elections.

Sadly, that's not surprising coming from the clueless clown hate circus that the annual CPAC meetings have become.

For sensible, moderate Republicans, we hate to remind you, but this is the face of your party today. Either take control of the wheel or expect to go over the edge with these clowns soon.