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The Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC concluded this past weekend. The three-day event acts as a Republican networking hub where participants — 11,000 this year — can attend workshops and listen to speeches from prominent members of the conservative community, including many GOP presidential hopefuls. Under the watch of David Keene, president of CPAC’s coordinating organization, the American Conservative Union, the conference developed a slightly more inclusive approach to the yearly gathering. The 2011 CPAC included Congressman Ron Paul’s (R-TX) youthful anti-war libertarians and, for the second time since 2010, GOProud, a Republican gay and lesbian group. However, with Keene slated to be replaced by Al Cardenas, a top lobbyist for the GOP, these tentative alliances seem uncertain at best. And as today’s guest, Adele Stan, reported in her recent article for AlterNet, in the post-Bush era, the Right has had its work cut out for itself in terms of presenting a unified front. CPAC’s most apparent fissures this year included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld being heckled on stage and presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Jim DeMint boycotting the presence of GOProud. Other notable occurrences included Ron Paul winning the annual presidential straw poll with 30% of the vote; Rightwing blogger Andrew Breitbart being served with papers indicating former USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, was suing him for libel and slander; Anne Coulter admitting there is more to being gay than just sodomy; and African American Allen West reassuring attendees that, because he was a keynote speaker, no one at the event was a racist.

GUEST: Adele Stan, Alternet’s Washington Bureau Chief

Read Adele Stan’s article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/149902/right-wing_disunity_clashes_at_this_year%27s_conservative_political_action_conference/