CPAC 2013, pros and cons

For the last three years, ever since Robert Stacy McCain insisted I MUST go to CPAC after we cov­ered the 1^st Scott Brown race I have been going to CPAC as a cre­den­tialed blog­ger with Fedo­ras and Can­noli in hand to inter­view movers, shakes and the peo­ple who help back them. As CPAC 2013 gets closer I’ve applied for my cre­den­tials and have been con­firmed for them. (Although I’ve yet to order the Cannoli)

There are an awful lot of great rea­sons to attend CPAC:

Access: The num­ber of high level con­ser­v­a­tives can’t be under­es­ti­mated, as a cre­den­tialed blog­ger you have a con­sid­er­able amount of access to said peo­ple all in a sin­gle place.

Net­work­ing: With a large amount of our fel­low blog­gers in atten­dance, it is pos­si­ble to net­work with peo­ple you have only com­mu­ni­cated with over the net.

News: Occa­sion­ally news breaks out at CPAC as it did last year with the con­fronta­tions with the Occupods and Andrew Breitbart’s will­ing­ness to con­front them (it’s so odd to think of CPAC with­out him)

First Hand Reports: First hand reports are always bet­ter than 2^nd hand reports as any­one can tell you. It’s also amaz­ing what you notice that some­one might not, or what some­one else might notice and men­tion to you.

Read­ers: One of the best things about CPAC is meet­ing YOU, the reader who has made this blog what it is and the tip jar hit­ters who make things pos­si­ble.

The Fedora Exchange: This one is per­sonal, I have fedo­ras loaned out to activists, when I see them I regain them and load them out to other activists.

This doesn’t even count the plea­sures of see­ing the friends I have made in blogging.

I tend to be very active at CPAC, I have been kindly called one of the “hard­est work­ing blog­gers at CPAC.” It’s true that I tend to spend a lot of time on sto­ries and less time in par­ties but there are sev­eral good rea­sons for this.

This is my job: I am try­ing to make a liv­ing as a free­lance blog­ger and radio host, if I hope to do so then I have to pro­duce con­tent for my read­er­ship that is a suf­fi­cient incen­tive for them to kick in the $300 weekly for me to draw a pay.

DaW­ife: My wife has worked very hard to keep things above water while I try this career. It has not been easy on her. That being the case it is incum­bent for me to put the max­i­mum effort in at CPAC. If the fam­ily can’t afford a vaca­tion I’m cer­tainly not going to turn CPAC into one. Given the expense CPAC entails it would be obscene for me to basi­cally spend three days par­ty­ing with friends while she has to work.

Vol­ume: I shoot a ridicu­lous amount of video in inter­views at CPAC, the sheer vol­ume of data requires me to be con­stantly writ­ing and upload­ing to keep up with it.

Oblig­a­tion: I’ve always told my adver­tis­ers and tip jar hit­ter that when I take their money it means I work for them. Let it never be said that I didn’t ful­fill my oblig­a­tions to the reader.

Rules of Sicil­ian liv­ing: I like a party as much as the next man but I have a vivid mem­ory of a CPAC where a female reporter imbibed to excess and made a com­plete fool of her­self in front of my face for sev­eral hours. Deco­rum and the rules of gen­tle­manly behav­ior for­bade my writ­ing on the sub­ject or nam­ing the per­son in ques­tion but it would appear to me alco­hol in quan­tity mixed with peo­ple who write for a liv­ing car­ry­ing a near infi­nite amount of record­ing devices is a com­bi­na­tion to be avoided.

I’m cheap: CPAC is an expense for me. So the more mate­r­ial I pro­duce the bet­ter value it is for the money.

So for me CPAC is a job, an enjoy­able part of a job but a job that car­ries expense nevertheless.

This year how­ever CPAC has made sev­eral changes that have proven to be a dis­tinct dis­in­cen­tive to attending:

Mov­ing: As Glenn Reynolds pre­dicted last year a larger venue was cer­tainly needed but the new hotel is not only very expen­sive but it not acces­si­ble by the Metro mean­ing cab travel and addi­tional expense..

Cre­den­tial­ing: CPAC has decided to issue a sin­gle media cre­den­tial for blog­gers and the MSM. While I’m sure this annoys the lib­eral media and was meant to ele­vate blog­gers this has a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage in the sense that the CPAC attendee could gen­er­ally tell friend (CPAC blog­ger gen­er­ally con­ser­v­a­tive) from foe (MSM jour­nal­ist gen­er­ally out to get you) and would act accord­ingly. If we are all the media then CPAC atten­dees will sen­si­bly treat us all as “enemy”.

Sin­gle media area: Again while it must annoy the MSM to no end to be on equal foot­ing with “just blog­gers”, this actu­ally works against blog­gers in sev­eral ways. Speak­ers went to the blog­ger lounge to speak to give access to peo­ple who would give them a fair shake. We were a sought after com­mod­ity It will be very easy for blog­gers to be crowded out in the scrum and our own area made us spe­cial. The ejec­tion of Mau­reen Dowd from the CPAC blog­gers lounge remains to me one of the great­est moments in CPAC his­tory.

No free Wi-​fi: Seri­ously? There is no wifi being pro­vided for blog­gers (I sus­pect this is related to #2 & 3) and it’s my under­stand­ing that pur­chased access is $250. For peo­ple who can afford expen­sive phones and data plans or who do this on a lark that’s a drop in the bucket. For the MSM it’s part of an expense account. For the blog­ger like me who uses a trac phone, buy his time in units of a cou­ple of hun­dred min­utes it’s a dif­fer­ent story. Con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of peo­ple already report­ing from CPAC the case for read­ers kick­ing in $1000 to get me there and back (Nearby Hotel + Air $821 Bag­gage fees $50, Cabs $40 and if I’m care­ful Meals $75) while still look­ing for that $300 weekly pay­check is iffy enough. To ask them to pay an addi­tional $250 sim­ply so I can do my job while I’m there, that’s just unrea­son­able. It also means I’ll have to go to my hotel to do my posting.

CPAC has always been about ener­giz­ing con­ser­v­a­tive and to some degree the alter­nate con­ser­v­a­tive media. Given blog­gers always had bet­ter access than the MSM in the past and our shoe­string I would think the wise thing to do would be to enhance these advan­tages rather than can­cel them.

Any­ways I can’t see me skip­ping CPAC. There is just too much news to get there and of course it’s an excel­lent chance to pro­mote the radio show and hope­fully pick up some spon­sors and per­haps maybe even some new sta­tions along the way, but I’ve got to tell you, these changes seem a real dis­in­cen­tive to attendance.

Of course that just might the Sicil­ian in me com­ing out.

Update: For­got a HUGE pro, How could I neglect men­tion­ing Mass at the Shrine of the Basil­ica of the National Shrine of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion. A place so holy you can actu­ally feel the pres­ence of the Holy Spirit. (and the best break­fast in Wash­ing­ton in the cafe­te­ria) Unfor­tu­nately the new loca­tion is 12 miles away mak­ing cab fare nearly $40 one way so that’s out So I guess it’s St. Colum­bia Church at Oxen Hill, Under $15 for cab far with tip. Cer­tainly not as spec­tac­u­lar as the National Shine but the con­tain­ing no less the real pres­ence of Christ in the Mass and the Eucharist.

Inci­den­tally if you are a Catholic going to CPAC for the first time and can afford it GO TO THE BASIL­ICA FOR MASS. Any Catholic needs to expe­ri­ence it at least once. In fact it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a group together to go to mass at the national Basil­ica (or at St Colum­bia) on Sunday.

Update 2: The com­ment of the year so far…

It is proof of a mer­ci­ful God that MY youth­ful indis­cre­tions all took place before the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cam­era phones and YouTube.

A mil­lion mid­dle aged blog­gers are nod­ding their heads.

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Well it’s a new week which means once again it’s time to seek that $300 pay­check to keep things going.

Week one and Two in Feb­ru­ary were very encour­ag­ing. If we can keep this up for week three then the wife will really be impressed.

The math is really sim­ple 15 x 20 15 Peo­ple hit­ting datip­jar for $20 pays me for the week.

Of course if there are 10 more of you who can hit DaTip­Jar for $100 then I can buy my CPAC tick­ets and hotel but for now I think I’ll worry about the pay­check and the mort­gage, first things first.