The Conservative Teleprompter Conference of 2010

Written by Brian Frederick

Published

The legacy of the Conservative Political Action Conference is shaping up to be little more than a bunch of lame teleprompter jokes. Consider Thursday's highlights:

  • David Keene, American Conservative Union: “We have made some bows to modernity. We have the Barack Obama honorary teleprompters.”
  • Marco Rubio, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate (FL): Because of the DC snowstorms, “the president couldn't find anywhere to set up a teleprompter to announce any new taxes.”
  • Erick Erickson, RedState.com: “Saving freedom through technology. The first step is we took the president's teleprompter for this event so that he cannot speak for the next few days. Render him as a mute as Rahm Emanuel was when his middle finger got cut off.” (Classy.)
  • Andrew Moylan, National Taxpayers Union: “I'm glad they left the teleprompter up here today. I assure you I will not be using it.”

And those were just the speakers who appeared on C-SPAN's limited coverage of the conference.

At least the hypocrisy was not lost on NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez, who tweeted: “I've heard at least three teleprompter jokes already. In front of a teleprompter...”

Of course, these guys are just following the lead of their biggest star. A couple weeks ago at the Tea Party convention, Sarah Palin said of the tea party movement: “This is about the people ... and it's a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.”

(Apparently, however, the tea party movement isn't bigger than any charismatic former governor with notes on her hand -- and whose unfavorability rating recently reached an all-time high.)

Friday promises more of the same. Atlanta radio host Herman Cain paused in the middle of his speech to note, “I would like to point one thing out. I recited that without a teleprompter.”

Congratulations.

Of course, things could be worse. Conservatives could instead be repeating the same tired old jokes about terrorism.

Take this opener from actor Robert Davi (who will always be the gangster in “Goonies” to me): “I have a little disturbing news that I just saw over the Fox News crawl. Andrew Breitbart and Ann Coulter will not be here because the president has rounded up the ACORN people and they're now en route to Guantanamo.”

Hilarious.

UPDATE: As commenter Kikabi points out, perhaps these media conservatives have forgotten about what happens when Obama doesn't have his teleprompter.