A cigarette and a chat with Joe the Plumber

Freddy Gray meets Middle America’s radicals of the Right at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering that is both bonkers and vitally important to the Republican party

In the basement of Washington D.C.’s Omni Shoreham hotel, a friendly young Korean–American is showing off his ‘Enoch Powell was right’ lapel pin. ‘People are like: “Oh, is that the British National Party?”’ he says. ‘And I’m, like, duh — it’s Enoch Powell.’ He is trying to recruit like-minded controversialists to protest against the EU on behalf of Geert Wilders. Nobody seems interested. ‘Come on …Come on,’ he urges, as rivers of sweat slosh down his face. All around him, in the exhibition hall, is a panoply of bizarre right-wing Americana. Somebody hands out fliers saying ‘Fight Leftist Scum!’; a man dressed as a policeman marches around in a T-shirt that reads, ‘Cops Say Legalize Drugs: Ask Me Why’; a bunch of pretty girls, in very short skirts and thick make-up, stand around discussing traditional family values. Welcome to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the beating heart of Republican America, the annual conference where college activists, members of Congress and celebrities from across the United States gather to discuss their party’s future.

The advent of Obama does not seem to have made anyone here more reasonable. One man pulls me aside and whispers: ‘I don’t think you realise that Islam is a Spartan religion. Mohammed chopped up bits from Spartan texts and put them together …and he went and called it a religion.’ People manning the promotional stalls are determinedly unabashed by their unfashionable views. One group announces, in bold font, that ‘It’s OK to be Ex-Gay’. I catch snippets of political discourse: ‘Well it’s clear, to me anyway, that Barack Obama is the real fascist,’ says one punter. ‘Thank you!’ shouts another man in reply.