Here’s what I thought when I heard the Conservative Political Action Conference has decided to honor former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with something CPAC calls the “Defender of the Constitution Award.”

You have an establishment at least somewhat concerned about the vituperative Tea Party movement, and not just their rhetoric but their ideas. In another corner of the conservative coalition, you have this contretemps over CPAC allowing a gay group to participate in its annual conference. Yesterday the first actual member of Congress pulled out, Rep. Jim Jordan, joining multiple conservative groups, including the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation, in boycotting the event.

CPAC, the venerable right-wing gathering, has a problem over its welcoming of the conservative gay group GOProud, fomenting into a full-fledged revolt by several right-wing fundie groups, who are now boycotting CPAC over GOProud’s participation.

I really can’t believe I’m writing this, but Michael Gerson hits the nail on the head this morning. Stopped clock, and all that.

Two very revealing snapshots from CPAC yesterday.

The conservatives are trying very hard to scrape the remains of their perfected ideology off the windshield before voters recognize it. The extent to which they succeed is another catastrophe that will foul up the scene, and this country. We need to make the point as much as possible; the worst president ever, George W. Bush, was a real conservative, and succeeded in his ambition to achieve conservative principles. We are barely surviving the effects of conservatism now, if, that is, we do survive as a nation.