Sympathy for the Devils: Scenes From the Social Conservative Collapse

Olivia Nuzzi

There was a time when the bigoted, Bible-thumping crowd ran roughshod over D.C. Now, not so much.

On Friday afternoon, the day after winning the election to become the new House Majority Leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—tan, grey-haired and neatly dressed—took to the stage at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition ‘Road to Majority’ Conference to thank “my Lord and Savior for his grace, his strength, and for never leaving me.”

The crowd ate it up—well, what was left of the crowd, anyway.

The Regency Ballroom inside the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington was barely half-filled by the time McCarthy took the stage around 1:15pm, after a string of speeches by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former presidential candidate Herman Cain, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, which touched on a range of topics—from the president’s foreign policy, to education, to prison reform, and, of course, abortion.

The crowd seemed to have dispersed after Christie’s well-received speech, which saw him again use a variation of one of his Greatest Hits: “if you’re pro-life, you have to be pro-life when they leave the womb, too.” A few minutes after Christie finished up, it looked like there had been a fire drill in the ballroom.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/21/sympathy-for-the-devils-scenes-from-the-social-conservative-collapse.html