Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

CPAC was never for the cool kids.

The Conservative Political Action Conference has been a fixture of the American political landscape for half a century and, for much of that time, its party scene has been well chronicled in fact and in fiction. Yet its parties, even at their most decadent and depraved, were never quite cool. After all, this was still a conference for political activists held in a Washington DC hotel. It wasn’t spring break in Cabo.

The conference served a number of roles besides being a location for young liberal journalists to gawk at even younger conservative activists. It was a trade show for consultants and vendors, many of whom viewed it as a prime place to woo potential clients or show off clients to potential donors. It also was a vacation destination for a certain type of older conservative, who would save up to spend three days in a room with fellow right wingers, taking the sights of Washington DC and seeing some of the personalities that they had long followed on talk radio or cable news. And, at its core, it was simply a convention. A chance for people from across the country who belonged to the conservative wing of the Republican Party to get together once a year. The result was that it brought together attendees ranging from the earnest khakis-and-blazer types to the activists who, at the height of the Tea Party, dressed up in colonial garb.

It also made it a useful measuring stick for the state of the American right, both when conservatives were a mere warring faction within the Republican Party and eventually as they became the dominant group. CPAC’s straw poll became a key litmus test of the runners and riders and it was considered well worth it for campaigns of presidential hopefuls to try to rig it—-busing interns to the venue and paying for their tickets in order to demonstrate their grassroots support.

It’s not really any of that now. The event, which ended this Saturday, felt vestigial, held more out of habit than because there was any urgent niche for it to fill. There were........

© Slate