Conservatives Adrift: The View From CPAC

Jonathan Stein, a Washington correspondent for Mother Jones, sees a conservative movement struggling to find itself at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington February 27.

"There is no consistent message as far as I can tell," he says in this interview. Other than the traditional Republican mantras of small government, tax-cutting and trickle-down economics, "there are not a lot of new ideas."

That does not mean that progressives can put down their guard in the ideological war, Stein says. He's watching how the conservative movement is trying to use the same tools the left successfully used in the run-up to the 2008 election to build momentum for upcoming battles over universal health care and other reforms.