Newt Courts CPAC with Pizza and $2 Beers

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), engaged in a tit-for-tat race for the primary wins, will be addressing this CPAC conference in the grand ballroom, giving impassioned speeches in an 11th-hour effort to convince conservatives that each is the right candidate to defeat President Obama.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will be making his case over pizza and happy hour brews.

The Newt 2012 campaign distributed a flier at CPAC that had a checklist of the day’s speakers in the Marriott Ballroom on the front – Newt not included; conservative darling Paul Ryan’s banquet speech not included — leading up to the big, bold event: a pizza party with Newt at a nearby Italian kitchen on Connecticut Avenue from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

“There will be $2 beers, too,” the volunteer told me.

The flier advertises “Free Pizza and Occupier Free!” — a nod to the reason there are more than a few cops walking around the conference site.

On the back of the flier is a Newt treatise against “runaway courts, union thugs and socialistic occupiers” (and Obamacare) with a footnote at the bottom:

“PS: I humbly ask for your vote in this year’s straw poll”