My scene-setter-of-sorts appeared here last week.

Since then, as anticipated here, Al Cardenas, the former Florida Republican chairman was named the new chairman of the American Conservative Union. There is grumbling in my inbox about that because he was not right from the beginning like others of us on the Rubio-Crist race. But other knowledgeable sources remain cautiously optimistic about the organization and the associated conference’s future as CPAC convenes today with a question-mark cloud above it — about what exactly it stands for and what exactly its value is.