While CPAC may seem like hostile territory for liberals, reporters from Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo and ThinkProgress are all on hand today at the Marriott Wardman Park.

And MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, one of the left’s leading voices, is also taking in the conservative action.

“I didn’t plan to come to Washington to cover CPAC,” Maddow told POLITICO, adding that she was actually in the city for a Library of Congress event.

“Since I was in town, and I knew we’d be talking about CPAC, it made sense to just stop by and see for myself,” Maddow said.

Maddow said she’s been invited in the past and praised CPAC for opening the door to media that are not exactly sympathetic to the cause.

“They’ve made very overt efforts in years past, even when they weren’t nearly as big a deal on the political scene, with outreach to talk radio, including progressive talk radio,” Maddow said.

“I do appreciate the way they’ve been unafraid in terms of the media that they’ve invited,” she continued. “I think that’s one of the things CPAC’s done right. I’ve always had a lot of respect for them for that.”

Some other events on the right, she said, haven’t been so open to left-leaning press.

“You see it now at a lot of conservative events happening now, GOP events and conservative events where they’re closed to the media or [open just to] handpicked media, and that’s an embarrassment,” she said. “CPAC’s never been like that."

Maddow will be hosting her show from Washington over the next two days but won’t be sticking around for Saturday’s closing night speaker, Fox’s Glenn Beck.

(Photo courtesy of Patrick Gavin, one of the POLITICO reporters flooding the zone at CPAC)

UPDATE: Gavin also caught up with Maddow, who mentions our similar taste in eyewear. Video after the jump.

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