CPAC: the conservative jamboree is now a Trumpian fringe
There’s perhaps a good reason why you might not have noticed that Wednesday marked the start of this year’s CPAC – or Conservative Political Action Conference – in the US.
The event which pretty much defined the political calendar during the Trump years has lost favour in 2023, despite being held in Washington DC, which should have provided an even greater incentive for America’s conservatives to attend. Yet, strangely, they don’t seem too eager to make the short trip to National Harbor, Maryland. Well, at least not all of them.
It’s an indicator of the shifting tides of American conservatism that this year CPAC will be host to the kind of Republican voices that do not perhaps represent the future of the party nor, for that matter, America itself. Kari Lake will be the guest speaker at the swanky (and expensive) Reagan dinner. Lake is considered one of the leading disciples of Trumpism and yet her appearance at CPAC marks a very unTrumpish moment, being a celebration of the candidate who lost Arizona’s gubernatorial race last year. America got so tired of winning, to paraphrase one of Trump’s favourite catchphrases, that now they’re celebrating losses.
Then there’s also Mike Lindell, known as the “MyPillow guy”, who will be speaking, though it’s hard to imagine a place where Lindell wouldn’t speak. He recently appeared on the late-night show of his nemesis, Jimmy Kimmel, even going so far as to accept the humiliation of doing so whilst sitting inside a fairground claw machine. Was he in on the joke or so desperate for attention that he didn’t care so long as the camera was facing his direction? It’s hard to tell with Lindell whose descent into the absolute depths of conspiracy gimcrackery is so unedifying to witness that one even questions the compassion of shows like Kimmel’s in giving a platform to something that increasingly resembles a personal crisis.
Nevertheless, Lake and Lindell are beacons of what CPAC means this year; big flashing red lights far out to sea warning other ships to steer clear of the region unless they want to be pulled in by the diminished but still powerful undercurrent of Trumpism. And that, certainly, is pretty much the underlying narrative of this year’s conference. Inside the conference, it’s about how Trumpism sustains itself and whether the former president generates new momentum to win the nomination and then regain the White House. Outside CPAC, it’s about how potential Republican nominees divorce themselves from the populist dogma that saw the GOP underperform in (or plain lose) four successive elections.
This split is important to stress. Trump as a candidate (and then as president) made CPAC his big blue-ribbon event each year. It was where he went to prove his credentials, wallow in the red, white, and blue, as well as grope the American flag. It’s ironic then that part of CPAC’s decline this year has been tied to revelations about the chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp. Once a near-constant fixture on American news networks, Schlapp has been an unrelenting advocate of Trump and a relentless mouthpiece for hyper-partisanship. It recently came to light, however, that Schlapp is alleged to have inappropriately touched a male Republican staffer on Herschel Walker’s campaign. It appears that just a hint of scandal was all that many establishment Republicans needed to cancel their hotel reservations in Maryland.
Not that the allegations appear to have affected Trump, who will still be attending and will still give the keynote speech on Saturday night. Former ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will also be there, no doubt trying to prove that they are younger (51 and 59 respectively) and more viable alternatives to the 44th president who will be 78 in 2024.
They might be young but it’s hard to see them as being particularly viable or drawing much support away from Trump. Of more interest are the candidates that are staying away. Most notable of those running in the other direction is Florida governor Ron DeSantis who is clearly too busy signing bills to bring back control of Disneyworld to the state legislature. Spending his time at a freakish theme park filled with outsized stuffed creatures who live in a fantasy world is obviously less preferable than being around Disneyland. It certainly makes some sense if he wishes to put a little distance between himself and the land of oversized opinions.
Yet DeSantis’s absence does seem to mark another of these shifts. He’s yet to announce that he will run for the nomination, but his absence from CPAC sets another piece of the puzzle into place. It can be read as a statement of strength, that the former Trump attack dog is now so self-sufficient that he doesn’t need CPAC for the next stage of his evolution. This week he also published the kind of book that usually precedes presidential runs. It’s the “look how I can fix America based on my background” book. In DeSantis’s case, it’s called “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival”. It pretty much announces his presidential run there in the title.
Trump meanwhile will attempt to use CPAC to reassert his influence. If he does, it will be because the support is still there in the base rather than support coming from the media. Coverage of CPAC has been sparse to non-existent, as one might expect with a Democrat in the White House. Yet it underlines again how much all politicians need the favour of media owners like Rupert Murdoch. Trump needs the media, but their low-key coverage of the conference suggests that the media no longer need Trump. Let’s see if he finds a way of making himself and CPAC relevant again.
@DavidWaywell
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