CPAC enjoys large dose of Trumpism
Trump officials and allies were featured in usually legislator-heavy speaker list
OXON HILL, MD.— The big screen beside the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) played a video mocking an old Connecticut regulation governing what makes a pickle a pickle, and if you’d been teleported to the present from, say, 1988, this would have made perfect sense.
And then you’d stare wide-eyed at much of the rest of the festivities.
For decades, CPAC was a gathering Republicans attended to rail against long-standing conservative villains such as overreaching government. In the Donald Trump era, they have largely been superseded by other enemies.
This year’s CPAC still offers moments of old-fashioned conservative orthodoxy. But it is being joined by a large dose of the loose philosophy that might be best called Trumpism.
On Thursday, speakers griped about the FBI. They darkly warned about Muslims. They made fun of transgender people. They held a panel on “fake news.” And, one after the other, they hailed the wondrousness of a year-old era that Vice-President Mike Pence claimed was “the most consequential year in the history of the conservative movement.”
At a gathering normally heavy on Republican legislators, only one, Sen. Ted Cruz, was on the speaker roster. In their place this year were Trump administration officials and Trump-friendly others: Fox News hosts, a Breitbart News editor, campus rabble-rousers fighting “political correctness,” far-right Europeans.
Thursday’s most telling indication of the new moment was the presence of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the newest star of the Le Pen dynasty of France’s far-right National Front. Endorsing Trump’s “America First” motto and warning of a Muslim infiltration of France, she declared, “Vive le nationalisme!”
Trump is scheduled to speak on Friday. The NRA strikes back The biggest news on Thursday was the incendiary remarks from two of- ficials from the National Rifle Association.
The NRA, the top U.S. gun-rights lobby group, has a time-tested strategy of temporary quiet in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. On Thursday, eight days after the shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida school, they used the friendly confines of CPAC to lash out.
First, spokesperson Dana Loesch levelled a wild and baseless charge against news reporters — claiming that they secretly enjoy mass shootings.
“I’ll say it really slowly so all the people on the platform in the back can hear me loud and clear: Many in legacy media love mass shootings,” she said, emphasizing each word. “You guys love it. Now, I’m not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings.”
She was followed by NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre, who called for schools to be “hardened” with armed security — and then painted a frightening picture of the state of American society, warning that the Democratic Party was “infested” with socialist “saboteurs” who hate American values.
He advised the audience to be fearful, saying, “You should be anxious, and you should be frightened.” Media faces scorn Loesch’s husband, Chris Loesch, appeared on a separate panel. He urged the audience to “wave goodbye” to the mainstream media. Dozens of people got up from their seats to wave to reporters seated in the back.
Just as it was a hallmark of Trump rallies, media criticism was a prominent feature of the new CPAC. The first video of the day was a compila- tion of clips of television anchors admitting errors or being mocked by Trump and Fox personalities as “fake news.”
The first panel was titled “An Affair to Remember: How the Far Left and the Mainstream Media Got in Bed Together.” In a sharp reversal from the usual Republican argument, which holds that cloistered media elites do not leave their northeastern bubble to speak with average Trump supporters in forgotten communities, one speaker, Candace Owens, complained that CNN too frequently interviewed Trump supporters who “had no teeth.” They wanted to make Trump supporters look “stupid,” she said. Hillary: yep, still hated Ben Shapiro, editor of the website The Daily Wire and an icon to may of the young conservatives who attend CPAC, praised Trump for preventing Hillary Clinton from becoming president.
A “lock her up” chant, like those common during Trump’s campaign, erupted from the left of the room, then another from the right. Within seconds, most of the gathering was chanting for the imprisonment of the candidate Trump defeated 15 months ago.
Cruz made a Clinton joke that appeared to be about her husband’s infidelity. He said a remark Bill Clinton made about Obamacare was one of the only times he had agreed with the ex-president — “other than about Hillary.” Warnings of a Muslim menace Trump has long singled out Muslims as a danger to society. CPAC speakers did, too.
Le Pen claimed Muslim immigration was creating an “Islamic counter-society” and changing France “from the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church to the little niece of Islam.” Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Muslim, called for a government “commission on Islamism.” Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam claimed, without providing evidence, of a dangerous “sharia element” establishing a presence “right here in the United States.” Identity politics Shapiro decried a culture in which, he claimed, members of minority groups can claim they have been victimized by an imaginary “white privilege.” He dismissed the existence of transgender people, saying a person born with male anatomy is “a dude” even if he identifies as a woman.
Other young conservatives also delighted in tweaking what they said was left-wing identity politics gone mad. Grant Strobl, chairperson of Young Americans for Freedom, was applauded as he explained how he exploited a University of Michigan policy that allowed students to choose their own gender pronouns to make professors call him “His Majesty.” Gorka! Sebastian Gorka, the combative former Trump aide pushed out of the White House by chief of staff John Kelly, had an uneventful appearance on a live-taped radio show. He managed to make headlines anyway: Before he entered the room, he swore at a reporter, called him “irrelevant,” and lightly pushed him before huffing away.