Gleeful conservatives chart course in era of Trump
OXON HILL, Md. (AFP) — America’s grassroots conservatives gathered Thursday for an annual confab near Washington in an ideological landscape up-ended by the election of President Donald Trump, a figure once snubbed by the movement and now hailed as its conquering hero.
“It feels like a celebration here!” Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where Trump will deliver the keynote address Friday.
The event just south of Washington kicked off with an appearance by Kellyanne Conway, the Trump campaign director turned senior White House advisor.
Asked about the influence of her boss on the movement, she said CPAC has already warmed to the era of Trump, and predicted: “By tomorrow it’s going to be TPAC.”
The real estate tycoon, who was once close to Democrats but emerged as the Republican oppo- nent to Hillary Clinton in 2016, has caused discomfort within a conservative that champions “family values,” free market liberalism and a strong defense.
While Trump shifted to the right during the campaign, he continues to defend his call for massive infrastructure investment, and his isolationist and protectionist talk has made many within the party bristle.
But at the first major conservative get-together since his shock election, the crowd was by and large proclaiming victory, with several young attendees seen wearing “Socialism sucks” t-shirts.
“We’re pleasantly surprised by what Trump has been doing,” Steve Hanly, a 61-year-old pilot from Dallas, Texas, told AFP as he attended his first CPAC with his family.
The billionaire president’s opening moves, including curbs on federal funding for aid groups that support abortion and the nomination of a conservative Supreme Court justice, convinced Hanly that Trump will take the country in the right direction even though he is not “a true conservative.”
Six years ago, Trump spoke for the first time at CPAC, where he was booed at times, although his words denouncing the political class and railing against economic rivals China and Mexico went down well. When the president addresses the thousands of grassroots activists gathered at the conference on Friday, he will likely be welcomed as the savior of the Republican Party, which now controls the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time in a decade.
“I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were hopelessly lost and in the minority,” said Charles Quilhot, an insurance broker living in Newport News, Virginia.
Trump’s first month in office has been hectic, Quilhot acknowledged, “But it’s a lot better than the alternative,” the establishment Democrat Clinton.