A digital pinball game defending the January 6 insurrection. A panel discussion called Putting Our Heads in the Gas Stove. An eager crowd watching agent provocateur Steve Bannon interview former British prime minister Liz Truss for a tiny online audience.
Every year the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, conjures a theatre of the absurd beside the Potomac River. This week something else slowly came into focus: three pillars of a Republican agenda that the party believes will provide a winning formula in the 2024 elections.
First, speaker after speaker highlighted the crisis at the southern border, variously describing it as “a war zone” where “thugs, Islamic extremists and Chinese spies” are staging an “invasion”. Second, this year’s CPAC theme was “Where globalism goes to die”, a rare foregrounding of foreign policy that embraced “America first” isolationism and advocated no more funding for Ukraine.
Finally, there was the contention that only Donald Trump can save American democracy. Speakers cast the Republican frontrunner as both as the underdog David, bravely battling political persecution, and a mighty Goliath tirelessly fighting for the forgotten and left behind. This was in striking contrast to Joe Biden, portrayed as both criminal mastermind and senile old man.
“I’m just going to say it – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suck,” said Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, seen as a potential Trump running mate. “And we shouldn’t look to Congress for the answers – the gridlock on Capitol Hill is not going to break in time to save America. We need a president who will. And I have always believed – and supported the fact – that our next president needs to be President Trump.”
This week marked the 50th anniversary of CPAC’s inaugural gathering, when Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California, urged conservatives to remain united. In 2015 the conference heard from establishment Republicans such as Jeb Bush. But since then it has marched rightward, each year proving more extreme than the one before. It has effectively become The Trump Show.
It has also lost relevance. Under CPAC impresario Matt Schlapp, who faced multiple sexual assault allegations, many sessions took place in a half-empty ballroom. “Media Row”, which includes various live talk radio broadcasts, and “CPAC Central”, a marketplace for vendors, was diminished compared with past years, exposing empty and forlorn floor space. Instead of Fox News, a plethora of fringe podcasters and streamers held sway.
But CPAC does provide a window to the soul of a Republican party in thrall to Trump. No issue is more central to his candidacy than immigration and resuming construction of a border wall. It was a constant talking point on the CPAC main stage.
Elise Stefanik, another contender for Trump’s vice-presidential pick, said: “We had the most secure border in our nation’s history when President Trump left office … In Joe Biden’s America, every district is a border district. Every state is a border state. The southern border is being invaded.”
In a session titled Trump’s Wall vs Biden’s Gaps, Thomas Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, said: “The reason I wake up pissed off every day is because this administration – Joe Biden is the first president in the history of this nation who came in office and unsecured a border on purpose.”
Describing Trump as the “greatest president in my lifetime”, Homan confidently predicted that the former president would destroy drug cartels in Mexico if re-elected. “President Trump will declare them a terrorist organisation. He will send a Hellfire rocket down there and he’ll take the cartels out.”
There was little acknowledgment over four days of the positive contribution immigrants have made to American society. Instead there were nods to white nationalism, the “great replacement” theory and Trump’s recent assertion that illegal immigrations “poison” the bloodstream of the nation.
Senator JD Vance, a devout Trump loyalist, told the gathering: “The reason why we have a border crisis is by design. Biden is invading the country with people who he knows are going to vote disproportionally for Democrats. California has five more congressional representatives than it should.
“Do you know why? They count illegal aliens for purposes of assigning apportionment in Congress. So when these guys flood the country with millions of people who shouldn’t be here they destroy the voting power of citizens in our own republic. This is by design and this is maybe the last very good chance we have to stop it.”
An examination of this topic in 2020 by the Pew Research Center found that if unauthorised immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone.
Vance and others were quick to draw a contrast between the border crisis and Washington’s obsession with the war in Ukraine. They questioned why taxpayer dollars should fund a conflict 6,000 miles away instead of tackling problems at home. Many were quick to add disclaimers distancing themselves from Russian president Vladimir Putin – not always convincingly.
Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said: “We’re the one that forced this war because we kept forcing Nato on Ukraine and showing Russia, hey, we’re going to build military bases on your borders. And Putin said, no, no, you’re not going to do that.
“I haven’t voted for any money to go to Ukraine because I know they can’t win. You hate that they’ve had 300,000 or 400,000 people killed, so – Russians also. You hate that we supported this. We’re pushing them out in front of the guns or out in front of the bus, I guess you’d speak. It’s an atrocity but they can’t win.”
Tuberville added: “Donald Trump will stop it when he first gets in … He knows there’s no winning for Ukraine. He can work a deal with Putin.”
There was little support here for Congress to pass a national security bill that would provide military funding for Ukraine. In a speech headlined Burning Down the House, Matt Gaetz, a congressman from Florida, said: “What’s really left unsaid in this Ukraine aid debate is that Europe’s fecklessness is a direct result of them becoming national security welfare queens largely at your expense … America is not the world’s police force and we are not the world’s piggy bank. It is not sustainable.”
In a jarring contrast from Reagan’s vision of American leadership, politicians from Britain, El Salvador, Spain and other parts of the world came to CPAC to rail against the sinister forces of “globalism”.
Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that CPAC has become an international movement. “We all want the same things. We want international cooperation. We want trade. We want peace. We want common sense. We want it within the framework of the nation-state, not within the framework of the European Union or the United Nations – or the increasingly appalling World Health Organisation.”
The audience erupted in cheers and applause.
CPAC offered a preview of other Republican talking points for the campaign. There were plenty of references to inflation and the demonstrably false claim that Trump bequeathed a booming economy that Biden ruined. A session called No Woke Warriors nodded to culture wars and, despite recent evidence about its limited electoral potency, numerous speakers assailed transgender rights.
The other common thread was a Trump worship that elevated him to the status of political martyr. Farage said the former president had been unfairly targeted by the justice system and commented: “I believe that Donald Trump is the bravest man I have ever met in my life.” Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina, opined: “We need warriors like President Trump, who is literally spending his golden years fighting for the survival of this nation.”
And Noem put it this way: “President Trump broke politics in 2016 – he just did – and that’s a good thing. He’s real. He’s not perfect – none of us are – but he cares about you. He doesn’t think he’s better than you. Luckily, we are not going back to the old days of the Romneys and Cheneys. The Republican party is much bigger than that now. We are filled with blue collar workers, many cultures, perspectives and viewpoints.”
Contrast will be key in the presidential election campaign. Biden, 81, was subjected to cheap shots and derogatory insults. At a discussion billed as Cat Fight? Michelle vs Kamala, rightwing commentator Kurt Schlichter commented: “I don’t think Joe Biden has any plans other than eating mush while watching Murder She Wrote. Two scoops. It will be tough to pry that desiccated old husk of a human being out of the White House.”
Down in CPAC Central, attendees were clear about the priorities for the coming campaign. Barbara Hale, a retired property agent from Austin, Texas, who was wearing a “Trump was right” badge, said: “The most important thing is our border. If Trump would have been our president instead of Biden, the wall would have been finished.
“We wouldn’t have this catastrophe that we have right now. I don’t know how anybody can vote Democrat today if you’re an American. I’m serious about that. If you love America, how can you vote to destroy America?”
America has sent enough funding to Ukraine, Hale added: “Like Trump has said he was going to do it as soon as he becomes president, he’s going to go talk to Europe and say, OK, we’ve paid our share to Ukraine to help them. We want Ukraine to be free. They need to pony up some money and they need to get more serious about helping Ukraine, not just the United States of America.”
Phil Cuza, 63, a saxophone player and retired police officer from New York, criticised corrupt politicians and district attorneys for “picking and choosing” who to prosecute. He added: “The southern border is extremely important because they’re undermining the whole country. It’s like having a house and you’re trying to dig underneath the house. Eventually the house will collapse if you don’t address that.”
Rachel Sheley, 54, a cybersecurity practitioner from northern Kentucky, said: “We need to stop funding wars in other countries. I like Trump’s initiative to loan money to these countries if they need it but they need to be held accountable to pay the money back.
“Our taxpayer money is going to these other places, some of which none of us ever travel to or get to. We don’t even know what’s going on in Ukraine. There’s no video or evidence of anything. I think it’s just a money-laundering scheme for the Democrats and the [George] Soros people.”
Asked what she thought of Putin, Sheley replied bluntly: “I don’t care.”
The marketplace featured everything from vibration plates to Trump glass art, from “Make America great again” shirts, hats and hammocks to a bus with a huge picture of the former president. There also a January 6-themed virtual pinball machine with the game modes “Political Prisoners”, “Have Faith”, “Babbitt Murder”, “It’s a Setup”, “Peaceful Protest”, “Fake News” and “Stop the Steal”, along with a photo of the “QAnon shaman” who stormed the Capitol and a screen showing footage from that day.
It was the brainchild of software developer Jon Linowes, 65, an election denier from New Hampshire who believes a baseless conspiracy theory that Trump’s foes planned the insurrection a year in advance as a pretext for keeping him off the ballot. He said: “If Trump was in office now, Ukraine would never have happened. October 7 [in Israel] would never have happened. The border would be shut down.
“All of these crises or situations that the Biden administration created were totally artificial and unnecessary and pathetic. We need someone like Trump with the strength and the fortitude to fix it if he can. If anyone can, he can. So that’s what I would expect. And I would expect him to pardon the J6 prisoners.”
