The Way Forward: The Good and Bad at CPAC
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In the past few months, the political division in America has been ramped up to a level never experienced before. Recently, with the passage of legislation that promotes infanticide, the proposal of the Green New Deal, and the rise in popularity of socialism, conservatives have felt the pressure of a burgeoning progressive culture. With radical members in the House, like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, the extinction of freedom that Reagan alluded to over 50 years ago has never felt more real.
It is with these emotions that thousands of Americans made their way to the premiere conservative conference of the year, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in National Harbor, Maryland, over the past weekend. At this event, attendees listened to some of the best conservative minds in the nation, as well as the president and vice president, talk about the importance of conservative principles in our western democracy. The topics ranged from socialism and capitalism to American exceptionalism and campus politics, etc. But what stood out the most was the state of unity that undergirded the whole event.
In previous years, even during the 2016 presidential primaries, CPAC was divided among those who believed in a more traditional understanding of conservatism (free markets, as opposed to fair markets, a balance of powers, and more traditional social values), as compared to what we have now. It was just last year when conservative commentator Mona Charen was booed on stage after criticizing the president, and conservatives themselves, for their hypocrisy on sexual harassment and sexual deviancy because the current president had engaged in multiple affairs and multiple marriages without any pushback. But with election season around the corner, the support for Trump by those very same conservatives has only grown.
According to NBC News, though Trump’s approval among Republicans has remained steadily high at 90% for the good part of a year, his overall job approval has continued to climb; reaching 46% as of late last month.
With this in mind, the biggest questions conservatives should be asking themselves is whether or not the fundamental principles of conservatism that founded CPAC are still intact, and whether or not the ideas presented are worth moving forward with.
The Good
On Friday, CPAC was kicked off by the Blaze founder, Glenn Beck. In an impassioned speech, Beck spoke directly to the biggest problem facing America today, the growing popularity of socialism. Beck made the important observation that both capitalism and socialism are successful in their economic pursuits. Socialism, he explained, is successful in that it guarantees everyone equality; equality of misery. Where the good of the collective is counted as more significant than the good of the individual. Everyone is made to be of the same status; poor. In contrast, capitalism is successful in its guarantee of inequality. It’s this inequality that allows individuals to make choices for themselves, uncoerced. It’s through capitalism that inequality gives way to meritocracy. A system that allows free people to decide where they will end up on the basis of their own effort.
With socialism’s popularity growing every generation, Beck explained that individuals are only free when they have sole ownership of their property, saying, “Here is the truth that made America great, all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, and in plain english, property.”
In similar fashion, Dennis Prager, founder of the widely popular Prager University, expounded upon the left’s desire for socialism by explaining that it was due to their fundamental hate for America, stating, “If you met a man married to a woman who said, ‘I love my wife but I would like to fundamentally transform her.’ Do you think he loves her? No, you don’t.” His comment based on a statement made by Barack Obama in 2008 when he said, “We are five days away, from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
Apart from the issue of economics, CPAC also made it a point to discuss the role of faith in our nation, and as I have discussed in an earlier piece, the conservative movement is nothing without a biblical foundation. On the panel, Allison Stuckey of the Blaze, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, and Hillsdale College’s Dr. Matt Spalding examined the significance of faith as it pertains to our public and private lives.
The panel started off by discussing the importance of separation of church and state, and how, contrary to public belief, this division was meant to encourage religion and the promulgation of religious values rather than to silence them. Spalding stated, “ultimately, self-government requires religion, not only to moderate our passions and our character but also provide a transcendent understanding of moral truth that is necessary to defining liberty itself.”
As our nation seeks to clamp down on religious freedom, this distinction by Spalding is important in that it sheds light on the misconception many Americans have regarding the separation of the two entities. The separation gives way to religious liberty in that government cannot tell churches what to do, and likewise, churches cannot tell the government what to do. As David French of National Review pointed out, all that the radical left really wants is “more state, less church.”
Allison Stuckey dived further into the issue of religious oppression by explaining that as our society has sought to eradicate religion, secularists have created their own; the religion of progressivism, where “intersectionality is one of their doctrines, and where identity politics is part of their worship.” What the left has accused conservatives of doing, the left has done themselves; using the federal government to promulgate their religious values on others because, as they say, they are the party of science and reason.
It’s through this hypocrisy that progressives have cudgeled numerous conservatives into shying away from publically professing their faith. To this point, senator Lankford explained that people of faith should not be forced to live out their faith only on the weekend. All people should be able to live out their convictions in a way that permeates all aspects of their life, even for those elected to government positions. He also went on to state, “faith permeates everything you do, it affects how I treat my wife, it affects how I treat my children, it affects my relationships with other people, it affects how I disagree with people,” “we have all this dialogue but I treat them different because I understand that that person is created in the image of God and they have value and worth,” “This is something we struggle [with] in our current modern day.”
The Bad
Every event has its highs and lows, and that is no different in politics. For CPAC, the bad aspects came in two parts.
The first problem is one that has plagued the conservative movement ever since Trump won the presidency; the worship of persona.
Mainline conservatives love Trump, and that was on full display at CPAC. Much of this spawns from the fact that at a base level, Trump loves America and he makes it known wherever he goes. Walking out onto the mainstage for his much-anticipated speech on Saturday (a speech that ended up being the longest of his presidency), the first thing that Trump did was bear-hug the American flag. As goofy as this may seem, Trump knows optics, and if there is anything that gets his base riled up, it is his unbridled patriotism. This is the type of person conservatives have longed for, someone who recognizes America's greatness in the world and is unwilling to apologize on behalf of it. But it is this same love for Trump that conservatives should be wary of.
For years, conservatives have sought to decrease the importance of the presidency. Many have believed, and still do, that the job of the president is to execute legislation and leave individuals alone. With Trump, the tone has changed. The idea of a “strong man” who will defend us from the tide of liberalism has made it to where anything the president does is a good thing. Just as love covers a multitude of sins, so too does the conservatives’ love for Trump.
How quickly we forget that just a few weeks back, Trump made the poor decision of declaring a national emergency to bypass Congressional approval, essentially expanding the power of the executive branch. And last week, right before CPAC, Trump was halfway around the world making the absurd claim that he takes North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, at his word regarding the death of Otto Warmbier. Yet, at CPAC, an event founded on preserving freedom and opposing dictatorships, there was no complaint from his base regarding either instance. Surely, Trump was not lying when he said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any voters.
But it’s with this first problem that the second arises, and that is temperament. In recent years, because of Trump’s 2016 victory, the phrase “own the libs” has become a hallmark of the conservative movement - where the only priority for conservatives is to jab at and humiliate those on the other side of the aisle. If you are still having trouble understanding the concept, look no further than the activism of Turning Point USA. But this attitude has made its way into punditry circles at CPAC where individuals like Michelle Malkin have used this tactic to go after anyone who doesn’t share their priorities. During her speech, Malkin went off the rails in calling out “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) for their lack of production in Congress by stating, “E-verify has been stalled. Sanctuary cities metastasized. And BOTH parties are to blame – yeah I’m looking at you, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, the Bush family, Mitt Romney and the ghost of John McCain.” Those are strong words from a woman who is willing to side with some of the worst people to get ahead.
The Donald Trump presidency has ushered in a new era of conservative politics for a new generation. The present conservative movement still contains much of the original principles that founded CPAC in 1974, but this time with a lack of decorum. Yes, there are many things to be optimistic about such as the preservation of certain core values (we could do better on the free trade rhetoric) but we should wonder how much further the movement can go when its only reason for relevance is found in the Oval Office and not its ideas.
In some ways, CPAC has become Trump fanfare. For now, it’s working. With conservative optimism this high, the movement, in its present state, can afford to engage in some boorish behavior. But that is not a recipe for success in the long run. It’s through our renewed sense of optimism that conservatives should revert back to the totality of principles and ethics that made this country great in the first place. As Glenn Beck so keenly stated, “We are Americans, but with all humility and without any more hesitation, we must stand up and declare that we are conservatives in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln and Reagan…”