Lost at CPAC: Any Sense of Principle
Up there with the surprise of seven new planets is one that awaits you at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, once composed primarily of the religious right of the Republican Party. Gone is the pretense of principle. They have come to celebrate the ascendance of Donald Trump, who couldn’t have risen without their abandoning their belief system in favor of joining the winning team. Without them, the thrice-married, four-time bankrupt casino and real-estate mogul, who previously embodied everything they were once against, could not have been elected.
In earlier times, CPAC awarded its straw poll victories to the Pauls, father and son, and family values crusader Gary Bauer. There was a county fair-without-the-prize-bull feel in the exhibit hall, with homages to Phyllis Schlafly and William Buckley, large screens devoted to a history of debt, and a target range where if you got close to the bull’s eye, you could win a pocket copy of the Constitution.
This year CPAC is all about a victory lap for the nationalist populist Breitbarians who admire Putin, despise immigrants, and want to roll back regulations to the days of smog alerts and rivers catching fire from all the chemicals dumped in them. The former head of Breitbart, (which now has a front-row seat at White House press conferences), Steve Bannon, National Security Council member and co-chief of staff, was a marquee attraction Thursday, along with his so-called counterpart Reince Priebus, who is trying to prove he is more than a potted palm, just as Mike Pence will have to labor to show he isn’t a puppet.
In their first joint appearance, Bannon and Priebus tried to make common cause, with some awkwardness. Bannon threw punches at the globalist, corporatist media and warned the audience “if you think you’re going to get you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.” He commended Trump for resisting all the people urging him to moderate.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/lost-at-cpac-any-sense-of-principle/ar-AAnhHfL