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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Facing a crisis that had the Republican Party’s most loyal stalwarts wondering if the outfit would even survive another 10 years, its most beloved figures lumbered through the Conservative Political Action Conference espousing a clear, consistent message: losing is the new #winning.
The locale for the wound-licking, reality-denying, backward-gazing jamboree was the Gaylord National Resort, just across the Potomac from DC. The setting proved a match for the party’s position on the outside of Washington looking in, and the curious name of the convention center chimed harmoniously with the character of the gathering. Which was: “Meet the Focked.”
Speaker after speaker on the main stage insisted that if the party just stuck with its message of free enterprise, low taxes, constitutionally limited government, a strong defense, the sanctity of life and deficit reduction, then voters will come to their senses and return the party to power. That would be the party that has carried the popular vote for the presidency exactly once since 1988.
As befits the party of nostalgia, the backdrop on the main stage was an eerie ghost mural crammed with fuzzy blue portraits of dead and aged conservative icons like William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Jesse Helms.
I repeat: Jesse Helms!
“America’s Future: the Next Generations of Conservatives” was the slogan plastered everywhere.
Yet a fresh, robust, indeed Falstaffian new leader, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, wasn’t present. Organizers compared CPAC to an all-star game and said Christie wasn’t having that great a year.
A week is a long time in politics, but conservatives are never going to forget the way he literally embraced President Obama in the closing days of the fall campaign. In December, Christie’s approval rating among Republicans dropped him to last place, 49%, among contenders polled by PPP. That figure was 25 points behind Paul Ryan and even 17 points behind Palin. Yet a national poll this month said he had a better shot against Hillary Rodham Clinton than the others, and in his home state, Christie has a 74% approval rating.
Policy-wise, too, there was little effort to let go of the past. “We cannot give up on repealing ObamaCare,” thundered Jim DeMint, the guy who gave up on his Senate seat to take a more lucrative job running The Heritage Foundation conservative think tank.
Sure, and I’m not giving up on dating Mandy Moore. Right after we repeal Obama-Care, let’s repeal the 2012 election results! Because that would kinda be the same thing.
Mitch McConnell also vowed to repeal ObamaCare, trotting out a 10-foot stack of paper he said (dubiously) was a printout of all the regulations related to the new law. (Did taxpayer dollars pay for this dumb prop?) He, too, vowed to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, because “ObamaCare must be repealed” is the new “Carthage must be destroyed,” the crowd-pleasing line ancient Roman Senator Cato the Elder used to toss into every speech on any topic.
Almost no one mentioned the party’s November standard-bearer by name, but let’s just say the word “Romneyite” is not a thing.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry took a double swipe at John McCain and Mitt Romney when he said it wasn’t conservatism that failed in 2008 and 2012, though he could be convinced otherwise — “if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”
Latino problem? What Latino problem? Perry went on to advise this Ship of Fools to stick to its present course. “Let me say something about what appeals to Hispanics in Texas,” he said. “It’s the free-enterprise agenda that allows small businesses to prosper, free of government interference. It’s the policies that value the family unit as the best and closest form of government. It’s the belief in life and the faith in God. No one, no one who risked life and limb to reach our shores comes here hoping for a government handout.”
Great! So Latinos are secret Republicans! Who accidentally vote Democrat.
Former star of the future Sarah Palin blasted Romney without naming him, too, saying, “Even our guys in the GOP too often have a habit of reading their stage directions. They’re being too scripted, too calculated. They talk about rebuilding the party. How about rebuilding the middle class?”
Newt Gingrich, another throwback figure, meant Romney & Co. when he said, “The Republican establishment is just plain wrong about how to approach its politics. The Republican consulting class is just plain wrong about how to approach its politics . . . Let me be clear. We don’t need new principles. We do need lots of ideas about how to implement those principles.”
Rand Paul, standing up for the libertarians, that forever up-and-coming cohort who catapulted his father to so much success, proved slightly better at reality recognition. “The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered,” he offered. “I don’t think we need to name any names, do we?” (Somewhere, McCain and Romney were saying, “Eh? Speak up, sonny boy!”)
Paul may be a new face, and he came out on top in a straw poll of CPAC attendees with a 25 percent plurality. But to the average voter he seems too much like the Mad Hatter at the Tea Party, even when he says sensible things like, “The new GOP will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere.”
Paul was referring to a left turn on immigration and gay marriage, but if the party did seem to be moderating on both (panel discussions supporting amnesty and gay marriage were packed, while reps from the anti side of both issues found themselves addressing nearly deserted rooms), a GOP that concedes social issues in order to win over a few minorities and to seem a little less mossy with younger voters may quickly find itself minus the votes of 20 million evangelical Christians.
Moreover, grant amnesty to 11 million illegal aliens and you might as well hand Democrats 8 million new voters. Today New Mexico’s a write-off for Republican presidential candidates. Tomorrow it may be Arizona.
Reagan tried to win Latino support with his 1986 amnesty (which was gingerly mentioned by a few speakers). Will the next Reagan repeat the effort? Trying to transcend identity politics Friday night was the guest of honor at the Reagan dinner, Jeb Bush, whose family brand has somehow become equally disliked by liberals and conservatives.
Yet should he run for president, Dubya’s little brother would be able to fire up the money machine and political networks like no other candidate. Conservative Boston University Professor Angelo Codevilla said the former Florida governor’s nomination would unleash a civil war that would destroy the Republican Party.
“The left hates him, and nobody on the right really likes him,” Codevilla told The Washington Times. “If somehow the Republican Party was to nominate Jeb Bush, you would have the final defeat of the Republican Party. The Republican Party would cease to exist.”
Jeb, a moderate on immigration who is married to a Mexican-American and speaks Spanish, gave a careful, sober speech that sounded like a rebranding effort.
“All too often we’re associated with being anti-everything,” Bush said. “Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on. Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates even though they share our core beliefs because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party.”
Bush’s tepid delivery drew mixed reviews. “College Repubs aren’t listening to Jeb,” tweeted conservative National Review reporter Robert Costa. “Hardly know who he is. Bored. On iPhones.”
Bush’s fellow Floridian Marco Rubio, a Caucasian Cuban whom Republicans have deluded themselves into believing is their bridge to Latinos (a recent poll had Hillary Rodham Clinton thumping him among this group by 60-24 percent), stuck mostly to bromides in his forgettable speech (calling for “the best place in the world to create middle-class jobs”) and insisted, “We don’t need a new idea. The idea is called America, and it still works.”
But Rubio struck the defensive chords that thrummed through a party that has managed to alienate everyone but straight white guys and their wives. (As James Carville once put it, “When people think you hate them, they don’t like it.”)
“Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot,” Rubio said. “Just because we believe that life, all human life, is worthy of protection at every stage in its development, does not make you a chauvinist.”
The cringing, stop-the-pain tone of a party beleaguered was sounded in several side panels. Topics included, “Stop THIS: Threats, Harassment, Intimidation, Slander & Bullying from the Obama Administration,” “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist When You’re Not One?” and “Survivor: Conservative Journalism — With the Growth of New Media, How Does [sic] Print, Radio and TV Journalism Survive and Who is Most Likely to be Voted off the Island?”
Books for sale in the conservative book shop in the activists groups’ gallery in the basement included “Government Bullies” (Rand Paul), “Bullies,” (Ben Shapiro) and “Fed Up!” (Rick Perry). Easy method for spotting the side that isn’t #winning: They complain about being bullied.
Despite the bustle and hurly-burly of the crowd, which was heavy on jug-eared young men in their first suits (a student pass was only $40), CPAC was overwhelming in its underwhelmingness. The conservative movement seems wan, undernourished, as it must have in pre-Reagan days. The conference seemed more like an excuse to put the party back in Republican Party — spring break for dorks — than a serious grass-roots effort.
RedStateDate.com set up a table hoping to lure the lonely with its legend, “Find your running mate.” A life-size cardboard cutout of Karl Rove, with a speech bubble reading, “We win by losing, ya know?” promoted a book called, “WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost . . . Again.” Rove, the only guy to win a presidential campaign for this party lately, is now widely loathed. T-shirts were handed out reading, “I SURVIVED CPAC.” Survived, not rocked.
“I wonder if any of this s–t makes any difference,” wondered my traveling companion, a major conservative donor who is thinking of putting his checkbook away. He was present mainly to jeer people like McConnell.
The most bracing advice to the Republican Party came from a Democrat and former George McGovern and Jimmy Carter strategist: Pat Caddell. In a panel discussion titled, “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?” he compared GOP political advisers to a RICO act and castigated Team Romney for having no message and running “the single worst campaign in US history.”
The Democrats, he said, “play to win, and we play for life and death . . . all this exercise is for your personal amusement, and Obama will continue to win.”
The conference room was nearly empty when Caddell started. Word spread quickly. Conservatives started flowing in to be chastised. The room took on the character of a revival meeting. Tell it, brother!
Caddell (a moderate who doesn’t love Obama) said that though he didn’t give a damn about the Republican Party, he did care about the future of the country and said he was offended by how poorly the GOP made its case last fall.
He marveled at how the Republicans lost nine of 10 toss-up Senate races, even in North Dakota and Montana, and suggested the GOP message men don’t care how races turn out because they’re part of the Washington establishment.
These guys “have no problem playing the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters,” Caddell said. “Did you know that a quarter of those people who wanted [ObamaCare] repealed voted for Obama? A third of the voters who wanted smaller government voted for Obama.”
He called out Romney for “cravenness” on the Benghazi debacle, shouting, “They decided, well, we don’t want to look warlike. Well, how about looking like a president?”
“You didn’t know Bain was coming? Ted Kennedy used it against you!” Romney, he said, was “the worst executive I’ve ever seen,” adding, “It was like putting a lieutenant in charge of Normandy.”
Lt. Romney reported for duty on Friday afternoon in his first public appearance since the November wipeout. Dy-no-Mitt packed the ballroom and drew a long, sustained, warm and strangely forgiving standing ovation from the same gathering at which he fancifully declared himself “severely conservative” last year.
“I utterly reject pessimism,” America’s rejectee said while thanking the party loyalists. Romney apologized for losing, praised the great American spirit and suggested we look toward the 30 Republican governors — “We’ve got to listen to the governors of blue and purple states, too,” he said, mentioning many names including those of Christie and his fellow pariah, Virginia’s Bob McDonnell, aka the Uninvited.
Yet somehow a clownish reality-TV personality was welcome. Donald Trump spoke to the handful who were able to get out of bed at 8:30 Friday morning after Thursday’s parties. Trump suggested confiscating all of Iraq’s oil: “We should take it and pay ourselves back!” he offered.
Sure. Whatever. Carthage must be destroyed. Jesse Helms!
Still, the barn-burner Democrat Caddell wound up on the same page with the denialist Republicans who advocate staying the course. Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh singled out Caddell for praise because Caddell’s core message was that Republican ideas — on small government, low taxes, ObamaCare — win in polls by “18, 20 points,” but Romney was too cowardly to launch an all-out attack on liberalism.
Given better messaging and a more appealing messenger, maybe the white working class that clings to guns and religion in places like Virginia and Wisconsin and Florida would have turned out the way Democrats turned out their base in 2012.
Maybe they’d turn out for . . . a black guy. Dr. Ben Carson, the devout Christian neurosurgeon, practically levitated the gathering yesterday morning with a stirring recap of his amazing biography (he grew up poor in Detroit, went to Yale, and rose to director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins) and a seemingly off-the-cuff riff about rock-ribbed social and fiscal conservatism that came off as caring, fresh, inclusive and forward-looking. Carson has the gift that Romney (and Rubio and Perry) lack of being able to make a hard-core political speech while sounding like he’s sitting in your kitchen with a cup of coffee.
After the speech, the physician said he was retiring from brain surgery and hinted he might go into politics. He’s inexperienced, but so was 2004 Barack Obama. And as Carson put it in his big applause line, “People say, well, he’s a neurosurgeon so he couldn’t possibly know anything about economics. It’s not brain surgery.”