CPAC Belongs to Donald Trump Now
NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND-The prince is dead. Long live the king.
The very first event of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a main-stage interview with Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, set the tone for this week . It took just about eight minutes for the gathered faithful to dispense with any allegiance to the old order and welcome in the new. Fittingly, they did it by taking a dump on Jeb (!) Bush.
"What is the president like in private?" asked Mercedes Schlapp, the appointed soft-tosser from The Washington Times.
"He's a family man," said Conway. "He's happiest when he's with his family." No one laughed. Then, they had occasion to. The best compliment the president can pay you, Conway continued, is to say you're "very high energy."
"So then the worst thing is to be a 'low-energy blank,' right?" said Schlapp eagerly. The assembled crowd in the ballroom chortled together instantly. It was a deliciously familiar dig at that old scion of one of the GOP's Great Houses, the kind of conservative-on-conservative violence the crowd here might have taken issue with just a year ago. In 2016, there was a concerted effort to keep candidate Donald Trump, by then odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination, off the stage here. The Establishment Types, of which Bush was the archetype, were still very much welcome.
Not anymore. Politics, we are constantly reminded, is a rough business. This machine of power and influence has chewed the former Florida governor up and spit him out, and a man who very recently raised upwards of $100 million from conservatives who saw him as a president is now reduced to a punchline.
Conway drove the point home just a few minutes later. "I think by tomorrow," she said, "it will be TPAC here."
Gone is the outsider-insider argument. Forget about the libertarians. There is one organizing principle, one unifying force for those gathered here, and it's one man.
You Might Also Like
