CPAC Is going To Damage The GOP, Rather Than Unite It

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Once upon a time, CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference was exactly that, pretty much a functional conference. Sure, they had speeches up the wazoo, but they also had working groups, seminars, polls, and tons of networking. It was a sounding board for Presidential hopefuls for the next cycle, and set the party orthodoxy for the midterms.

Not this year. This year, CPAC is going to be a four day pissing contest and bitching board. Normally, early 2024 hopefuls would show up to speak, and hope for a strong showing in the last day 2024 Presidential Straw Poll. But with Trump sitting at 58% popularity for 2024, this year the conference is going to be a nonstop, constant recitation of The Big Lie, in a desperate attempt to reunite the party around Trump. There’s just one simple problem. There is no party without a cohesive message, and Donald John Trump is not a coherent message.

In 2016 Donald Trump secured the GOP nomination for President. And at the convention, they signed off on an official party platform. Trump changed it to eliminate offensive weapons for Ukraine, but there was a wide ranging platform of party principles and goals. You know what the official GOP party platform was coming out of the 2020 GOP convention? Whatever the fuck Trump says. That was it. The party stopped standing for anything, and chose to run specifically and solely on the cult of Trump.

And if current indications are anything to go by, they’re about to do it again. This year’s CPAC is shaping up to be a desperate attempt to reunite the party around the rotting aura of Trump, because, I don’t know, some abused partners just can’t seem to break free from their spouse? Trump’s base is somewhere between 28-33% of the GOP. And the majority of the GOP would like at least some passing lip service to conservative principles, and they’re not going to get it.

This is a 40 car pile up looking for an intersection. Trump is toxic to GOP white suburban women, and their spouses, as both 2018 and 2020 showed. And if the GOP is going to use CPAC 2021 as a coronation for Trump 2024, then they are just daring these voters to rebel against the party again in 2022, while also making sure that they scarify away any possible large corporate donations to the party.

And they just keep digging the grave deeper. President Biden’s Covid-19 relief bill is insanely popular across the entire political spectrum with the public, as is the $15 an hour minimum wage. And by the looks of it, the GOP in both chambers are going to vote in lock step in opposition to the bill, forcing the Democrats to pass it solely with their own votes. Pop Quiz! Once the Democrats pass the Covid-19 relief bill without GOP support, which party is going to look better to the American population, the GOP or the Democrats?

I have been covering this shit for a long time, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that voters want politicians to stand for something! And if you want them to vote for you, then they kind of expect that you stand for the same things that they do. And in the weaning post Trump era, what do GOP candidates and incumbents actually stand for?

By the looks of it, President Biden is going to immediately follow up the passage of the Covid relief bill with his vaunted infrastructure package. This is also going to be chock-a-block full of things that will be popular with the majority of the population. Things like universal broadband internet, upgraded airports and ports, improved schools and better pay for teachers, massive road and bridge repair and high speed rail. All coming with the extra bonus of millions of high paying jobs. And the Republicans being Republicans, they will oppose all of these things that their own constituents love, and without even a coherent reason for doing so. Obstruction is now their only policy and position.

CPAC will continue to play itself out over the next three days. But if it turns out like I expect it will, far from uniting the party, all it will do is to piss off the non Trump conservative movement, scare away the corporate donor class from any participation in the 2022 midterms, and convince any potential rising mainstream GOP star that they’re better off sticking with their job at Walmart, rather than getting involved in this shit show. What a way to run a railroad.

Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35

 

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17 COMMENTS

  1. Obstruction is all Moscow Mitch has……they have no ideas, suggestions, or paths forward on anything, and haven’t for years…..nothing but obstruction of the ideas of people who are actually trying to solve problems and make progress.

    It is much easier to simply oppose an idea than it is to come up with the idea yourself……lying and making up “facts” about why something can’t be done rather than helping make the idea a reality or even improving on the idea……but that would take intelligence and effort…..two things they are sorely lacking.

    • And that approach only gets you so far, Blue. After a certain point, you have to make something that’s yours. The continuing mistake of the GQP is that they think Trump and his cronies can do the building.

  2. ‘Obstruction is now their only policy and position.’
    As it has been for quite some time. Their last motto was an ironic reference to this. There was no way that they could Make America Great Again, they can’t MAKE or DO anything. All they can do is try to block what the only capable people are doing. And when they gain power they just wreck everything to ‘prove’ that governments can’t do anything. That’s why the productive states are Democratic and the Republican states are like Kansas and Texas, with their failures now measured by death and shortened lives in poverty.

  3. Amongst that meagre MAGAt 28-33% of the Geriatric Old Party are many older folks, stuck in their chosen time warps, counting on Trumpism to keep them safe from dangerous realities like racial diversity and basic democracy. They won’t change but they will age and die off, so that percentage will reduce with time.

  4. The irony: doing it this way undercuts even TRUMP’S goals of hosing the GQP for a few extra bucks. He’d get more if he and his toadies could lie convincingly enough to make corporate backers open their bank accounts again.

  5. Well, you’ve got to hand it to Mitt Romney. He–along with the rest of the GOP–is firmly against the $15/hour minimum wage (for all the usual horror stories reasons the GOP’s opposed any minimum wage increase for the last 40 years) but he’s proposed raising the minimum wage to $10/hour over the next 3 or 4 years. From what I could understand of the article I read the story, apparently after the wage has reached the $10 mark, it’s supposed to increase based on the rate of inflation. If the minimum wage had just gone up to match the inflation rate since the rate was last increased to $7.25 in 2009, by my math, the current minimum wage would only be about $8.80.

    Of course, the odds that Romney can get his fellow GOPers to go along with even this proposal is pretty small. After all, as I mentioned above, the GOP has opposed the minimum wage–not just increasing it but the very idea since the GOP believes that companies will pay generously out of the goodness of their corporate hearts (which, of course, is the ultimate in absurdities since they don’t want to pay the minimum wage as it is much less pay more than it).

    • Mitt is a zero effect in a party that’s long since gone round the bend. Wake me up when Willard does something that’s actually important.

  6. We know a number of older people with intelligence, insight, values, and generosity. They’re called Democrats or Independents. They are in their 70s and 80s and they vote. Don’t discount them by referring to the GOP as Geriatric. Actually a number of fascist-leaning people appear to be young. Where have all the flowers gone, indeed?

    • You forgot to mention that the latter group of youths is also overwhelmingly white. Schoolyard bullies, the lot of them, which is all fascists really are at heart. And whatever those 70 and 80 year olds’ political affiliations, you’re missing Murf’s point. Their expiration date is coming up and most of the loudmouths of that ARE Republicans. They will not be missed.

  7. They pretty much have no choice of platforms, as long as Trump is in charge. He is so erratic and out of control, that yep, they have no general direction. Just small, pissy negativism, obstruction and power grabbing. Very sad that some people chose that as their politics.

      • I’d really prefer raising Godzilla to wreak havoc on CPAC. If we could limit the damage to just the actual convention venue, that would be the better option but, if the host city has to suffer for its sin (of hosting the event), so be it.

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