To the Editor:
CPAC is the annual Republican event where Party activists, elected officials, and loyalists come together to check the Republican mood and rally around their shared values. It has been an essential stop for presidential hopefuls. Not this year, and the group was densely Trumpian. Still, in the poll for preferred presidential candidate, Trump won only 62% of his own crowd.
Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Kevin McCarthy, and Ron DeSantis declined invitations to attend. Part of the reason could be the scandalous sexual accusations made by a staffer against Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union which organizes CPAC, who has unconvincingly denied the claim.
CPAC has apparently morphed into a Donald Trump fan club and many Repos are not inclined to join RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel also did not attend, though Trump supported her recent reelection.When she later declared that all Republican presidential candidates, in order to ascend the debate stage, will be required to sign a pledge of support for the eventual nominee, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman told CNN that Trump “will support the Republican nominee because it will be him.”
Trump delivered a rambling keynote address and reveled in self-adoration and his false 2020 election fraud claims. He claimed that all the storefronts in Portland, Oregon are gone, because stores are "burned down every week." He repeated the lie that he “saved” NATO by forcing other countries to pay up. In fact, in 2019 Trump tried to withdraw the US from NATO. He called non-MAGA Republicans “freaks, neocons, globalist open borders zealots — and fools."
Announced presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy attended, as did potential hopefuls Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott. The usual election-denier suspects were there. In a monstrous rejection of democratic and Christian principles, Michael Knowles, a Daily Caller host, stated, “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,“ and Lauren Boebert proclaimed that God approves her plan to “uproot and defund any agency that advocates for diversity, equity, or inclusion.”
Someone else was missing from the event: Fox. In years past, Fox Nation helped underwrite CPAC and provided streaming coverage of the multi-day event. Fox contributed nothing this year and their “big guns” Hannity, Carlson, and Ingraham were conspicuously absent. Black-fly magnet Steve Bannon has vowed to bring Fox down for revelations in the Dominion lawsuit and their recent lack of Trumpian enthusiasm.
There is something afoot in Repo World.
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore