The Trump lovefest known as the Conservative Political Action Conference returned to National Harbor, across the Potomac from the nation’s capital, on Thursday.
It was a triumphant return for the right wing of Republican Party politics, long represented over the party’s DC establishment at the three-day event. But with many of the Republican electeds on Capital Hill and their allies in the White House aligned firmly with the MAGA, “America First” agenda, CPAC was once again a homecoming for what Senator Jim Banks called onstage the “new right” of American politics.
Of their enemies, the Indiana senator declared: “That Republican Party is dead. We have no time for wimpy Republicans.”
With day one of the conference taking place on the one-month anniversary of Trump’s swearing-in, much of the agenda was focused on the “wins” Trump’s allies could point to from the post-election period.
It was also a place for a little gloating.
“It feels different this year,” podcaster Michael Knowles declared with a nudge-nudge tone from the stage. “I don’t know what it is....it can’t just be that we won.” He’d go on to joke that the feeling in the room was due to Trump’s victory in the popular vote.
The day’s lineup also included praise of Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts by Trumpworld figures including Banks, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, and others.
Numerous speakers on the first day used their time to confront the growing but largely ineffective small-d democratic resistance to Musk’s efforts, including court challenges filed by state attorneys general. The guest list was less prestigious, as far as MAGA celebrities go, than 2024’s election-year bash and the earlier pre-election launchpad that took place in 2023.
A recurring theme Thursday: the necessity of Congress “doing its job” — cementing, through legislation, many of the personnel and policy changes being pursued by the DOGE cost-cutting initiative.
“He’s right over the target right now,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday at CPAC, speaking of Musk. “That’s why Democrats are so nervous.”
One of his fellow speakers was Trump’s attorney Alina Habba, now a counselor to the president. Habba, who joined a Q&A session, dodged a question from the moderator who suggested that federal judges that have ruled against the White House lacked the constitutional standing to do so.
It also meant a victory lap over the perceived defeat of “wokeness,” namely an image of modern masculinity and an embrace of LGBTQ Americans, including transgender people (who were a top target for onstage derision by the day’s speakers).
Leading that charge was none other than JD Vance, the vice president, who spoke Thursday morning and was the day’s keynote address. His remarks, aimed primarily at young men, painted the left and its views of healthy masculinity as inherently hostile to the gender as a whole.
“I think that our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge,” said Vance, who received loud applause from a crowd of a few hundred. “Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man.”
He also previewed how the right’s victim narrative on the issues of religious liberty and abortion rights would morph into a concerted effort by an empowered, politically-dominant conservative movement to push America’s cultural identity firmly rightward.
“We have got to persuade our fellow Americans,” Vance said from the CPAC convention stage. “Unborn life is worthy of protection. It is sacred in the eyes of God.”
“We have the power [now],” said the vice president. “We have to pick up the torch and fight for that, every single day.”
