Party Crashing: A critical view of CPAC

After showing the federal security guards my driver’s license, I walked through the metal detector. Beep! Between my suit and overcoat, I must have had over a dozen pockets, and I didn’t feel like figuring out which one held my change, so they scanned my jacket and I walked through again. This time I made it without trouble, but there were still old ladies waiting for security guards to pass wands over them to make sure they weren’t hiding knives beneath their broaches.

No, I was not getting aboard an airplane but entering the 32nd annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). With the exclusion of the year I was abroad, I have made the three-hour drive from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where I am now a senior, to the conference every year of college. In the past, it was held at a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, but this year it took place at the Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.

In many ways this is appropriate; a giant federal building next door to the headquarters of the IRS is an ironic comment on conservatives who have made peace with big government. The guards and metal detectors represent the movement’s main passion, the national-security state. And the fact that the only reason they decided to move it is because the building is named after Ronald Reagan suggests attendees’ primary preoccupation: putting a simulacrum of our 40th president on everything from the $10 bill to Mt. Rushmore. A number of people at the conference were wearing shirts and hats that piously stated, “God, Reagan, Bush.”

JCPAC, sponsored by the American Conservative Union (ACU), is the largest gathering of conservative activists in the country. Neoconservative Marshall Wittmann derisively calls it the Star Trek convention for conservatives. While I have never been to a Star Trek convention (really!), from my second-hand impressions, this description is apt. Several dozen conservative organizations and a few vendors set up booths where would-be inductees can learn about the various groups, sign up for their mailing lists, and buy their products. Simultaneously, conservative activists, politicians, and intellectuals give speeches to a fawning audience around the clock.

The major attractions this year were Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, several senators, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich. I will confess that I didn’t listen to most of their speeches; I knew what to expect. I walked into Miss Coulter’s speech halfway through and within 15 seconds I heard her utter “there’s a difference between free speech and treason” and promptly exited. This is not to say that ACU did not manage to find some interesting speakers, though American Conservative editors Patrick Buchanan and Philip Giraldi were not given the opportunity to talk directly about foreign policy. Former Congressman Bob Barr gave a passionate speech against invasions of civil liberties in the post-9/11 era, and a very thoughtful debate was held on immigration policy with Phyllis Schafly and Numbers USA’s Roy Beck debating Tamar Jacoby and Stephen Moore.

The only antiwar voice that got a chance to speak directly against the administration’s foreign policy was the venerable John Basil Utley of Conservatives for Peace. Mr. Utley was given a mere three minutes on a 10-man panel, and I heard several people cough obscenities about him as he spoke. He undoubtedly received the coolest response of any of the speakers.

I spent several hours at the Conservatives for Peace booth. The group is an offshoot of Americans Against World Empire, which was started by antiwar conservatives and libertarians during the first Gulf War. They had copies of Ivan Eland’s The Empire Has No Clothes, this magazine, Sobran’s, and various articles by Paul Craig Roberts, Charley Reese, Pat Buchanan, and others. While a few well-known antiwar libertarians such as Dr. Eland and James Bovard stopped by with words of support, the most common response from attendees was to call the people manning the table leftists, unpatriotic, or communists. The last accusation is especially ironic as Mr. Utley was an outspoken Cold Warrior and is the son of the great anticommunist Freda Utley.

While the Conservatives for Peace booth was not very popular, an outfit selling “Freedom Gear” was. Their tasteful t-shirts included one with a likeness of an Abrams tank and the words “Iraqi Roadkill Is What’s For Dinner.” Another had a Frenchman waving a white flag and the words, “We Salute You.” When the vendor asked me if I would like to buy the shirt, I told him that I didn’t think the French were cowardly. He snapped back that they quickly negotiated peace in World War II and would not let us use their airfields during our latest war. I explained to him that 1.3 million French died in World War I, more than all American war deaths in history, and since over 100,000 died during World War II, their reluctance to fight is understandable. I also asked how he would like it if the French wanted to put troops in America. The response I got from the several people who had gathered around was, “What are you, a Democrat?” This apparently meant communist because they also sold shirts that said, “What Blue States? All I see is Red” with hammers and sickles strewn across the West Coast, Northeast, and Upper Midwest.

It seems that what I thought was just a “two minute hate” against the French and other pet enemies of the Right has now become over two years of hate. At a cocktail party sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, I had joked with a fellow young conservative that I was glad when the Dixie Chicks were boycotted by country radio for criticizing President Bush—not because of their politics but because I didn’t like their music. She told me that they were her favorite band, but she destroyed all their records and still doesn’t listen to them. She said she didn’t like country musicians who shoved their politics down the fans’ throats. Apparently this didn’t apply to Toby Keith, Darryl Worley, Montgomery Gentry, or the other country artists who supported the war much more actively than the Dixie Chicks opposed it.

One of the most interesting things I noted was the burgeoning movement to draft Condoleezza Rice to run for president in 2008. When I talked to a few people wearing “Draft Condi” buttons to find out why they thought she should become president, the only answers I got were that she was intelligent and supported the president. All of them denied that they wanted her to run because she was a black female, but they did not question that this fact had its political utility. My initial response was that her race and sex were unlikely to gain points from the professional anti-racists or even from minority and women voters. I learned, however, that the main reason they thought her race was useful was not because she would deflect accusations of racism (not that they didn’t entertain the possibility), but because it could help expose left-wing racism—whatever that means.

Secretary Rice may be quite conservative, but the only thing I knew about her was that she was willing to lie to help the president go to war and that she supports affirmative action. A few weeks after the conference, I read that she is also pro-choice. If she turns out to be pro-gay marriage and for increasing federal spending, as well, I doubt it will do much to deflect conservative enthusiasm for her. Supporting George W. Bush and whatever wars he decides to fight seems to be only litmus test.

In fact, if one thing was apparent from CPAC, it is that foreign policy has become the defining issue for the Right, and anyone who opposes endless war will be derided as a liberal, anti-American, or worse. This is done at the expense of all domestic concerns— both social and economic. Although New York Post editor Ryan Sager complained that open-borders advocates and supporters of homosexual marriage were not greeted with unqualified acceptance at CPAC, they were both treated with much more respect than anyone who opposed the war. That people like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger are hailed as conservative heroes shows that many conservatives are willing to sacrifice almost any principle for electoral success and war.

Another general observation was that college students are much more likely to be unyielding Bush loyalists than older conservatives. I talked to numerous people who were in their mid-twenties to early thirties who agreed with me on many issues like immigration and foreign policy. The president and vice president of the ACU, David Keene and Donald Devine, have both expressed skepticism of the neoconservatives, blind support for President Bush, and our current foreign adventures. While they may bite their tongues to ensure that they can get big-name politicians to speak at their events—Mr. Devine was nearly fired for being insufficiently enthusiastic about President Bush’s address to the ACU last year—and neoconservative foundation money, they at least remember a conservative movement that used to stand for limited government and a national-interest foreign policy.

But most college students, who came of age as conservatives in the post-9/11 world, identify conservatism as support for the war in Iraq and President Bush. Russell Kirk, Ludwig von Mises, and Richard Weaver, if they have even heard of them, are seen as thoughtful but irrelevant—and certainly not as fun as having David Horowitz and Ann Coulter tell you how to accuse your professors of treason.

Sam Francis, who died a few days before the conference, spent the last 15 years explaining why the conservative movement has been a failure. From the mood of most of the attendees at CPAC, you would not get that impression. Rather, they were exuberant, triumphalist. Republicans control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and the majority of the governorships across the country. Fox News and the Internet give the Right a voice alongside the traditionally liberal print and television media. But what very few would admit, or even care about, is that government is still getting bigger, abortion is no closer to being banned than it was 20 years ago, homosexual marriage seems to be inevitable, and immigration is inundating our country at unprecedented rates. If electing Republicans and waging wars is the gauge, then the movement has been a gleaming success. But if that becomes conservatism’s raison d’etre, we can pray for nothing more than its failure. ______________________________________________________

Your article is laced with rhetorical fallacy and weasel words (like endless war). Not that I don't appeciate the effort you put into this, but you might try more subtlety: whatever good points you made were lost by what appears to be contempt and disdain for both your subject material and your audience. Note that Ann Coulter does not convert many liberals.

Marcus Epstein is a student at the College of William and Mary.

Correction: Marcus Epstein has lead such a pampered and sheltered life that he has not yet come to the realization that the price of freedom is not FREE

Me again. Not here to flame you. Conservatives welcome honest criticism, we've had to adapt after being shut out of the MSM and the PCBS of academia. But here's another example:

...but because it could help expose left-wing racism—whatever that means.

You made no good faith attempt to follow up and learn, for yourself and for your readers, what your subject meant by left-wing racism. That makes you appear not credible. This article will play well over at MoveOn, but if you intend to change hearts and minds you'll need to at least be percieved to be honest in your criticisms.

No one in politics ever gets everything they want.

When Democrats are in power, their hard core constituants always gripe that their agenda is not getting moved forward fast enough. They want more than their politicians can push through.

It's no different with conservatives. After fourty years of a Democrat controlled congress, Republicans will support "their" politicians against all attacks, even it the majority of the party core wants them to be more conservative.

You can't anoint moderate Republicans in the primaries and then expect then to take a hard right after November.

Liberals have the advantage of us in that area. Their politicians will take a hard left turn. We tend to get the 'lesser of two evils' choice.

Basically. Marcus is still young, though, and still has plenty of time to realize that there's a portion of the world which hates him merely for existing, and no amount of leaving them alone will appease. That, and if the mark of a "true" conservative is hanging around with the likes of Leonora Fulani and Taki Cokespoonopolous, count me out ;)

The guards and metal detectors represent the movement’s main passion, the national-security state.

No, the guards and the metal detectors have been in every federal office building for decades now. They have nothing to do with CPAC.

Marcus is still young, though, and still has plenty of time to realize...

Too true. I was a socialist in my youth. Nothing makes for a better Conservative than a flirtation with the Left in your youth. ;)

Marcus

It is interesting that you have published your own piece. That not by way of oblique criticism but as an observation about the changes in way opinions get disseminated and changed. I think it good that conservatives of every stripe are finding ways to get heard.

I know that it is thought essential to adopt a breezy tone to reflect a bit of panache to the jaded reader in order to assure him that he is privy to the latest and coolest insights. But in the long run such affectations evaporate with no trace and it is, after all, an ambition to influence minds which motivates your writings and your efforts to publish them.

A minor criticism from one who has attended CPAC and who felt warm and tingly as he compared it to the bad old days of almost two generations ago during the Goldwater days when we conservatives (then of your age) of any stripe were blatantly misrepresented by the then dominant media: You lost me when you exonerated the French. Sir, we would all do well to cultivate a visceral enmity toward the French of the kind which sustained one of England's saviors, Viscount Lord Nelson.

Thank you for posting such an interesting article.

Conservatism, by its very nature, is distinct from [other] ideologies in that it has no single answer to any question - but rather builds upon the fundamental foundations of our basic values (family, country &c.), and therefore is open to a wide variety of potential conclusions.

Those who attempt to force a particular narrow perspective of conservatism not only ignore the basic tenets, but rather dispose of them - and cannot really claim the title.

It is good to see that the diversity of conservatism is still represented by some Americans - if not all.

It would be great if we could ignore the rest of the world and mind our own business in the world.WE CAN NOT.Reagan became conservative reading Weaver,Kirk,Taft,Von Mises,Hayek etc.Then he read Chambers!!!!!!! We have to carry a big stick and swat anything that moves.

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