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As she finished, they applauded obediently, but there was no joy in it. The crowd sat silent for her entire speech. “The answers are going to come from the people of this country rising up in a grassroots movement.” McFarland ended with a bizarre attempt at tying these international events to what was supposed to be Thursday morning’s conference theme: the value of local political action. Though she did not overtly call for military action, she emphasized the importance of standing with our allies. She framed Putin’s aggression as part of a “generational struggle not just about Europe,” asserted that the Russian dictator would continue to gobble up territory, and assured attendees that Putin’s endgame was the dissolution of NATO.

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After years of framing China as America’s nemesis, she argued that the recent China-Russia pact has restored “the China-Soviet alliance has bedeviled the free world.”īut McFarland also deployed anti-Russian rhetoric not heard on a CPAC stage in many years. CPAC speakers had planned to hammer Biden on inflation, and so McFarland told the crowd that skyrocketing oil prices under the Biden administration gave Putin the money he needed to launch his invasion. McFarland took the stage in an unscheduled appearance to try to weave this horrific development into the existing party line. It seems unlikely that Russia could possibly displace it.īut this wan effort to paper over the Putin-lionizing in which many conservatives indulged in the run-up to the invasion is a far cry from a policy position, and 20 minutes later, ACU senior fellow K.T. China now firmly occupies the position of Republican bugbear. More significantly, he tapped into America’s war fatigue to transform the GOP from the party of American interventionism into the party of American noninterference. Trump, infamously cozy with Russia, praised Putin’s strength and moxy just two days before the invasion began. The party painstakingly forged unity from chaos. The conservative cup runneth over with the gifts of runaway inflation, Covid fatigue, and the inevitable, humiliating end of the decades-long Afghanistan debacle.

January 6, 2021, is no longer the elephant in the room - only one speaker directly addressed the incident last year - but the subject of entire speeches devoted to accusations fingering the FBI as the real culprit behind the Capitol riot and exhortations against the inhumane treatment experienced by arrested participants - in the genuinely horrific carceral system attendees tend to champion for everyone else. Election fraud is no longer a fraught third rail but party dogma the so-called “Big Lie” is questioned only in whispers.

No one seriously doubted that Trump would take the keynote slot at the conference. The 2022 crowd may be awkwardly stumbling to make sense of Ukraine, but they’ve resolved their own crises with a remarkable self-assurance. Whatever doubts may have existed in the conservative mind have since been wiped away. The Democrats are not merely the opposition but an enemy to be crushed. Two roads diverged in a blood-red wood and, live on stage at CPAC 2021, the American conservative movement chose the road less traveled, at least in the United States: conspiracy, vengeance, and a dangerous undermining of America’s long history of peaceful transition of power. This was a party in the midst of an existential crisis. Trump himself was not slated to attend until mere days before the event.

CPAC listed Mike Pence as the keynote speaker of the Ronald Reagan dinner. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham had broken ranks with Trump. At that time, the Republican Party’s future was far from certain the precarity and tension were palpable. CPAC 2021 took place in the shadow of January 6, and the air crackled with panic and uncertainty. It will not be the first time the conference opened with the conservative movement in such awkward arrears.

And so, with only a few hours separating the unthinkable and the opening ceremonies of CPAC, the conservative wing of the Republican Party must scramble to develop a position in real time in front of a live audience.