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The slogan for the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was “America Uncanceled.” Yet, during a speech by former President Donald Trump, unquestionably the apex of the convention, he named every member of Congress who voted in favor of impeachment of convention, saying “get rid of them all.” A week later, Trump dedicated an entire official statement bashing the most successful campaign strategist in Republican history, Karl Rove, for his criticism of Trump’s CPAC speech in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Prior to CPAC, Trump issued a similar statement attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), calling him “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.” Along with his tacky and uncreative nicknames for other Republicans such as “Jeff ‘Flakey’ Flake,” “the warmonger Liz Cheney,” “little Ben Sasse,” and “liddle’ Bob Corker” (yes, Trump used the same insult for Sasse and Corker, and previously for Marco Rubio and Mike Bloomberg as well), Trump has been a proponent of his own version of cancel culture.
For Donald Trump to not only speak at CPAC, but to have the entire convention built around his personality, is a major precedent in itself. As The Dispatch’s Andrew Egger noted, “there’s ostensibly nothing modern conservatives hate more than a loser—Sen. Mitt Romney, after all, was once a CPAC darling too.” CPAC coped with designing the event around the personality of a loser by simply pretending he was a winner and canceling those who offered an alternative account. Along with Trump’s familiar lies of a “stolen election” in his speech, there was a combination of twelve panels questioning the validity of the 2020 election. As Kellyanne Conway prophesied in 2017, CPAC has morphed into TPAC or “Trump PAC.” Trump and other Republican officials have perpetuated a crusade against conservatives who offer even the mildest criticism of Trump, to the extent that many define conservatism not based on any policy or even ideology, but on pure loyalty to Trump.
One of the core differences between conservatism and progressivism in the US is that disputes amongst conservatives often feature debates on ranging topics such as spending, tariffs, immigration policy, carbon tax, and education stemming from either ideological contretemps, or varying perspectives on the efficiency of a certain policy. Contrarily, disagreements among progressives focus on power; tactics that better further the policies they all support. However, conservative pundits in the Trump years have been using the progressive’s playbook, only replacing loyalty to the most progressive agenda with loyalty to Trump. Historically, conservatism had consisted as a collective group of factions, of differing values and policy views, from the fusionism of social conservatives with laissez-faire fiscal conservatives, and famous rivalries of Nixon vs Goldwater, Buckley Jr. vs Rockefeller, Ford vs Reagan, and Romney vs. Paul. Nowadays, certain Republican officials who act as Trump cheerleaders love to shut down conversations by labeling (another traditional progressive tactic) the lesser Trump loyalist as a RINO (Republican-In-Name-Only). Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) are two prime targets of the term RINO, despite being two of the most conservative members of Congress, showing that these RINO labels aren’t justified by their vote on any policy issue, but only blind loyalty to Trump.
Following the 2020 November election, I (wrongly) predicted that Republican officials would start to distance themselves from Trump. My reasoning for this shift was most Republican officials, many of whom were harsh critics of Trump during the 2016 GOP primaries, came to support him because it was the best route to pass conservative policies. However, although that may have been an explanation for their initial support of Trump, their continued support of Trump represents not loyalty to conservative principles, but fear of the MAGA voter base. Congressmen in general, especially Republicans, have become more afraid of primary challengers than their general election opponents. Currently, an extreme total of five incumbent Republican senators, Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Rob Portman (R-OH), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) have announced their retirement at the end of this current term, with 87-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) likely to follow suit. Despite only Burr voting to convict Trump, all six senators were expected to have MAGA-crazed primary challengers in an effort to perpetuate right-wing cancel culture.
Another event at CPAC, was a straw poll for the preferred 2024 nominee. Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump led with 55% of the vote, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the runner-up with 21%. Despite Trump’s exorbitant lead, 45% of CPAC attendees (nearly all Trump super-supporters) want someone other than Trump as the next nominee. While CPAC straw-polls aren’t entirely reliable (eight years ago Rand Paul won the CPAC presidential poll) based on this data and that the MAGA crowd represents a loud minority (not a silent majority) of the Republican voter base, this could be an early source of optimism for potential challengers in the 2024 GOP nomination and for other conservatives canceled by the “America Uncanceled” movement.
