A year after being the toast of CPAC, Steve Bannon is nowhere to be found

Bannon’s complete absence from an event that featured him heavily in 2017 demonstrates just how much the White House team — and the party itself — has shifted during the first year of Trump’s presidency. Gone, too, from the annual gathering of conservatives are Reince Priebus, Trump’s former chief of staff and former head of the Republican National Committee, and KT McFarland, a former national security aide to Trump. Both Priebus and McFarland had spoken at CPAC in multiple previous years.

Bannon’s fall from the top of the party was swift and complete. Not only was he ousted from the West Wing in August amid an overhaul of the president’s staff, but he lost his position at the helm of Breitbart News in January after an author published insults Bannon had leveled at Trump family members.

Perhaps even worse, Bannon seems to have lost his influence with the president he helped elect. Trump publicly denounced Bannon after the publication of a book that quoted his former chief strategist as calling his daughter “dumb as a brick.”

And Bannon’s hopes of becoming a populist kingmaker were dashed late last year when the campaign for the firebrand candidate he backed in the Alabama Senate race, Roy Moore, imploded amid a sex scandal that handed a reliably Republican seat to a Democrat for the first time in more than two decades.

These days, Bannon spends his time “building the grassroots effort” behind the scenes of the “populist nationalist movement,” a source familiar with his activities told the Washington Examiner.

But the low profile Bannon now maintains is a far cry from the headliner status he enjoyed at the conservative movement’s highest profile annual event just a year ago when he took the stage alongside Priebus.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, told the Washington Examiner. “His rise was so spectacular. … The fact that he’s off the grid is mind-boggling because I really like and care for him and I think he’s a smart guy, and I think it’s too bad. He’s a great talent.”

Schlapp said he was “disappointed” when he read Bannon’s comments in the book Fire and Fury ,by Michael Wolff, that ultimately cemented the former Breitbart chief’s exile from the party.

“I felt like he’d either been taken advantage of by a liberal journalist or he had a moment when he said things he would regret,” Schlapp said.

Upon his departure from the White House last year, Bannon set out to find candidates who could challenge incumbent Senate Republicans in 2018 and embarked on a mission to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., by electing insurgents. But after the Moore debacle and his comments about Trump family members exhausted Bannon’s political capital, even the outsider candidates he once supported began to distance themselves from the former Trump aide.

“I think it’s unfortunate, because I think that he did help the president a lot and activated a lot of people who might not have gone to the polls before, but you cannot tolerate that kind of behavior,” said Kelli Ward, who Bannon backed to take on Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., in October before Flake announced he would not seek re-election.

“So when someone does something that is unfortunate like he did, you have to say ‘OK, you’re relegated over there,’” Ward said of Bannon’s comments to Wolff during an interview with the Washington Examiner, pushing an imaginary person aside with her hands. “And that’s what happened with him.”

Ward said she did not regret accepting Bannon’s endorsement last year, despite her efforts to downplay her relationship with the former Breitbart chief and to ally herself with the Trump agenda.

“At the time, it was where I needed to be to be able to keep other people out of the race and to continue to propel me to victory,” Ward said.

The Trump administration will send 12 officials to speak at CPAC this year, demonstrating the extent to which the conservative movement has embraced and even bent to the will of a president whose candidacy conservatives initially resisted.

Brad Blakeman, a GOP strategist and former senior aide to George W. Bush, said the conservative gathering will highlight the team Trump has assembled to help him govern, not the one that helped him get elected.

“The reality of White House politics is that the people who get you to the White House are not necessarily the people you need in the White House,” Blakeman said. “Campaigning and governing is as different as night and day. It is not unusual for campaign people to drop off as a governing team is assembled and a White House team takes shape.”

Blakeman said CPAC 2018 “is showcasing Trump the president” by featuring his governing team, not the “lean” team that once ran his campaign.

Before he helped steer Trump’s campaign to victory and earned himself a spot among the president’s top confidantes, Bannon rarely attended the annual conservative gathering and even criticized it for excluding voices from the party’s populist periphery.

Bannon and Breitbart spearheaded counterprogramming in 2013 that featured controversial figures who didn’t land an invitation to speak at CPAC. The event, dubbed “The Uninvited,” included appearances from Pamela Geller, an author with incendiary views on Islam, Larry Solov, CEO of Breitbart, and Bannon himself.

Bannon’s panel on the main stage at CPAC last year packed the ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort. Although Priebus and Schlapp joined him for the discussion, Bannon’s participation generated the most interest ahead of the event because the elusive chief strategist rarely appeared on camera or spoke publicly, unlike his media-friendly stagemates.

“Matt, I want to thank you for finally inviting me to CPAC,” Bannon joked at the beginning of his blockbuster appearance at the conference last year.

Schlapp, whose organization puts CPAC together each year, said the response he received after facilitating the discussion between Priebus and Bannon demonstrated the curiosity and mystique surrounding Bannon.

“When that panel occurred, there was a very bright light coming from Steve Bannon, and I think the world saw that there was a lot of candle-power and a lot of provocative thought, and it was an electric moment,” Schlapp said.

“The feedback I got personally was just people were fascinated. They were like, ‘What’s he like to talk to?’ ‘Does he seem like a normal guy?’ They really just were fascinated by him,” Schlapp said. “A year later, I think it’s a fair story that today he’s basically off the grid.”

Breitbart, which Bannon helped grow into an influential player in the age of Trump, is set to have a limited presence on the main stage at CPAC this year. Raheem Kassam, Breitbart’s London editor, is scheduled to host a national security panel on Thursday and to introduce Nigel Farage, a nationalist British political figure and top Trump booster, on Friday.

But Bannon’s former news organization participated much more fully in the conservative confab last year, when the site had reached the high-water mark of its influence.

Breitbart journalists and editors filled eight speaking roles at the conference last year, according to the 2017 schedule.

Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former senior adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said CPAC’s roster of speakers doesn’t always determine who is leading the conservative movement in any given year.

“CPAC is an interesting event, but not necessarily reflective of where the party is headed,” Conant said. “Trump skipped the event in 2016 and won the nomination a few weeks later. Sarah Palin was a big draw in 2014 and 2015.”

Conant noted many GOP lawmakers opted to skip the conference this year because the event fell during a congressional recess, meaning members are likely spending the week in their districts.

“CPAC attendees represent an important part of the party,” Conant said. “But they’re not necessarily representative of Republicans nationwide.”