To read the liberal media, the Conservative Political Action Conference and Chairman Matt Schlapp are a little too pro-Trump. The press have even claimed that some marquee Republicans skipped the annual event because of its focus on former President Donald Trump.
But to go in another direction, said Schlapp and some attending the conference, would be to ignore that Trump leads in 2024 surveys and that even media polls show him supported by a sizable majority of the GOP.
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“I think Trump is the odds-on favorite,” Schlapp told Secrets while not discounting the chance other candidates could catch fire. “These other guys are going to give it a shot, and we’ll see where we go,” he said.
“Trump was an amazing president. It is very hard for me not to think Trump was the greatest president,” he said. “When they said that, at the beginning, I said, ‘Nah, come on.’ Now looking back on it, he really might have been our greatest president,” he added.
But perspective is everything, and he said it’s hard to judge past presidents with modern ones.
“We’ve been around for almost 250 years, so it’s hard to say who’s the greatest, right? Look at what they do with sports legends. Like in baseball, how do you really compare a guy from 150 years ago to today?” said Schlapp.
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Pollster Jim McLaughlin, who has worked with Schlapp and CPAC, said the conservative lightning rod is different from many inside-the-Beltway Republicans looking for a Trump alternative.
“Matt isn’t a swamp creature, he understands the grassroots conservative movement as well as anyone,” he told Secrets.
“All you have to do is walk around CPAC and talk to conservatives, and the people will tell you, Trump is the conservative movement much in the same way Ronald Reagan was back in the day. Why? Because Trump’s conservative reform agenda worked, it was a success when it came to making our economy stronger, our nation safer, and it promoted freedom throughout the world,” he added.
