“Subdued,” “serious,” “hungry” and “deliberative”: These are just some of the words members of the press used Friday to describe the overall feeling of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a three-day gathering of the nation’s leading conservative politicians and activists.
“CPAC has definitely changed since, say, 2009,” Bloomberg’s Dave Weigel told the Washington Examiner’s media desk. “There’s way less strangeness than there used to be. There are no longer anti-immigrant or anti-gay groups flagrantly walking around, and there’s no fight between the gay groups and CPAC itself or the anti-gay groups.”
For Weigel and others, there’s a serious and subdued feeling to this year’s gathering of conservatives at the sprawling Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.
“CPAC is different every year in the feeling. Of course, when you’re in an election year and you’re neck deep in a primary, the passions are so much higher,” CNN’s Chris Moody told the Examiner. “The confrontations are more intense, and the stakes feel a lot tougher.”
“But it’s fairly subdued this year. People are doing a lot more listening this year and a lot less shouting because attendees want to hear where some of these potential presidential candidates stand on a whole bunch of issues,” he said.
CPAC has over the years offered potential Republican presidential candidates the opportunity to gauge possible White House bids, with this year offering time and space to possible candidates including Govs. Scott Walker, R-Wis., Chris Christe, R-N.J., and Bobby Jindal, R-La.
“Attendees this year seem subdued because this is a chance for these possible candidates to have a fair shot among these activists,” Moody said. “People are interested because I think you’ll find that a lot of people haven’t made up their minds and they’re happy to listen.”
“Now, of course, you’re going to have people who shout down [former Florida Governor] Jeb Bush or they’ll walk out. But, for a lot of these people, they want to see what these guys have to say,” he said.
Daily Signal editor-in-chief Rob Bluey agreed, adding in a conversation with the Examiner that sees this year’s gathering as “deliberative.”
“People are very much interested in paying close attention to what the candidates say. This is the year because at this point next year, things could be decided for all we know,” he said. “So this is their opportunity to hear from about a dozen potential candidates who may enter the race and so attendees are being very deliberate and serious in terms of paying attention to what they’re saying.”
“In past years, there wasn’t the incredible energy I saw yesterday with packs of people running up and down after potential candidates,” he said, adding later that the feeling despite the perceived enthusiasm is still “deliberate and serious.”
For National Review’s Jim Geraghty, the serious tone among attendees likely reflects their disappointment in the newly Republican-controlled Senate and its failure to put “the brakes” on President Obama and his various executive orders.
“This is a crowd, a lot of activists, who worked very hard in 2014, wanted to elect a Republican Senate to go with a Republican House,” he told the Examiner.
“I think the folks outside the conservative movement don’t understand that for your average rank-and-file conservative, Barack Obama is one of the worst things to happen to the country,” he said. “That he is making everything worse. So they think, ‘Alright: He’s making everything worse, he’s worse in his second term, we are going to stop this guy by getting a Republican Senate and that will put the brakes on things.'”
But many conservatives feel let down by supposedly feckless Republican leadership, he said.
Following the Republican Party’s major midterm victories in 2014, which saw the GOP wresting control of the U.S. Senate from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., conservatives feel like they got the opposite of what they worked for: They feel that the White House is more out-of-control than ever and no one is working to stop them.
“If anything, President Barack Obama, feeling liberated from not having any vulnerable Democrats in the Senate that he has to worry about, and not being up for re-election himself, he’s doing what he wants,” Geraghty said. “This is Obama without strings. This is Obama without limits. He’s doing things he would not have done were he facing re-election or if vulnerable Democrats were facing re-election.”
“So some conservatives feel like this is a slap in the face: We worked really hard as conservatives and we’re not getting what we wanted when we were told, ‘Hey, elect a Republican Senate and it’s going to make a difference.'”
This likely accounts for why this year’s gathering of conservative activists in Maryland feels so serious, he said.
“I think there’s a certain amount of trepidation. A sort of, ‘Hey, there’s a serious problem in this country. And it’s not just enough for potential candidates to go out and do the usual, ‘Do you know what’s going to get us out of these problems? Freedom,'” he said.
“Applause lines are perfectly fine, but we’re up against a very determined opponent and — for 2016 — the margin for error is not great. And it’s time for conservatives to really buckle down and say: ‘There’s a progressive leftisim that controls the executive branch. Apparently, electing a Republican Senate wasn’t enough.’ There’s a seriousness, but people are ready for 2016. The potential Republican candidates knew they had to come in here and engage with the crowd and I think most of them did reasonably well.
And there appears to be another dynamic at play at the 2015 gathering of conservative activists: For members of the press, the mood and antics of the day closely resemble the current struggles and issues of the Republican Party as a whole.
“I sense a tale of two CPACs,” TheBlaze’s Mike Opelka told the Examiner. “It felt like Thursday was the future, Friday was the establishment and Saturday is the leftovers.”
“I feel CPAC reflects Congress, and the leadership in the GOP is divided into different factions that are at war,” he said. “I think conservatives are still on some mushy ground. And they’re all trying to find out, ‘Alright. There are a lot of people who think they’re candidates, they’re kinda’ hinting they are. So what do they stand for?”
Separately, Weigel agreed, noting that like the Republican Party, CPAC attendees appear to be engaged in a bit of soul-searching, the struggle between the “grassroots” and “establishment” wings of conservatism on clear display.
“People are sorting through their issues and seeing what the party stands for before they settle on a candidate,” he said.
Attendees are “hungry,” he said, adding “they’re not ready to find a candidate today. It’s more they’re really anticipating who the person will be.”
