Donald Trump violates CPAC’s conservative safe space

Share

In the exhibit hall at the Conservative Political Action Conference, one of the very first booths that catches the eye is staffed by a middle-aged man in a camouflage baseball cap hawking an online dating service.

Craig Knight was tired of websites pairing him with liberal women, he explained. So he launched his own site, conservativesonly.com, that would spare others the same experience.

Whether they are looking for romantic hook-ups or just good company, thousands of ideological hardliners from across the United States come to CPAC, the American Conservative Union's annual conference, for something approximating a real-life version of Mr. Knight's service. They gather in National Harbor, Md. – a surreal pop-up town across the river from Washington built in the past decade it seems for the sole purpose of hosting conventions at the sprawling hotel complex at its core – and for a few days, people who spend much of their lives feeling like outsiders can mingle with only one another.

But this year, their safe space has been violated by something alien and unpleasant. Even though he cancelled a scheduled appearance at the last minute, making him the only one of this year's remaining Republican presidential candidates not to give an address, Donald Trump has imposed an identity crisis on attendees. Accustomed to railing against the establishment, they now find themselves threatened by a presidential front-runner who is even more of an outsider than they are.

The signs of their struggle with Mr. Trump's status in the race for the Republican presidential nomination have been all over CPAC since it began on March 2, as delegates fret about fissures that could last well beyond this bizarre election year.

It is not that the worldviews of CPAC attendees have ever been monolithic. The conference is a big tent, bringing under its roof everyone from libertarians to staunch social conservatives, and "Tea Party patriots" to William F. Buckley disciples. College girls in short red skirts festooned with Republican elephants wander past middle-aged men in ill-fitting stars-and-stripes track suits. The gay-conservative group Log Cabin Republicans is excited to have been allowed to play an official role this year after being denied previously. This has outraged the American Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property, a Catholic organization whose red-sashed members are handing out flyers in protest. (The diversity does not really extend to visible minorities, who are mainly evident in the form of hotel staff.)

But uniting these factions, mostly, has been a healthy disdain for Washington's political class and any conservatives seen to be too comfortable within it. Each year, prominent Republican elites trudge into the conference's main ballroom to prove their bona fides, and a good number are rewarded with taunts and jeers when they offer party lines. Arch-conservatives from Congress or the National Rifle Association or right-wing media outlets are greeted rapturously; media personality Glenn Beck is among the top celebrities.

There is still a good amount of that this year. The likes of Republican National Committee chair Reince Preibus got a cool reception, and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin drew applause by immediately following presidential candidate John Kasich with a yelling, sneering attack – complete with obnoxious impressions – of relatively moderate conservatives of his ilk. One of the more creative of the costumes worn by delegates belongs to a man with a fake knife stuck into his back meant to symbolize how "RINOs" (Republicans in Name Only, a popular term for conservatives deemed to have strayed from the orthodoxy) have betrayed him.

And yet in the past 12 months, many regular attendees have gone from embracing and helping foment populist anger against the political mainstream to worrying their party is about to go off the deep end with a populist candidate too out-there for their own taste.

The awkward identity shift is epitomized by William Temple – a gray-bearded fellow from Brunswick, Ga., who dresses like a colonial revolutionary, with a cape signed by his "Tea Party heroes," and is something of a mascot for that wing of conservatism.

Last year, Mr. Temple led a walk-out on Jeb Bush's CPAC speech because the presumed presidential front-runner at the time was too much of an establishment Republican. This year, he was telling anyone who would listen that he would stage the same sort of protest during the (subsequently cancelled) Saturday-morning address by Mr. Trump, because the billionaire who turned out to be the real front-runner is too nasty and egomaniacal and misogynistic, and would probably be impeached if he ever made it to the White House.

Most delegates are not quite so outspoken. But based on conversations with several, they seem about evenly split between those who would certainly vote for Mr. Trump if he becomes the nominee and those who do not know if they could. (Most of those conversations were before Mr. Trump passed up his chance to improve their impression of him, presumably achieving the opposite effect.)

Asked how it feels to be a conservative right now, a few managed to offer some variation of "exciting." Others described it as "disturbing" or "worrying." Mr. Knight, the proprietor trying to bring ideological compatibility to love lives, called it "confusing."

A common refrain was that this year's conference is a little too subdued, a little too tentative, compared with past editions – a sentiment that seemed apt during a big-screen airing of Thursday night's rancorous Republican presidential debate.

Thousands of hard-core conservatives supporting different candidates, many with beer in hand, could have made for a rowdy audience. But even at the debate's hottest moments, reaction was fairly muted. As Megyn Kelly of Fox News laid into Mr. Trump for his policy inconsistencies, one of the frontrunner's very few supporters in the room stood up and gave a thumbs-down. The thousands of other viewers around her, split between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, lightly cheered or murmured or looked down at their phones.

When it was over they filed out, the younger ones off for a night of quasi-debauchery at National Harbor hot spots like a dueling-piano bar and a place with a mechanical bull. Finding fellow conservatives to date would be easy that night, even without the help of a website. Reconciling themselves over whom their party of choice is getting into bed with is more challenging.