The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

CPAC: We Are Here

Posted on | February 26, 2020 | Comments Off on CPAC: We Are Here

 

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia
My brother Kirby and I checked into our hotel here about 6:30, loaded everything up from the car and stopped in the lobby bar for a beverage. We are staying here in Alexandria — about 2 miles across the river from National Harbor, site of CPAC 2020 — because the hotels near the conference are either filled up or charging $450 a night, which is crazy. Upon checking in here, we discovered there’s a $20 per night fee to park the car, which means an extra $60 for our three nights here before we re-locate Saturday over to the Gaylord, where John Hoge has reserved a room where we’ll be doing a special episode of The Other Podcast.

Kirby is here as a photographer, and if you’ll follow his Instagram account, you should get excellent photos this week capturing the scene at CPAC with substantially better quality than I get using my notorious Barbie Cam. Meanwhile, Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle has this preview:

American Conservative Union (ACU) chairman Matt Schlapp told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview ahead of the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that this year’s conference will focus on exposing and explaining the contrast between the rising socialist left inside the Democrat Party and a renewed and energized GOP under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
“We believe that CPAC 2020 is unique because we believe the starting gun goes off for the presidential campaign,” Schlapp told Breitbart News late last week. “The Saturday of CPAC is the Saturday of the South Carolina primary. We’ll have a much clearer idea of the Democratic presidential race. We believe that presidential race is reflected in our theme ‘America Versus Socialism.’”
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rises through the ranks of the Democrat Party to become the delegate leader—before this year’s CPAC, he has won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, the first-ever candidate in either party to do so in a presidential primary process—the focus of rising socialism on the left is becoming clearer. Democrats are in panic mode as Sanders surges heading into South Carolina’s primaries, and next week’s Super Tuesday contests, but on the other side of the aisle President Trump and a cleaned up and newly unified Republican Party are on the march as this election year kicks off. Gone are the likes of former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and uninvited from CPAC this year are the handful of globalist establishment Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT).
Schlapp said this year’s CPAC theme, “America Versus Socialism,” offers a contrast between Trump’s renewed and refreshed GOP and the rising socialist left taking over the Democrat Party that “couldn’t be clearer.” . . .

Read the whole thing. We’ve got to run over to the Gaylord to pick up our credentials. The media check-in closes at 8:30 and I’ve got a midnight deadline for an American Spectator column.




 

Category: CPAC

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