Remember the days when TBogg used to refer to Erick Erickson’s still-very-downmarket CPAC shindigs as ‘Tragic: the Gathering’?
Murphy the Trickster God willing, it may yet return to its natural status as a grooming site for young ultra-conservative lobbyists and podcasters. Many people are saying!
GOP stars flee CPAC: DeSantis, McCarthy, Pence, McConnell, Youngkin all staying away. https://t.co/1wPoaKHZlk
— Jonathan Allen (@jonallendc) February 27, 2023
Nobody with actual hopes for higher office wants to risk being in camera range if (when) the CPAC audience start shouting the 14 words, or one of the keynotes speakers sets fire to a cross…
Many of the Republican Party’s marquee players — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and the top GOP leaders in Congress — will skip this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, dealing a significant blow to the annual gathering’s stature.
The abandonment of CPAC, which runs from Wednesday through Saturday, comes as its chairman, Matt Schlapp, defends himself against a lawsuit alleging that he fondled a male aide to then-Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia in October, without the aide’s consent…
Despite the mass exodus, the party’s most dominant figure — former President Donald Trump — plans to speak at the conference late Saturday afternoon, according to his spokesman, Steven Cheung.
None of the politicians declining to attend have cited the allegations as the reason for their absence, but several Republicans who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it is a factor in the broader movement away from the conference…
There is a sense among some Republicans that the conference was becoming more of a chore in recent years, said a veteran GOP operative who is not attending this year and asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly.
“Someone said to me, ‘We all wanted an excuse not to go, and Schlapp gave it to us,’” the operative said.