by Rod Williams, Feb. 26, 2022- I have attended CPAC on two occasions and loved it. The top luminaries in the conservative movement spoke, breakout session had a scholarly discussion of political philosophy and public policy, and conservative authors discussed their latest books. You can read about my experiences at this
link, this
link, and this
link.
While the massive vendor's hall may have had groups advocating some causes I was not ready to join, there were no nut-job groups and certainly no white nationalist or "hate" groups. Libs of course find advocates of border security and opponents of normalizing of gender dysphoria and sex change for children to be "hate" groups, but that is not my standard when I use the term. There were few crazies at CPAC and none on stage and I had an enjoyable experience, at times exhilarating, and came away feeling better informed and motivated.
This year nut-job Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green is a featured CPAC speaker. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Q-anon supporter. She was a regular contributor to a conspiracy website. She has supported almost every right-wing conspiracy theory circulating. She touts the Pizzagate theory, the Clinton Kill-list, mass shootings as a false flag theory, and 9-11 as an inside job theory. She has advocated executing Democrat politicians. She has equated the Democrat Party with Nazies. She continues to claim Trump won the election in a landslide and that the election was stolen. Her Covid-19 theory is that Dr. Fauci is criminally liable for helping create the virus as a bio-weapon. She has suggested that space lasers caused fatal wildfires in California.
In addition to featuring Marjorie Taylor Green, CPAC is going to be a big Trump rally. I am over CPAC. I no longer feel at home in what has become the contemporary Trump-era conservative movement. I long for a return to conservative sanity.
Thankfully there are still plenty of real conservatives and conservative publications, it is just that have been dwarfed by Fox News and the Trumpinistas. If you want conservatism not contaminated by nut-jobism, one can read National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, and others. One of my favorites is The Dispatch. Below are portions of a Dispatch fact check from Friday's CPAC.
Fact Checking Claims on Vaccines, Election 2020, and January 6 From CPAC
Friday’s speakers made statements that have been repeatedly debunked.
by Khaya Himmelman, The Dispatch, Feb. 26, 2022 - The agenda for the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference was diverse, with events like “Breaking China’s Power: No more ‘10% for the Big Guy’” to “Silly Doctor! Sex Changes Aren't for Kids.” It was also full of misinformation.
Some was subtle and amorphous, and some was blatant and specific, but the most noteworthy examples touched on three categories that The Dispatch Fact Check has been tracking for some time: vaccine misinformation, election misinformation, and the events of January 6. Here’s a roundup of some of the most significant claims that came out of the second day of the four-day event.
Fair use does not allow me to reprint the whole thing, so I will summarize. CPAC had a panel on Covid-19 that featured Leila Centner, the head of a Miami private school. She had banned teachers at her school who got vaccinated. “I really don’t want teachers to get shot,” she said “because we don’t know of the possibility of the vaccinated impacting young unvaccinated kids.” This is called "viral shedding" and is simply false. Shedding can occur only in vaccines that contain weakened versions of the targeted virus. The Covid vaccine is not that kind of vaccine. There is no virus in the Covid-19 vaccine. In addition to this misinformation, there was more anti-vaccine misinformation spread at CPAC. If you can access the full article, please do so to see what other Covid-19 lies were spread.
There was a lot of repeating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Here is an excerpt from the article:
Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana spoke early in the day on a panel titled “Fighters on the Front Line,” in which he declared that he would “never, ever apologize for objecting to an unconstitutional election.” He provided no evidence that the election was “unconstitutional,” but the audience cheered in response.
Later in the afternoon, Josh Mandel, Ohio Republican Senate candidate, similarly said: “I want to say this very clearly and very directly, I believe this election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.” He was also cheered on by an audience. In that same speech, he called Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger “traitors,” and said that “we should abolish the January 6 commission and replace it with a November 3 commission.” Mandel also claimed that he was certain Trump won Ohio by an “even higher margin” than he did.
That is only part of it. It appears that claims of a stolen election were a major theme of the conference. The prosecution of those who took part in the January 6th riot is presented as the Justice Department having “abused their power to punish Trump supporters,” and to having “criminalize political dissent."
It is unfortunate that CPAC, an old and respected event, has descended into a carnival of liars, nut-jobs, and a celebration honoring insurrectionists.
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