John Schnatter, the pizza mogul who in 2018 stepped down as chairman of the Papa John’s franchise after using a racial slur in a comment about blacks during a conference call, mingling with the crowd, saying that he was among those unfairly canceled. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida warned that “wake up, everything is run by the state.”
And former Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who in 2020 he ran for the presidency of the Democratic Party but took right-wing positions and became a darling of the conservative media, calling the government a “secular theocracy” due to its efforts to combat misinformation.
Eight miles from the CPAC, an even more angry right-wing gathering, the America First Political Action Conference, took place at another Orlando hotel, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia as the main attraction and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona appearing on video.
Commentator Nick Fuentesconference team leader said that Putin was compared to Hitler. He laughed and added, “They say it’s not good.”
Mr. Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier, leads the so-called “America First” or “grouper” movement, which promotes the idea that the nation is losing “its white demographic core.” Last month, Mr. Fuentes was subpoenaed by congressional investigators investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
At CPAC and beyond, focusing on the negative can be both strategic and intuitive. Polls show Republican voters have a more favorable attitude towards Mr. Putin than Mr. Biden, and one of the lessons of the backlash against the party that owns the White House during the last four midterm elections is that a strong dislike of the president of the opposition party is more than enough to contribute to crushing victories.
“The conservative movement is always evolving, and as it evolves and responds to the radical ideas of the progressive left, the issues that really matter to people change a little,” said Charlie Gerow, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. “The only unifying factor for conservatives is Joe Biden and his henchmen in the states.”