This past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference marked the unofficial kickoff of the race to achieve “Anointed Son of the Right-Wingers” status in the forthcoming Republican presidential primary season. While candidates have been jockeying for many months — firing off passive aggressive subtweets and making cryptically critical statements through their press offices, among other antics — the 2015 CPAC marked the first time the presumptive candidates were all in the same place, firing off televised speeches in front of a raucous crowd.
The show did not disappoint. As is likely to happen when one puts a handful of rabid conservatives and wanna-be conservatives in the same room (it sounds like the start of a bad joke), the stars pulled no punches in their ceaseless struggles to show who is the real conservative among the wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing. Jeb Bush was booed, briefly. Does this spell trouble? Could he be a moderate? Chris Christie fired off several unprovoked potshots at various candidates. Can he climb out of the hole he has dug for himself? Ted Cruz said Republicans should judge their candidates by their actions, and not their rhetoric. Does that mean he intends to stake his candidacy on the 2013 government shutdown? Scott Walker may have compared striking workers to ISIS. Does this mean he is not ready for the big stage?
Did CPAC actually provide answers to any of these questions? No, not remotely. But it does provide a useful lens into what looks to be an extremely entertaining primary season. More than that, perhaps the most important function of CPAC is to determine whether Republicans can achieve some measure of cohesion as they look to pick their nominee. Democrats are already salivating at the potential of the Republicans’ self-combustion in the primary season, joyous at the prospect of an unappealing firebrand like Ted Cruz or a heavily-tattered establishment candidate like Jeb Bush (a la Mitt Romney, 2012) stumbling into a general election matchup that morphs into an essential coronation for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
This is the real story of CPAC, and is a possibility that should strike fear into the hearts of every red-blooded Republican. I agree with analysts who cite Romney’s unnatural and bumbling dive to the right for his 2012 loss, but I also agree that nominating an unelectable candidate (sorry Ted Cruz, as much as I might admire you, a 23 percent approval rating just doesn’t cut it) spells disaster. Any Republican nominee must carry total support from his own party, performing the treacherous and precarious balancing act of holding both establishment and grassroots support. Before CPAC, I must admit I worried that this balancing act was impossible.
But CPAC, antics notwithstanding, convinced me that my worries were misplaced. Sean Hannity, Fox News host and conservative semi-deity, delivered a speech in which he pointed out that, yes, Republicans are all on the same team, and yes, indeed, Republicans all agree on most things! To quote Mediaite’s bare bones summary of Hannity’s speech: “Debt is bad, energy independence is important, school choice is a must, and the American border should be secured immediately.”
Well, sort of. It is true, American conservatism (and by proxy, the Republican Party), is not one coherent set of beliefs, but a coalition of interests. As James Ceaser, a politics professor at this University has written, American conservatism is a coalition made of “four heads that draw their lifeblood from the same heart: traditionalism, neo-conservatism, libertarianism, and the religious right.” The intellectual diversity within the party makes it difficult for candidates to hold support from each “head,” but when a candidate does, he is a formidable electoral monster. And, as Hannity reminded us, the odds of finding the ideal candidate are high, given that conservatives agree much more than they disagree.
The odds are also high because of Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. Jeb, anointed candidate of establishment Republicans, performed better than expected as he defended and burnished his conservative credentials in front of a rowdy CPAC crowd. Walker, the Wisconsin governor who possesses an unimpeachably conservative governing record, also has the great fortune of hailing from a traditionally blue state, presumably giving him some appeal to moderates.
None of this is to conclude anything about the 2016 presidential election, which, as I have to remind myself, is 20 months away. Nevertheless, CPAC reminds me that conservatives have some reasons to be optimistic. Pull the veil past the posturing and you will see a cohesive coalition on most core issues, with at least two candidates well positioned to unite conservatives rather than divide them prior to the general. It is too early to start feeling optimistic, but I cannot help myself.
John Connolly is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at j.connolly@cavailierdaily.com.
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