Donald Trump’s presidency is over and his Twitter feed has been silenced, but at the first major conservative rally of the year, the message is clear: Mr. Trump is here to stay.
Elected officials and activists speaking on the first day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Florida this year focused on COVID-19 restrictions, the so-called cancellation culture, how the 2020 election was managed and the threats they see from democratic policies. While there was little mention of the Capitol attack last month, speakers over the summer protested the “liberal mob” and riots.
The conference does not feature overt critics of the former president, so praise for Mr. Trump, who still has the support of most GOP voters, was an opening day theme.
“There are a lot of voices in Washington who just want to erase the past four years,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz told the crowd. “Let me tell you right now: Donald J. Trump isn’t going anywhere.”
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton told a story about an immigrant who attributes his economic success to the former president, celebrating Mr. Trump’s ability to attract Latino voters in the 2020 election.
And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri received a standing ovation when he told the crowd on Jan. 6 that he objected to the election results. He denounced Twitter for banning Trump, ending his speech with, “America now, America first, America forever.”
Many speakers urged the Republican Party against a return to pre-Trump origins and criticized some of the policies pushed by the GOP leaders.
“We’re not going to win the future by trying to get back to where the Republican Party was,” said Florida Senator Rick Scott, who also chairs the Senate Republicans’ campaign. “If we do that, we will lose the work base that so inspired President Trump. We will lose elections across the country and we will ultimately lose our country.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, due for re-election in 2022, left his own mark on the future of conservatives, saying the party rejects open borders, “weakness” against China and “military adventure.”
“We are not going back to the days of the failed Republican establishment of yore,” he said. “Hold the line, stay still, and never step back.”
Hawley told the people attending CPAC that they “represent what’s to come.”
“To the people who say to us,” Oh, you are the past. Your moment is over, it’s over. It’s Joe Biden’s America “now,” he said. ‘I just want to say,’ we are not the past. We are the future, ”he said.
At the event, Hawley bore widespread criticism of his objection to the Electoral College’s counting of votes on January 6 as a badge of honor.
“I was called a traitor, I was called a seducer,” he said of the response to his voice. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m standing here. I’m going to stand up for you because if we can’t have a free and open debate in this country, we won’t have a country.” His wording echoed a comment that Mr Trump opposed that day. made his supporters, “If you don’t fight terribly, you have no more land.”
Nearly a dozen speakers at the event have been named as potential presidential candidates for 2024. “For a moment I thought we were in Des Moines,” Cruz joked about the speaker lineup.
Cotton, one of the likely hopefuls for the White House, suggested that the Republicans would not be fighting Biden within four years. “They want to grant amnesty to 15 to 20 million illegal aliens. No strings attached, with voting rights – presumably in time for what they hope will be Kamala Harris’s reelection campaign,” he said.
But as a roster of Republicans compete to bolster their profile, it is Mr. Trump who is the great speaker who will be making his first public comments since leaving office at the conference on Sunday.
Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., joked that the conference should be called “TPAC” because of the support the former president has among the public. He gave a brief preview of his father’s speech and said to the crowd, “I imagine it will not be what we call an ‘energy-efficient’ speech. And I assure you it was Donald Trump and all your feelings about the MAGA will strengthen. Movement as the future of the Republican Party. “
Opinion polls show that Trump still has a firm grip on the Republican Party base. A Suffolk University / USA Today poll published earlier this week found that nearly 6 in 10 Trump supporters said they would like to see him as president again in 2024 and 76% said they would vote for him if he got the Republican nomination. sought.
Notable speakers on Saturday include Florida Senator Marco Rubio, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who have been identified as potential presidential candidates for 2024.