CPAC2023 is smaller than previous CPACs, with fewer breakout sessions or workshops parallel to what is happening on the main stage. Mainly missing are younger and libertarian-leaning attendees, though the remaining heavily Trump supporting registrants and those speaking to them seem to have adopted an America First version of the libertarian’s non-interventionist foreign policy, calling for an end to the Ukraine war with negotiated settlements, and for Europe to start paying for its own NATO defense.
The annual event started at the Woodley Park Marriot, a venue of faded elegance and rabbit warren rooms and hallways in Washington, D.C. CPAC moved to the Gaylord National Resort down the Potomac River at Forest Heights, Maryland for larger quarters a decade ago, then moved to Florida during the Covid lockdowns, and is now back at the Gaylord in Maryland.
I have purchased a ticket almost every year since 2007 though some years I have also asked for and received a media credential. One year when I was feeling in high cotton I bought a platinum ticket, which entitles one to perks like going to the VIP Reagan Dinner. That year was a year Ron Paul was running in the GOP primaries. As I walked to sit in the velvet-rope enclosed front row, in worn jeans with fashionable holes in them, and various “End the Fed",” anti-war, and Ron Paul buttons, an usher blocked my path - I could not belong in the VIP seating. Then he saw my platinum lanyard and badge. "Right this way, sir."
I’ve organized both a Ron Paul booth and one for Gary Johnson. My first time at CPAC I sat in the back of a workshop on "new media." My slightly long hair and Armani Exchange casual wear provoked the moderator, conservative radio talker Larry O'Connor (then with Breitbart) to look at me and ask with amusement "Do we have a liberal spy here today?"
The several times I was credentialed media I'd applied and simply said I wrote freelance for Breitbart, or the Federalist, or the Daily Caller, or even for my own blog (my blog that was actually attacked by Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews on their MSNBC shows as well as by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine).
This year I applied for a media credential and sent samples of my more CPAC friendly writing in SpliceToday, a zany website owned by Russ Smith, a former New York journalist turned Baltimorean, who at one time owned the alternative City Papers in both Washington, D.C. and in Baltimore. Splice has a variety of writers, more libertarians and liberals than conservatives, My own pieces in Splice are often somewhat philosophical reviews of TV shows or movies. I also write about "gay topics" - Jussie Smollette and other gay miscreants, the Dave Chapelle tempest, "Bros," "Spoiler Alert," the "Sex and the City" revival, and that fantastic romantic gay episode of "The Last of Us." I did not hear back from CPAC about my media credential this year, though that has happened in years past, and yet the media credential was there when I arrived. This year as in many past I also bought a ticket for $295. At registration I just picked up my paid ticket and didn't even try to find the media credential desk. With a recently injured knee I decided not to wander up and down stairs and escalators and to just forgo using the media room, at least the first day. (Friends who are in the media room have since offered to bring me in with their media credentials if I need a desk.)
Thursday morning, before CPAC began, I was wandering the exhibit hall of booths and talking to groups like Hawaii Conservatives.org, Atheists for Liberty, or the Log Cabin Republicans. When I had almost finished touring the hall, two large men in beige suits appeared and said "Bruce Majors?" One lifted my name tag to read it and he then removed my lanyard and name tag from my body, lifting it up and over my head, and grabbed my San Pellegrino bottle to see what it was. They said I should come with them. I asked what was up and one chuckled and said something like "You know why." I said I was going to need an explanation and my $295. He said they were taking me to someone who would provide one.
Back at the registration desk where I’d been an hour before, a nice young woman who was a troubleshooter in the registration department said I had been denied a media credential, and anyone so denied was not allowed to buy a regular event ticket. I asked to speak to her supervisor. I told her I had been going to CPAC for 15 years. She called her supervisor, and relayed that I was a long-term attendee who had had media credentials before, and they should look me up in their records. Her supervisor then called the general counsel for CPAC. The two Security men were joined by others as well as a Maryland State Trooper. (State Troopers are usually at CPAC at the Gaylord National Resort, since Presidents and Congresspeople are often speakers, and many events have a lot of security.) The troubleshooter ushered me into a side room, with all the security outside. The General Counsel arrived. Apologies ensued. There was a new media team that still had some bugs, and they had made a mistake. My lanyard and name tag were returned to me. I shook various security people's hands (or fist bumped them) and their chief told me if it happened again (since I am still on a banned list that had already been distributed) to tell anyone who detains me to ask for "Keith." (I've since had volunteers who worked in registration and also a State Trooper greet me and say they were glad I was back the next day and they were sorry this manhandling had occurred.)
The nice troubleshooter said she was giving me back my ticket but also refunding my $295. Thankfully this all took less than an hour.
But then later that day a reporter acquaintance interviewed me about the low attendance at this year's CPAC and whether I thought it was due to the "Schlapp scandal." I did not see this, but according to her Washington Times article CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp was chased through the halls Thursday morning by reporters asking him about a lawsuit against him over a different kind of manhandling. Schlapp, married to Mercedes Schlapp with whom he has several children, is being sued by a man who was a Herschel Walker campaign staffer assigned to drive Schlapp when he spoke at last year's Walker campaign events. The anonymous accuser says Schlapp aggressively groped him. The accuser also said that he would reveal his identity if Schlapp denied the charges. Schlapp has denied the charges and the accuser has not given up his anonymity. Does he just want to settle out of court for some portion of the $9 million he is suing for? Or was he actually sexually assaulted?
I don't know the answer to that. I don't think this scandal has affected CPAC. Loyalists at CPAC I imagine believe all such groping charges - whether about Schlapp and a male campaign staffer or about Trump and women - are mainstream media lies. (The only place I heard Schlapp discussed was at the Log Cabin booth, where a gay journalist from a New York paper had stopped by.) What CPAC is mainly missing this year are the throngs of young people who used to register so they could vote in the annual CPAC presidential straw poll for Ron Paul (in 2007 and 2008) and for Rand Paul (in 2015 and 2016), helped out by generous subsidies for their tickets and hotel rooms by Ron Paul groups like Young Americans for Liberty and the Campaign for Liberty. There are no Ron Paul or Rand Paul related booths in the exhibit, and no related speakers. There are no libertarians of any stripe, from the Ayn Rand Institute to reason magazine, who have often been here in the past. (Reason actually once did a story on “gays at CPAC” using Grindr to count how many Grindr gays were within 100 feet of the main stage, and then interviewing gay attendees.)
I've since learned that other writers - like Mike LaChance from Legal Insurrection - who write for smaller center-right publications were denied media credentials. But I now wonder if this "new media department" with bugs, denied medial credentials to any applicants they did not know well, especially those who write for smaller publications. If so apparently it didn't help, and Mr. Schlapp was still chased around the Gaylord Hotel.
The reduced numbers at CPAC, a Trump-concentrate, seem more worried about other issues. Nikki Haley could not get through her carefully constructed speech without some jeers of “RINO.” Vivek Ramaswamy had to address some choruses of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” from the crowd. Steve Bannon, in a pro-Trump stemwinder, assaulted Rupert Murdoch and FOX News for not covering Trump and not covering CPAC this year. As I drove away from the hotel listening to Bret Baier’s show simulcast on SiriusXM, some highlights of CPAC were covered. Though not Steve Bannon’s praise of Donald Trump, who spoke at the end of CPAC.
