The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was kicked off Thursday morning by Sen. Ted Cruz with a fiery speech covered on most of the major network and cable broadcasts. But Cruz gave another, less publicized speech later in the day at a counter-event held a few blocks away from CPAC. This was one of a several alternative events being held in conjunction in CPAC, hosted by and featuring those the American Conservative Union chose not to include in their annual gathering.
The Uninvited II
The conference held yesterday (Thursday) was titled “The Uninvited II: The National Security Action Summit,” hosted by Breitbart News Network and held a few blocks away at the Westin hotel. Last year, Breitbart News hosted an impromptu panel on the last day of the CPAC to discuss security issues not included in the official schedule. It was titled “The Uninvited,” and included former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Rosemary Jenks, Frank Gaffney, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, and others. This year, a full day counter-event was planned in advance, featuring some of those same speakers plus James O’Keefe, Rep. Peter King, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin, Phyllis Schafley, Sen. David Vitter, Rep. Jim Bridenstine, and others. Live streamed by Breitbart News, the event was a gathering of immigration foes and security hawks, moderated by Frank Gaffney. The URL for reserving a space at the conference was HomelandThreats.com, hosted by sponsor EMPact America.
Panels included:
- The Muslim Brotherhood, the “Civilization Jihad” and Its Enablers
- Amnesty and Open Borders: The End of America - and the End of the GOP
- Benghazigate: The Ugly Truth and the Cover-Up
- Protecting the Grid: Correct Its Vulnerabilities - or a “World Without America”
The full schedule of events can be viewed on their website.
Breitbart News Chairman Steve Brannon had a busy day shuttling back and forth between the official CPAC and the “Uninvited,” attending the official conference for the awarding of the first annual “Citizens United Andrew Breitbart First Amendment Award” to Mark Levin.
In this video, Bannon is interviewed about the reasons for hosting Uninvited II. As Brannon notes, it is their hope that these issues will be included at future CPACs, eliminating the need for the “Uninvited” events.
But the highlight of the alternative conference was a midday speech by Sen. Ted Cruz, who presented himself to the audience as an alternative to the “extremes of the spectrum on security” represented by Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. John McCain. Cruz described himself as a third choice for “peace through strength” in the mold of Ronald Reagan. The well received speech has been posted on Sen. Cruz’s official youtube account. This year’s CPAC is the beginning of the 2016 GOP presidential marathon, with 26 candidates included in the Saturday straw poll sponsored by the Washington Times.
The background with the transmission tower graphic in photo above of Cruz and Gaffney is that of EMPact America, a sponsoring organization dedicated to warning about electromagnetic pulse, the topic of the last panel of the day. EMPact is encouraging United States military action against Iran, claiming the Middle Eastern nation could take out the electrical grid of the United States by way of electromagnetic.
Newt Gingrich had been scheduled for the “Uninvited II” but dropped out, reportedly due to the tone of the publicity of the event. Gingrich was then approached by the American Conservative Union to help develop a last minute panel on Ukraine for CPAC.
White Nationalist “Unconference”
An “Unconference” is being held tonight (Friday) by Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute, a white nationalist organization. Spencer announced he would be “crashing” CPAC, but the NPI is sponsoring a separate evening event with speaker Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, followed by an open bar and “unconference.” The location of the event was being kept secret until today, but advertised as within a few blocks of the CPAC convention.
White nationalists have previously tried to attend and influence the CPAC conference, including efforts by Jamie Kelso, a former aide to KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, to covert young attendees to his brand of overt white supremacism (see video).
Conservative Divisions
CPAC has become a bellwether for monitoring the divisions between conservatives. In recent years, the American Conservative Union has invited and uninvited groups ranging from GOProud to the John Birch Society. Most mainstream media is describing the conservative split as one between the GOP establishment and the Tea Partiers, but there are other paradigms for describing the current divides. The security counter-conference highlights the split between neo-conservative security hawks and the growing paleo-libertarian and libertarian factions on the Right. The revival of paleo-conservatism and paleo-libertarianism was a featured topic in my recent article “Nullification, Neo-Confederates, and the Revenge of the Old Right”, co-authored by Frank Cocozzelli.