A CPAC Dallas Post-Mortem — Not For The Conference, For Democracy

DALLAS, TX —It seems everyone is fixated on what ex-President Donald Trump had to say Sunday in a Fox interview and his long and rambling grouse-fest from the CPAC stage.

CNN covered the list of lies Trump spewed yesterday. Here are the Top 12.

What's so much more concerning is how the GOP and the conservative movement in general remain All In for the former president. They know he lies. They don't care. They know he's recently finished not-quite-last on a historians' list of great presidents. They know how transactional his friendships are and the moment you're not useful to getting him what he wants, you're his personal piñata, like his former Attorney General Bill Barr has become.

By refusing to break ties with the former Oval Office occupant, conservatives are not only keeping old wounds from healing; they're opening new fissures across the country on a daily basis.

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Consider South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who apparently believes that anyone who shut down their state in order to save lives during last year's pandemic lacked "grit." At one point during the height of the pandemic, her state had a positivity rate of 43 percent. Instead of issuing any kind of mask mandate, she tweeted that her constituents should go shopping.

Or you could try getting inside the Black Ops-minded Madison Cawthorn, the newly-minted representative from North Carolina. Upon hearing that President Biden favors community workers traveling door-to-door in order to get America vaccinated against COVID-19, the alt-right poster boy suggested that Biden's operation might just be a dry run, so that he could return first for your guns, and then for your Bibles. What??

Or ruminate, as Dr. Anthony Fauci did on camera over the weekend, over the CPAC announcement that Biden's goal of vaccinating the country is falling short. The hall erupted in cheers.

Texans played a huge role in all of it. In his kickoff address Friday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick advanced the theory that the border crisis is being engineered by Democrats to flood their party with new citizen voters and ensure that Republicans can never win another national election. But after scaring the bejeebers out of them, he left the crowd with on an optimistic note: "In 2024, Trumpism will rise again!"

Rep. Louie Gohmert, not to be outdone, postulated that the insurrection was the work of Democrats who didn't request enough security for the Capitol on Jan. 6, transforming the riot into a case of entrapment.

And many used the opportunity to curry favor by adding their own little scoop of manure to fertilize the Big Lie that Trump was the actual victor in 2020. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller happily genuflected at that altar. "I'll just say it. The election was stolen. I'm convinced of it."

Well, I mean, so long as you're convinced, who cares how?

Notable in his absence was Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who took almost as much fire as the Democrats currently bedeviling him in Austin. Abbott has said he needed to stay in the state capital to oversee the special session, but there's no question that as far to the right as he is, he's not far enough to pass the CPAC loyalty test.

Doubtless Noem knew that Abbott chose to spare a few lives last spring in locking Texas down briefly. And his gubernatorial challenger and former Texas Congressman Don Huffines certainly understood he was on friendly ground decrying Abbbott as a RINO (a Republican In Name Only) before his CPAC audience.

CPAC demonstrates once again that Trumpism is not idea-based or policy heavy. It's a crusade against a perceived enemy made up of fellow Americans. And none of it bodes well for an ailing democracy in which neither side can speak to or about the other without spewing venom.

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