The Zombie Conservative Movement

We can start with the caveats.

First, CPAC doesn’t really get going till the weekend, but it does appear set for poor attendance this year.

Second, many on the right stopped reading Drudge because they perceived an editorial drift to the left.

Third, many Americans still read Drudge.

Fourth, when the prominent voices of the right are making jokes about overthrowing the country, people are going to notice.

So I give you this.

Posobiec, who was also one of the originators of the Taylor Swift conspiracy theory that never happened, welcomed people to CPAC by claiming January 6th was just the start of overthrowing the country’s democracy, and his statement was met with an “amen” from Steve Bannon.

Do you want to radicalize people against the GOP? That’s a good start.

CPAC has always had some freak elements involved. But those elements were inside the tiny conference rooms a few floors away from the main stage and now are on or near the main stage.

The American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, has, for a very long time, been an organization where center-right lobbyists maneuvered to get conservatives to pay attention to the lobbyists’ causes. Now, board members have left the organization raising alarms about ACU with a cloud of suspicion over the organization due to Matt Schlapp’s alleged behavior, which includes allegations of same-sex harassment.

CPAC, which once fielded a broad array of the conservative movement, has fully embraced Trump’s cult of personality, and the free exchange of ideas from the right is not much different from what you’d get at a leftwing conference in terms of control over topics.

CPAC has even let the John Birch Society back in the door — an organization long repudiated by the conservative movement.

I don’t mean to pick on ACU and CPAC, though. The conservative movement needs an enema or a brain to rescue it from its current predicament. The National Rifle Association has fallen apart too. Like CPAC, its board members have decided they’d rather rearrange deck chairs on a sinking ship than actually clean the place up and plug the holes.

Too many conservative institutions have given up as their leadership dies off or retires. The organizations are being placed in the hands of the grifters who kissed geriatric butt long enough to make it seem they meant it. And we’re left now with a rudderless movement that excels at spooking senior citizens out of their cash while remaining deficient in promoting ideas for the sake of those ideas.

The mantra of the new right is “what has conservativism conserved?” We see that many of those in charge have only been committed to conserving dollars for their beach houses, and the young grifters have figured it out. The movement is without much of a brain left — institutions with money, vanity, and no fight left for good ideas.