OPINION:
When my dad retired, we moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, where he and my mother bought a tavern and ran it for a decade. I was just a kid at the time, but he gave me what I have since realized was great political advice. The week they opened, Dad had spent most of his working life as a union organizer. He served as president of the Rockford, Illinois, Labor Council, co-chaired the state’s 1956 Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign with Sen. Paul Douglas, and later ran for mayor.
He spent much of the first two weeks throwing people out of Keene’s Tap, suggesting in the strongest terms that they not return. I wondered why he was so aggressively driving away potential customers.
When I asked him, he said: “You have to make it clear to the troublemakers who have already been thrown out of every other bar in town that they’re not welcome in yours. If you don’t, they’ll give the place a bad name, and you’ll be stuck with customers who will make it impossible for you to attract others.”
William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review and author of “God and Man at Yale,” never met my dad, but someone must have given him the same advice. As we set about building the modern conservative movement, Buckley stressed the importance of ridding the movement of the nuts, conspiracy theory buffs like those who made the John Birch Society a laughingstock, racists, and others who would drive away rather than attract potential converts who would help expand the movement.
Buckley and those who might have understood my dad’s advice are gone. The lunatics are back. One of them, Jack Posobiec, an alt-right antisemitic aficionado of more conspiracy theories than one can list, began his remarks at this year’s conference with these words: “’Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.”
He raised a clenched fist as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, next to him on the stage, muttered, “Amen.”
I wondered, listening to this nonsense, how it has come to this. One hundred people or so attended the first CPAC in a downtown Washington hotel in 1974. Then, California Gov. Ronald Reagan spoke at the annual event 16 more times. CPAC has convened annually since.
Then, Reagan’s 1981 CPAC speech was his first public appearance outside the White House as president of the United States. He told his audience that when his staffers questioned his decision to speak to them first, arguing there were so many “more important” appearances he might make. “I’m going to CPAC,” he told them, “because I believe in dancing with those who brung you.”
I was chairman of the American Conservative Union as that small 1974 gathering was morphing into a must-attend conference attracting activists from around the country and the world. When I left that organization to become an officer of the National Rifle Association, CPAC drew more than 11,000 conservatives, including national, state and local politicians, right-of-center activists, writers, and thousands of conservative college students.
CPAC was the first “out of studio” telecast by C-SPAN, which provided gavel-to-gavel coverage for years. Hundreds of thousands of conservatives planted themselves in front of televisions nationwide to take in the proceedings or, later, bought or taped the proceedings to watch later.
CPAC then attracted conservatives of all stripes. Social conservatives, anti-communist warriors and free market aficionados gathered to debate, meet and network. It was a true gathering of the movement and was co-sponsored by more than three dozen right-of-center organizations that met to craft each year’s agenda, provided speakers, and channeled attendance at some 200 trade booths and events into the night.
That CPAC no longer exists. We were open to conservatives with widely differing views but kept the kooks out. A Jack Posobiec would have never been invited then. But this year, there he was on the main stage, and those attendees who visited the exhibitors would find the John Birch Society.
The conference has become a show with no debates or differences allowed, and its organizers control the agenda top down instead of co-sponsoring up. They have redefined conservatism, and many of the traditional conservative organizations have left for other venues.
Today’s CPAC is for admirers of former President Donald Trump only — unbelievers are quietly or not so quietly disinvited. The training we provided about defining conservatism with the times, challenges and open debate that strengthens or weakens new and old ideas and helps students find their place in the big picture is gone. This decidedly different tone has allowed the troublemakers to return and overrun the tavern, and those who came before they were allowed in are leaving.
Mr. Trump and CPAC’s organizers apparently never got the advice my dad gave me.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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