To Trump, or not to Trump: CPAC crowd ponders an existential question

The last morning of every Conservative Political Action Conference is generally a subdued one, as speakers, students and adult attendees alike nurse their hangovers, hang out with their friends, listen to the final speakers and await the results of the annual straw poll.

But in the wake Donald Trump’s last-minute cancellation – to stump, he said, in Wichita, Kansas in advance of a Republican caucus he wasn’t favored to win – exhibitors started rolling up their banners before Senator Marco Rubio gave his Saturday keynote speech. They left behind pamphlets and candy they didn’t want to pay the unionized convention services to ship back to their offices. I grabbed a beer koozie for my father.

And though the ballroom was full for Rubio’s moment in the spotlight – albeit maybe not quite as crowded as for Ted Cruz’s barnstormer on Friday – there was more buzz about whether someone, anyone, could keep Trump from sweeping the day’s four Republican polls and cementing the nomination than there was about anything specific Rubio said.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that CPAC wasn’t fertile ground for Trump’s policy agenda and persona, given that attendees are normally longtime activists, monied donors and fresh-faced, deeply committed college conservatives. Making America great – or at least less liberal – again might be high on a lot of attendees’ agendas, but the general, deeply ideological interest in smaller, less powerful government shared by many attendees isn’t entirely compatible with Trump’s message about what can and should be achieved through the personal power of the head of the executive branch.

Even if this wasn’t the sort of crowd regularly treated to panel discussions of eminent domain – or one of the few places outside a law school classroom in which rosy-cheeked twentysomethings could dissect the finer points of the Kelo v City of New London decision by the US supreme court; even if this wasn’t the sort of crowd before which one would use the phrase “goodness gracious” instead of a saltier epithet; and even if this wasn’t the sort of crowd that knows the difference between a “flat tax” and a “fair tax” and has opinions about both, CPACers enjoy conservative entertainers but take conservative policy discussions very, very seriously.

Trump, many of them told the Guardian, does not.

Attendees at CPAC are the most committed of the conservative faithful – and attendance is a costly tithe to the church of conservatism. Tickets don’t come cheap: students, veterans and senior citizens are accorded steep discounts but general admission costs $300. Would-be platinum-level VIPs are asked to call for prices.

Taking into account travel expenses and the steep hotel room rates at the Potemkin village of “National Harbor” in Fort Washington, Maryland – from which you can see (but not walk to) Alexandria, Virginia and which, in the winter months, is accessible only by car – you have to figure that the average attendee easily shells out $1,500 to $2,000. This gives them access to panel discussions by activists opposed to gun control and abortion, speeches from conservative standard-bearers and candidates, and book signings by Clueless actress Stacey Dash, former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Steve Forbes and George W Bush’s former press secretary, Dana Perino.

And though they are all conservatives of some stripe with more than a few dollars to spare, CPAC attendees are not – and never have been – of a singular mind about almost anything, particularly about which candidate to back. So though there were more than a few “Make America Great Again” hats in the crowd, Trump’s advisers were probably right in their alleged calculation that his post-speech questions from a journalist wouldn’t be softballs and could inspire a less-than-friendly reaction from a boisterous crowd.

The big question for Trump and those who desperately don’t want him to be the Republican nominee is how much the rest of the primary will resemble, ideologically speaking, the ballroom at CPAC, or how much it will resemble the big tent Republicans were once desperately hoping to erect.

Saturday’s contests, unlike many of the previous primaries, were more or less closed to those not previously registered as Republicans. In effect, they may well look more like CPAC than the primary in South Carolina did. Many conservatives were openly hoping well before Saturday that a more traditional conservative would win those contests, earn some delegates and forestall the growing feeling of inevitability around his eventual nomination.

There is, of course, one major stumbling block to conservatives’ reasoning that the closed and forthcoming winner-takes-all contests will assure them a nominee with roots in the conservative movement. If, in fact, non-traditional Republican (or non-Republican) voters are turning out in droves for Trump on the basis of his personality and persona rather than the ideological consistency of his policies – as is widely suspected – there’s no reason to believe that those voters will turn out in November to vote for a different, more ideologically conservative nominee.

It might not be the first time conservatives have had to do this much navel-gazing at CPAC. And for many on the stage and off, the question of whether they will vote for Trump if they have to is actually a question of whether it’s more important to get a Republican in the White House or to hew to their deeply held conservative principles, even if doing so means at least four more years of seething hatred for the White House’s occupant.

For many, it’s a difficult question to answer. For now, they’re hoping voters in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine and beyond will prevent them from having to do so.