The annual confab is already showing how top GOP officials are making wildly different bets on the future of their party.
Jason Smith was, quite literally, caught in the middle of his party’s tug of war this week. The Missouri Republican lawmaker stood at the microphones alongside House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for their weekly news conference, usually a staid affair where GOP leaders project unity before a dubious Capitol Hill press corps. Then Smith watched McCarthy and Cheney clash over Donald Trump’s role in their party — all live on C-SPAN. Should Trump be speaking at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando? McCarthy offered an immediate „yes.“ Cheney said it’s up to CPAC, but then forcefully restated her position against the former president „playing a role in the future of the party, or the country.“ Asked later if it was awkward to witness his leadership give such conflicting visions on Trump, Smith replied: “Hasn’t that been happening all year?“ The episode perfectly captured the civil war raging inside the not-so-post-Trump GOP. And those divisions will be on full display this weekend during CPAC, an annual party gathering where the action of late has become very much about one man — Donald John Trump — and very little about conservatism or policy or much of anything else. McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who have separately trekked to Mar-a-Lago to schmooze with Trump, are both slated to speak at the conference. So is Trump, in what will be his first public political speech since leaving office. Not speaking: Cheney, who unapologetically voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan.6 riots, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who didn’t vote to convict Trump but condemned him nonetheless and has cut off communication with the ex-president. Cheney did, however, speak at a Reagan Institute event this week, where she urged Republicans to „make clear we aren’t the party of white supremacy” and called for any commission on Jan.6 to look into Trump’s lies about the election. Even before CPAC gets underway, the event is already showing how the top Republican leaders in Congress are making very different bets about the future of the GOP — and how it could be years before anyone finds out who is right. In one camp, there are the Republicans like McCarthy and Scalise who have calculated that getting cozier with Trump and his base is the best way to boost the party’s prospects in the next election. In the other are establishment-minded pols like McConnell and Cheney, who counsel a more traditional brand of conservatism after the GOP lost both chambers of Congress and ultimately the White House under Trump.
