The Ukraine Invasion Has Scrambled CPAC’s Brain

Read the full article at The New Republic

It is Thursday, February 24th, and we are in the enormous Gatlin Ballroom at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel—an endless, rambling, palatial complex of chandeliers and windows and pools and palm trees. A crane-mounted camera swoops to capture the enormous crowd, standing in rapt attention, as the soaring vocals envelop the crowd in their familiar embrace. The Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual confab of conservative luminaries more commonly known as CPAC, is getting underway in Orlando, Florida, as it always does, with the national anthem.

The American Conservative Union, the hosts and organizers of the event, obviously learned the lesson of the disastrous live anthem performance at CPAC 2021. This year, the anthem is pre-recorded. Every note is perfect. Things are going according to plan.

And yet, as the anthem reaches its crescendo—the rockets and the bombs—my mind is anywhere but this room. I am thinking of my sleepless eyes transfixed, along with the rest of the nation, on the horrific videos emerging from Ukraine. We watched as the hell of European war waged by a superpower for the purpose of territorial expansion descended upon us in fire and fury. Most of us have no living memory of such a thing. To the end, I was sure it would not happen. And yet all of us now live in a world in which Russia has unhinged its jaw to swallow its neighbor.

And so, with only a few hours separating the unthinkable and the opening ceremonies of CPAC, the conservative wing of the Republican party must scramble to develop a position in real time in front of a live audience…

Read the rest at The New Republic