American Conservative Union (ACU) chairman Matt Schlapp told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview ahead of the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that this year’s conference will focus on exposing and explaining the contrast between the rising socialist left inside the Democrat Party and a renewed and energized GOP under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
“We believe that CPAC 2020 is unique because we believe the starting gun goes off for the presidential campaign,” Schlapp told Breitbart News late last week. “The Saturday of CPAC is the Saturday of the South Carolina primary. We’ll have a much clearer idea of the Democratic presidential race. We believe that presidential race is reflected in our theme ‘America Versus Socialism.’”
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rises through the ranks of the Democrat Party to become the delegate leader—before this year’s CPAC, he has won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, the first-ever candidate in either party to do so in a presidential primary process—the focus of rising socialism on the left is becoming clearer. Democrats are in panic mode as Sanders surges heading into South Carolina’s primaries, and next week’s Super Tuesday contests, but on the other side of the aisle President Trump and a cleaned up and newly unified Republican Party are on the march as this election year kicks off. Gone are the likes of former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and uninvited from CPAC this year are the handful of globalist establishment Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT).
Schlapp said this year’s CPAC theme, “America Versus Socialism,” offers a contrast between Trump’s renewed and refreshed GOP and the rising socialist left taking over the Democrat Party that “couldn’t be clearer.”
“The policies of all the major Democratic candidates reflect the fact that their grassroots supporters want a socialist party,” Schlapp said. “They don’t want a Democratic Party; they want a socialist party. They’ve essentially let the genie out of the bottle with their rhetoric and their recklessness. Now they’ve, through their indoctrination through the public school system and the media, they’ve created a whole couple generations of people who believe everyone gets a trophy and that everyone should make the same amount of money and that if you’re more successful in society you have to turn those resources over to the government to redistribute them. And at the same time, they don’t want to take on China and they don’t want to take on radical Islamic terrorism, and they’re okay with the disintegration of the foundations of society like the family.”
Schlapp said, too, that this year will have “probably more politicians” than movement leaders because “of the nature of the year” being an election year, but that CPAC is “also the place where the conservative movement comes together to plot and to plan.” He said that CPAC is a place where the movement hashes out ideas and fleshes out what it stands for—a deep discussion that has been different from year to year among conservatives.
“But it’s also a place where the coalition of people who are supporting Donald Trump and the more aggressive conservative members of Congress and some of the new governors like Ron DeSantis, it’s the place where people who might consider themselves nationalists or populists but also definitely conservatives, Trump supporters but otherwise not that political, it’s a broad coalition that believe in conservative policy goals but is accepting of those that might choose a little bit different of a title,” Schlapp said.
The interest in CPAC in 2020 is several times higher than any previous year. Almost every hotel room in National Harbor, Maryland, is sold out, and Schlapp said CPAC tickets have sold “three times the pace of last year.”