Today I attended the first day of the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual
gathering of conservative politicians, activists, and students.
This year, like last year, CPAC is being held at the Gaylord
National Resort, which is located south of Washington, D.C. in
National Harbor, Maryland.
In the morning Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) gave a
speech in which he called for an audit of the Federal Reserve,
the abolition of the IRS, and for “every single word of Obamacare”
to be repealed. Cruz also made clear that he is not a fan of
President Obama’s foreign policy, saying that under Obama “the
people of Ukraine have seen Russian tanks move into their sovereign
land.”
Other CPAC speakers also criticized the U.S. response to the
situation in Ukraine. Former United Nations Ambassador John
Bolton said:
Today, can you just imagine Ronald Reagan dealing with Vladimir
Putin? … [In Ukraine], Vladimir Putin has a strategy and Obama
has nothing. Putin has a growing defense budget and ours is
shrinking.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said:
In Europe, Vladimir Putin is trying to reconstitute the power
and the influence of the former Soviet Union. I say this to you
because of the number of young people that are here today. I want
you to consider what this will look like in 10 years … if you
inherit a world where Russia continues to hold its neighbors
hostage, not just because of its military capabilities, but also
because of dependency on Russian oil and gas.
One non-American conservative also criticized Obama’s foreign
policy. Daniel Hannan, a British Conservative who represents South
East England in the European Parliament, was at CPAC in his
capacity as secretary general of the Alliance of European
Conservatives and Reformists. Given Cruz’s earlier brief comment on
the Obama administration’s position over the ongoing crisis in
Ukraine, I asked Hannan what he thought about the state America’s
perception around the world. Hannan said,
It’s definitely the case that under this presidency U.S.
prestige has waned, and in some parts of the world prestige is a
hard commodity, it matters.
Hannan went on to say,
I do think that you could construct the argument that there has
never been a worse time to be a traditional friend of the U.S.
Obama’s relationship with the U.K. has been criticized before,
with his removal of a bust of
Winston Churchill from the Oval Office soon after he took
office and his position on the
Falkland Islands being cited as indications that the so-called
“special relationship” may not be faring well under the current
administration.
CPAC attracts many of the usual
conservative suspects. The Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle
Association, as well as some conservative publications were all
represented. Refreshingly, there were also groups represented in
the CPAC Hub that are either explicitly libertarian or have
libertarian sympathies such as Students For Liberty, Families
Against Mandatory Minimums, Young Americans For Liberty, and the
Cato Institute.
What was particularly reassuring was an event on the
legalization of marijuana in Colorado. Mary Katherine Ham,
editor-at-large of HotAir.com (who had this exahnge with
Bill O’Reilly last month on drug policy) joined Chris Beach,
executive producer of Bill Bennett’s “Morning in
America” show, for a discussion on marijuana legalization
moderated by Colorado State Rep. Janak
Joshi (R-Colorado Springs). Beach, who was arguing against
legalization, argued that illegal drug use is going down thanks to
the war on drugs and that while alcohol is harmful adding another
new drug to a legal market would be a bad idea.
Thankfully, almost every single person in the audience who asked
a question at the event was skeptical that current U.S. drug policy
is working. One man said that his children have easy access to
marijuana despite the vast amounts of money that has been spent on
drug policy. Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has criticized U.S. drug policy, will be
speaking at CPAC tomorrow.
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