‘Awake not Woke’ CPAC pushes aside taxes and fiscal policy for culture wars
NEVER SURRENDER TO WOKE
ORLANDO, Florida — The Conservative Political Action Conference showed culture war grievances and fear of “Marxist” political philosophy is the main motivating force for today’s conservative base within the Republican Party, as this year’s event unabashedly made it the central focus with the theme “Awake not Woke.”
The annual gathering of conservatives, which serves as a gut check on the Republican base and presidential testing ground, was once a conference where former House Speaker Paul Ryan pitched his vision to lessen poverty through welfare and regulation reform. But speakers this year deliberately turned the focal point away from taxes and economic policy.
“You can always cut taxes. You can always roll back regulations. You can always elect better people,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said in a speech that focused on Marxism being “infused” in society. “But when freedom is lost and it’s eroded, it is so hard to reclaim it and to get it back.”
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in his speech that so many people are moving to his state “not just because we have lower taxes, because we’ve always had lower taxes,” but because they are “fleeing leftist governments in this country.”
From former President Donald Trump to Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Marxism within U.S. borders was presented as the biggest scourge facing the United States and Western civilization even as Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine.
“Wokeism is a form of cultural Marxism. It is not just about raising taxes and bad economic policy. It’s about tearing up the fabric of society and trying to replace it with something that will be much, much more sinister,” DeSantis said.
A survey of 2,574 attendees asking the three issues most important to them found that cultural issues reigned supreme over economic matters. Election integrity was the most popular at 49.1%, immigration and the border wall at 47.6%, constitutional rights at 42.7%, and inflation and cost of living coming in at 26.6%. Taxes, budget, and spending ranked seventh at 16.2%.
Conservatives say they are not the ones pushing culture wars, but rather are reacting to overtures by the Left.
“The battle line fell back. We used to assume we had certain things in common and then we could talk about public policy that we would prefer. And that changed. We don’t hold these things in common anymore, and that has everyone’s attention,” American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
“Parents aren’t domestic terrorists. Cops aren’t the force of evil. They actually keep us safe. … Gender confusion, girl sports, you can go on and on and on,” Schlapp said.
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Conservatives are also eager to focus on issues that appeared to bring electoral success in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, when Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin won with the help of outraged parents.
“What actually moves independent voters and brings back a lot of the women voters to the Republican Party that we had lost — much of it has been kind of those cultural issues, whether it’s critical race theory, whether it’s young men, you know, playing in young women’s sports, whether it’s parents being ignored,” said Saul Anuzis, president of the 60 Plus Association and former Michigan Republican Party chairman.
“The Democrats have done it to themselves,” said Anuzis, who considers himself to represent the center-right of the Republican Party. “This is not your parents’ Democratic Party. Guys like John F. Kennedy couldn’t even get nominated in the Democratic party today, and so that’s really pushed people away.”
Desire to appeal to disaffected Democrats and liberals was reflected Schlapp’s decision to invite former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, despite her dismal American Conservative Union rating, to speak at the conference’s Ronald Reagan Dinner and torch cancel culture.
Congressional candidates at the conference touted their “awake not woke” credentials.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is running for Senate, argued that his resume on “awake not woke” issues differentiates him from the other candidates in the race.
“I’m actually in the middle of those fights, not just talking about it. Some people don’t want to talk about it,” Schmitt told the Washington Examiner. “We’re suing the Springfield, Missouri School District, the largest school district in the state, for hiding documents on critical race theory. I’ve sued 45 school districts in Missouri for their continued mask mandates, and we continue to win those.”
Karoline Leavitt, a 24-year-old former aide to Rep. Elise Stefanik now running for Congress in New Hampshire’s first Congressional District, told the Washington Examiner that she decided to run because her “generation of voters became completely brainwashed by the media, by the Big Tech companies, by our entire culture, Hollywood, higher education.”
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The “Awake not Woke” CPAC theme represents an evolution in focus for the event and conservatism overall. Several years ago, CPAC had generic themes with moldable meanings, including “Conservative Action Starts Here” in 2015 and “Our Time is Now” in 2016. By 2019, Trump’s influence and the shift to being confrontational on social issues began to show with a “What Makes America Great” theme, followed by “America vs. Socialism” in 2020 and “America Uncanceled” in 2021.
“It’s just corny enough that it makes it almost better,” Joshua Devries, a student at Grand Valley State University, said of the “Awake not Woke” theme. “‘Wokeism,’ if you want to call it that, really impacts everything because people just want to be woke rather than just being sensible and rational and having conversations about things.”
Not all politicians, though, were eager to abandon putting economic issues front and center.
“I think now is the opportunity for the Republican elected officials to embrace what their primary voters want, which is true free markets, less regulations, lower taxes across the board for everybody, not picking winners and losers,” said Michigan state Rep. Steve Carra, who Trump endorsed when he announced a primary challenge to incumbent Rep. Fred Upton. But he added that issues like “critical race theory, opposing illegal immigration, unconstitutional mandates, shutdowns” should be “hot topics” and on the minds of attendees.
