Rick Klein and Shushannah Walshe: “Just less than a year ago, Donald Trump decided to skip CPAC – a decision the organization said he would come to regret, since it ‘sends a clear message to conservatives.’ The Trump campaign said he would be back in 2017, ‘hopefully as President of the United States.’ (How many in the room in 2016 thought that would really happen?) Now comes this year’s CPAC, with Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump both in the speakers’ lineup.”
“That’s just a hint of the extent to which the conservative movement has been adopted and co-opted by Team Trump. Conservatives – even those who insisted Trump was never one of them – have, for the most part, gone along with it. Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway have all been CPAC fixtures in the past. Now they will be CPAC rock stars, appearing on behalf of the leader of the conservative movement, the man in whose administration they serve.”
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