Former Chair of CPAC Condemns ‘Alternate Reality’ of Today’s Event: Trump Supporters Seek Out ‘Totalitarian Leaders’ Like There ‘Used to Be in Germany’
The former chair of CPAC, ex-GOP Rep. Mickey Edwards (OK), condemned the 2021 version of the conservative event as a little more than a Trump-worshipping cult of personality that promotes an “alternate reality” and is drawn to totalitarianism.
During an appearance on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront, the former eight-term Oklahoma congressman was aghast at far the first day of this year’s CPAC annual event had moved from the event he was leading during the Reagan era. Edwards publicly left the GOP in January after the Capitol insurrection.
“The Republican party really no longer stands for any kind of principles, conservative or otherwise,” Edwards said. “The party seems now to be completely following the lead of one man wherever he goes, which is the definition of a cult. The party’s views that have matured over years and years are out the window. Now all that matters is ‘Trump is for this, we’re for this.’ And that includes denying truth, denying fact, denying reality. And it’s such a disconnect from what has really happened in the world.”
“The people at CPAC are living in an alternate reality in which facts don’t matter, the Constitution doesn’t matter. They have no principle except whatever their leader says,” he added, calling out Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and current CPAC chair Matt Schlapp, who both signaled clear solidarity with former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” election fraud conspiracy that fueled the assault on the Capitol.
“He doesn’t have the job that I used to have because when I was head of CPAC, it was a group based on conservative principles,” Edwards said, referring to Schlapp. “We were strong supporters of the Constitution. We believed in free elections. We believed in democracy. These people don’t believe in any of those things.”
Edwards then implied blindly loyal Trump acolytes shared many similarities with those who supported the Nazis. “They’re no different than the people who flock to other totalitarian leaders in other countries,” he claimed. “They’re no different than they are in Hungary, then they used to be Germany. There’s no underpinning of fact, concerns about the norms of free democracy.”
The former CPAC chair then said his party had moved so far right that it would dismiss one of its greatest presidential icons as a conservative apostate: “Ronald Reagan could not get elected to anything by the people who were at the CPAC conference this year.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
