Dear Commons Community,

Conservative columnist and  CNN commentator S.E. Cupp on Wednesday hit the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with a mocking new nickname: the “Donald Trump Family Variety Hour.”

Cupp broke down how the “once obligatory event” for national Republicans has been “corrupted and corroding” since Trump’s takeover of the GOP.

It would go off in Maryland this week with “hardly a bang, more of a whimper,” she predicted, noting the absence of high-profile Republicans and the scheduled attendance of Trump and his family members.

CPAC faces further turmoil as Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference, faces allegations he groped a Republican staffer, which he denies, noted Cupp.

But it’s the Trump element that has turned it into a “joke,” she said.

It’s now just “a vehicle for Trump and Trumpism and is no longer … a stop on way to becoming president,” she added.

“I don’t think people go there to meet the next generation of leaders. They go to celebrate the last one,” said Alex Conant, a longtime GOP strategist who remembers attending his first CPAC as a high school student in the 1990s and being star-struck meeting Newt Gingrich, the Georgia congressman who had just stepped down as House speaker.

CPAC has indeed become a “joke.”

Tony

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