The year’s biggest conservative confab kicks off Thursday as thousands of activists, elected officials and party leaders gather for the Conservative Political Action Conference.
But while they’re gathering at a convention center just outside of Washington, D.C., their minds — and rhetoric — are focused squarely on the White House.
What does CPAC look like? check out the video below:
This year’s CPAC marks the unofficial kickoff of the battle for the conservative vote among GOP presidential contenders. For some, like Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the event will be a homecoming, a return to their most ardent and loyal supporters.
For others, like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, CPAC represents a lion’s den, full of activists skeptical of his conservative chops and wary of his presidential aspirations.
CPAC can put a potential contender on the map, as it did with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson last year, when the movement launched to draft him into the presidential race drew significant attention and he took third in the presidential straw poll.
But it can also cripple a frontrunner, as it did when then-GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney called himself “severely conservative” at the 2012 convention.
We’ll be live-blogging the event here. Check back to follow all the CPAC ups, downs — and whatever Sarah Palin uses as a speech prop this year — here:
Carly Fiorina attacks Hillary Clinton’s record
1:45 p.m. — Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard executive who could be the only woman to enter the Republican race, took a series of shots at Hillary Clinton — who she challenged to “please name an accomplishment.”
“Like Mrs. Clinton, I too have traveled the globe. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, I know that flying is an activity, not an accomplishment,” she said.
Fiorina lambasted Clinton’s handling of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and her “conflict of interest” when the Clinton Foundation reportedly accepted gifts from foreign governments during her tenure as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.
“She tweets about women’s rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights. She tweets about equal pay for women but will not answer basic questions about her own offices’ pay standards — and neither will our President,” Fiorina said. “Hillary may like hashtags. But she doesn’t know what leadership means.”
Fiorina also name-dropped the woman many liberals hope will challenge Clinton in the Democratic primary: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
She channeled Warren’s populist appeal, saying she’d diagnosed similar problems but had a dramatically different take on the solutions.
“Elizabeth Warren is right: crony capitalism is alive and well,” Fiorina said. “Government and government programs have grown so big, so powerful, so costly and so complex that only the big and the powerful can prosper. But Elizabeth Warren is dead wrong about how to end crony capitalism. You see, whether it is Dodd-Frank, Obamacare or net neutrality, all this government complexity means the big get bigger, the small disappear, and the powerless are trapped.”
— Eric Bradner, CNN
Chris Christie goes after Jeb Bush
1:00 p.m. – Gov. Chris Christie sought to defend his brash style and counter narratives that he’s being outrun by Jeb Bush, saying it’s too early to make sweeping predictions.
The New Jersey Republican sat on stage with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, where he weaved a slew of anti-media statements— “I’m giving up the New York Times for Lent” — to counter recent narratives about a slowed momentum for the potential Christie campaign.
“Is the election next week?” he asked, when pressed on his low standing in 2016 polls. “If I decide to run for president, I’m not worried what polls say 21 months before” the election.
Asked how he’ll manage to outperform Bush, who’s tapping into his family’s vast network to collect a massive fundraising haul, Christie said “if the elites in Washington who make backroom deals” decide the nominee, then Bush would be the frontrunner. But, he argued, he’ll “do OK” if that decision is left up to the people.
He also said that Bush’s previous proposal about repopulating Detroit with immigrants was “misrepresenting the priorities” and said he would focus more on the people already living in the city.
Christie, as he’s been doing in early voting states lately, embraced his “Jersey guy” persona, saying people like to hear a direct, blunt politician.
“Sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up,” he said, defending his outburst against a heckler in the fall.
— CNN’s Ashley Killough
Ben Carson
9:00 A.M.: Ben Carson took the stage earlier than scheduled, but still found a packed auditorium and enthusiastic audience for a relatively subdued speech that unfolded like a laundry list of his policy priorities.
Carson urged listeners, “let’s not turn our backs on Israel,” said Congress should offer an alternative to Obamacare before they repeal it, and defended conservatives’ opposition to same-sex marriage. It was a departure from last year’s speech, during which he railed with fiery rhetoric against the “P.C. police.”
“We need to move in a very different direction,” Carson said, calling for the nation to move away from big government programs.
He also, during the question-and-answer portion of his appearance, said the government should have a “safety net” to support those in need, but should eliminate programs that cause “dependency.” And he said that home-schoolers, in his estimation, perform better than public school educated students.
— Alexandra Jaffe, CNN
Carson is one of the more interesting newcomers on the national political stage. An African American in a party desparate to make inroads with minorities, Carson is also a neurosurgeon without the burden of a political background. He has become a favorite in the conservative media. He’s also the only potential 2016 candidate to have a movie made about his medical career. Cuba Gooding, Jr., played Carson. But as a fierce critic of Obamacare, Carson has also waded into controversy. He once compared the health care law to slavery and drawn parallels between the U.S. and Nazi Germany.
CNN’s Mark Preston made this short bio video with our digital video team earlier this year:
Carson debated Wolf Blitzer about that Nazi Germany comment back in December:
Meanwhile, out in the halls of the conference, some of the more interesting characters of the conservative movement had on their American flag pants:
Carson suggests stripping the president of his golf game: