By James Demetriades
The Conservative Political Action Conference is an annual gathering that allows conservative politicians from across the nation to gather together and express their values and ideals. The 2015 conference featured individuals like Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and a slew of presumptive Republican presidential candidates. This year’s conference, as per usual, establishes a pecking order for conservative candidates.
The Republican base, composed of a coalition of second amendment defenders, economic conservatives and social conservative evangelicals, is free to jeer at its least favorite candidates and cheer for its favorites. This year, former governor Jeb Bush, the front runner of the Republican establishment, faced the jeering head-on and was booed multiple times. This is telling. Just as conservative Republican candidates woo support here to garner national attention, more moderate candidates need to connect with the party’s base effectively in order to solidify their strength and viability through the primary.
To almost no one’s surprise, moderates like Bush and Governor Chris Christie were not well-received, while others like Senator Rand Paul, Governor Scott Walker and Senator Ted Cruz thrived. Each year, the few thousand attendees vote in a straw poll to determine their favorite candidate. While this poll is not indicative of national Republican support, it highlights the shortcomings and strengths of candidates in relation to the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Paul finished in first for the third year in a row with 25.7 percent of the vote, followed closely by Walker. Bush, by comparison, finished in fifth with 8.3 percent of the vote. While Bush came behind four other candidates, it is important to note that he out-performed notables like former Senator Rick Santorum and Marco Rubio.
This mixed bag shows that conservative support is split and Bush, by sticking to his guns as a moderate , means to push a narrative of moderate government focusing specifically on not scaring away independents in a possible general election.
Just as in 2012, the moderate candidate, former Governor Mitt Romney, took a straight and narrow moderate path to ride past waves of successive conservative candidate frontrunners to grab the nomination. However, Bush should be warned that Romney won the CPAC poll in 2012, a sign that the conservatives believed in him.
Today, many conservatives believe that Romney’s moderate stances led to him to lose and are seeking a radically conservative candidate who does not fear opposition and will not compromise. Bush may be hard-pressed to back-pedal on enough policy to woo the conservative base.
This means that while the establishment and donors may be Jeb Bush fans, Bush’s exploratory committee has a lot of work to do to solidify conservative support in the next six months, lest they face a primary circus in next year’s spring.
