The most important meeting of conservative America begins

In Texas, a new version of the Conservative Political Action Conference — known as CPAC — has launched. This is a very important meeting for Republican politicians. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was allowed to open the conference as a speaker.

The speech was viewed with suspicion. “A few days ago, Orbán was expected to deliver a milder version of his speech in Romania,” said American correspondent David Hummelberg. There, Orbán made controversial statements about false racism. He said it with caution, and at the CPAC spring conference in Budapest he was a racist, not anti-Semitic. No, rather his message was simply ‘defender of Christian values’.

In Dallas, the Hungarian prime minister got along well with the public. “He’s famous for talking about race, LGBTQ rights, refugees and opposition to liberal democracy. Those are the things they find at CPAC, too, but don’t say it as loudly as he does.

Ultra-conservative

According to Hummelberg, the conference can be seen as a platform for speakers who preach conservative, ultra-conservative or authoritarian views. ‘Christian white men and women create a dominant nostalgic image and stir each other up.’

Also Read | Orban will also open the American Conservative Conference, CPAC

In addition to Orban and of course Donald Trump, other Republican leaders such as Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor-Green will also speak. “This is a collective of people who believe that Trump won the election, that immigrants are thieves, murderers, adulterers, and that Democrats are a coup against the Christian community.”

Speech trumps

We shouldn’t expect too much from Donald Trump’s speech on Saturday evening, Hummelberg thinks. “Two years will be as they say. He won the election, there is a democratic coup. Trump can count on broad support for those positions during CPAC. In such a meeting, political rivals neatly line up to endorse Trump’s claim that the election was stolen. But CPAC is not representative of all Republicans, especially the American electorate.