CPAC 2021 organizers begged participants to wear masks – and were booed

One of the most enduring clips from the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference was Mick Mulvaney dispensing the coronavirus pandemic as an “attempt by the media to overthrow the president”. More than 500,000 deaths and a year later, the first full day of CPAC 2021 in Orlando, Florida, illustrated how little conservatives have learned.

Throughout Friday, the speakers characterized the coronavirus – which continues to claim more than 2,000 lives every day in the United States – as something that concerns only the weak liberals or, more ominously, as little more than a pretext that Democratic public officials used to close businesses and schools.

This type of rhetoric may seem absurd to anyone who takes science and public health seriously, but not to CPAC participants.

One of the most memorable scenes from Friday’s festivities happened at the beginning, when the people in charge of the event had to take the stage and beg people to respect “private property rights” and “the rule of law” using masks while walking through the hotel where the conference would take place is being held. Dissatisfied participants responded by booing and shouting “freedom!”

People can be excused for experiencing some cognitive dissonance. Speakers who came before and after that incident demonstrated that enduring a one-year pandemic did not motivate conservatives to take basic public health practices more seriously.

“This is just stupid”

Notably, a trio of Republican senators were among the worst criminals when it came to disclosing incorrect information about Covid-19 on Friday.

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) started the morning boasting not only about going to church “during a time in Covid”, but also singing during the service.

“I even dared to sing in church, contrary to California doctrine,” he said.

But it has nothing to do with the “California doctrine”, whatever it is. Church singing was linked to widespread events in the early days of the pandemic last spring, so public health experts recommended against it, and some states banned it (until a Supreme Court ruling in November concluded that such bans were unconstitutional) . It is not safe unless you have already been vaccinated – which Lankford was, but most Americans have not yet been.

Lankford’s comment set the tone. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) started his speech by telling a joke about his decision to travel to Mexico for a family vacation last week, while millions of his constituents fell ill without power. He then pretended not to understand why it is important to wear masks during a pandemic, describing it as “strange” that restaurantgoers are forced to wear masks in many states, unless they are eating or drinking.

“You go in, you have to put on your mask – unfortunately, I have two – you go in, you have to put on your mask. You sit down, you can take off the mask. See, apparently, the virus is really connected to the rise, ”joked Cruz, adding later:“ This is just dumb. ”

Later, Senator Tom Cotton scoffed at Maryland officials because of state public health guidelines that ended up forbidding the CPAC to hold the conference in its usual location, near Washington, DC.

“Although cases are plummeting and vaccination rates are rising, we are still forbidden to get anywhere near our nation’s Capitol,” said Cotton, as if the fact that new cases and daily deaths has declined from where they were two months ago was a good reason to immediately abandon all public health guidelines.

In retrospect, CPAC 2020 was one of the first indicators that Republicans would politicize public health responses to the coronavirus pandemic by framing any measure that closed businesses or schools as a violation of their personal freedoms. That mentality went on to infuse a reelection campaign in which Trump spread disease and misinformation across the country at rallies that scoffed at basic public health measures.

But even after Trump’s defeat, the conservative approach to the coronavirus pandemic remains unchanged.

It’s still Trump’s party in more than one

In addition to mocking the coronavirus, another big topic on Friday was the speakers sharing the same lies about the 2020 election and the January 6 uprising.

Wayne Dupree, a conspiracy theorist who once claimed that the shooting at Sandy Hook school in 2012 was a false flag, used a discussion board to try to blame the antifa and the Black Lives Matter by an insurrection that was perpetrated by Trump supporters. Later, a panel discussion entirely devoted to “How the judges and the media refused to look at the evidence” of electoral fraud had to be interrupted in the Right Side Broadcasting CPAC flow so that the hosts could distance themselves from the panelists’ claims . (Voting machine companies have filed billions of dollar lawsuits against individuals and media organizations that falsely claimed that the machines were rigged against Trump.)

And, of course, the day was infused with many complaints of cultural war on everything from social media companies having the audacity to check Trump’s facts to Mr. Potato Head’s genitalia.

The bottom line is that conservatives have not even tried to learn lessons or make adjustments after an election cycle in which they lost control of the White House and the Senate.

As it was last year, CPAC 2021 is a cult celebration by Donald Trump that will headline a speech by the former president – the personification of a movement that represents little more than owning the libs.