What does "change" mean at CPAC? Back to right-wing extremist basics

The recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has received considerable attention by the media this time around; why I don’t have a clue, since even if some of the participants want to “shake things up” by claiming to call for “change” within the Republican Party; naturally, what they really mean appears to involve revolving back to the same point. As I mentioned before, future presidential hopeful Marco Rubio (as is Al Cardenas, current head of the American Conservative Union) is your typical right-wing white Cuban-American who apparently has a romantic notion of pre-Castro Cuba. 

Now, before I get back on track, let’s summarize what right-wing Cuban-Americans are so nostalgic about. Dictator Batista was of mixed race, but his policies were “colored” from pining after the support of the island’s Euro-elite; he only managed to find “acceptance” from the American Mafioso, with whose help he turned Havana into a playpen for the stereotypical “Ugly American.” Meanwhile, the vast majority of peasants lived in huts often made from palm trees; half had never attended a school of any sort, few had access to running water, electricity or healthcare, and despite Cuba’s relatively high GDP (compared to Third World countries), most were desperately poor and malnourished. 

Cuba was also one of the most corrupt countries in the world; among other enterprises, Batista was accused of  exacerbating an atmosphere of conflict with revolutionaries in order to pocket money received for arms purchases. His regime was notoriously rife with brutal repression (including the murder of university students, who were all considered “revolutionaries” by Batista). In the end, even its principle bankroller, the U.S., was forced to withdraw its support of Batista, and the regime fell so easily because Fidel Castro was able to take advantage of widespread moral revulsion of the status quo—even by some white Cubans, perhaps embarrassed by the fact while they enjoyed the kind of life Americans take for granted, such a life was heavily subsidized by enforced poverty elsewhere and organized crime “investment.” Among his many “sins” that drew the wrath of the right-wing fringe, JFK was known to sympathize with and understand the aspirations of those who fought against the Batista regime, which he admitted was another brutal Latin American dictatorship that U.S. found useful to call “friend.”

But enough of the shameful history of the Right. Rubio told his listening audience that the party did not need to “change”—in fact it needed to become even more retrenched in its “principles.” This may be Rubio’s attempt to insure the backing of a potential presidential run by the hardline social conservatives who might view Rubio as what the party is cynically trying to sell him as in order to attract Latino voters—a group that otherwise has been the subjected to dehumanization and hatred. Rubio’s change of tone from “outreach” in his State of the Union response to no “compromise” of “principles” perhaps reflects the fact that he knows that Latino voters are not as “dumb” as many in his party think they are. 

So what are we to make of the talk of “change” by Rand Paul and Sara Palin? Palin’s comments can be quickly dismissed as that of her typical celebrity opportunism. Palin criticized Republicans for being “scripted,” but what she is really saying is that her off-the-cuff inanities should be seen as more “authentic” even if based on ignorance of the issues. Yet what she told CPAC listeners (to repeated ovations) wasn’t “change,” but avoiding  “rebranding” of the party,  and simply “rebuilding” the country Republicans helped to grind down during the Bush years. She doesn’t actually mean “rebuilding” the country in terms of infrastructure, jobs or anything that benefits all citizens, but “building” a reliable Republican voting base.  

"As conservatives, we must leave no American behind,” Palin exclaimed with no apparent recognition of irony, let alone hypocrisy. “And we must share our message of freedom and liberty to all citizens, even those who may disagree on some issues because there is solid common ground in fighting against government overreach and for independence. And those who disagree with us on some issues, they're not our enemies, they're our sisters and brothers. They're our neighbors and friends. It's time we all stop preaching to the choir, and let's grow." This is the same notoriously thin-skinned Palin who takes even the mildest criticism worse than a burn victim, isn’t it? 

In this astonishingly simplistic view of the world,  how Republicans would go about giving their “message” a different spin  without changing the perception that they are the party of privileged whites is not explained, and like most Republicans, Palin makes great assumptions of how people view government; she would obviously be surprised to learn that many millions of people view Republicans as the enemy of the working class and working poor, and government as providing protection from the rapacity of the few that Republicans represent in fact. The last recession can be seen as a result of what happens when government fails to serve as that mechanism, allowing the greed of the few to crush the aspirations of the many.

Then there was Rand Paul. Paul, another presidential hopeful in 2016, told onlookers  "The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered.” Just wipe off the moss and what do you have? Even more extreme “libertarianism,” which is nothing more than law of the jungle; the irony, of course, is that the maintenance of such a society would require a rights-infringing police state. Anyways, what kind of “change” does Paul advocate to attract the “Facebook Generation”? Among other things, unlimited gun ownership and totally unregulated “free” enterprise—the latter which would have the long-term effect of killing-off small business. 

What does Paul offer for those not in the top one percent, or not blinded by race hatred? Um…dismantling the Department of Education (apparently because education serves too much as an “equalizer”), abolishing the 1964 Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts—in other words, anything that says you cannot trample on the “rights” of the current majority demographic. Of course, rather than be “inclusive,” this is—with no apparent realization of incongruity—aimed at white Americans who don’t like the idea of “sharing.”  Paul’s recent filibuster against the use of drones is highly instructive in how some people in the country seem to care more about the welfare of our enemies abroad than the welfare of people right here in this country (admittedly many on the left are just as guilty of that). The reality is that Paul’s version of “change” is to become even more reactionary and extremist.

The CPAC conference—which not surprisingly did not invite a true moderate like New Jersey governor Chris Christie, but did invite the increasingly racially-polarizing and paranoid schizophrenic  Donald Trump—is what it is: A coming together of people largely out-of-touch with the views of most people in this country, hoping to arrive at a strategy that will cloak their bigoted worldview in a shroud of “rights,” but in fact narrows the rights of working people (begun in earnest under the regime of the “hero,” Ronald Reagan) in favor of the privileged “elite.” This is about changing how people “perceive” their reactionary agenda. That an uncritical media gives this gathering a spin of “legitimacy” only serves to cause utter revulsion to people who believe that “we the people” refers to more than the caste who wrote those words. The people gathered at the conference need to be exposed for who they: Blind fanatics with no purpose but to create a country that serves the cause of the few over the many.