Earlier: Haley Ignored Border Invasion At CPAC Speech. Attendees Heckled Her

Where are you going, CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference)? Laura Jedeed’s, New Republic piece, ”The Sad, Desolate Scenes of CPAC 2023” was pretty close to the mark when you subtract her condescending sneers. CPAC 2023 was anemic compared to past jam-packed events that I’ve attended.

“It’s so great to see everyone here, and it’s so great to see a packed house, too!” It was approximately 11:15 a.m. in Washington, D.C., and investigative reporter Sara Carter was lying. https://t.co/wCfp9hrdBj

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) March 6, 2023

I first felt something was off when I pulled into the parking garage in back of the Marriott Residence Inn, a block from the Gaylord Center where CPAC was in session. Usually, I’d have to go up to the fourth deck to find a spot; on Thursday there was plenty of parking on the first deck of the garage.

As I walked into the Gaylord I passed easily through the lobby and down to the registration area and quickly got my badge. No line, no waiting and then into the vendor area, notable by the absence of conservative publishers like Regnery, or any brand recognizable to the right.

Where in years past it was packed, this time one could roll a bowling ball without hitting anyone.  Up in the Grand Ballroom, where the main events took place, only about a third of the seats were filled, with a room divider closing off the back of the hall. Also absent were the breakout sessions, a salient feature of past CPACs—VDARE.com editor Peter Brimelow spoke at one in 2012.

For VDARE.com readers: This year CPAC’s official program managed to acknowledge the mess that is illegal immigration, with three panels directly addressing the peril.

But there was nothing on legal immigration, as usual.

The first panel featured a forceful, almost belligerent Tom Homan (acting ICE director under Trump) expounding on the deliberate failure of the Biden administration to safeguard the country from the invasion now taking place. This stood in direct contrast to Trump’s policy of strengthening enforcement and building the wall. Homan was furious with Biden’s doing nothing to stop fentanyl flowing freely into the US and into the veins of a younger generation. He was livid with a government that allowed criminal aliens to plunder American citizens while government handouts gave aid and comfort to the invaders. His remarks were sometimes profane but hit a sore spot in an audience equally fed up with an administration more attuned to displacing than protecting Americans.

Likewise, Sara Carter, right, who covers immigration for Fox News, delineated the menace to border communities by an administration that welcomed criminals as it disparaged the fears of Americans whose lives and property are threatened daily by cartel gangs and invaders who destroy fences, imperil livestock, and turn the natural environment into a trash heap.

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller not only reiterated Homan’s points but amplified the concerted effort of the Left to permit and encourage aliens, even illegal ones, to vote in local elections, a process already underway. Such actions, said Miller, are deliberately aimed at demolishing American sovereignty and self-government, surrendering the country to foreigners manipulated by the left in its endeavor to seize permanent political power.

Cong. Westley Hunt (R-Tx), right, decried the ”progressive” absurdity of calling anyone who opposed the invasion a ”racist.” ”I’ve been black for a long time,” he said, and now he too was ”racist” for wanting secure borders.

Moderator Eric Bolling [Tweet him] came in for a well-deserved booing after babbling the cliché that we require immigration for prosperity, as if skilled Americans didn’t exist. Has Bolling never heard of the great American engineering schools—MIT, Caltech, Carnegie-Mellon? Does Bolling really believe Emma Lazarus’ treacly nonsense? The Statue of Liberty is properly ”Liberty Enlightening the World,” not ”Come one, come all.”

Bolling needs to look at the number of American IT professionals who are being displaced by low wage Indians, or who have had their jobs shipped overseas to tech sweatshops.

The rest of the three-day event featured the usual commentaries on the Chinese menace, foreign policy, and how the progressives want to destroy freedom. All valid, but the biggest threat, immigration, should have been given more space. Judging from Trump’s forceful, provocative, and necessary pronouncement on immigration (albeit illegal), this was what the audience wanted to hear and what the country needs to hear.

President Trump Lays Out His Mass Deportation Plan

"Under my leadership, we will use all necessary state, local, federal and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history."

"We will pick them up, and we will throw them out of our… pic.twitter.com/abFwpCeVxR

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) March 4, 2023

Will anyone listen?

CPAC 2023 was a shadow of its former self, the attendance numbers show that.  Like the Senate Republican leadership, does it listen only to itself? 

If so, then it is headed for the shoals.

Spirit of the Fighting 69th has been writing us letters for years.