Scoop: Trump to blast "Bush Republicans" at CPAC
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
- Josh Kraushaar
Axios on facebookAxios on twitterAxios on linkedinAxios on email 
Kari Lake, who lost her race for Arizona governor in November, kisses a portrait of former President Trump after speaking at CPAC in National Harbor, Md., yesterday. Photo: Nathan Howard/Reuters
Former President Trump plans to draw a sharp ideological contrast between his MAGA movement and Bush-era Republicans in his speech at CPAC on Saturday — and will urge GOP voters to finish the job of remaking the party by backing him for president.
Why it matters: The CPAC conference, now dominated by the MAGA movement, offers Trump a home-field advantage. He first spoke there in 2011, where he previewed many of the populist themes that fueled his 2016 campaign.
- Trump's keynote address, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. ET Saturday, is expected to last about 90 minutes.
- "The issues that brought Trump to the fore in 2016 are still with us," one Trump aide told Axios. "These issues have never left. He's going to remind people of the bigger picture. There's a longer struggle here — in terms of finishing the job."
Zoom in: Trump's finish the job rhetoric is somewhat reminiscent of President Biden's message in his State of the Union speech last month, in which he called on lawmakers to "finish the job" of rebuilding the economy and unifying the country.
- Trump's approach is provocative for a former president accused of inspiring an insurrection aimed at overturning the results of an election he lost.
Crowds during the first three days of CPAC — at a massive convention complex in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington — reflected the divide Trump fosters among Republicans.
- They're smaller than in the past — but heavily pro-Trump..
What they're saying: "Trump has completely remade the party since he's become president," another Trump aide told Axios. "He realized there's a difference between what grassroots activists thought and what Bush Republicans in Washington, D.C., were trying to enact."
Between the lines: In coming days, Trump plans to step up his attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely viewed as his biggest threat to the Republican nomination. But Trump's CPAC speech isn't likely to go after any specific presidential opponents, aides say.
- The speech will blast establishment GOP leaders, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
- Even as a former president, Trump remains eager to portray himself as a political outsider against the establishment of both political parties.
Go deeper: He's expected to take shots at Republican hawks as "warmongers," and say that support for additional aid to Ukraine threatens a third World War.
- Trump's former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and his UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, both spoke at CPAC this week and offered more traditional, hawkish Republican messages.
The bottom line: Trump's strategy underscores the generational issues that will be at play in the 2024 election.
- Trump, 76, and Biden, 80, have vastly different politics but essentially are calling on voters to remember what they've done — even as polls indicate many voters in both parties are hungry for new leaders.
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Is it any wonder why the once upper case Grand Old Party of Abe Lincoln is now known in the lower case as merely "the gop"?
Time to grow a new catchy and clever phrase. This one is old and stale.
We'll see how many real Republicans are ready to drink Trump's poisonous Kool-Aid.
MAGA needs a new leader...Trump has become a millstone around the party's neck.
Stay tuned. I can't wait until the mud starts to be slung.
Trump is already leading Desantis by fifteen percentage points!
I suspect that polls taken on 3/4/24 will show a wholly different picture.
cpac has been a freak show and flea market combo so far.
jr needs an intervention and his fiance kim gargoyle is getting uglier by the week.
Is it any wonder why the always lower case democrat party has always been the party of slavery, Jim Crowe, pro-crime, drug addicts, trannies and groomers?
Those mired in the gop should try to free themselves from that nasty mess and join decent humanity on the right side of things.
You actually think that republicans would leave the party to become THIS?
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Yet the 1950s conservative Democrats became today's gop.
Younger and minority voters rejected your MAGA extremism!
No, most of them are dead now.
Who called Dems Nazis? Are you after Godwin’s Rule Award today?
Just because someone does not agree with your radical ideals does not make them extremists,, nazis, white supremacists, or any other word you need to replace racist with because that word no longer has a meaning. .
Leftists really need to grow up with their bs hyperbole.
This is what republicans wanted to return to a non-PC country for, just so people [Deleted] can label innocent people as nasty, vulgar, and violence to suit your brand of mud-puke politics?
In your mind, its Republicans who do that? Do you read many of the left wing posts here?
Republicans, who interfere with the lives of 'countless' visible and invisible to the public people lives do not get to claim political innocence! It is conservatives waging 'culture wars' that are the causes of the effects we all interact. Conservatives, have a clear 'answer' to the transsexual lifestyle already: Don't like it? Don't participate in it. Tell your children to make the conservative choice. It should be easy for them, after-all conservatives are GREAT PARENTS AND HAVE GREATER PARENTING NETWORKS to share with conservative youth!
But yet, here conservatives are. . . looking over the 'fence' into other people's freedoms and liberties and trying to control/pull 'strings.'
Really CB?
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No, here is a better idea.
Don't force the lifestyle down our kids' throats with "story hours", ESPECIALLY without the consent of parents you are saying should tell their children to choose the conservative ways.
Most of today's leftists are groomers.
Exactly, progressives want people free to do what is compulsory.
Mud-puke politics?
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Nobody is calling anyone except self avowed Nazis, of which there are aplenty in the United States of America, "Nazis". Yet these modern day Nazis and Klan members vote with the MAGA.
MAGAS are the republicans in the gop who vote for Trump.
I do not believe any of the Bushes voted for Trump in 2020.
Understand?
No, I don’t understand the meme that you copied and pasted.
You insulted heterosexual liberals in your haste to insult homosexuals!
If some conservatives only want conservative 'expressions' AKA: heterosexuality - in schools, then go to/open more private schools. For instance, Catholic schools.
Storybook hour should be for those who want to participate. I don't know why they would not be voluntary. But, since some conservative "little heteros" will be in private schools some conservatives don't have to care what liberals are saying to each other!
Your pithy comment is not clear at all.
Show me where I insulted homosexuals.
Okay, try to straighten out the above. Who are you calling "trannies" (LGBTQ) and "groomers" - heterosexuals, directly and alone? WHO?!
You understand full well. Lame attempt to troll also noted...
They're the gqp.
I would imagine the people of AZ are quite relieved that this is no longer their governor.
Lake is part of a faction of the GOP that has tossed honesty and integrity out the window (not even a semblance remains). This faction (and those who continue to defend Trump even though they claim they do not want him as the nominee) are what will cause the GOP to lose the 2024 presidential election.
How these people cannot comprehend that they are shooting themselves in the foot is fascinating.
Yet old school "Bush Republicans" are explicitly rejected by MAGA!
Yup, the party is in very bad shape.
"I didn't leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me".
These people, these conservatives, they don't intend to let go of Donald Trump, because they are Donald Trump! Call it what it is.
Reactionaries sure seem to have their own special kind of bs hyperbole, don't they?
Not sure what you mean by reactionaries, but if you are referring to radical leftists, then yes, you are right on the [money.....deleted]
Since you don't know, I'll educate you. "Reactionaries", of course, refers to right wingers.
Well, I did react to stupid liberal bs, so I can you may be right on the money again.
This stupid bs
was not posted by a "liberal".
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What I "reacted" to was this
"Is it any wonder why the once upper case Grand Old Party of Abe Lincoln is now known in the lower case as merely "the gop"?"
THIS bs WAS posted by a liberal.
The topic is Trump bashing the gop and other republicans.
Lower case!
Democrats and this seeder are not on topic. Get back on it...
I am on it. I responded to a post YOU made..
Another example of why republicans are the lower case gop!
Old School upper case Repubs, the Bushes, are unwelcomed.
Liz Cheney is 'teetering' somewhere right now about how she can position herself to help liberals. And 'poor' former RNC chair Michael Steel and Nicole Wallace they are seemingly getting "into it" deeper and deeper with the liberal worldview. Because they can't deal with the 'darkside' of Trump 2.0!
Teetering somewhere? She’s accepted a professor position at Univ of VA.
Politics, Drinker 'ry! Political positioning what we are discussing here.
If you say so.
They're the gqp, nothing but a bunch of whackjobs and conspiracy theorists and trump ass kissers.
It's what Liz Cheney stated: She will work to stop Donald Trump from getting into the office of president a second time. And as of right now, Trump is making an attempt to do just that!
Most of today's neo-fascist propaganda sounds like that idiotic statement.