“We have an elite who have been in power for at least the last 40 years, who fundamentally don’t like western civilization and they wanna destroy it,” said Liz Truss, who was prime minister for 49 days in 2022, as she spoke to a half-full room at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas. It was her third such speech.

The Liz Truss who addresses American audiences bears little resemblance to the awkward, growth-obsessed economics nerd who somehow ascended the greasy pole of British politics, only to slide back down at staggering speed.

She’s changed her vocabulary – and her talking points. The few attendees of her panel, snappily titled “Europestan: Can Europe Survive?” could hear Truss lambasting “grooming gangs” and “transgender ideology.” She has become fluent in the language of the “MAGA Republican.” And now she’s returning from the New World – and she’s bringing CPAC back with her to Britain, like the Walter Raleigh of the 21st-century right. 

Truss has become fluent in the language of the ‘MAGA Republican’

Truss has become fluent in the language of the ‘MAGA Republican’

CPAC has changed a lot in the age of Trump, under the leadership of its chairman Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes. One major development has been international franchising. Schlapp brags that “12 countries in five continents” have hosted the conferences. Britain will be next: Schlapp and Truss announced in March that “CPAC GB” will take place in London from July 16 to 18. (The news was actually broken hours beforehand, in this magazine’s Cockburn’s Diary newsletter.)

Truss, in her role as chairman of the CPAC GB organizing committee, wants to set a “Trump-style revolution” in motion in the United Kingdom, or, as she says, the “equivalent of a MAGA movement – a ‘MEGA’ movement, ‘Make England Great Again.’” Who knows what is to become of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” said the late philosopher Eric Hoffer. CPAC, as a flagship event for American conservatism, may be going through a similar process.

The conference was jointly founded in 1974 by two think tanks: the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom. In the early days, the conference was “very much focused on a Frank Meyer-esque fusionist agenda,” says Tim Chapman, president of Advancing American Freedom, the conservative think tank founded by former vice president Mike Pence. “It built the intellectual foundation for the right.” CPAC’s first keynote speaker was Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, who used the platform to articulate his national vision. He quoted John Winthrop as he described a “shining city on a hill,” a line he went on to employ throughout his political........

© The Spectator