National Conservative Conference

After attending NatCon, the recent National Conservatism conference featuring academics, wonks, theologians, and politicians like Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, and Ron DeSantis, I realized there are two factions within American conservatism: Team Frodo and Team Boromir. Readers of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring remember Frodo as the hobbit tasked with destroying the Ring of Power lest it fall into the hands of the evil Sauron. Boromir was the traveling companion who urged Frodo to let him use the Ring’s power against their enemies. “Why should we not think that the Great Ring has come into our hands to serve us in the very hour of need?” he asked. “Wielding it the Free Lords of the Free may surely defeat the Enemy.

Cockburn has made it about halfway through the third rendition of the National Conservatism Conference and he's already identified some major winners and losers. Loser: Cockburn, whose room was not ready when he arrived drenched in sweat from the airport and thus was forced to change in a hotel lobby bathroom ahead of the conference's VIP welcome reception. Winner: Florida senator Marco Rubio, who made an actually decent joke about the Dallas Cowboys during his keynote address. Loser: New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, who was ratio'd on Twitter when he claimed Florida governor Ron DeSantis's speech was courting "anti-vaxxers" and has now been deemed an enemy of the NatCons. Technically, everyone at this year's conference is a winner.

I expected there might be some trouble at the National Conservative Conference, held earlier this week in Orlando. There had been omens. American Airlines flight cancellations had upended many attendees’ travel plans, with some unable to make it at all. I was fortunate enough to have booked on Delta, but was hit with a stomach bug as soon as I stepped on the plane. A bad portent on a personal level, but more to the point, this wasn’t the first time I had been to a conservative event with high-profile — some would say controversial — speakers. Disruptions are fairly standard fare. Years ago, I saw Newt Gingrich, of all people, speak at the New School in New York City.

Orlando, Florida   Cockburn just got back from the second annual National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. The ballroom of the Orlando Hilton can hold more than a thousand people. A little snowbird tells Cockburn that Yoram Hazony, the event's organizer, was in panic mode in the days before the summit. Not enough people had paid for the $315 ticket or $2,500 VIP pass. It seems even DC politicos had better things to do on Halloween than listen to Josh Hawley scream about porn. Cockburn hears that every right-wing organization in attendance received emails from Hazony begging them to help ship out more people. In the end, the official turnout was 700 attendees — though a hundred of them were the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and most of them were on a freebie.

Trumpism is, according to its adherents, meant to replace Reaganism, the political doctrine that has dominated the Republican party and the conservative movement since Ronald Reagan left office. Reaganism is identified by a commitment to free market economics, internationalist foreign policy, strong national defense and an open door to immigration.But then Reaganism and its British version, Thatcherism, have also been associated with an intellectual revolution that swept the West in the 1970s and that was headed by Nobel Prize-winning economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and driven by think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the Center for Policy Studies that transformed the political discourse worldwide.

Peter Thiel. Tucker Carlson. John Bolton. What’s most striking about the trio headlining the National Conservatism Conference is that none of the three has ever been elected to anything.Bolton may be national security adviser, but judging by his recent exile to Outer Mongolia and his stymied efforts to force regime change in Iran, his influence is ebbing. He may be rejoining the civilian corps soon enough.So why is a major new conference so honoring these folks? The question could be inverted. Why aren’t we hearing from over 200 Republican members of Congress? Sen. Josh Hawley, a freshman, will close Tuesday night at the NCC, but his address seems to have been a late addition.