CPAC IS NOT CONSERVATIVE, NEVERMIND CONSERVATISM:

Charen's outpouring of dissent accentuated how quickly and completely CPAC has become a pro-Trump gathering, just two years removed from him skipping the event because of a planned walk-out among conservatives who opposed his candidacy. Late Friday morning, with a standing-room-only ballroom full of conservative activists thundering down applause, Trump told of the "horrendous" immigrants taking advantage of our visa lottery system. He warned of dangerous and unproductive people arriving via "chain migration." And then, underscoring these threats, the president dusted off "The Snake," a ballad he often recited on the campaign trail, which likens immigrants welcomed by America to a venomous serpent that bites and kills the woman who took it in.

It seemed to set a tone. Gaffney, invited back to CPAC after being banished from the event for years, warned that most of the Chinese nationals in the United States are here to spy on Americans. A short while later, Rick Ungar, a left-wing radio host whom Schlapp invited for a panel discussion, was booed when he described a naturalization ceremony--and again when he said that Mexican immigrants have "more in common" with conservatives than liberals. That night, Schlapp's communications director, Ian Walters, stunned attendees of the event's trademark Ronald Reagan Dinner by saying the Republican National Committee elected Michael Steele as chairman in 2009 "because he's a black guy."

All of this in one day--and less than 24 hours after the Trump administration changed the mission statement of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to remove the phrase, "a nation of immigrants."

"None of this happens in a vacuum," Steele told me Saturday morning, still visibly upset by Walters' remark. Steele said that Schlapp had apologized to him but then pointed to Steele's criticisms of Trump and the Republican Party. "And I'm like, 'Yeah? What the hell does that have to do with what your guy said from the podium last night?' He was twisting it back on me," Steele said. "There are people who have an attitude regarding race in this party that needs to be cleansed out. Otherwise this party will die from it."

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