Sign of GOP Infighting, as CPAC Leader Says Cheney, Kinzinger Want Less Inclusive Party

The representatives are preparing to host what some are calling a parallel conference this weekend in Washington, D.C.

AP/Mary Schwalm, file
Representative Elizabeth Cheney. AP/Mary Schwalm, file

ORLANDO — With CPAC’s latest conference under way in Florida, one of its leaders has a skeptical eye on two Republican U.S. representatives who are preparing to host what some are calling a parallel conference this weekend in Washington, D.C.

Vice Chairman Charlie Gerow is accusing Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger of wanting to make the GOP less inclusive.

“Their message,” he says, “is that the Republican party, the conservative movement, the fight for freedom would be strengthened if we could only get back into the country club elites and leave out the working men and women, leave out the minorities, leave out the African Americans, the Latinos, the Asian Americans, the Indian Americans that Donald Trump brought to the party.” 

“They’d rather not have those folks,” Mr. Gerow told the assembled crowd, but, “I know that we want each and every one of those people in the fight for freedom, along with all of you.” 

The Washington summit is hosted by Principles First,  an organization that says it was “built by citizens disillusioned with the current state of our politics” and is “committed to revitalizing and championing conservative principles in the 21st century.”

The conference is sponsored by the Bulwark, a new anti-Trump news outlet; the Republican Accountability Project — formerly Republican Voters Against Trump; Country First, an organization whose mission is to defeat “toxic tribalism”; and American Values, whose mission is to foster “a community of Americans empowered to lead with truth, reject extremism and misinformation, and defend democracy.”

Mr. Gerow mocked that summit as irrelevant and out of touch.

“They could have held their little gathering in Hollywood or Silicon Valley,” he said, “but they chose to stay in the swamp, the city where sound travels faster than light.” 

He added: “I guess they probably could have held it in a phone booth, but they’re going to be together with their dozen or so great friends telling each other how they really think the Republican Party would be better off” if it excluded the people President Trump attracted.

“Look at their list of speakers,” he joked, “they’re all either lame ducks or soon to be lame ducks, or they have an X in front of their title. They even have that guy who was promoting the Russian hoax,” referring to Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. 

In addition to Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger, speakers at that conference include Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger; a former U.S. representative, Joe Walsh; the Maricopa County, Arizona, recorder, Stephen Richer; a former White House director of strategic communications, Alyssa Farah; and scholars from the Manhattan Institute, Reason, Brookings, AEI, and CATO.


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