This year’s CPAC roster includes Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s white supremacist aide who, as head of Breitbart News, bragged that “We're the platform for the alt-right.” It included Milo Yiannopoulos until he was booted for saying gross things about something other than women and non-white people—everything Yiannopoulos said up to the moment he advocated for pedophilia was fine by CPAC. So this smells like an entire stockyard full of bulls:
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference began Thursday morning outside Washington, DC, with a strange denunciation of the movement by the executive director of the organization behind the event. In a speech titled "The Alt Right Ain't Right at All," American Conservative Union executive director Dan Schneider said that the alt-right isn't really a conservative movement at all. Instead, he said, "a hate-filled, left-wing fascist group hijacked the very term 'alt-right.'" Schneider called the alt-right anti-Semitic, racist, and sexist.
That CPAC would take the trouble of trying to distance itself from the alt-right shows that the brand has become toxic—people noticed that “alt-right” translates to “white supremacist.” But saying “that’s not us” while featuring Bannon and seven current Breitbart staffers on your program is really not even trying.