The GOP's first 2024 cattle call is almost here. By the looks of the CPAC speaking roster, it's gearing up to be a very Trump-friendly affair.

• The Conservative Political Action Conference is set for February 25 to 28 in Orlando, Florida.
• This year’s event features a lineup of pro-Trump conservatives, many eyeing a 2024 White House run.
• Notably absent so far: establishment GOP leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
• Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

If this year’s CPAC confab is any indication, Donald Trump is likely to hold the keys to the Republican Party — and possibly even the 2024 GOP nomination — for a long time to come.

CPAC, short for the Conservative Political Action Conference, will run for four days starting February 25 in Orlando, Florida. The state has become a veritable political bunker for the former president and his allies following his election loss and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The conference has long been considered a launchpad for ambitious Republicans looking to win their party’s nomination and eventually the White House. As such, it’s one of the most closely watched barometers of where the GOP is at any moment. 

The lineup of speakers so far consists of a blend of conservative politicians and influencers, most of them Trump’s biggest and most vocal allies. Many are likely 2024 contenders looking to maintain a public profile in the meantime.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all got top billing. Donald Trump Jr. is set to speak and be introduced by his girlfriend, Trump advisor and former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, according to a conference organizer. 

Don’t expect any moderate or establishment Republicans to get much limelight at the event — or maybe even in the 2024 primaries. Trump smashed that model of Republican Party nominee, Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and leader of CPAC, told Insider Tuesday.

“They told them they were gonna defend traditional marriage, put a padlock on the IRS, appoint judges to prevent legislating from the bench,” Schlapp said, ticking down a list of stinging losses for the right from the same-sex marriage battles of a decade ago to scraps with then-President Barack Obama’s IRS. 

“If you’re a 75-year-old, longstanding voter, the only thing that the Republicans seem to be consistently good on is holding the line on new environmental regulations and taking the steps to cut taxes. And everything else becomes: ‘That’s too tough a fight.’ ‘Is that really the hill we want to die on?’ Pick your metaphor,” Schlapp added. 

The GOP establishment has to take a backseat, for now at least. But the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement still hangs in the balance, according to several Republican strategists who have spoken with Insider since the 2020 election. 

“The reason politics is such an interesting profession is because you don’t know until the ball is in play,” said Schlapp, who ran the White House political operation during President George W. Bush’s first term. “All these people armchair quarter-backing what’s going to happen, you should take with a grain of salt.”

From CPAC to Trump-PAC

CPAC has long been one of the most important platforms for Republican White House hopefuls to whip up grassroots and conservative media support for their presidential bids. 

A lot has changed in one year since the last CPAC conference was hosted in the Washington suburb of National Harbor — and where actor Sacha Baron Cohen, dressed as the character Borat crashed the party during a speech by then-VP Mike Pence.

At the time the novel coronavirus was in the early stages in the US and almost no one was wearing masks. The event would become the site of a coronavirus scare just before states started their March lockdowns.

This year, organizers moved the conference to central Florida, which has some of the loosest coronavirus restrictions. The Sunshine State is also Trump’s new permanent home.

In 2011, Trump regaled the forum when he was just toying with a presidential run. A decade later, many Republican strategists now refer to CPAC as Trump-PAC.

Some of the instigators of the January 6 insurrection will be onstage. Rep. Mo Brooks got a speaking slot. He’s the Alabama Republican who spoke at a pro-Trump rally south of the White House just before many of the Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. Rep. Paul Gosar, the Arizona Republican who led the effort to overturn the 2020 election results from the House floor, is also on the schedule.  

The conference may also be as notable for who’s not showing up. Republican Party leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Pence are so far absent from the speakers’ roster. Also left out are leaders of conservative militant groups Trump embraced — and who helped coordinate the assault on the Capitol — like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Members of such fringe groups could still easily show up outside the conference next week. But it is unlikely they would be welcomed by the CPAC organizers. In 2017, as self-professed white supremacist Richard Spencer was garnering widespread media attention, CPAC organizers kicked him out of the conference.

Trumpy aspirations

CPAC’s speaker list is jammed full of likely White House aspirants, many of them included in Insider’s ranking of the 2024 prospects.

Organizers have reached out to Trump and Pence to speak this year. Pence declined. Trump and his team are still deciding, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Whether he attends or not, Trump is still the man to beat in the next presidential election cycle. A Politico/Morning Consult poll of likely 2024 Republican voters released Tuesday found that a whopping 53% of them would select Trump if he ran again. 

Pence came in a distant second with 12% of the support. No one else, including Trump Jr. and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, got more than 6%.

And anti-Trump Republicans stand very little chance if the poll is anything to go by.

“Nobody is going to get the nomination if they’re a Never Trumper. Nobody is going to get the nomination if they’re not a conservative,” Schlapp said. “The Republicans who think they’re going to get the nomination through The Lincoln Project probably need to get a lawyer.” 

Of course, 2024 is a long time away in politics and a lot can change.

On one side are Republicans who believe the party needs to win back women and the suburbs, a big-tent strategy akin to how Ronald Reagan won landslide victories decades ago. On the other side are conservative activists aligned with Schlapp, the former George W. Bush operative who now says the old GOP coalitions don’t work anymore.

“The Republican Party demonstrated how far it can go when it just unified Republicans. Look at John McCain and Mitt Romney,” Schlapp said of the GOP’s 2008 and 2012 nominees, who both lost to Barack Obama. “I don’t like that approach.”

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