To strengthen and reaffirm the historic friendship that has long linked our party to the American conservative universe. Compare ideas and opinions to find meeting points and a common vision regarding future challenges to be faced together, on both sides of the Atlantic. Strongly reaffirm the importance of our battles, our values, our identities, to team up in view of the decisive electoral appointments of the mid-term in the United States and of the administrative and political appointments in Italy.
These are just some of the slogans that characterized our mission, together with the Identity and Democracy group of the European Parliament, at CPAC 2022, held for the second consecutive year in Orlando, Florida. An experience necessary to better understand and get to know the conservative American galaxy closely and a fundamental opportunity to build bridges between ours and their reality under the banner of similar political positions, if not entirely similar, on numerous issues, from defense of the borders against illegal immigration to the defense of family values, passing through the fight against Islamic fundamentalism and the increasingly topical question of the fight against the excesses of “politically correct”.
It is no coincidence that accompanying this year’s edition of the event was the slogan “Awake not Woke”, a difficult to translate form that contrasts being alert to the “woke” ideology, that of those who he knocks down the statues of Christopher Columbus, of those who want to remove references to Christmas from their greetings messages or of those who want to remove authors, artists, historical figures of the past from the history books in the name of cancel culture; a rather worrying drift, which has its origin in the USA and which has been spreading in Europe for some time with harmful effects.
But our participation in CPAC 2022 has allowed us, thanks to numerous meetings with key figures of US conservatism and of the movements belonging to the center-right with stars and stripes, to see firsthand the preparations for the recovery of the Republican Party which, in clear ascent in the percentages of approval, aims to regain the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate next November, on the occasion of the mid-term elections.
It is news these days that most Americans – as certified by the latest NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist polls – consider the first year of Biden’s administration “a failure”. Skyrocketing inflation, broken promises and too weak responses to the pandemic, disaster in Afghanistan: after only twelve months of taking office, the disappointment of the Americans with regard to the democratic presidency is tangible.
The recipes of the left, even overseas, turn out to be wrong and in the US there is already a strong desire for change. The relaunch of the ideas of the center-right in America can and must necessarily act as an encouragement for those who share the same ideas in Italy and in Europe, putting in place a series of policies that put the individual, his freedoms and his rights at the center.
In the days of the CPAC, unfortunately, several thousand kilometers from Orlando, the world had to deal with the unacceptable and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia, which brought war back to Europe. A dramatic event, obviously welcomed with great apprehension also in the United States: according to polls, most Americans believe that this would not have happened if Donald Trump had still been in the White House .
We cannot know, of course: but what is certain is that, in the four years of the Republican presidency, there have been no wars, and this is a fact. But instead of thinking about the past, we wanted to deal with the present and talk about the future: with our republican friends, we shared our concerns about the military escalation, reaffirming our commitment to peace.
The West must learn from the mistakes of the past and show itself united and compact, the US and the EU, in opposing the threats, come from Moscow or Beijing or Pyongyang. We are and will always be on the side of freedom and democracy, against all abuses.
League MEPs who participated in CPAC 2022Alessandra Basso, Susanna Ceccardi, Rosanna Conte, Danilo Oscar Lancini, Antonio Maria Rinaldi, Silvia Sardone, Isabella Tovaglieri, Annalisa Tardino
