CPAC: Social conservatives shift from playing defense to offense

By Tyler Arnold

Washington D.C., Feb 21, 2025 /
19:50 pm

In the wake of the 2024 election and with Republicans in full control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, social conservatives gathering at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) said they are relishing the opportunity to switch from a defensive to offensive posture on several policy fronts.

Mercedes Schlapp, a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union (ACU) Foundation and wife of ACU chairman and CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp, told CNA Friday she believes that specifically, “the death of wokeism and gender ideology has been a crucial part of President [Donald] Trump’s victory and the Republicans’ victory.” 

“[Trump] talks about the revolution of common sense when he’s talking about two genders,” said Schlapp, who is Catholic. Schlapp said Trump’s focus on gender ideology “really hit home for parents,” including Catholic and other Christian parents, and their desire to “protect their children.” 

“I think it really hit home to so many Catholic families who are teaching their children Catholic values,” she said. “And that’s why you saw this shift, I think, where more Catholics ended up voting for Donald Trump.”

“The Democrats lost the common sense — and their loss is our gain,” Michael Knowles, a Catholic political commentator for The Daily Wire, declared during a Thursday afternoon speech at the event.

Knowles emphasized the importance of Trump winning the popular vote, which he did not win in his first presidential victory in 2016, calling the election “a mandate for common sense.”

During the campaign, Trump leaned heavily into criticisms of gender ideology, including transgender surgeries for children, biological men in women’s sports, and regulations that imposed “gender identity” constructs in public life. Since taking office, he has initiated executive actions to end all those federal policies.

Pope Francis has referred to gender ideology as “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” in the world today.

Knowles said that until recent years, “transgenderism did not exist in public life at all,” arguing that “LGBT gender-bending ideology” was “forced upon us” and ultimately rejected by voters.

He said American society has historically been based on God and referred to the current secularist trends as an “aberration and a national scandal [that] needs to be reversed.” He noted God is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, on American money, and in the full version of the national anthem.

“Religion is not just some private privilege,” Knowles said. “Religion is a public right. Our very country is predicated on the idea that God exists and we are made in his image.”

An emboldened social conservatism

During a CPAC panel titled “Culture Warriors: Take Your Truce and Shove It,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling, who is Catholic, called Trump the “most pro-family president” in American history for signing executive orders to “protect our children and families.”

Speaking on the same panel as Schilling, Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance pointed out that although Trump’s executive actions against gender ideology are welcome, the United States Congress still needs to pass laws to enact the same policies to prevent a future administration from reversing Trump’s orders.

“We cannot give up until we are actually able to codify this policy,” said Nance, who is an evangelical Christian. 

Some speakers also went further than Trump has on other cultural issues.

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Knowles, for example, criticized the federal sanctioning of homosexual marriage, noting that most Democrats were against it until the 2000s. He said marriage “is a natural institution” of a man and a woman and there’s “nothing bigoted about that observation.”

“That is the only definition of marriage that distinguishes it from other types of relationships,” Knowles said. 

Schilling and Nance both criticized cultural norms leading to a decline in marriage and having children. 

“Being a father — it’s the most amazing thing,” said Schilling, who has seven children. 

Specifically, Schilling criticized the prevalence of pornography and the popularity of marijuana among other cultural vices, which he said distract from “important things like getting married.”

Nance also expressed concern over falling fertility rates in the United States, saying: “We’re not at replacement rate for our children, for our families.” She said that although not everyone can get married, “it’s OK to realize and to state that it’s the ideal.”

“I would suggest there’s some real systemic causes of [the declining marriage and fertility rates] that we have to deal with,” Nance added.

Schlapp told CNA that society will “prosper” and “thrive” when “you have families who pray to God and have a religion,” adding: “It is how you can have a stable community, and quite frankly, a stable society and a stable nation.”

“We always believe that at CPAC, it is a spiritual warfare because we’re fighting against evil,” she added.

“We are fighting against diabolical influences,” she said. “And when you’re dealing with … taking down the communists and … taking down the globalists, these are people who do not believe in God and they hate the Catholic Church, and they hate Christian values.”

Tyler Arnold is a staff reporter for Catholic News Agency, based in EWTN News’ Washington Bureau. He previously worked at The Center Square and has been published in a variety of outlets, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative, and The Federalist.

CNA – Catholic News Agency