Patriots, family-values, promoters, and homeland advocates find their stride at NatCon

What began as a modest gathering of conservative thinkers has become the go-to place for promoting homeland-focused policies and family values. There’s a lot of MAGA at the annual NatCon conference, but mostly, participants are advocating for a world where it’s not weird to be a flag-waver, not weird to take responsibility for your family, and where you’re not at odds with the people educating your children

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seems almost too apropos that to reach the sessions of this year’s National Conservatism (NatCon) conference, visitors must descend several flights of stairs from the entrance of the stylish Washington, DC hotel hosting the event.

Political confabs each have their tone. Those focused on fundraising and electoral rallying are marked by loud music and fist-pumping rhetoric — heavy on theatrics, light on substance. Many held by think tanks or academic groups have plenty of tweedy intellectualism, but struggle to connect ideas to the world of accomplishable politics.

Close to a decade after the NatCon coalition took shape, its fifth large-scale US conference feels like the boiler room of the contemporary American right. Attendees and presenters are drawn from an array of conservative policy wonks, present and former officials, authors, media figures, bloggers, student group leaders, and the like — punctuated by a line-up of billboard speakers, including Tulsi Gabbard, Josh Hawley, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Tom Homan.

In essence, NatCon shares many of the MAGA ideas and viewpoints, but in a much more intellectual and organized fashion.

The crowd at NatCon skews young but is peppered by plenty of grey hair. Amid the din of the casual conversation in hallways lined by tables promoting the work of organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the fact-heavy presentations of its sessions, emerges an energetic, positive-thinking group soberly fleshing out foundational ideas for a movement that seemingly has a better chance than ever of becoming political reality.

Especially given the confident posture and achievements of the current Trump presidency, what began as a modest gathering of thinkers has quickly become a policy shop for ideas on immigration, promoting religion and family, homeland-focused foreign policy, and “cleansing” the administrative state that find fertile ground in today’s executive branch.

NatCon aims to be a “big tent” and does not lack eclecticism. Some of that is found in the biography of its founder and chairman, Yoram Hazony, a political theorist and Orthodox Jew who has lived in Israel for most of his adult life.

Its tent has included a growing number of Orthodox Jews, among them several presenters like Atlanta’s Rabbi Ilan Feldman, who spoke at a panel discussing avenues to challenge the mainstreaming of deviant lifestyles in America.

Those at NatCon were brought together by a set of common beliefs, but they have never moved in lockstep. The past year has seen a good deal of disagreement on the right over what is right or wrong about the Trump administration’s actions on Israel and Iran.

In the long run, it is one of many issues with constantly changing realities that the evolving movement will be forced to confront.

NatCon’s speeches and whisperings provide a unique insight into the world of ideas behind policies of the “MAGA” camp and the shifted center of gravity on the American right.