Frank Gaffney in today’s Washington Times echoes my dismay at the lack of foreign-policy discussion at CPAC:

Still, the Mount Vernon Statement is a paragon of robust national security-mindedness in contrast to what took place in the succeeding three days at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). With a few notable exceptions — including powerful addresses by former U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton and former Sen. Rick Santorum — the program was bereft of the focus one would think 10,000 people who cherish the memory of Ronald Reagan would have demanded, especially in the midst of a global war with two active combat fronts.
Incredibly, there was but one panel held in the plenary hall that had as its principal subject the question of national defense. Titled “What is a Conservative Foreign Policy?”, it featured remarks by a junior (but promising) member of Congress, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah; an old Reaganaut, Don Devine, who urged America to emulate President Reagan’s abandoning of Lebanon and the use of force only in tiny Grenada; and Joanne Herring, the colorful Texas patriot/philanthropist best known for her persona played by Julia Roberts in “Charlie Wilson’s War.”
With all due respect to the participants, it is inconceivable that CPAC’s organizers could not have arranged a more formidable program to address this and related topics. We are entitled to know why they did not do so. Watch this space for the answer.

When I raised this issue last week, reader Bart Jacka wrote me seeking to explain:

One possible reason why an organization like CPAC isn’t spending much time on foreign policy — including on what a “conservative” foreign policy looks like — is that there isn’t a lot of substantive disagreement by conservatives with the Obama Administration.
I’m not saying that there aren’t “any” substantive disagreements or that there aren’t any disagreements.
But when I look at even the harshest “conservative” criticisms of Obama, they’re over relatively — and I mean the world “relatively” small matters: how vigorously we interrogate those we believe to be involved in Islamic-based terrorism; whether we try Islamic terrorist suspects in civilian rather than military court; whether we close Guantanamo; whether he should bow or shake hands when meeting foreign royalty.
Those matters (well, not the bowing thing) are important, but take a look at the larger picture: Mr. Obama is having the U.S. prosecute a war in Afghanistan to turn back the Taliban and to deny Al Qaeda a base of operations; he is continuing to work to help the Iraqi government secure the country in a democratic fashion; he is trying to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons without resort to force (which is what Bush tried to do); he supports Israel; he is maintaining NATO; he is balancing our need to confront China with our need to get along with it; he is working with other nations to try to pre-empt Islamic terrorist attacks.
Yes, there’s plenty of criticism — but compare the kinds of criticisms leveled against Obama on the foreign policy front to those leveled against him on the domestic front: whether the government takes an aggressive role in regulating health insurance and care; whether the government tries to fight the emission of greenhouse gases; whether the government runs large deficits during a time of recession; etc.
These are much bigger fights that expose huge differences in outlook – not just the details of “how” something is done. As excited as one can get arguing about the merits of a “military commission” vs. a “civilian court” for Underpants Bomber, it isn’t really as big a deal as whether every American is required to purchase health insurance.

I think there’s something to this, but it’s only part of the answer – Gaffney’s concern is actually that, even in the areas of disagreement that Jacka identifies, CPAC was deficient. And I think that’s in large part due to the fact that David Keene and Grover Norquist, who have the biggest voices in planning CPAC, are on Obama’s side against conservatives on many of these areas of disagreement. Specifically, the two of them (along with Bob Barr) smeared opposition to closing Guantanamo and to civilian trials for terrorists in the United States as “scaremongering.” When CPAC is run by people sharing the views of the ACLU, CAIR, and Eric Holder, what do you expect?