Steve Bannon Slated As Keynote Speaker For Anaheim GOP Convention
ANAHEIM (CBSLA/AP) – President Donald Trump's former chief strategist will be the keynote speaker at the California GOP Convention in Anaheim next week.
The California Republican Party announced Friday that Bannon will speak at the opening dinner of the Fall Convention on Friday, Oct. 20.
"Steve Bannon is not shy about taking on the establishment on behalf of hard working Americans," said CRP chairman Jim Brulte in a statement. "He is a leading voice in the effort to drain the swamp in Washington DC, a change desperately needed since it has limited our progress."
The convention is being held Oct. 20‑22 at the Anaheim Marriott.
In a speech Saturday to religious conservatives in Washington, D.C., Bannon provided a taste of what he might say in Anaheim. In a message to Republican incumbents he considers part of the establishment he said, "Nobody can run and hide."
According to CBS News, Bannon predicted that Trump will win a second term.
"President Trump's not only going to finish this term, he's going to win with 400 electoral votes in 2020," Bannon told the Values Voters Summit.
Bannon is promoting a field of potential primary challengers to take on disfavored Republicans in Congress and step up for open seats. Among the outsiders: a convicted felon, a perennial candidate linked to an environmental conspiracy theory and a Southern lawmaker known for provocative ethnic and racial comments.
It's an insurgency that could imperil Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Bannon called it a "populist nationalist conservative revolt."
The emerging Bannon class of rabble-rousers shares limited ideological ties but a common intent to upend Washington and knock out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), standard-bearer of the establishment.
So intent is Bannon on bringing down McConnell that he laid down this marker Saturday to some of the incumbents at risk of a challenge from his flank of the party: disavow McConnell, satisfy other conditions and possibly escape the wrath.
"Until that time," he said, the message to the elite is: "They're coming for you."
The crop of outsider candidates unnerves a GOP that lost seats — and a shot at the Senate majority — in 2010 and 2012 with political novices and controversial nominees and fears a stinging repeat in 2018.
"The main thing that binds them together is a rejection of the Republican Party establishment, a rejection of the political elites, the financial elites and the media elites," said Andy Surabian, a former Bannon aide and senior adviser to the pro-Trump PAC Great America Alliance.
Bannon told the religious conservatives that economic nationalism and anti-globalism, the same forces he said elected Trump, can overpower Republican elites.
"This is our war," he said. "The establishment started it. ... You all are gonna finish it."
To escape it, he suggested, Senate incumbents can oppose McConnell, eliminate the filibuster that he says is impeding Trump's agenda and denounce Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican who gave a scorching appraisal of Trump as an untethered leader who could lead the U.S. into another world war.
Bannon singled out John Barrasso of Wyoming, Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Dean Heller of Nevada as senators who "vote the right way" but did not step up to condemn Corker. There's still time for a "mea culpa," he said, implying such senators could be spared his insurgency if they toed his line.
Senate Republicans had been upbeat about adding to their 52-48 majority, especially with Democrats defending more seats next year, 10 in states Trump won in last year's presidential election.
But the Bannon challenge could cost them, leaving incumbents on the losing end in primaries or GOP candidates roughed up for the general election.
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
