Brandon Straka is best known as the founder of the Walk Away movement, which aimed to make the case for Republican and conservative principles to young American voters. On Friday, Mr. Straka addressed the assembled at CPAC 2026.
Here are some highlights.
Mr. Straka began by observing some sense of division in the conservative movement. He notes that his work in the Walk Away movement started a national movement to promote young liberals to walk away from the left, and that the left, when he walked away, had become tyrannical, wherein anyone who questioned the orthodoxy was cancelled.
He described being happy to move to the right, where he could express his opinions freely, where disagreement didn't produce disenfranchisement.
Mr. Straka notes that the MAGA movement is splitting along ideological lines. He described character assassinations, that all Americans must pick a side. That's a very real problem, and Mr. Straka notes that the matter became worse when he was arrested and accused of multiple felonies after the January 6th, 2021 hooliganism.
Next, Mr. Straka described a divide between, as he describes it, the Mark Levin and the Tucker Carlson wings of the party. He went on to describe a similar divide between the Lauren Boebert and the Marjorie Taylor Green factions.
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There are some very real concerns here.
Here is, for my money, Mr. Straka's key point; he asks when it became forbidden, as a conservative, to question your own government. That's a very good question. That's what the First Amendment is all about.
A good part of this problem, of course, is that conservatives are more independently minded; we aren't a hive-mind like the left. That just makes our ability to discuss and disagree civilly all the more important.
Back to Mr. Straka's remarks: On identity politics, Mr. Straka makes another good point; namely, that identity politics always leads to the result of certain groups, be they ethnic groups, religious groups, or any other grouping become untouchable; free from criticism or correction. That's anathema to civil discourse, not to mention flying in the face of the very idea of free speech.
Brandon went on to call for consequences for corrupt government officials. He spoke up for the SAVE America Act, housing reform, and for enforcement of our immigration laws - not controversial positions for conservatives. He went on to call for free and unfettered speech, speech where disagreement, where differences, don't result in cancellation.
Brandon Straka has been putting out this message for some time. My friend and colleague Jennifer Olive O'Connell described Mr. Straka's very similar message at CPAC 2024.
Jennifer quoted Mr. Straka in that appearance:
I started WalkAway after making the startling realization that almost everything I'd believed in my entire life was actually nothing more than a carefully constructed narrative installed in the public consciousness with meticulous deceit by the entertainment industry, the media, and various systems of propaganda in our culture. When I realized that not only was I being lied to, but the media and the Democrats had concocted a formula to control every minority community in this country through a steady diet of fearmongering and deception, I became outraged and I decided to do something about it.
This is someone who was a creature of the left. He walked away. We should wish him every success in convincing other young liberals to do likewise.
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