Thousands of conservative activists will descend on Washington Thursday to divine the future of a Republican Party that is fervently committed to defeating President Obama in the fall, but remains deeply divided on nearly everything else.
The three-day Conservative Political Action Conference will attempt to bridge GOP divides that threaten the party's strength against Obama in the general election, by rallying competing factions around a set of core principles: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, organizers said.
The theme of the conference is based on "the idea that if we want to be successful in politics [we] have to be founded on certain principles," said Lee Edwards, an expert on the conservative movement with the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. "I'm sure that you'll [hear] many references to first principles, to the Constitution, to the Declaration [of Independence] by the various speakers -- both those who are running for president ... and those who are participating in various policy discussions."
