On Saturday night, Stephen K. Bannon grabbed the microphone on the upper level of Tom’s Watch Bar, a sports bar in National Harbor, Md., to close out the final after-party of the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.
“The management is upset,” Mr. Bannon, the former Trump adviser turned podcaster, said to a crowd of a few hundred college Republicans, young political operatives and middle-aged MAGA-sphere celebrities. “You all aren’t drinking enough. I told them I was throwing a party, but you all are a bunch of pencil-necks. Are we drinking or not?”
The room roared back. They were definitely drinking. A college Republican sporting a turtleneck and a Gen-Z fade teetered past the dance floor. A mohawked security guard wearing a Gadsden flag pin manned the stairs to the V.I.P. section, where Nigel Farage, the former Brexit Party leader, pressed the flesh with Newsmax hosts and other guests like James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas.
Nearby, Mark and Patricia McCloskey signed leaflets featuring the infamous photo of them pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters from their front lawn in St. Louis in 2020. Televisions around the bar played a loop of promo images for Mr. Bannon’s podcast, “War Room.” A D.J. bumped 2010s club hits.
The bar was open — domestic beers and tequila sodas flew across it, and servers in T-shirts circulated trays of old-fashioneds. After four days of speeches and a convention floor offering little more than a Jan. 6-themed pinball machine and some late-night infomercial products, the attendees appeared desperate for a good party.
CPAC has long been as much a social event as an opportunity to set the tone and agenda of the conservative movement. But in recent years, as Donald J. Trump has remade the Republican Party, CPAC’s attendance and cultural capital has declined, a trend heightened by allegations of sexual assault made in a lawsuit against the organization’s president, Matt Schlapp. (Mr. Schlapp has denied the allegations.)
In the days leading up to the convention, one longtime conservative activist told The New York Times in a text message that he would rather poke out his own eyes than attend, arguing that the event had turned into a veritable Trump rally at which no other views were permitted.
Those who did show up were quick to note that the CPAC party scene was also on life support.
“It’s dead,” said Michael R. Bartels, 28, the advisory chairman of the New York Young Republican Club. Mr. Bartels said that the conference was caught between an older generation of conservatives in the mold of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and a younger, Trumpier wave.
“They’re kind of in a case where they try to please both and win neither,” he added. “I think CPAC will come back in a little bit, but it’s kind of in a lull because it doesn’t know what it is.”
An event hosted by the Hungarian Embassy on Thursday was billed as a closed-door, exclusive reception. Rumors flew that President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who spoke at CPAC on Thursday, would attend. Several CPAC attendees said that they had opted not to go after failing to secure a place on the event’s guest list.
Yet at the embassy that evening, the only requirement at the door was to sign in on a clipboard. Mr. Bukele was not present, though others, including Kari Lake, who refused to acknowledge her loss in the Arizona governor’s race in 2022 and is currently running for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate seat, and Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, stopped by, mingling briefly with a modest crowd.
On Friday night, members of several College Republicans clubs packed into a sweaty conference room for a Young Conservatives happy hour, which also drew a handful of older attendees looking for something to do.
“I’m like 20 years older than all these people,” said Jaison Kurian, 41, who described himself as a “cool dad with Snapchat,” flashing his profile on the site.
At the atrium bar in the Gaylord Convention Center, where CPAC was being held, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida posed for pictures with grinning college students and grizzled consultants. Across the way, a small group of men in an assortment of antiquated formal wear — double-breasted coats, lederhosen, low-collared vests — sidled in from the hotel lobby. They stopped to chat with three CPAC attendees, one of whom NBC News identified as a minor internet personality affiliated with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and his groyper movement.
“I’m a national socialist,” said Gregory Conte, 35, one of the men in formal wear. Mr. Conte, the former operations director for the National Policy Institute, the white nationalist think tank run by Richard Spencer, said he had come to CPAC for “people watching,” but wasn’t willing to pay for attendance.
“Some friends of mine were coming, and I wanted to come talk to some people,” Mr. Conte said. “I’ve been meeting all kinds of interesting people here.”
Mr. Conte and his entourage orbited CPAC over its final two days, popping up at a 1980s-themed bar on the Gaylord Convention Center’s rooftop on Friday night and sitting in the atrium lounge during the conference on Saturday afternoon, shortly after Mr. Trump’s keynote speech brought it to a climax. Some speakers — including Mr. Bannon and President Javier Milei of Argentina — closed out CPAC’s main stage in the grand ballroom while news crews broke down sets in the broadcast hall outside.
At a barbecue restaurant nearby, a South Carolina primary watch party appeared to be cut short by Mr. Trump’s decisive victory. By the time the restaurant had switched one of the TVs to Fox News from college basketball, the race had been called for the former president.
“This is democracy as I envision it,” one attendee laughed after a brief cheer. “Not even 1 percent reporting. Where are the votes? Who cares!”
By 8 p.m., there was only one event left on the schedule: Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” party, and everyone wanted in. One draw was Viswanag Burra, 32, a former producer for the “War Room” podcast who later held staff roles in the offices of Mr. Gaetz and former Representative George Santos, who was recently ousted.
Mr. Burra said he now worked as an independent consultant: “I work for Steve, I work for George, I work for Matt,” he said.
At CPAC, Mr. Burra was everywhere — helping rally a welcome party for Representative Elise Stefanik of New York as she entered the venue, tinkering with a laptop at a breakout session with Mr. Bannon, leaning on the wall during the Hungarian Embassy event, fielding a seemingly intoxicated attendee’s pitch for a “Trump-endorsed cab company” well past midnight at the atrium bar.
The “War Room” party was billed as invite-only, but with Mr. Burra at the door, it seemed as if everyone was invited. The groyper contingent showed up alongside several of the costumed National Socialists. So did a contingent of Young Jewish Conservatives.
“It’s all about building coalitions,” said Ian Chase McMath, 31, a member of the New York Young Republican Club and a cameraman for Newsmax. “There could be a future president in this room.”
