CPAC 2009: Day 2

I decided to try a different approach today, since I took my laptop along, even though I didn't have access to Wi Fi. I typed three posts at different times throughout the day, finishing the last one a few minutes ago. Enjoy!

11:15 AM—Today, on Friday, Day 2 of CPAC, there are noticeably larger crowds, though not everyone is as dedicated as Jed and I are. We were here and in our seats by shortly after 8:00 (after picking up the free medium coffee that was available at the nearby McDonald’s Monday-Friday, 5-9 AM) in time to see the first speaker of the Day, Senator John Cornyn from Texas. Cornyn is currently in charge of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which recruits candidates to run in U.S. Senate elections across the country. I have admired Cornyn for a number of years now, and it was good to hear him speak. He has a low-key style and is not a particularly dynamic speaker, but I can see how these very skills could make him an effective legislator. More and more, I believe it is more essential to have a long-term, persistent effectiveness at accomplishing good and keeping faulty legislation from passing than to have strong oratorical skills. I enjoy hearing all the nuts and bolts stuff anyway, so Cornyn and his successor, Jim DeMint from South Carolina, had no trouble at all holding my attention.
As DeMint came to the stage to a rock star welcome, I had to think “Only at CPAC!” since probably outside of South Carolina, only a handful of the country’s citizens would even recognize his name, let alone his face. Well, we know him here! It would be a tossup between DeMint and Tom Coburn if I were asked who my favorite Senator is. When Larry Hart, Executive VP of the American Conservative Union, introduced DeMint, Hart told the crowd that DeMint had a 100% rating from the ACU. Senator Cornyn had told us that he was proud to be the #4 most conservative member of the Senate, which led me to ponder over who might hold the #1 ranking; I think I found my answer. DeMint, however, if you had the patience and interest level to follow him, gave a very deft comparison/contrast between the two parties, after referring to the State of the Union address 3 days ago as “the experience of watching the world’s best salesman of socialism address the nation.”
The energy level picked up a few minutes later as House Minority Leader John Boehner took the podium. Boehner comes from Cincinnati and was raised in a home with 11 brothers and sisters; his father was a bar owner, so he swept and mopped floors and tended bar all through his growing up years, dealing with “every character that walked in the door!” He got big laughs by following up this story with the comment that he had no idea how he would need all of these skills working in Congress later! Boehner is one of the stalwarts, and has fought against earmarks since the day he walked onto Capitol Hill. He told the crowd that “I didn’t come to Washington because I wanted to be a Congressman; I came because I wanted to preserve the opportunities I had so that my children and grandchildren could still take advantage of them.”
Boehner was followed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell really surprised me! Maybe the crowd was more awake by then and the coffee had entered their bloodstream. This is another politician whom I would have characterized as a very skilled legislator, but not the most gifted speaker, based on what I had seen of him in the past. But, McConnell had the crowd with him from the get-go; he has a quick sense of wit, which really helped him. McConnell told some of the most interesting stories from 20+ years in politics that I have heard yet this conference. One of them was about what the landscape of Kentucky politics was when he came to the Senate in 1985. The governor was a Democrat, Kentucky had not sent a Republican to the Senate in decades and 7 out of 7 Congressional representatives were Democrats. Nine years later, the governor was a Republican, as were both Senators and 5 out of 7 Congressmen.
2:45 PM--Senator Tom Coburn was next. This is another hero to the American taxpayer, whether most of us know it or not. He has made his mark by doing what Obama promises to do, but doesn’t seem to have yet found the time to actually bring about: Going through the budget line by line, finding waste and irrespective of party, shining the light of day on it. Coburn is a true citizen/legislator, having served as a physician for years before coming into the House in the 1994 Revolution, staying true to his term-limits pledge and leaving in 2000, then returning as a Senator in 2004. He kept his prepared remarks brief, and mostly took questions.
The most rousing speech of CPAC so far came from a quarter I should have expected, but really hadn’t thought about. Wayne LaPierre, the Executive VP of the NRA, had the crowd on their feet repeatedly with a speech that was both energetic and interactive. LaPierre was the first speaker to use multi-media, interspersing his speech with clips from his appearances on multiple TV shows over the last couple of years. The clip that got the best response was from CNN, where LaPierre accuses a CNN reporter of faking a story, and contrasts CNN with the New York Times, who at least retracts their stories when they are proven false. The young blonde anchor interrupts LaPierre and declares that she can’t let him get away with accusing CNN of faking stories. LaPierre responds by simply repeating the charge, word for word, and the crowd went wild. (The clip ended at that point.) If any speech constituted a call to action from the attendees in a way that was simple and easy to follow, it was LaPierre’s. The portion that impressed me the most was one in which he explained what the fight against gun control was like prior to the establishment of the NRA. All the disparate factions who appreciate the Second Amendment (including hunters, target shooters, people who live in dangerous areas, older people and single women who need protection and many, many others) had no common cause around which to rally. The NRA has changed all of that. Probably since I have yet to own a gun, I had never considered these truths (although I have always appreciated the NRA), so this explanation was enlightening to me, above and beyond the Constitutional protections gun owners enjoy via the 2nd Amendment.
Jed & I and about 250 other students enjoyed a free grilled salmon and polenta lunch at noon today in the Palladian Ballroom, courtesy of the Young America’s Foundation, and got to hear columnist and author Tony Blankley speak to those in attendance. Blankley started in politics, as so many of those longtime conservatives did, in the Goldwater campaign of 1964. He later served as Gingrich’s press secretary when Gingrich was Speaker of the House, so he had many interesting stories to tell.
I sit here now listening to a panel of about 15 young people presenting “2 Minute Activist” testimonials, challenging all of us to further action to implement our beliefs. It is hard to explain the electricity and fervor here, unless you can physically see it. The one chief lack that I see here in this facility is the unavailability of Wi Fi, so that I can’t actually blog live without a wireless card. My bet is that CPAC moves to another facility that is more technologically friendly by at least 2011, the way it is growing; Dave Keene said last year that his goal is to outgrow this facility to the point where we need something bigger and I think with this year’s registration, we are well on the way there.
11:20 PM—I hope this is coherent because I am dog tired!!!
An unexpected highlight was the panel on “Entrepreneurialism under the Obama Presidency: Will Obama Tax Us to Death?” (I made up that title, but it was something along that line. What can I say? I’m exhausted and a little giddy…) One of the presenters was a visually impaired gentleman named Steve Lonegan, who, as it turns out, is running for the Republican nomination to oppose Jon Corzine in the New Jersey gubernatorial race. You would have had to be here to truly capture the scene. Mr. Lonegan walked rather slowly and unsurely, with guidance, to the podium, as any of us would if we couldn’t see where we were going. But then…the transformation! This man is a livewire when it comes to public speaking, and he had the crowd on their feet as he excoriated the excesses of the richest public servant in New Jersey history, who paid $60 million for his Senate seat in 2000, another $60 million for the governor’s race in 2005, and has virtually driven all new business from the state due to his unparalleled tax increases. It was beautiful to behold. Eric Singer was another speaker from this same panel whom we recognized as soon as he walked onto the stage because we had met him on the Metro yesterday! Turns out he has been in finance for some years and established a hedge fund last year called the Congressional Equality Fund. The principle behind the fund is that they only invest when Congress is NOT in session; when Congress is back in DC, they go to cash. Ever since they started, they have tracked at least 30% better than the market average. (In other words, they’ve still lost money, but not NEARLY as badly as everybody else.)
Ron Paul was up at 4:00 PM and by this point, the auditorium was jam packed with a line stretched endlessly outside the ballroom of those who wanted to enter, but couldn’t. (I actually wanted to make a restroom run a few minutes before this, but decided against it once I realized my odds of even making it back to my saved seat were nil if I exited the premises.) The young people love Ron Paul, and he gave them what they came to hear. I have come virtually full circle on Ron Paul myself since I first heard him in the Presidential debates 2 years ago. How can you not take the man at face value by now when virtually everything he was predicting and we were all laughing him to scorn for has now come true? We have adopted a Wilsonian foreign policy that is destined to fail when we have problems here at home that have gone unaddressed: an ever mounting debt, with no end of deficit spending in sight, monstrous bailouts, a totally uninhibited Federal Reserve who thinks that a river of paper money is eternally theirs to print and a Congress that is out of touch with the people, among other things. Ron Paul and his example have been a very convicting lesson for me, reminding me how so often in my life, I have judged people externally rather than by their character. It was easy 2 years ago to be dismissive of a somewhat diminutive, slightly hunched fellow with a high voice that got even pitchier when he got excited about a point he was making. But he has unwaveringly stood his ground, and sadly (I’m sure from his point of view, as well as mine) history has proved him right. Ron Paul stands tall in my book. I don’t think it is prudent to believe we can abolish the FBI, although I would love to get rid of the IRS. But Congressman Paul believes in the Constitution, and he is right.
He is not my Presidential candidate for 2012, however. That man spoke last. Mitt Romney entered the Regency Ballroom at 4:35 to a welcome unlike any other I have seen at CPAC to date (though I expect Rush Limbaugh’s ovation will probably exceed even Mitt’s tomorrow night). Dave Keene introduced him (the only speaker Keene has introduced the whole conference), saying that this year, we welcome Mitt as “one of us, one of the family….someone whom we’ve never needed more than we do today” and Mitt walked out to thunderous applause, cameras flashing everywhere. The speech was good, very solid. I think everyone was tired, so the response was somewhat subdued throughout, although he had everyone on their feet several times. But the crowd was WITH him, no doubt about it. There really were not any standout moments; the thing I notice about Mitt is that he has that “it” factor, that presence that we haven’t seen in a Republican since Reagan (although the 2000 George W. Bush had it, to some extent). From my vantage point, at least judging by this conference, he has to be considered the frontrunner for 2012, at this point.
I may say more about Mitt’s speech tomorrow or maybe on a later blog post. Right now, bed is not just calling me, it is DEMANDING my presence! See you all tomorrow on Day 3 as we wrap up.