Right Online 2009

I was not even aware of the Americans for Prosperity think tank a year ago, let alone that they had sponsored the first annual Right Online conference in Austin, TX last summer.

I first began to hear about AFP a few months ago as Glenn Beck brought different personalities from the organization onto his show. Someone invited me to become a Facebook fan of the organization, then I received a Facebook friend request from their President, Tim Phillips, followed shortly by an invitation to the second Right Online conference. The end result of this process was my presence in Pittsburgh on August 14-15 at the Station Square Sheraton right on the riverfront.

The conference kicked off at noon on Friday, 8/14. I won't go into painstaking detail over every detail that occurred, but there were a number of highlights and observations that I want to record while memory is still relatively fresh. (My laptop unfortunately contracted a virus on Saturday afternoon, probably due to the Sheraton's unsecure connection, from which it did not recover until Monday afternoon. And then I had a paper to write and work to catch up on, yada, yada, yada...thus my inability to blog about the conference until tonight!)

If there was one overarching lesson with which I came away from Right Online, it is the power of Twitter! I created my Twitter account several months ago and did well to check it briefly every couple weeks or so. I arrived in Pittsburgh following maybe 10 people on Twitter, with my own followers in the single digits. By the time I drove home to Indiana on Sunday, I was following close to 100 people and had nearly as many fellow Tweeters who had jumped aboard my Twitter rocket! And the number has steadily accelerated every day since then.

Midway through Friday afternoon, I walked around a corner at the Sheraton and who should be standing there, Blackberry in hand, but my fellow Hoosier and political pal, Kristen Luidhart...neither of us had had a clue that the other would be present, though I had noticed her Tweeting on the Right Online Tweetdeck. She warned me that Twitter is addictive, and she knew whereof she spoke. It fosters a sense of community among activists like us that is difficult to adequately portray if you haven't yet taken the plunge yourself. There is something about the immediacy and spontaneity of putting your views out there for instant comment and receiving quick feedback in real time that is quite rewarding. More on Twitter in a minute...

It was fun to see a number of people whose blogs I have followed and whose columns I have read for a number of years. John Hawkins of Right Wing News (who is also a Townhall.com columnist) was on the first panel of the day on Social Networking 101. Matt Lewis, who has broken a lot of scoops on Townhall.com over the last few years and blogs regularly at Politics Daily, was in charge of the second panel. Matt shared pointers on political blogging that will probably lead to some facelifts on this very blog in the days ahead, as soon as I can afford to expend some resources in both dollars and time. The key concept that I garnered from Matt's very interactive lecture is that "Words are not enough" when it comes to blogging. Pictures and video are the spice that adds real pleasure to a blog for the reader; they provide the hook that brings the reader back.

There were so many unexpected delights in the 28 or so hours that the conference lasted, but chief among those was the opportunity to get a bit better acquainted with Irish filmmaker Ann McElhinney. I just took a peek back at my blogs about CPAC 2009, and I see that I neglected to say a word about the presentation that she and her husband, Phelim McAleer, gave on CPAC Saturday (February 28, 2009) about their upcoming anti-global warming conspiracy documentary "Not Evil, Just Wrong." So a bit of background. Andrew Breitbart very shrewdly booked Ann and Phelim in the slot right before Ward Connerly, who directly preceded Rush Limbaugh's closing speech. I would wager that there probably were not 10 people in the ballroom that day who had ever heard of Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, but the venue was jammed to capacity because of eagerness to hear Rush. Ann and Phelim spoke to the crowd for about an hour about their project, interspersed with clips from the film. They entered a roomful of strangers and walked off waving to 6,000 screaming fans. Yes, they are that good.

Back to Right Online...I walked up to Ann and Phelim at the hotel bar and introduced myself, saying how much I had enjoyed their speech at CPAC. We talked for a minute, then about an hour later, at Matt Lewis' workshop on Facebook & Twitter, Ann sat down in front of me and shared some of the vision she and Phelim have for their project. Ann is a ball of restless kinetic energy, like few people I have ever seen. She and Phelim have paid a price for their conversion to conservatism since they were both flaming liberals until 5 years ago when they filmed the documentary "Mine Your Own Business" and saw that the real villains of the story were not businessmen, but environmentalists who forced continued regional poverty at the expense of their own posturing.

The closing event of the day was a screening of "Not Evil, Just Wrong." The movie runs about 85 minutes. As the father of a kindergartener who came home from 2 straight weeks of Earth Day celebrations at her school this last year telling me why I needed to take care of the trees and not drive as much, I can assure you that this film is sorely needed...and that is the least of the reasons why it is MUST viewing. The movie documents the testimony of the British lawyer who took Al Gore to court for misstatements that were made in the film (the prosecution won!), as well as a founding member of Greenpeace who realized where the organization was going in the '80's and chose to make his departure. But the most poignant observation concerns the destruction that has been wrought in the name of global warming dogma, with the withholding of DDT from poor African nations. DDT is the chemical that Rachel Carson made famous in her book "Silent Spring", which in turn heavily influenced Al Gore. Carson's thesis was that DDT was a lethal chemical for birds. Not true, as it turns out, but it was enough for the anti-DDT lobby to swing into action and have it banned. Until now, other than John Stossel, I'm not sure who else has covered the fact that 30 million Africans have died from malaria because of the absence of DDT in mosquito-swarmed areas of the continent. There is much, MUCH more to this film and it debuts nationwide on Sunday, October 18. More on that in the coming weeks.

I believe, with everything in me, that I listened to the next Senator from Pennsylvania speak last Friday night. Pat Toomey gave an eloquent, impassioned and brilliant speech after our dinner. This is a warm, witty and wise man; it is easy to discern why he lost to Specter by only 4 points in a bitterly contested 2004 primary, even when the biggest of big guns (President Bush and Senator Rick Santorum, among other establishment figures) were lined up against him. Toomey understands the free enterprise system and the power of liberty in a way that Arlen Specter doesn't begin to have the capacity to grasp. He is also a pleasant man with an easy demeanor, which should stack up well against the man who is reportedly feared by his staff as one of the meanest bosses on Capitol Hill. As conservative online media personality David All recently Tweeted, "Arlen Specter typifies absolutely everything that is wrong with Washington." Toomey cracked that he had hoped and planned to run against Arlen Specter in the Republican Party, but he had no idea he would drive him clear out of the party! He was interrupted by repeated ovations from a very enthusiastic crowd and closed with a heartfelt homage to "those who will have to pay for all of these new government programs....people that somehow are forgotten about in all of the wheeling and dealing in Washington." (Not verbatim, but close.)

Saturday morning was the time slot allotted to the celebrity speakers. Erick Erickson, of Redstate.com, has built such a huge following with one of the best blogs in cyberspace and Ed Morrissey of Hotair.com has crafted a blog that now surpasses the Daily Kos in readership! (Somehow, you haven't yet seen that headline in the New York Times or heard Chris Matthews mentioning it, have you?) They were warmly welcomed by the Saturday crowd, as they deserved to be. Steve Moore, from the "Wall Street Journal", Grover Norquist from Americans for Tax Reform and Jim Pinkerton from Fox News, gave us some commentary on the current political situation and Michelle Malkin closed out the morning session with an animated speech. As the author of the current #1 New York Times bestseller Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies, Malkin was greeted with joyful cheers from the eager crowd. She is a capable speaker, as well as a gifted writer and tireless blogger.

The day closed with a panel on "Map to Victory: How the Right Can Win Online." It was moderated by Rob Bluey, with Matt Lewis and Erick Erickson as participants. This was one of the most fascinating segments of the whole conference as Lewis and Erickson shared their ideas on how to most effectively drive opinion and dialogue in the blogosphere and took questions from the crowd.

I promised more about Twitter, so I'll close this post with this story. By the time the conference was over, I was Tweeting with the best of them throughout each session. This final panel was broadcast LIVE on C-Span. As I was sitting there minding my own business, I looked down at my computer screen and saw a Tweet directly to me from a Jenci Spradlin in Tennessee. She had seen me on TV when the camera went to a questioner in the crowd, so was jumping on Twitter to tell me that she had glimpsed me out in the audience! If this isn't the ultimate illustration of the power of multiple media forums, I don't know what is. I have gotten more than a few chuckles out of that in the days since...and not to Tweet my own horn or anything (sorry for the bad pun), but Jenci also got a small donation for her Breast Cancer Awareness walk this week that she wouldn't have gotten if she hadn't met a new Twitter buddy that she saw on TV!