The Internet is a wondrous tool for so many reasons, but I relived one of them today for perhaps the thousandth time. I am talking about accidental discoveries, which happen to me routinely, but are one of the WWW characteristics that I've come to take for granted.
So anyhow...I get a daily e-mail notification from TIME magazine called "The Page" from reporter Mark Halperin, detailing several news stories. I clicked on a link that was about Newt Gingrich, but appeared to be some opinion piece...and in the process, found out that Newt Gingrich has become the Roman Catholic Church's most recent high-profile convert. Rod Dreher quotes Christopher Buckly in this blog post about what kind of catechism student Gingrich must have been. One can only imagine...but it is fun to do so!
There is also cogitation about whether or not Newt's conversion is genuine and heartfelt or a politically calculated decision. Who can tell? I choose to believe the former and here is why: I am a fan of Newt Gingrich's ideas (for the most part, 95% of the time), but have never felt that he has been more than religious on a token basis until very recent years.
I read Steve Gillon's book The Pact a couple of months ago, which seemed to substantiate what I've just stated. (It is a great read, by the way, all about the rivalry and both mutual respect and distaste that Gingrich and Clinton shared for each others' political skills and beliefs, respectively). Gingrich grew up in the Deep South, in Georgia, where Baptist church identification and attendance was ubiquitous. This is both a blessing and a curse, a benefit in the sense that familiarity with the doctrines of Christianity on some level tends to occur in a broad percentage of people, but a problem from the perspective that said familiarity seldom rises above a surface knowledge. It seems to me that Gingrich, following his fall from power in 1998 and subsequent dissolution of his marriage, which stemmed from an affair with his current wife, has done some real soul-searching. He has authored a recent book(let) and filmed a documentary on "Rediscovering God in America", both unread and unseen by me, so I can't comment any further on them. He has also gone on Dr. Dobson's program and admitted that he hadn't always been the family man he should have been, etc., etc. None of this proves anything in and of itself, of course, and only God knows hearts. I suppose your viewpoint on all of this will directly correlate to how you felt about Gingrich all along, and how you tend to feel about humanity in general, particularly politicians.
I have noticed a renewed interest in the last few years in the ancient traditions and disciplines of Christianity. It is easy to me to see how someone on a spiritual quest could arrive where Newt has, given the current environment. It will be interesting to see if much more is made of this in the days ahead.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
So what do you think?
About the current crisis, that is. Are you scared? If so, what are you doing about it? Do you not think it's really a big deal; in other words, calling it a "crisis" is engaging in hyperbole? Or maybe you have given up a long time ago because you have concluded that the politicians will never do anything of substance, so why try? Are you figuring everything will calm down at some point if we just ride it out?
There is a method to my mad questioning here, namely that I really want to hear what you think, whether you are just stumbling across this blog or you read it whenever you see that there has been a new post. Yes, for the first time, I am actively soliciting comments to a post, rather than just being happy that the counter registers an additional visit. So please at least respond briefly with your thoughts on this.
I have been saying for months that we are living in very momentous times. Books will be written about this era for decades, perhaps centuries to come. And I do believe we are in deep-seated crisis. The market has rallied over the last several days and gone up about 600 points. Currently, the Dow hovers around 7200. My guess, however, is that this is a bear rally, and that it will sink again. I was talking to a friend this evening who thinks we've probably found the bottom at circa 6500. I hope he's right, but I doubt it.
Here is my core belief about the whole mess. It is a prime learning opportunity for us as American citizens. We are, one on one, quite limited in what we can do about it in terms of an immediate effect. But here is what I have decided to do.
This tumble in the world economy has highlighted for me what I don't know. It has also focused a glaring spotlight on the ignorance of the ostensibly smartest among us who claim such vast reservoirs of knowledge.
The vast bulk of the American people really do not understand the financial system of this country and how it works, including me. The more I learn about the Federal Reserve System, the more uneasy I feel about it. Additionally, the closer I look at that organization, the more all fingers point to the rise of the progressive movement of the early part of the 20th century that Jonah Goldberg so eloquently reports on in his excellent bestseller Liberal Fascism. I need to dig a little deeper on this...no, make that a lot deeper. I have a feeling I won't be happy with what I uncover.
But beyond that and even more urgently, the American people, including many of the best and brightest among us (and I mean that without any sarcastic connotation at all) have lost touch with Constitutional principles. I have been hearing Glenn Beck talk about the book The 5,000 Year Leap for quite a few months now. I finally bit the bullet and bought it. I am about 100 pages in, and my world has been rocked. I had no idea the apple had rolled this far downhill from the tree. I can tell that I have embarked on a long overdue lifelong quest: to understand the Constitution and advocate restoration of its truths to the public square, whatever that entails.
We cannot fight error with ignorance. We cannot combat foolish policies when we don't comprehend our own foundations. So I will be starting a weekly study of this book on Thursday, March 26 with 3 of my good friends; we'll be assisting the local and the global economies by meeting at Starbucks every Thursday night for an hour or so of discussion. And I will be recommending this book to everyone I come across who is interested in the welfare of the USA.
I don't think the world is ending. I also don't believe that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. (I could tip my hand right now and say I'm not a pre-millenialist, but that is another matter for another time.) But I do not believe the continuation of America as we know it is assured. In fact, the survival of the America we know and love as a beacon of freedom and dynamic growth has never been more in jeopardy. I do not speak these words lightly. We have faced trials from our very beginning, including a Civil War where more American lives were lost than in any other conflict, two world wars and a number of horrendous Presidencies, among a host of other evils. Yet, we suffer from an absence of common values in this country that brought us through the previously cited turbulence. (Read the book!)
It need not be so. I pray it does not unfold as it could. So I am trying to educate myself and others and to make my voice heard. I will not be silent. I want my children to live with the freedoms that I have enjoyed. I desire the same for my grandchildren and their offspring.
But if it is not to be...I want to be able, as an old man, to look those whom I love in the eye and say that the United States of America was worth fighting for and I acted accordingly.
What I am doing is only a start. What are you thinking about? How are you contributing? And how are you acting, rather than hunkering down and taking it?
There is a method to my mad questioning here, namely that I really want to hear what you think, whether you are just stumbling across this blog or you read it whenever you see that there has been a new post. Yes, for the first time, I am actively soliciting comments to a post, rather than just being happy that the counter registers an additional visit. So please at least respond briefly with your thoughts on this.
I have been saying for months that we are living in very momentous times. Books will be written about this era for decades, perhaps centuries to come. And I do believe we are in deep-seated crisis. The market has rallied over the last several days and gone up about 600 points. Currently, the Dow hovers around 7200. My guess, however, is that this is a bear rally, and that it will sink again. I was talking to a friend this evening who thinks we've probably found the bottom at circa 6500. I hope he's right, but I doubt it.
Here is my core belief about the whole mess. It is a prime learning opportunity for us as American citizens. We are, one on one, quite limited in what we can do about it in terms of an immediate effect. But here is what I have decided to do.
This tumble in the world economy has highlighted for me what I don't know. It has also focused a glaring spotlight on the ignorance of the ostensibly smartest among us who claim such vast reservoirs of knowledge.
The vast bulk of the American people really do not understand the financial system of this country and how it works, including me. The more I learn about the Federal Reserve System, the more uneasy I feel about it. Additionally, the closer I look at that organization, the more all fingers point to the rise of the progressive movement of the early part of the 20th century that Jonah Goldberg so eloquently reports on in his excellent bestseller Liberal Fascism. I need to dig a little deeper on this...no, make that a lot deeper. I have a feeling I won't be happy with what I uncover.
But beyond that and even more urgently, the American people, including many of the best and brightest among us (and I mean that without any sarcastic connotation at all) have lost touch with Constitutional principles. I have been hearing Glenn Beck talk about the book The 5,000 Year Leap for quite a few months now. I finally bit the bullet and bought it. I am about 100 pages in, and my world has been rocked. I had no idea the apple had rolled this far downhill from the tree. I can tell that I have embarked on a long overdue lifelong quest: to understand the Constitution and advocate restoration of its truths to the public square, whatever that entails.
We cannot fight error with ignorance. We cannot combat foolish policies when we don't comprehend our own foundations. So I will be starting a weekly study of this book on Thursday, March 26 with 3 of my good friends; we'll be assisting the local and the global economies by meeting at Starbucks every Thursday night for an hour or so of discussion. And I will be recommending this book to everyone I come across who is interested in the welfare of the USA.
I don't think the world is ending. I also don't believe that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. (I could tip my hand right now and say I'm not a pre-millenialist, but that is another matter for another time.) But I do not believe the continuation of America as we know it is assured. In fact, the survival of the America we know and love as a beacon of freedom and dynamic growth has never been more in jeopardy. I do not speak these words lightly. We have faced trials from our very beginning, including a Civil War where more American lives were lost than in any other conflict, two world wars and a number of horrendous Presidencies, among a host of other evils. Yet, we suffer from an absence of common values in this country that brought us through the previously cited turbulence. (Read the book!)
It need not be so. I pray it does not unfold as it could. So I am trying to educate myself and others and to make my voice heard. I will not be silent. I want my children to live with the freedoms that I have enjoyed. I desire the same for my grandchildren and their offspring.
But if it is not to be...I want to be able, as an old man, to look those whom I love in the eye and say that the United States of America was worth fighting for and I acted accordingly.
What I am doing is only a start. What are you thinking about? How are you contributing? And how are you acting, rather than hunkering down and taking it?
I'm back
Yes, I know tomorrow, it would have been 2 weeks since I last posted anything, and I have not posted about anything that occurred subsequent to Rush's speech. Speaking of that, I had no idea I was as much a part of history as I was! In the era of fast-paced events that characterizes our time, for a speech to receive the play for 2 weeks that this one has in the media is something of a rarity. Yet, it is still being discussed.
Somewhere in the last 2 weeks, the first anniversary of this blog came and went. I wondered how long it would last, and I'm sure a few others did, too. I am still not exactly sure what I'm doing here; there really is not a consistent subtext to it all, and I tend to post when I feel like it rather than as circumstances demand, but I am having fun. So perhaps that is what matters most when it comes to blogging, if I'm not doing it for a living.
In any event, I am back, and ready to resume duties. I guess I was speakered, conferenced and in general, tuckered out after CPAC, though it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. (And I had to complete my classes once I got back home.) So onward we go...
Somewhere in the last 2 weeks, the first anniversary of this blog came and went. I wondered how long it would last, and I'm sure a few others did, too. I am still not exactly sure what I'm doing here; there really is not a consistent subtext to it all, and I tend to post when I feel like it rather than as circumstances demand, but I am having fun. So perhaps that is what matters most when it comes to blogging, if I'm not doing it for a living.
In any event, I am back, and ready to resume duties. I guess I was speakered, conferenced and in general, tuckered out after CPAC, though it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. (And I had to complete my classes once I got back home.) So onward we go...
Monday, March 2, 2009
Rush Limbaugh's speech
7:06 PM—We are sitting in the Detroit airport waiting for our 9:15 flight on home to Indy, with no free Wi Fi available, contrary to what I had expected. So I am forced once again to go ahead and post what I wanted to this evening, but just to wait several hours to actually get it up on the blog.
I might as well cut the chase and go straight to my impressions of Rush Limbaugh in person. Again, you can sneer if you want, but I’ll say it anyway: I don’t consider myself a celebrity hound, by this point in my life; in other words, I don’t look goggly-eyed at someone just because they are famous or have a measure of renown and for no other reason. Nonetheless, seeing Rush Limbaugh speak represented the definite fulfillment of one of those items that I’d classify in a section headed “I’d love for it to happen, but I doubt it ever will.” I have listened to Rush Limbaugh for going on 16 years now, and I still remember where I was (on a farm in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania) when I first heard those one-of-a-kind “vocal vibrations.” I was talking later to Jed about what I’m about to say next, something that I find more and more difficult to comprehend the longer I live. Those of us who love Rush are endlessly excoriated and belittled by those who don’t as mind-numbed robots whom he drags around by the nose. Why is this? I think, at one point anyway, Howard Stern’s listenership might have been numerically similar to Rush’s. Howard Stern is someone whose viewpoints on most issues (I’m presuming here, since I’ve never listened to a second of his show) and certainly, whose values couldn’t be more antithetical to my own. Contrary to what is true for Rush, I would say that Stern and the lifestyle he advocates, by default at least, are actually dangerous to the well-being of the country. Yet, I would never argue that his listeners, even the majority of them, are lacking in intelligence or so enthralled by Stern’s persona that they don’t think for themselves. My hunch is this: Rush actually makes a positive difference in those of who have listened to him for a long period of time. He stirs us to action. Listening to Rush Limbaugh, for me, has not been an activity that has occurred in a vacuum. Because of starting to listen to Rush at age 18, I have read and/or purchased books and/or columns by the likes of George Will, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams and countless others. Along an ancillary line, Rush has enabled the rise of Glenn Beck, who has broadened our horizons by exposing us to recent works such as The 5000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen and Meltdown by Thomas Woods, Jr. and renewed our interest in the Founding Fathers. This educational process then threatens those who hold opposing views and want to see policies implemented that are in opposition to what we support. Of course, then, their goals are inhibited by an educated public. So they resort to the tactics that come naturally to them anyway: ad hominem attacks and name calling.
Well, they can try all they want, but they’ll never succeed. You would think the naysayers would just pack it in after an unparalleled 20 years of record-level accomplishments, but they keep engaging in their mean-spiritedness, which just reinforces the determination of Rush’s fans. So, as the kids say today, “It’s all good!”
Rush was supposed to start at 5:00, but after a hilarious introduction by conference organizer Lisa de Pasquale, (who was invited to listen to Rush for the first time in 1994 as a 16-year-old in the automobile of a boy on whom she had a crush at the time, so her tag line was “I can say I was introduced to Rush Limbaugh in the backseat of a car”) Rush bounded onto the stage at 4:45 to absolutely thunderous and sustained applause that probably went on for close to 2 minutes. To say it was pure electricity doesn’t do it justice.
Rarely have I ever seen such a stellar example of “under promising and over delivering” as we were privy to who were in the audience. Rush came out early, and was scheduled to speak for 20 minutes. He spoke for 90! And I think he could have gone on even longer.
Impressions: He had a few notes at the podium, but used no prompter, which he himself pointed out for the benefit of the “Drive-bys.” The notes he did have must have amounted to just a few words here and there, and he probably only looked at them 5 or 6 times in the whole hour and a half, just to remind himself of what he wanted to say. If you are a listener to his program, you would have noticed different characteristics coming through as he spoke, including the imitations of different personality types, though he didn’t do any Clinton mimicking. (Joe Scarborough did a couple times during his brief speech on Thursday and it was pretty good.)
Rush was clearly fearful because of something Dave Keene and Lisa de Pasquale had told him backstage before he came out for the speech, and he communicated his reservations to the crowd. He said he had been informed that this year, it was almost as if being out of power had freed people up and they felt they didn’t have to hold back anymore from expressing certain opinions. He indicated that this was understandable, but said that we really do not want to be a permanent minority and it might become too easy to get used to exactly that!
Rush also addressed head-on the “mysterious anger of the Drive-by media” over his stated wish that Obama fails. I had heard him discuss this on his show a number of times, but never this directly and concisely. Basically, why should he want him to do anything other than fail if success for the implementation of his programs equates to failure for the country? It is a very simple explanation, though tough to swallow for someone with no historical context, which many in the media evidently do not have. (Of course, another Rush truism that comes to my mind, which I often use myself is that “the historical perspective of most people begins with the day they were born.”)
The overarching theme of the speech, in Rush’s own words, would be this: “It breaks my heart that President Obama, with all of the communications skills that he obviously possesses, is using those very gifts to tear down this country and the institutions and practices that have made it great rather than building them up.” Some context is needed for this. Rush is enormously successful financially; I believe his most recent contract, over 8 years, pays him a total of $400 million. Yet, life has not always been so for Rush. In fact, his success came fairly late in life, after a good deal of floundering and stumbling. It is easy for those of us looking on who are young and still making our way in life with some financial difficulties here and there to look at Rush and envy his “luck.” I have owned Rush’s first book The Way Things Ought to Be for many years, but hadn’t cracked the cover in a decade, probably. Just yesterday, I opened it up to Chapter 2, where he tells the story of how his program went national. If you want a real revelation of the GI-NORMOUS risks (plural, not singular) that Rush and Ed McLaughlin (the former ABC executive who sponsored him initially) too in syndicating the program in 1988, you need to read that chapter. I reiterate all of that to say that I can easily understand why Rush and others like him look at the economic pilfering in which the Obama team (and yes, Hank Paulson and his lackeys) have been engaging and become very vocal about it. It undermines everything they have achieved and enabled so many others to do.
Beyond that, though, Rush brought the conference to its feet when he declared that conservatism, first and foremost, is about people; conservatives love people and do not consider them expendable. I believe that this is a core Christian principle, but I have to admit I had never thought of it as a politically conservative tenet, per se. But as with so many concepts, Rush is right once again! We are about the individual, not pitting one group against another.
Rush’s speech ended rather suddenly; I think he realized that it was past 6:00; I think the conference was contractually obligated to conclude then, and perhaps he needed to be back home by a certain time that night. He concluded with a profoundly moving expression of gratitude to the audience for our love and support to him and his family over the years, saying he could never overemphasize what we mean to him. Again, you have to be a fan to understand. Cynics could look on and say, sure, that’s how he makes his money. You can’t really respond to that other than to reply that that misses the point. We wouldn’t be listening if there wasn’t a substantial, quality return on our minutes spent tuned into the show. And isn’t that the case with anything in life to which we commit our resources?
The evening concluded with a presentation to Rush of the “Defender of the Constitution” award: an original document actually signed by Benjamin Franklin. What a great way to conclude CPAC 2009!
I might as well cut the chase and go straight to my impressions of Rush Limbaugh in person. Again, you can sneer if you want, but I’ll say it anyway: I don’t consider myself a celebrity hound, by this point in my life; in other words, I don’t look goggly-eyed at someone just because they are famous or have a measure of renown and for no other reason. Nonetheless, seeing Rush Limbaugh speak represented the definite fulfillment of one of those items that I’d classify in a section headed “I’d love for it to happen, but I doubt it ever will.” I have listened to Rush Limbaugh for going on 16 years now, and I still remember where I was (on a farm in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania) when I first heard those one-of-a-kind “vocal vibrations.” I was talking later to Jed about what I’m about to say next, something that I find more and more difficult to comprehend the longer I live. Those of us who love Rush are endlessly excoriated and belittled by those who don’t as mind-numbed robots whom he drags around by the nose. Why is this? I think, at one point anyway, Howard Stern’s listenership might have been numerically similar to Rush’s. Howard Stern is someone whose viewpoints on most issues (I’m presuming here, since I’ve never listened to a second of his show) and certainly, whose values couldn’t be more antithetical to my own. Contrary to what is true for Rush, I would say that Stern and the lifestyle he advocates, by default at least, are actually dangerous to the well-being of the country. Yet, I would never argue that his listeners, even the majority of them, are lacking in intelligence or so enthralled by Stern’s persona that they don’t think for themselves. My hunch is this: Rush actually makes a positive difference in those of who have listened to him for a long period of time. He stirs us to action. Listening to Rush Limbaugh, for me, has not been an activity that has occurred in a vacuum. Because of starting to listen to Rush at age 18, I have read and/or purchased books and/or columns by the likes of George Will, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams and countless others. Along an ancillary line, Rush has enabled the rise of Glenn Beck, who has broadened our horizons by exposing us to recent works such as The 5000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen and Meltdown by Thomas Woods, Jr. and renewed our interest in the Founding Fathers. This educational process then threatens those who hold opposing views and want to see policies implemented that are in opposition to what we support. Of course, then, their goals are inhibited by an educated public. So they resort to the tactics that come naturally to them anyway: ad hominem attacks and name calling.
Well, they can try all they want, but they’ll never succeed. You would think the naysayers would just pack it in after an unparalleled 20 years of record-level accomplishments, but they keep engaging in their mean-spiritedness, which just reinforces the determination of Rush’s fans. So, as the kids say today, “It’s all good!”
Rush was supposed to start at 5:00, but after a hilarious introduction by conference organizer Lisa de Pasquale, (who was invited to listen to Rush for the first time in 1994 as a 16-year-old in the automobile of a boy on whom she had a crush at the time, so her tag line was “I can say I was introduced to Rush Limbaugh in the backseat of a car”) Rush bounded onto the stage at 4:45 to absolutely thunderous and sustained applause that probably went on for close to 2 minutes. To say it was pure electricity doesn’t do it justice.
Rarely have I ever seen such a stellar example of “under promising and over delivering” as we were privy to who were in the audience. Rush came out early, and was scheduled to speak for 20 minutes. He spoke for 90! And I think he could have gone on even longer.
Impressions: He had a few notes at the podium, but used no prompter, which he himself pointed out for the benefit of the “Drive-bys.” The notes he did have must have amounted to just a few words here and there, and he probably only looked at them 5 or 6 times in the whole hour and a half, just to remind himself of what he wanted to say. If you are a listener to his program, you would have noticed different characteristics coming through as he spoke, including the imitations of different personality types, though he didn’t do any Clinton mimicking. (Joe Scarborough did a couple times during his brief speech on Thursday and it was pretty good.)
Rush was clearly fearful because of something Dave Keene and Lisa de Pasquale had told him backstage before he came out for the speech, and he communicated his reservations to the crowd. He said he had been informed that this year, it was almost as if being out of power had freed people up and they felt they didn’t have to hold back anymore from expressing certain opinions. He indicated that this was understandable, but said that we really do not want to be a permanent minority and it might become too easy to get used to exactly that!
Rush also addressed head-on the “mysterious anger of the Drive-by media” over his stated wish that Obama fails. I had heard him discuss this on his show a number of times, but never this directly and concisely. Basically, why should he want him to do anything other than fail if success for the implementation of his programs equates to failure for the country? It is a very simple explanation, though tough to swallow for someone with no historical context, which many in the media evidently do not have. (Of course, another Rush truism that comes to my mind, which I often use myself is that “the historical perspective of most people begins with the day they were born.”)
The overarching theme of the speech, in Rush’s own words, would be this: “It breaks my heart that President Obama, with all of the communications skills that he obviously possesses, is using those very gifts to tear down this country and the institutions and practices that have made it great rather than building them up.” Some context is needed for this. Rush is enormously successful financially; I believe his most recent contract, over 8 years, pays him a total of $400 million. Yet, life has not always been so for Rush. In fact, his success came fairly late in life, after a good deal of floundering and stumbling. It is easy for those of us looking on who are young and still making our way in life with some financial difficulties here and there to look at Rush and envy his “luck.” I have owned Rush’s first book The Way Things Ought to Be for many years, but hadn’t cracked the cover in a decade, probably. Just yesterday, I opened it up to Chapter 2, where he tells the story of how his program went national. If you want a real revelation of the GI-NORMOUS risks (plural, not singular) that Rush and Ed McLaughlin (the former ABC executive who sponsored him initially) too in syndicating the program in 1988, you need to read that chapter. I reiterate all of that to say that I can easily understand why Rush and others like him look at the economic pilfering in which the Obama team (and yes, Hank Paulson and his lackeys) have been engaging and become very vocal about it. It undermines everything they have achieved and enabled so many others to do.
Beyond that, though, Rush brought the conference to its feet when he declared that conservatism, first and foremost, is about people; conservatives love people and do not consider them expendable. I believe that this is a core Christian principle, but I have to admit I had never thought of it as a politically conservative tenet, per se. But as with so many concepts, Rush is right once again! We are about the individual, not pitting one group against another.
Rush’s speech ended rather suddenly; I think he realized that it was past 6:00; I think the conference was contractually obligated to conclude then, and perhaps he needed to be back home by a certain time that night. He concluded with a profoundly moving expression of gratitude to the audience for our love and support to him and his family over the years, saying he could never overemphasize what we mean to him. Again, you have to be a fan to understand. Cynics could look on and say, sure, that’s how he makes his money. You can’t really respond to that other than to reply that that misses the point. We wouldn’t be listening if there wasn’t a substantial, quality return on our minutes spent tuned into the show. And isn’t that the case with anything in life to which we commit our resources?
The evening concluded with a presentation to Rush of the “Defender of the Constitution” award: an original document actually signed by Benjamin Franklin. What a great way to conclude CPAC 2009!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
CPAC 2009: Day 3
It is 11:30 PM, and I am once again exhausted, though ebullient after a powerhouse day. If you're reading this blog, I'm surmising that you probably caught the Fox simulcast of Rush Limbaugh's speech to CPAC tonight, so were able to see it firsthand. (I believe C-SPAN aired it later, at around 8:00.) I will wait until tomorrow evening when we have a 3 hour layover in Detroit to post on that, as well as some of the other afternoon speeches and closing events and news. What a conference!!! I truly wish I had the stamina to stay up and post now, but 1) I'm exceedingly weary and 2) we want to see a few sights in the morning before we fly out in the afternoon. So for now, here was my assessment of the first several events of the day:
12:10 PM—Things got in high gear very quickly this morning, as one of my heroes, former Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, kicked things off this morning with a fiery speech. Tim Goeglein, former press spokesman for Indiana’s former Senator Dan Coats, introduced Santorum with a story I had forgotten about, but I remember when it occurred. Back in the mid-90’s, Santorum was debating Barbara Boxer on the Senate floor on the issue of partial-birth abortion. Boxer’s thesis was that no person is a person until that person exits the womb. Santorum, half exasperated and half in disbelief, replied, “But it’s a BABY!!!” (No matter where it is, prior to or after emergence from the birth canal.) Just at that moment, against all odds, from the packed gallery, a baby cried out. Santorum later amended the story to drive home the point even further: Babies are not allowed in the Senate gallery. (Jed and I were just piecing the story together from our collective memories; apparently, a door to the gallery flew open at just the right moment for a baby’s cry to be audible from outside the entrance.) Santorum pulls no punches and the crowd ate it up. He was very vocal about the failures to communicate experienced by Republicans in the previous administration. While he was not discourteous to Obama, he did point out that we are in very dangerous times, yet “we have elected someone from the minor leagues” to lead this country. Santorum also articulated the threat the country faces from radical Islam more explicitly than anyone I had yet heard at this particular event. He voiced a rebuke that needs to be made more frequently: this is not a “War on Terror.” Terror is a tactic and a strategy, not a subject that can be narrowed down and defeated. The enemy is radicalized Islam, and we must be prepared to defend the country against it.
Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota was next. Apparently, he feared the crowd would not be very familiar with him, but I didn’t notice anyone leaving the nearly full ballroom after Santorum was done. (The crowds are MASSIVE today.) Pawlenty delivered the goods; his style is a very different one from Santorum, for instance, but extremely effective. He has a very neighborly, engaging, conversational style to his speaking that I find very non-threatening, yet persuasive. You look at this man in action and you can’t help but think “Rising Star.” I think he has to be considered as potentially in the mix for 2012. Pawlenty comes, as I discovered today, from a very unlikely background for a Republican governor, yet this has proven to be his recipe for success. Several of his brothers are union members and he has a sister who is a Special Ed teacher in a public school; not exactly the standard CPAC constituency. Yet, he told the story of how he won most of them over and the questions he asked in the process of doing so: “Do you want more taxes? Do you want more regulation? Do you want your guns increasingly restricted, as well as your fishing rights?” Et cetera. Pawlenty’s speech was about the most wide-ranging, business-oriented talk I have heard from an executive politician the whole conference. This man knows whereof he speaks. Watch him. He will go places.
At 11:15, we were privileged to hear from a man whom I have admired for almost half my life. Bill Bennett is a giant in the conservative movement, and he was warmly welcomed by the crowd. He is not a flame throwing speechmaker, but has more of a teaching style, which I find very enjoyable. He revealed to the crowd that he has assembled a team of educational experts to make his two-volume work on American History (America: The Last Best Hope) into curriculum that is usable in schools. This curriculum has now been approved for use in Illinois, New York City and yes, INDIANA! Bennett also spoke at length on the threat of radical Islam. He told the story of a 50-something year old Islamic woman whose name I can’t recall at the moment who recruited 80-plus female suicide bombers for the cause of jihad. A little-known detail: this despicable piece of human debris also arranged for the rape of each of these women a while prior, so that in their disgrace, they would be amenable to the suggestion of martyrdom in order to regain admission to Paradise. Bennett’s quote: “We cannot and will not share the earth with such people.” (I am not really sure how I feel about that way of stating it. We can’t police the world, and similar things probably go on in countries that are our allies. We certainly should do everything we can to make sure such radical offenders to society are prosecuted and punished.)
2:23 PM—One of the most anticipated speakers of the day, yea, even the entire weekend, was clearly Ann Coulter. People had to be turned away at the door for her 1:00 PM speech. Tom Delay introduced Ann Coulter in this fashion: “I have people come up to me all the time, saying they appreciate so much that I say the things out loud that they’re thinking, but won’t say. Ann Coulter says the things out loud that I am thinking, but don’t dare say!”
I have gone from loving Ann Coulter to being disappointed in some of her rhetoric, back to a new appreciation of what she says and writes. Ann Coulter is a satirist. There is no public speaker today who does it better, as proved by the sellout crowds she draws on college campuses and the books she sells in the millions. The remark of which I disapproved was the one she made at CPAC 2007 about John Edwards, calling him a disparaging term for a homosexual. This has to be balanced by a couple of observations. First, all people say at least one unadvised thing a year, perhaps more. But even more to the essence, the same Media Matters-oriented crew that are up in arms constantly over Ann Coulter give a complete pass to the nasty bilge that spews daily from the likes of Al Franken, Lewis Black, Kathy Griffin, Rosie O’Donnell and Bill Maher (the latter of whom I will not watch for any reason at any time in any place). Jed was in 7th heaven with Ann Coulter on stage and got his book signed later! (My wife, who would never say a mean word to or about anyone, stood in line to get our Coulter book signed last year.) I won’t recount Ann’s wit for you; you can go to http://www.anncoulter.com/ and read her columns to your heart’s content and you’ll get the gist of what we heard for 30 minutes. She is a very gifted and funny woman, and supremely intelligent, which is very clear when you read her books, which are extensively footnoted and documented throughout.
Andrew Breitbart brought a panel on that was very interesting, about conservatism in Hollywood. David Horowitz, another of my movement heroes (his autobiography, Radical Son, is absolute must reading, if you want to comprehend the encroachment leftists have made in this country in the last 40 years) mentioned different conservatives and libertarians with whom he has interacted, including Kurt Russell, Dennis Miller and Gary Sinise. Robert Davi was also present; not a household name, but he is an actor whose face you might recognize if you plug his name into imdb.com.
The one wish I have is that I could have dared to leave the Regency to head to another panel session or two in the Ambassador Ballroom across the way. Seats, however, are a closely guarded commodity as I type today because of Rush Limbaugh’s pending arrival for the 5:00 closing speech. I did leave the room for a few minutes for a cup of Starbucks while asking my seatmates to guard my chair; I even left my laptop, which I wouldn’t dare request that complete strangers do anywhere else but here. (This was as much as I typed today; please come back for more tomorrow!)
12:10 PM—Things got in high gear very quickly this morning, as one of my heroes, former Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, kicked things off this morning with a fiery speech. Tim Goeglein, former press spokesman for Indiana’s former Senator Dan Coats, introduced Santorum with a story I had forgotten about, but I remember when it occurred. Back in the mid-90’s, Santorum was debating Barbara Boxer on the Senate floor on the issue of partial-birth abortion. Boxer’s thesis was that no person is a person until that person exits the womb. Santorum, half exasperated and half in disbelief, replied, “But it’s a BABY!!!” (No matter where it is, prior to or after emergence from the birth canal.) Just at that moment, against all odds, from the packed gallery, a baby cried out. Santorum later amended the story to drive home the point even further: Babies are not allowed in the Senate gallery. (Jed and I were just piecing the story together from our collective memories; apparently, a door to the gallery flew open at just the right moment for a baby’s cry to be audible from outside the entrance.) Santorum pulls no punches and the crowd ate it up. He was very vocal about the failures to communicate experienced by Republicans in the previous administration. While he was not discourteous to Obama, he did point out that we are in very dangerous times, yet “we have elected someone from the minor leagues” to lead this country. Santorum also articulated the threat the country faces from radical Islam more explicitly than anyone I had yet heard at this particular event. He voiced a rebuke that needs to be made more frequently: this is not a “War on Terror.” Terror is a tactic and a strategy, not a subject that can be narrowed down and defeated. The enemy is radicalized Islam, and we must be prepared to defend the country against it.
Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota was next. Apparently, he feared the crowd would not be very familiar with him, but I didn’t notice anyone leaving the nearly full ballroom after Santorum was done. (The crowds are MASSIVE today.) Pawlenty delivered the goods; his style is a very different one from Santorum, for instance, but extremely effective. He has a very neighborly, engaging, conversational style to his speaking that I find very non-threatening, yet persuasive. You look at this man in action and you can’t help but think “Rising Star.” I think he has to be considered as potentially in the mix for 2012. Pawlenty comes, as I discovered today, from a very unlikely background for a Republican governor, yet this has proven to be his recipe for success. Several of his brothers are union members and he has a sister who is a Special Ed teacher in a public school; not exactly the standard CPAC constituency. Yet, he told the story of how he won most of them over and the questions he asked in the process of doing so: “Do you want more taxes? Do you want more regulation? Do you want your guns increasingly restricted, as well as your fishing rights?” Et cetera. Pawlenty’s speech was about the most wide-ranging, business-oriented talk I have heard from an executive politician the whole conference. This man knows whereof he speaks. Watch him. He will go places.
At 11:15, we were privileged to hear from a man whom I have admired for almost half my life. Bill Bennett is a giant in the conservative movement, and he was warmly welcomed by the crowd. He is not a flame throwing speechmaker, but has more of a teaching style, which I find very enjoyable. He revealed to the crowd that he has assembled a team of educational experts to make his two-volume work on American History (America: The Last Best Hope) into curriculum that is usable in schools. This curriculum has now been approved for use in Illinois, New York City and yes, INDIANA! Bennett also spoke at length on the threat of radical Islam. He told the story of a 50-something year old Islamic woman whose name I can’t recall at the moment who recruited 80-plus female suicide bombers for the cause of jihad. A little-known detail: this despicable piece of human debris also arranged for the rape of each of these women a while prior, so that in their disgrace, they would be amenable to the suggestion of martyrdom in order to regain admission to Paradise. Bennett’s quote: “We cannot and will not share the earth with such people.” (I am not really sure how I feel about that way of stating it. We can’t police the world, and similar things probably go on in countries that are our allies. We certainly should do everything we can to make sure such radical offenders to society are prosecuted and punished.)
2:23 PM—One of the most anticipated speakers of the day, yea, even the entire weekend, was clearly Ann Coulter. People had to be turned away at the door for her 1:00 PM speech. Tom Delay introduced Ann Coulter in this fashion: “I have people come up to me all the time, saying they appreciate so much that I say the things out loud that they’re thinking, but won’t say. Ann Coulter says the things out loud that I am thinking, but don’t dare say!”
I have gone from loving Ann Coulter to being disappointed in some of her rhetoric, back to a new appreciation of what she says and writes. Ann Coulter is a satirist. There is no public speaker today who does it better, as proved by the sellout crowds she draws on college campuses and the books she sells in the millions. The remark of which I disapproved was the one she made at CPAC 2007 about John Edwards, calling him a disparaging term for a homosexual. This has to be balanced by a couple of observations. First, all people say at least one unadvised thing a year, perhaps more. But even more to the essence, the same Media Matters-oriented crew that are up in arms constantly over Ann Coulter give a complete pass to the nasty bilge that spews daily from the likes of Al Franken, Lewis Black, Kathy Griffin, Rosie O’Donnell and Bill Maher (the latter of whom I will not watch for any reason at any time in any place). Jed was in 7th heaven with Ann Coulter on stage and got his book signed later! (My wife, who would never say a mean word to or about anyone, stood in line to get our Coulter book signed last year.) I won’t recount Ann’s wit for you; you can go to http://www.anncoulter.com/ and read her columns to your heart’s content and you’ll get the gist of what we heard for 30 minutes. She is a very gifted and funny woman, and supremely intelligent, which is very clear when you read her books, which are extensively footnoted and documented throughout.
Andrew Breitbart brought a panel on that was very interesting, about conservatism in Hollywood. David Horowitz, another of my movement heroes (his autobiography, Radical Son, is absolute must reading, if you want to comprehend the encroachment leftists have made in this country in the last 40 years) mentioned different conservatives and libertarians with whom he has interacted, including Kurt Russell, Dennis Miller and Gary Sinise. Robert Davi was also present; not a household name, but he is an actor whose face you might recognize if you plug his name into imdb.com.
The one wish I have is that I could have dared to leave the Regency to head to another panel session or two in the Ambassador Ballroom across the way. Seats, however, are a closely guarded commodity as I type today because of Rush Limbaugh’s pending arrival for the 5:00 closing speech. I did leave the room for a few minutes for a cup of Starbucks while asking my seatmates to guard my chair; I even left my laptop, which I wouldn’t dare request that complete strangers do anywhere else but here. (This was as much as I typed today; please come back for more tomorrow!)
Friday, February 27, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
CPAC 2009: Day 1
The first day of CPAC 2009 is now history, and what a kickoff it has been! If you want to go straight to my rundown of today's events, go ahead and scroll down to the next paragraph after this one. But, if not, keep reading...
First, a little bit of runner-up info: My friend, Jed Hutchison and I landed at Baltimore International at about 11:30 yesterday morning, paid the $3.10 to ride the shuttle for 10-15 miles to the Greenbelt, MD Metro stop and bought our 7-day passes for the Metro. We had decided early on not to rent a car this time and it has definitely turned out to be the right judgment call. It is so much simpler to just hop on the Metro and motor all over town than to search agonizingly for parking places everywhere you go in this town. We had lunch at the Arlington Red, Hot & Blue, my favorite Tennessee barbecue joint in the country (there are branches in several states), and by the time we reached the Alexandria Comfort Inn to check in, it was nearly 4:00! We checked in, stowed our bags, then headed out and got back on the Metro. To get to the Omni Shoreham Hotel (where CPAC is held), you ride the Blue Line to the Metro Center stop, which is about 5 blocks due east of the Treasury Building, which sits on the east side of the White House. It was a beautiful evening, probably in the low 50's out, so we walked around the Willard Carlton Hotel, the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, Blair House, Lafayette Square and the Treasury Building, just enjoying the majesty of the epicenter of world power. While peering throught the fence in front of the famed West Wing, we glimpsed Fox News' Wendell Goler reporting live from the White House front lawn, probably on "Special Report with Bret Baier." We finally pulled ourselves away and went back to the Metro, where I spotted a Caribou Coffee shop. I like their coffee better than Starbucks, and we were both feeling weary, but not like sleeping, so we want in to grab some lattes. Our barrista (a young African-American guy with earrings in both ears) spotted Jed's Ann Coulter book and astonished us with effusive praise, "Oh, I LOVE her!" He asked if we were in town for CPAC and said he would be there as well; turned out he was a student at Catholic University. Just goes to show how erroneous stereotypes can be... :) We Metro'ed on over to the Omni where we did our early check-in and were done by 7:00. We hopped back on the Metro, hoping to take in the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Wall, as well. I made the mistake of leading us off the Metro at the Federal Triangle stop, which was not where we were supposed to be, so we walked all over creation before discovering we were completely on the wrong end of town, to my chagrin. Fortunately, Jed didn't hold it against me, although he probably regretted ceding control of the directions to me! After grabbing a sandwich at McDonalds and leaving early because of the muttering, malevolent looking homeless person sitting next to us, we Metro'ed over to the Capitol Building and walked down the street on the South side between the Capitol and the Library of Congress/Supreme Court building. The Capitol at night is something I had never beheld prior to yesterday evening. "Awesome" in the truest sense of the word. We were very weary indeed by this point (I had only slept for 3 hours the night before) so concluded our day's events and headed back to the Comfort Inn. Now to today...
We arrived at the Omni at 9:30 this morning and went straight to the Regency Ballroom, where our first celebrity sighting occurred: Fox News' Carl Cameron was in the Press section getting ready to cover the conference. The Omni is quite large and opulent, with a number of ballrooms, but the Regency is where most of the more well-known speakers at CPAC are heard. Dave Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union (which sponsors CPAC) opened the conference with a welcome to all of us at 9:45, and very enthusiastically shared some news that I feel is portentous of very positive things. Keene informed us that at the first CPAC in 1973, the speaker was Ronald Reagan and they managed to attract 125 people. Last year, a historic 7,000 attendees arrived for CPAC 2008, largely because of the presence of 4 leading Presidential candidates: Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney (who, as some of you may recall, astonished those in attendance by using his CPAC speech to withdraw from the race) and yes, John McCain (who is NOT here this year, to no one's great mystification). This year, however, all previous attendance records have been smashed with between 8500 and 9,000 expected to show up for a fine roster of events.
Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, Jr., introduced Congressman Paul Ryan right on schedule at 10:00. Ryan was on McCain's short list for VP last year, and it was easy to see why. Ryan is only 38 years old, but speaks with authority, as well as historical and political context. I noted with great pleasure that he referenced both The Federalist Papers (Ryan's paraphrase of one of the concepts in the book: "The laws of nature and nature's God are the only sure touchstones of right and wrong")and Frederick Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and not just in passing, either; it was clear that he was well acquainted with the contents. It can only bode well for conservatives if leaders like Ryan are being schooled in the great conservative minds of the past, as well as the Founders. Ryan also iterated a theme that I heard voiced honestly and repeatedly throughout the day, i.e., that Republicans had lost their way, and thus the elections of '06 and '08.
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton was next. The crowd was prepared for red meat and Bolton did not disappoint! He took the crowd on a rollicking tour of Obama's foreign policy, which Bolton does not seem to believe exists, at least in any coherent fashion. Bolton also discussed the threats from China, North Korea (which he called a "functionally criminal state") and Iran. I found several noteworth aspects of Bolton's speech. First, he spoke for a good 30 minutes in a wide-ranging foreign affairs tutorial, with no Teleprompter and seemingly no notes. The guy is brilliant. He also was not hesitant to criticize Bush administration policy, although his tone was a bit gentler in doing so and a little less wickedly humorous than when critiquing Team Obama. This was another motif I noticed this year; I heard no criticism of Bush last year that I can recall, though I was only there for Saturday then, so I can't speak for the first 2 days. Bolton himself said that we are better off in some ways not having to defend the Bush record anymore...and this is a man who worked for Bush! Nonetheless, truth is truth. Bolton looks to me like the most unlikely figure to give a rousing speech, with his bushy eyebrows and mustache, but he is amazingly effective and on game.
A panel discussion followed on "The Future of the Conservative Movement", featuring Bay Buchanan (Pat's little sister), Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal (who is on Fox regularly with Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the like) and Van Hipp (whom I had never heard of). Bay has a very spirited style, just like her brother. The portion that stuck with me from her few minutes was the assertion that it is in the states that the truly positive changes resulting from waves of popular support/opposition are taking place. She cited new border controls in Arizona, as well as a couple of other initiatives I can't recall right now. Steve Moore's specialty is finance, and of course, he is deeply troubled by all of the bailouts, but he is a happy warrior kind of fellow and fun to listen to. One question that he got in the Q & A afterwards (those are the most interesting portions of the panel discussion sometimes!) was how Republicans can evade being labeled as the "Party of NO"; Moore's response was a chuckle and "What's wrong with THAT?"
My favorite panel discussion of the day was on "The Key to Victory? Listen to Conservatives", which was led by Michael Barone. He opened with a comedic line rife with implication: "I've known Chris Matthews for 30 years, and Barack Obama is the first male that could make a tingle go up Matthew's leg!" Barone is a political genius; the man can break down every constituency in every precinct across every state in this nation and explain what the voting patterns are, of what the demographics consist and countless other arcane pieces of information which I find fascinating. One of his key theses today was that Republicans need to copy Rahm Emanuel's strategy of 2006 and start tactically planning to seriously contest races in 2010 that might not normally be considered friendly turf for Republicans. He cited both the Governorship in New Jersey (the current Democrat Governor, Jon Corzine, recently paid off his ex-girlfriend's $450,000 mortgage out of state funds or something of that nature, according to Barone; my details may be slightly off, but the gist is there) and Chris Dodd's Senate Seat, which suggestion was heartily received! Barone was followed by Aaron Schock, is the youngest person in the Congress. What an inspiration! A 28-year old Republican Congressman from a predominantly African-American district with heavily Democratic voting patterns (Illinois has 2 Democrat Senators, a Democrat governor and the 2 houses of the legislature are both in Democrat hands) and he won the old-fashioned way; he went out and told his story to people and asked for their vote. He won re-election in 2008 even after voting against the minimum wage increase of early 2007, right after his first election. When asked why by his constituents, he accurately and forthrightly explained that minimum wage increases lead to rising prices across the board that effectively cancel out the wage increase. He dared to be upfront with the voters rather than searching for an expedient answer. Makes you want to cheer!
Congressman Mike Pence was the highlight of my day. I love this man. He brought the crowd to their feet over and over again with his rousing call to return to conservative principles and traditional values. This man is fearless. You cannot listen to him and not be inspired. He told the story about a town hall meeting he held in New Castle, Indiana last week where a voter who had just lost his job thanked him for voting against the bailout and said, "Congressman, I can find another job, but I won't be able to find another country if we ruin this one." Pence was the only speaker, I believe, all day to specifically reference the power of prayer, saying that "it is good at times to remember what our knees are for."
The room had filled close to capacity when Sarah Huckabee came to the podium to introduce her father in a warm and touching tribute. Mike Huckabee gave a good speech. I like Governor Huckabee, but being a Romney supporter, I'm certainly not on the bandwagon, especially since I sense a rematch in the making in the 2012 primary. Huckabee punctuated his entire speech with jokes and stories, about 2/3 of which were funny and effective. I enjoyed being able to see him up close and in action. He certainly has a sense of empathy and timing that the crowd clearly enjoyed.
The closing event of the day was supposed to be a panel discussion of the Fairness Doctrine by former Congressman Joe Scarborough (now host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC), radio host Roger Hedgecock and Tucker Carlson (formerly of CNN's "Crossfire" and also MSNBC's "Tucker"). I'm not sure if this had anything to do with what actually happened, but the news came to us all that afternoon that Senator Jim DeMint had forced a vote on the Fairness Doctrine and the Senate had voted to say "No" to it 87-12. Scarborough came out to rollicking applause, told the crowd he opposed the Fairness Doctrine then proceeded to talk to us about what "I feel like talking about" which was the unlikely story of his election to Congress in 1994, with no money or name ID, defeating a 16-year good-old-boy incumbent, whom he successfully tied to Clinton.
Roger Hedgecock talked about the Fairness Doctrine in a very interesting lecture-type speech; his thesis is that Obama/Reid/Pelosi will try to force localism on radio stations rather than bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.
Tucker Carlson had the crowd in stitches with a very funny, wide-ranging, opinionated speech. His schtick is to overtly encourage interruptions from the crowd, virtually begging for opposition. It was a very different speech from what I thought he would give; not just a name-dropping funfest at all, but a lot of serious political policy discussion combined with the humor and sarcasm. The strand that ran through his talk was that there is nothing wrong with being a negatively oriented party, which Republicans are often accused of. He compared this to parenthood and life in general, asserting that much of life is about saying "NO" to people and helping stop bad things from occurring. He did say, though, that this must be coupled with putting a leader front and center in the party who knows how to communicate ARTICULATELY. He had the crowd roaring with guffaws when he hilariously, but not maliciously compared George W. Bush giving a speech to watching an inebriated friend try to cross a busy street: "You really feel for the guy and you're rooting for him to make it across (or to the end of the sentence), but you just don't know if he's capable of it!" My favorite line of the whole day came from the section of Tucker's speech where he talked about the media's love affair with Obama: "The kind of love the press feels for Barack Obama is the kind you have to be a 14-year-old boy to understand."
What a fun day! And tomorrow we go back for more...Hope to have a series of video clips up first thing in the morning.
First, a little bit of runner-up info: My friend, Jed Hutchison and I landed at Baltimore International at about 11:30 yesterday morning, paid the $3.10 to ride the shuttle for 10-15 miles to the Greenbelt, MD Metro stop and bought our 7-day passes for the Metro. We had decided early on not to rent a car this time and it has definitely turned out to be the right judgment call. It is so much simpler to just hop on the Metro and motor all over town than to search agonizingly for parking places everywhere you go in this town. We had lunch at the Arlington Red, Hot & Blue, my favorite Tennessee barbecue joint in the country (there are branches in several states), and by the time we reached the Alexandria Comfort Inn to check in, it was nearly 4:00! We checked in, stowed our bags, then headed out and got back on the Metro. To get to the Omni Shoreham Hotel (where CPAC is held), you ride the Blue Line to the Metro Center stop, which is about 5 blocks due east of the Treasury Building, which sits on the east side of the White House. It was a beautiful evening, probably in the low 50's out, so we walked around the Willard Carlton Hotel, the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, Blair House, Lafayette Square and the Treasury Building, just enjoying the majesty of the epicenter of world power. While peering throught the fence in front of the famed West Wing, we glimpsed Fox News' Wendell Goler reporting live from the White House front lawn, probably on "Special Report with Bret Baier." We finally pulled ourselves away and went back to the Metro, where I spotted a Caribou Coffee shop. I like their coffee better than Starbucks, and we were both feeling weary, but not like sleeping, so we want in to grab some lattes. Our barrista (a young African-American guy with earrings in both ears) spotted Jed's Ann Coulter book and astonished us with effusive praise, "Oh, I LOVE her!" He asked if we were in town for CPAC and said he would be there as well; turned out he was a student at Catholic University. Just goes to show how erroneous stereotypes can be... :) We Metro'ed on over to the Omni where we did our early check-in and were done by 7:00. We hopped back on the Metro, hoping to take in the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Wall, as well. I made the mistake of leading us off the Metro at the Federal Triangle stop, which was not where we were supposed to be, so we walked all over creation before discovering we were completely on the wrong end of town, to my chagrin. Fortunately, Jed didn't hold it against me, although he probably regretted ceding control of the directions to me! After grabbing a sandwich at McDonalds and leaving early because of the muttering, malevolent looking homeless person sitting next to us, we Metro'ed over to the Capitol Building and walked down the street on the South side between the Capitol and the Library of Congress/Supreme Court building. The Capitol at night is something I had never beheld prior to yesterday evening. "Awesome" in the truest sense of the word. We were very weary indeed by this point (I had only slept for 3 hours the night before) so concluded our day's events and headed back to the Comfort Inn. Now to today...
We arrived at the Omni at 9:30 this morning and went straight to the Regency Ballroom, where our first celebrity sighting occurred: Fox News' Carl Cameron was in the Press section getting ready to cover the conference. The Omni is quite large and opulent, with a number of ballrooms, but the Regency is where most of the more well-known speakers at CPAC are heard. Dave Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union (which sponsors CPAC) opened the conference with a welcome to all of us at 9:45, and very enthusiastically shared some news that I feel is portentous of very positive things. Keene informed us that at the first CPAC in 1973, the speaker was Ronald Reagan and they managed to attract 125 people. Last year, a historic 7,000 attendees arrived for CPAC 2008, largely because of the presence of 4 leading Presidential candidates: Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney (who, as some of you may recall, astonished those in attendance by using his CPAC speech to withdraw from the race) and yes, John McCain (who is NOT here this year, to no one's great mystification). This year, however, all previous attendance records have been smashed with between 8500 and 9,000 expected to show up for a fine roster of events.
Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, Jr., introduced Congressman Paul Ryan right on schedule at 10:00. Ryan was on McCain's short list for VP last year, and it was easy to see why. Ryan is only 38 years old, but speaks with authority, as well as historical and political context. I noted with great pleasure that he referenced both The Federalist Papers (Ryan's paraphrase of one of the concepts in the book: "The laws of nature and nature's God are the only sure touchstones of right and wrong")and Frederick Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and not just in passing, either; it was clear that he was well acquainted with the contents. It can only bode well for conservatives if leaders like Ryan are being schooled in the great conservative minds of the past, as well as the Founders. Ryan also iterated a theme that I heard voiced honestly and repeatedly throughout the day, i.e., that Republicans had lost their way, and thus the elections of '06 and '08.
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton was next. The crowd was prepared for red meat and Bolton did not disappoint! He took the crowd on a rollicking tour of Obama's foreign policy, which Bolton does not seem to believe exists, at least in any coherent fashion. Bolton also discussed the threats from China, North Korea (which he called a "functionally criminal state") and Iran. I found several noteworth aspects of Bolton's speech. First, he spoke for a good 30 minutes in a wide-ranging foreign affairs tutorial, with no Teleprompter and seemingly no notes. The guy is brilliant. He also was not hesitant to criticize Bush administration policy, although his tone was a bit gentler in doing so and a little less wickedly humorous than when critiquing Team Obama. This was another motif I noticed this year; I heard no criticism of Bush last year that I can recall, though I was only there for Saturday then, so I can't speak for the first 2 days. Bolton himself said that we are better off in some ways not having to defend the Bush record anymore...and this is a man who worked for Bush! Nonetheless, truth is truth. Bolton looks to me like the most unlikely figure to give a rousing speech, with his bushy eyebrows and mustache, but he is amazingly effective and on game.
A panel discussion followed on "The Future of the Conservative Movement", featuring Bay Buchanan (Pat's little sister), Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal (who is on Fox regularly with Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the like) and Van Hipp (whom I had never heard of). Bay has a very spirited style, just like her brother. The portion that stuck with me from her few minutes was the assertion that it is in the states that the truly positive changes resulting from waves of popular support/opposition are taking place. She cited new border controls in Arizona, as well as a couple of other initiatives I can't recall right now. Steve Moore's specialty is finance, and of course, he is deeply troubled by all of the bailouts, but he is a happy warrior kind of fellow and fun to listen to. One question that he got in the Q & A afterwards (those are the most interesting portions of the panel discussion sometimes!) was how Republicans can evade being labeled as the "Party of NO"; Moore's response was a chuckle and "What's wrong with THAT?"
My favorite panel discussion of the day was on "The Key to Victory? Listen to Conservatives", which was led by Michael Barone. He opened with a comedic line rife with implication: "I've known Chris Matthews for 30 years, and Barack Obama is the first male that could make a tingle go up Matthew's leg!" Barone is a political genius; the man can break down every constituency in every precinct across every state in this nation and explain what the voting patterns are, of what the demographics consist and countless other arcane pieces of information which I find fascinating. One of his key theses today was that Republicans need to copy Rahm Emanuel's strategy of 2006 and start tactically planning to seriously contest races in 2010 that might not normally be considered friendly turf for Republicans. He cited both the Governorship in New Jersey (the current Democrat Governor, Jon Corzine, recently paid off his ex-girlfriend's $450,000 mortgage out of state funds or something of that nature, according to Barone; my details may be slightly off, but the gist is there) and Chris Dodd's Senate Seat, which suggestion was heartily received! Barone was followed by Aaron Schock, is the youngest person in the Congress. What an inspiration! A 28-year old Republican Congressman from a predominantly African-American district with heavily Democratic voting patterns (Illinois has 2 Democrat Senators, a Democrat governor and the 2 houses of the legislature are both in Democrat hands) and he won the old-fashioned way; he went out and told his story to people and asked for their vote. He won re-election in 2008 even after voting against the minimum wage increase of early 2007, right after his first election. When asked why by his constituents, he accurately and forthrightly explained that minimum wage increases lead to rising prices across the board that effectively cancel out the wage increase. He dared to be upfront with the voters rather than searching for an expedient answer. Makes you want to cheer!
Congressman Mike Pence was the highlight of my day. I love this man. He brought the crowd to their feet over and over again with his rousing call to return to conservative principles and traditional values. This man is fearless. You cannot listen to him and not be inspired. He told the story about a town hall meeting he held in New Castle, Indiana last week where a voter who had just lost his job thanked him for voting against the bailout and said, "Congressman, I can find another job, but I won't be able to find another country if we ruin this one." Pence was the only speaker, I believe, all day to specifically reference the power of prayer, saying that "it is good at times to remember what our knees are for."
The room had filled close to capacity when Sarah Huckabee came to the podium to introduce her father in a warm and touching tribute. Mike Huckabee gave a good speech. I like Governor Huckabee, but being a Romney supporter, I'm certainly not on the bandwagon, especially since I sense a rematch in the making in the 2012 primary. Huckabee punctuated his entire speech with jokes and stories, about 2/3 of which were funny and effective. I enjoyed being able to see him up close and in action. He certainly has a sense of empathy and timing that the crowd clearly enjoyed.
The closing event of the day was supposed to be a panel discussion of the Fairness Doctrine by former Congressman Joe Scarborough (now host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC), radio host Roger Hedgecock and Tucker Carlson (formerly of CNN's "Crossfire" and also MSNBC's "Tucker"). I'm not sure if this had anything to do with what actually happened, but the news came to us all that afternoon that Senator Jim DeMint had forced a vote on the Fairness Doctrine and the Senate had voted to say "No" to it 87-12. Scarborough came out to rollicking applause, told the crowd he opposed the Fairness Doctrine then proceeded to talk to us about what "I feel like talking about" which was the unlikely story of his election to Congress in 1994, with no money or name ID, defeating a 16-year good-old-boy incumbent, whom he successfully tied to Clinton.
Roger Hedgecock talked about the Fairness Doctrine in a very interesting lecture-type speech; his thesis is that Obama/Reid/Pelosi will try to force localism on radio stations rather than bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.
Tucker Carlson had the crowd in stitches with a very funny, wide-ranging, opinionated speech. His schtick is to overtly encourage interruptions from the crowd, virtually begging for opposition. It was a very different speech from what I thought he would give; not just a name-dropping funfest at all, but a lot of serious political policy discussion combined with the humor and sarcasm. The strand that ran through his talk was that there is nothing wrong with being a negatively oriented party, which Republicans are often accused of. He compared this to parenthood and life in general, asserting that much of life is about saying "NO" to people and helping stop bad things from occurring. He did say, though, that this must be coupled with putting a leader front and center in the party who knows how to communicate ARTICULATELY. He had the crowd roaring with guffaws when he hilariously, but not maliciously compared George W. Bush giving a speech to watching an inebriated friend try to cross a busy street: "You really feel for the guy and you're rooting for him to make it across (or to the end of the sentence), but you just don't know if he's capable of it!" My favorite line of the whole day came from the section of Tucker's speech where he talked about the media's love affair with Obama: "The kind of love the press feels for Barack Obama is the kind you have to be a 14-year-old boy to understand."
What a fun day! And tomorrow we go back for more...Hope to have a series of video clips up first thing in the morning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
