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!)