The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

CPAC Day 3: Everybody Write-In Your Straw-Poll Favorite: Ann Coulter; UPDATE: Rejecting My Advice, CPAC Attendees Vote for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney

Posted on | February 12, 2011 | 38 Comments

They saved the best for the final day of CPAC: Ann Coulter followed by Allen West.

UPDATE: Awesome!

Security at CPAC recognized me when I rolled down to the front row to get a picture. Pretty freaking cool. Ann ended her speech with what every Southern Baptist would recognize as her testimony, and it was 31 flavors of awesome. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

UPDATE II: Getting ready for Allen West’s keynote speech. My daughter Kennedy and her husband Martin have joined me in the Blogger’s Lounge.

UPDATE III: CPAC straw poll results: Ron Paul 30%, Mitt Romney 23%, everybody else in single digits, including Newt Gingrich 6%, Tim Pawlenty 4%, Michelle Bachmann 4%, Sarah Palin 3% and Herman Cain 2%. Note the names below Cain in the straw poll: Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, John Thune, Jon Huntsman and Haley Barbour.

UPDATE IV: A few more photos:

Donald Douglas of American Power with 2011 CPAC keynote speaker Rep. Allen West.

Dana Loesch with her favorite blogger.

Fingers Malloy, Alyssa Farah and my young journalist protege, Josiah Ryan.

Javier Manjarres, Sarah Rumpf and Ed Morrissey.

UPDATE V: Total straw poll results at Human Events, via Memeorandum. I’m on the VIP list at the Reaganpalooza. so I’ll be catching you on the flip side.

UPDATE VI: Young Americans for Freedom has expelled Ron Paul from its national advisory board.

Category: Allen West, Ann Coulter, CPAC

We Have Always Been The Party Of No

Posted on | February 12, 2011 | 16 Comments

By Wombat

This was originally going to be a response to one of the comments in Stacy’s post Hecklers In The Big Tent, but it got a bit long and complicated, so I’m going to throw this up as a regular post without all the linkagery I normally specialize in here.

I think everyone is missing a fundamental truth about the GOP that has pretty much defined the party since the New Deal days. Unlike the Democrats, who have always been about getting and keeping power (and more nakedly so since the New Left took over the party in the 70s), the Republicans have always been a party defined by what it’s against. During FDR’s New Deal, the main thing we were against was the socialism of the New Deal. When the Cold War started, this receded into the background and was replaced by a fairly solid anti-communist stance that left us somewhat rudderless when the Soviet Union collapsed, until the War on Terror came along. This is one of the reasons the GOP has traditionally been supportive of the military and vice versa.

The social conservatives, especially the Catholics who mostly hang out at National Review, didn’t always represent a major factor in the party. They first became a major bloc in the party as the Reagan Democrats of the 80s found themselves marginalized by the radical Democrats’ insistence on legalized abortion with as few limits as possible, and switched over to the GOP. This is not to minimize the role played by evangelical Protestants or Mormons by any means; all social conservatives were and are important to the success of the GOP, and Republicans who ignore them get what John McCain got in 2008: lots of voters staying home instead of being foot soldiers and reliable voters.

Until W’s second term, the fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks have had their concerns given lip service at best, and the back of the hand at worst. Now the spendthrift socialism of the New Left, untempered by a Republican Senate or President, has been made fully operational, and in response the GOP has found another Big Idea to be against. Libertarians, social conservatives and yes, even gay conservatives have found something they can all agree on: the free-spending Democrats need to be expunged, the national debt needs to be reduced, and Uncle Sam’s credit card needs to be taken away. As with Communism, anything that distracts from tackling the Main Enemy needs to be shoved into the background until we have defeated the unholy trinity of New Leftists, public sector unions, and crony capitalists who are driving the country into a pit of over-regulation, hyperinflation, and economic stagnation.

This is why I can’t get too excited over the GOProud flap. As a Catholic traditionalist, I don’t agree with a lot of their positions, but on the other hand, they’re willing to argue about those issues at the state level (where arguments about society and culture belong) while standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches of fiscal conservatism. Considering the treatment usually handed out to political apostates from the GLBT community, I think we should cut them a little slack and accept their support. Especially if we can get them to quit taunting the more thin-skinned social conservatives. 😉

The RINOs have always been with us. There are a lot fewer of them now than there used to be, but we have always had Republicans who liked the power offered by public office (the Washington insiders) or who were more liberal in the fiscal or social sense due to the nature of their state or district. Conservatives and libertarians need to decide on a case-by-case basis whether having somebody on your side 60% of the time is good enough or whether we want to purge them in favor of a possible 75- or 90-percenter who maybe can’t get elected. Yeah, we should always have somebody in the wings ready to threaten them in the primaries if they get wobbly on spending and taxes, but we should pull together in the general elections against the greater enemy — and if they won’t return the favor, we need to run them and their supporters out of the party and keep them out.

Category: Conservatism 101, GOP, Libertarians

CPAC Day 3: Fear and Loathing and
Tri-Corner Hats in the Kruiser Cabana

Posted on | February 12, 2011 | 8 Comments

Every year, there are two CPACs: The one I attend, where conservatives get together and have a wonderful time — as at the scene (above) inside the late-night “Kruiser Cabana” party hosted by Stephen Kruiser of PJTV — and the (allegedly) divisive and controversial hatefest reported by the liberal media. How more transparently biased could the media possibly be? Pamela Geller calls attention to the lede of a Time magazine feature about CPAC:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, a three-day carnival of Republican ladder-climbers and red meat throwers, convenes Thursday in Washington.

One of the reasons I spend most of my time covering the behind-the-scenes fun at CPAC — rather than chasing the pack of media jackals in pursuit of a “gotcha” quote from the speakers on the big ballroom stage — is because their coverage provides such a warped funhouse mirror distortion of what this event is really all about.

Yes, there are would-be 2012 GOP presidential contenders speaking at the conference. Yes, there will be controversial things said from the main stage in the ballroom — “controversial,” that is, by the standards of liberal reporters who find any blunt expression of fact to be controversial. But CPAC isn’t about the political stars up on the stage, it’s really about the thousands of conservative activists in attendance. And this year, there are a record 12,000 of those, including more than 5,000 college students for whom this event is a rite of passage.

When they aren’t merely distorting CPAC, liberal reporters do not hesitate to lie about it. Michael Shear of the New York Times:

Egypt Captivates World’s Attention — Except at CPAC
Three weeks of historic protests in Egypt upended President Hosni Mubarak’s regime on Friday with the world looking.  But here at the Conservative Political Action Conference, no one took any notice. . . .

There is a word for that kind of reporting: Bullshit.

Egypt: Mubarak Resigns

That’s the headline on an item I filed from CPAC moments after Mubarak’s resignation was announced. And here’s a headline that apparently the New York Times didn’t see fit to print:

Ron Paul: U.S. ‘propped up’ Mubarak in Egypt

So how is it that one of the biggest draws at CPAC can address the Egyptian crisis from the main ballroom stage and yet the New York Times insists that “no one took any notice” of the crisis?

We could ponder that puzzle at length, but why bother, when we can just ignore the liberal media and have fun? Speaking of which: What’s crossing the mind of this man in a pirate hat?

That’s DC new media legend Matthew Keller, but things aren’t always what they appear. That’s not actually a pirate hat, but a festive colonial tri-corner, and the woman reclining on the bed behind him? Read more

Category: CPAC

CPAC Day 3: ‘Flu-Like Symptoms’

Posted on | February 12, 2011 | 13 Comments

Skye at Midnight Blue describes herself as experiencing “flu-like symptoms” which can only mean she’s contracted the dreaded CPAC Fever. This disease is caused by a rare virus known as schmooze and is spread through the promiscuous exchange of business cards.

Some have blamed CPAC Fever on Dana Loesch’s leather pants — ?!?! –but we know that a major contributing factor is weakened immune systems, caused by the excitement generated by Herman Cain:

As to the impact of Cain’s speech, I quote Ed Morrissey: “[Cain] stole the show yesterday with his speech in the late afternoon. People left the ballroom saying that he moved them to tears.” Cain drew 10 standing ovations.

Join the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain.

Category: CPAC, Herman Cain

CPAC Day 3: Winning the Future

Posted on | February 12, 2011 | 4 Comments

Friday evening, I was a guest at a reception hosted by a group of College Republicans, including Jonathon Snyder of Ohio State University. Jonathon is state chairman of Ohio College Republicans and is now a candidate for the chairmanship of the College Republican National Committee. He was kind enough to consent to an interview:

My apologies that I ran out of memory on my camera and cut off the end of Jonathan’s sentence. His Web site is InnovateCRNC.com and he is also on Twitter. You should keep an eye on this promising young leader.

Category: CPAC, Republicans

CPAC Day 2: Into the Scrum

Posted on | February 11, 2011 | 17 Comments

Rep. Michelle Bachmann was surrounded by autograph-seeking admirers Friday afternoon in the lobby of the Wardman Park Marriott in one of those spontaneous scrums that occur when GOP celebrities show up at the Conservative Political Action Conference. 

There is an interesting story behind how I ended up in the midst of the Bachmann scrum. About noon, I got a call from a young woman who introduced herself as Kathleen McCaffrey, a Cornell University student who is also a co-blogger at Professor William Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection. Professor Jacobson had told me that his associate would be attending CPAC and so, when she called, I arranged to meet her in the hotel lobby.

When we met in the lobby — “Look for the man in the brown hat” — Miss McCaffrey was accompanied by her friend, Michele Walk, associate editor of The Politicizer, a student-oriented conservative site. “Come to my office,” I said, directing them to the smoking area outside the hotel that functions as my HQ at CPAC. We had been out there about two minutes when we were joined by Ladd Ehlinger Jr., who employed his photographic skills to commemorate the meeting.

Now, it happened that Miss Walk is a student at George Washington University. As soon as she told me that, I said, “Do you know Sergio?” GWU alumnus Sergio Gor is a rising young operative I’ve known since 2007, who now works for — can you guess? Read more

Category: CPAC, Ed Morrissey, Legal Insurrection, Michele Bachmann

CPAC Day 2: Hecklers in the Big Tent

Posted on | February 11, 2011 | 37 Comments

Yesterday’s incident in which some Ron Paul supporters shouted “war criminal” at Donald Rumsfeld and his surprise guest Dick Cheney gets explained by Dave Weigel:

The ballroom for big events fills up many minutes in advance. In this instance, the people who wanted to hear Rand Paul speak at 3:45 had to arrive around 2:30, and stay there. If they did, they sat through a speech from Donald Trump (a surprise to attendees who weren’t checking the news frequently), and used every possible moment to yell “RON PAUL” at the Donald. When Trump responded to one of the heckles, and said that Paul “can’t win” the presidency, there were loud and righteous boos.
It takes a while to exit the ballroom. This means that hundreds of Paul fans — recognizably younger and sometimes beardier than the median CPAC attendee — are in the room or in lines as Donald Rumsfeld is introduced.

Total CPAC attendance is more than 10,000, among whom are hundreds of Paulistas — more than 10 percent of the total attendance, due not only to the fanaticism of Paul’s following but also because Campaign for Liberty has paid the way for his student supporters to attend the conference.

As might be expected, the Paulistas are at odds with most conservatives on foreign policy and this coincidence of scheduling that had many of the anti-war libertarians in their ballroom seats during the Rumsfeld recognition is just typical of the unexpected happenings at CPAC. And this unfortunate incident of inexcusable rudeness should help put the whole GOProud “controversy” in perspective. Are conflicts between anti-war libertarians and pro-war neocons really any different than the clash between gay Republicans and pro-family social conservatives?

Grant that these would seem to be what might be called irreconcilable differences, and yet if the broad coalition of the Right is to cohere — as it was powerfully coherent in 2010 — the disagreements must be tamped down. Courtesy and forebearance would seem to be requisite to the endeavor.

As I was explaining to friends at dinner last night, my main idea nowadays is that the GOP’s problems are not so much ideological as they are systemic and structural. The key battle is between the grassroots and the party elite — whether Republicans are to be a bottom-up or top-down party — and not between differing ideological factions of the rank-and-file. So as long as you’re fighting the elitist GOP Establishment, I’m on your side, without regard to any specific policy-oriented  litmus test.

My idea of an important policy debate: Should John Cornyn be tarred-and-feathered or would it be a sufficient gesture to burn him in effigy?

Category: CPAC

Egypt: Mubarak Resigns

Posted on | February 11, 2011 | 8 Comments

Finally:

Hosni Mubarak has stood down as Egypt’s president after 18 days of mass demonstrations.
The announcement was made by Vice-President Omar Suleiman shortly after it was reported that Mr Mubarak had flown to Sharm el-Sheikh.

Egyptians celebrated by blowing their car horns and setting off fireworks. It appears to have been a military coup. Much more at Instapundit.

UPDATE: New York Times:

“Taking into consideration the difficult circumstances the country is going through, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the post of president of the republic and has tasked the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to manage the state’s affairs,” [Egyptian vice president Omar] Suleiman, grave and ashen, said in a brief televised statement.

UPDATE II: CNN has full text of Mubarak’s resignation speech. How do you say “spend more time with my family” in Arabic?

Category: Egypt
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