Don’t Pay the Ransom, I Escaped!

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LAS VEGAS — Excuse the long blog silence, but I spent most of the Right Online conference shadowing the Christine O’Donnell campaign team. They’re trying to raise awareness among conservative activists of the crucial opportunity in the Delaware GOP Senate primary, which I wrote about last week at The American Spectator, and Friday here on the blog.

Anway, as longtime readers know, my idea it that there’s only one way to do campaign coverage: Go all-in. So for the past three days, I spent a lot of time with Team O’Donnell, sitting in on meetings that were “totally off-the-record,” according to sources close to the campaign.

That’s a phrase that’s become kind of a running joke with me. “Sources close to the campaign” are, as often as not, guys I’ve hung out — even guys whose sofas I’ve crashed on. The O’Donnell campaign just recently hired Yates Walker, whom you may remember from the Doug Hoffman campaign in NY-23. O’Donnell’s campaign manager is Matt Moran, who filled the same role for Hoffman, and their e-campaign team is Eric Odom and Steve Foley, whom I’m sure you remember from their 73Wire coverage of Hoffman.

In other words, “We’re getting the band back together,” to borrow a line from The Blues Brothers. The O’Donnell campaign is benefitting from lessons learned in the wild NY-23 campaign, which turned into a national conservative crusade in the last three weeks before the election. (See “Battle Cry in the North Country,” in the December/January American Spectator.) With seven weeks remaining until the Sept. 10 primary, O’Donnell seems to be very near a point of breaking through at the national level that Hoffman didn’t reach until there was less than a month to go before the election.

Anyway, so it’s a pretty exciting time, but this kind of close-range coverage means I spend a good deal of time having conversations I can’t report. The fact that I just shlepped my luggage from the fabulous Venetian Resort Hotel halfway across town to Odom and Foley’s condo, via a Las Vegas transit bus, is also an experience that doesn’t necessarily make for great blog fodder.

I’m about to get a long-overdue nap, but not before I give a special shout-out to those of you who have hit the tip jar. Also, Eric Telford and the crew at Americans for Prosperity for putting together a great conference, even if I still wasn’t invited to be on any of the panel discussions. I’ll have some more photos and videos from Right Online later, but for now I’ll leave you with this “man-on-the-street” interview:

Yes, that’s Christine O’Donnell beside the pool at the fabulous Venetian Resort Hotel. And, no, she wasn’t wearing a bikini. She did, however, agree to wear the famous fedora I borrowed from Da Tech Guy.

BTWT, dibs on the “Christine O’Donnell bikini” Google-bomb. Today is, after all, Rule 5 Sunday.

Important New Theory In Alleged March Racial Epithet Incident

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by Smitty

Power Line notes the NYT partially walks back the claim of the infamous word falling between ‘bigger’ and ‘rigger’ being used at the Kill the Bill protest in March.

there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members.

So, perhaps somebody with an iPod and some speakers was standing inside the building, listening to gangsta rap, and the Congressmen heard it as they came out. Then the whole incident could be downgraded from ‘victimized by racial epithets’ to ‘experiencing art’. Look at me being a Helpy Helperperson!

Back to my Rule 5 Sunday work. Check back in an hour-ish.

Update: More at American Power.

‘Sometimes I Think You Guys Are A Bunch Of Cowards’

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by Smitty

Go, Greta. This is a great segment with Paul Ryan, touting his Roadmap Plan.

Ryan puts words in the mouth of unnamed Dems:

“If it wasn’t so political–I love your idea–I’d go for this.”

Ryan points out the stark challenge facing a GOP trying to play bass and drums at the same time. There really is no half measure between the minimal, essentially libertarian Constitution as written, and the nanny state. He remains unconvinced, perhaps rightfully so, that the American people are serious about the elimination of Federal entitlements. Our ruling class continues underestimate Americans. It falls to the Tea Parties to get people elected who will go through this Federal monstrosity with a machete and a blow torch, and set about restoring liberty. Nothing else will do.

Would Andrew Breitbart Survive The Come-Down?

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by Smitty (via Insty)

Tunku Varadarajan achieves unintentional humor at The Daily Beast, discussing the feeding of Charlie Rangel to Cthulhu:

[Rangel’s] is a style, a method, a politics from an age when it was simply not done to ask uncomfortable questions of a black politician, lest that politician (and his supporters) retort that the questioning was racist. That protective smokescreen of “racism” was good to men like Rangel, allowing them to go about their merry ways blithely, and untroubled. It is harder to strike pouting, Manichaean postures now, when a black man holds the highest office in the land. There can be no cheap and easy shaming of critics, no slick refuge in a narrative of racial oppression.

Sure is a good thing Rep. Andre Carson got in his licks while the gettin’ was good. Aside: I attended the “Kill the Bill” protest (though was not present at the infamous non-event) and so I take that particular counter-factual just a little bit more personally.

The ground truth, contrary to T.V.’s assertion, is that Progressives will continue to piss down our backs and tell us it is raining as long as the Holy Narrative remains superior to the facts. Evil will continue to concoct dark designs, assume that good people are having those ideas, too, and therefore decide to go for a preemptive strike.

The relaxing alternate future, with Andrew Breitbart sitting in the corner of the tea house having a cup of Earl Gray and a scone, dreaming of his days jousting mad cows and odder men on cable news shows, isn’t likely to happen soon. Expect skirmishing leading up to a big political battle this November, and an all-out bun fight in two years. Racism shall be the least of the charges, I reckon.

Right Online VIDEO: Evan Sayet

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I ran into Evan Sayet here at Right Online and he dropped by my posh suite here at the fabulous Venetian Resort Hotel. Evan asked if he could log on and check his e-mail:

Celebrities using my computer — how cool is that? It’s like getting re-Tweeted by Alyssa Milano or something. Anway, Evan then generously agreed to a brief video interview:

Man, I’ve got to work on my interview technique. Evan cracked me up during the interview as we made reference to his “opening act.” He discussed his famous 2007 Heritage Foundation speech:

And his 2009 Heritage Foundation speech:

His Web site is EvanSayet.com.

Right Online VIDEO: Matt Lewis Talks Twitter, Blogging and E-Mail

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During his Friday talk at Right Online, Matt Lewis offered some very helpful advice to activists about how to build online strength with Twitter contacts (hint: re-Tweets and hashtags) and talked about the importance of developing a good e-mail list.

Matt’s a really awesome guy, who had me on his podcast twice this past week to discuss the intellectual history of the paleconservative-vs.-neoconservative schism. Part One here. Part Two here.