In response to Dr. Carson's four-point plan for destroying America:

Some short time before his death, Andrew Breitbart was introduced to these videos, explaining "Cultural Marxism," and he spread them around (including to me).

Continue reading

Many stories have been written about how Breitbart ROCKED CPAC.  I want to shout out everyone but post here are supposed to be short and there's a lot to be said.  But, you know who you are.

My personal mission at CPAC2013 was to have an epiphany about Andrew Breitbart.  It's been rough, mentally, since Novemeber.  I'm surrounded by family, friends, associates, neighbors, and strangers singing the praises of a president bringing the greatest country the world has ever know down to its knees.

Continue reading

Dr. Ben Carson's address to CPAC 2013 included his thoughts about how, if he were an enemy of America, he would set about destroying her.  His plan had four points:

1. Create division among the people.

Continue reading

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's speech at CPAC 2013 was a strange performance.  It seemed like it fell a bit flat with the audience.  For some reason, he decided to devote an extraordinarily large chunk at the beginning to recycling his jokes from the Gridiron Dinner.  He had a couple of good cracks in there, but he just kept going and going, and he's really not a very good jokester.  (Which can be turned to advantage with a little humor jiu-jutsu - the stiff joke-teller can bring the house down by slipping a laugh line into the middle of serious oratory without warning.)

Once the jokes were out of the way, the rest of his speech was quite a bit different than what other conservatives have been saying.  Jindal's Big Idea is to stop fighting for control of Washington and focus on growth instead of fiscal restraint.  "We must not become the party of austerity, we must become the party of growth," as he put it.  He envisioned the success of pro-growth policies, particularly those implemented by Republican governors, building up public enthusiasm for the GOP that could be translated into national electoral success in 2016.

Continue reading

In response to American University Professor hate tweets Dr. Benjamin Carson:

Besides being stupid and offensive, people like this are so drearily predictable.  What a surprise it would be if they paid due respect to Dr. Carson and offered stimulating moral or intellectual disagreement with what he said.  But no, it's just the usual stern order to return to the liberal plantation immediately, or Carson's racial identity will be revoked.  Yawn.  At this point, I'm not sure how even the most hardcore lefty student stays awake through one of these tedious professors' classes.  I would imagine it takes a lot of red meat getting tossed out to keep the kids from falling asleep at their desks.

Continue reading

Deen Freelon, Assistant Professor - School of Communication

Continue reading

Senator Rand Paul won the straw poll with 25% of the vote. Senator Marco Rubio came in a close second with 23% of the vote. Coming in a distant third with 8% was Rick Santorum. Governor Chris Christie, who wasn't even invited to speak at CPAC came in a surprising fourth place with 7% of the vote, and Paul Ryan came in fifth with 6%.

 There were 23 options on the survey, with  several other names written in, including Allen West, Condoleezza Rice, and Judge Andrew Napolitano.

Moments ago, a surprised and emotional Katie Pavlich won CPAC's prestigious "Blogger of the Year" award which was  presented by our own Sonnie Johnson. Pavlich, a Townhall columnist and author of the 2012 expose, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up first thanked the late Andrew Breitbart in her acceptance speech.

A well deserved honor for a hard working blogger - well done Katie!

Continue reading

The day I was invited to emcee for CPAC, I was also trying to write a tribute to Andrew.  I had the basic pieces already written but I couldn't find a way to end it. 

As I sat and thought about Andrew at CPAC just one year earlier, stories I had already told didn't seem appropriate.  So, I crossed them out.  Lines and hashtags we made trend, didn't seem right.  So, I crossed them out.  Feeling sad and nostalgic seemed offensive. So, I crossed it out.

Continue reading

Jonathan Krohn, the precocious kid who became a sensation at CPAC 2009 after he delivered a rousing defense of conservatism, has spent much of the day dumping on CPAC 2013, and yours truly, on his Twitter feed.

Joel Pollack: "It's not objectionable for the President to defend Muslims." Phew. I'm sure he's happy to hear that Joel. #CPAC2013 #snark

— Jonathan Krohn (@JonathanLKrohn) March 14, 2013

Continue reading

Politico's Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman have produced a snarky yet sadly misguided analysis of the political backdrop to CPAC 2013. Their take reflects the mainstream media's focus on particular personalities, as well as issues the left believes ought to define conservatives--gay issues, immigration, foreign policy, etc.

There is turmoil in the conservative movement, but it is less about specific people and principles and more about a crisis of trust between the grass roots and the leadership. Martin and Haberman note one of the recent drivers of that mistrust--the decision by several GOP governors to accept Obamacare funding for Medicaid expansion in their states--without noting that the problem goes deeper than disagreement on policy.

Continue reading

In response to Lord: 'CPAC is the Conservative Tent,' not the 'Big Tent':

It's always tough to establish a tent based on ideology, rather than party loyalty, especially when various forces seek to pull that ideology in different directions.  The current incarnation of liberalism is united by a single mission - make the government bigger, at the expense of people they don't like.  Their tent will grow a good deal more tense if real "austerity" sets in, and it's finally time to make Interest Group A sacrifice in the name of Interest Group B.  We're a few years away from fiscal reality forcing such hard times upon the Left, and they're pretty confident they can keep the electorate sedated until systemic collapse gets under way, so for the moment their conventions are happy combinations of shopping sprees and bank-heist planning sessions.

Continue reading

Jeffrey Lord makes the timely point that the Conservative Political Acton Conference (CPAC) is not supposed to be a big tent. It's supposed to be a conservative tent. Leave the big-tent politics for the Republicans--and let us have one gathering, just one, where conservative ideas take precedence over electoral coalition-building.

Lord cites our founder, Andrew Breitbart, approvingly, noting that Breitbart supported dissident groups like GOProud, but opposed their use of left-wing political tactics. Lord also notes the hypocrisy in judging CPAC by the gay-marriage standard embraced less than a year ago by arch-liberal President Barack Obama.

Continue reading

So should we expect to see Arroz con Pollo y Platanas at the CPAC buffet table?

I'll be speaking on a panel at CPAC 2013 about "Benghazi and Its Aftermath: U.S. Middle East and Southwest Asia Policy." My focus will be the great strategic mistake of June 2009, when we could have sealed victory the War on Terror, but failed to do so because of the Obama administration's refusal to topple the Iranian regime.

In June 2009, when Iran's theocrats stole the election for hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranians knew two things: first, that they hated the regime; second, that international troops had toppled regimes to the east and west, and stood just across each border in large numbers--130,500 in Iraq and 61,130 in Afghanistan.

Continue reading