I just came back from my trip to Washington D.C’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference. I saw Romney, McCain, Paul and Huckabee, as well as President Bush and Tony Snow.

My thoughts:

Romney gave the greatest speech I’ve ever heard him give. In fact, if he decides to run in 2012, I’ll be his number one supporter. I kind of knew that he was going to drop out of the race, as he looked like he was going to cry throughout the entire speech.

McCain continues to bore me with his speaking. When he came on stage, a majority of the crowd applauded, but there were definitely some loud boos. I think he’s not that great of a public speaker and that hurt him. The reaction from a lot of CPAC attendees though was that he did a good job to start to convince people that he can be a conservative, too.

Paul did virtually nothing to help his case, and I don’t see his appeal ever growing any more. His supporters are very passionate – and it’s not a “good” passionate either… it’s more or less a crazy “I’m the president of the Ron Paul fan club” kind of passionate. He also made the claim that Osama bin Laden “likes our foreign policy.” I didn’t know that Ron Paul had talks with Osama… apparently he does.

Huckabee gave a good speech, though nothing like the speech he gave at CPAC 2007. I thought he hit all his major points and stressed that he was staying in the race because voters deserved an election, not a coronation.

I also got to see President Bush speak to the crowd. I literally waited in line for over 5 hours to make sure I got in there. He gave a great speech. Though I forget most of what he said, I do remember that he talked about how his daughter was getting married. Also there were various screams from the audience saying things like “I love you George!” and at one point the crowd erupted in “4 more years!”

Tony Snow closed out the convention with an outstanding “rally the base” speech. I heard him speak last year and I didn’t think he did a good job, but I was very impressed this year. He rallied the crowd saying that the conservatives may have finished Act 1 when they defeated communism and liberated millions, but there was more work to be done.

Overall, good convention. Romney won the straw poll 35% to 34% over McCain, but I walked away with the feeling that conservatives will come around and support him if and when he is the nominee.

Labels: Bush, CPAC, Huckabee, McCain, Pinstripe Politics, Romney, Ron Paul, Tony Snow

Posted by Gary at 4:01 PM | Permalink | |

I heard several stories today about conservatives willing to vote for Clinton or Obama over McCain in the general election. Are they crazy?

True, McCain is not an all-around conservative, but he has more conservative tendencies than Clinton or Obama. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good, as I've learned in politics. McCain may not be perfect, but he's better than any Democrat - and here's why:

1. Iraq, he won't give up.
2. Potential to nominate "Scalia-like" Supreme Court justices
3. Socialized health care
4. There is a real possibility that he can die while in office, depending on who his VP is, there might end up being a conservative in the Oval Office throughout some of McCain's term in office.

Side Note: As much as Talk Radio would like people to believe that Huckabee and Romney are sharing the same votes; it simply can't be true. These same Talk Radio hosts were chiding Huckabee for being too liberal a month and a half ago, so how is he now the "other" conservative.

Head's Up: I'm heading to CPAC; look for a full review on Sunday's edition of Pinstripe Politics.

Labels: CPAC, McCain, Pinstripe Politics

Posted by Gary at 8:16 PM | Permalink | |

This is the last CPAC post, and it has been the longest in coming 1) because it required the most amount of digestion/reflection, and 2) because I've been really busy. A good amount of this post was spurred on by Mark Henrie's ISI-sposnored talk on Saturday morning of CPAC entitled "Conservatism 101."

He used as a branching off point George Nash's three divisions of the conservative movement and the books that define them (from Nash's excellent History of the Conservative Movement in America Since 1945). Those three divisions are libertarians, spurred on by F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, anti-communists, pointing at Whittaker Chambers' Witness, and the traditionalists, who found inspiration in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and Richard M. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences.

Now obviously, there can be great conflict between all of these three groups, though they have natural points of convergence. For example, the libertarians and the traditionalists would have both prefer to have a non-interventionist foreign policy, and the anti-communists wanted to fight communism at home and abroad. However, all three parts came together, getting Barry Goldwater the nomination in 1968 and Reagan the presidency in 1980.

The reason for this uniting was that they all believed that the West was in crisis. The anti-communists feared the growing power of the USSR, and its further expansion into Europe and Asia. The libertarians feared the expansion of the state in Western Europe, which they believed would lead to totalitarianism. The motivating events for traditionalists, according to Weaver where William of Ockham, the French Revolution, and the rise of Nazism in Germany. The traditionalists found it appalling that Nazism had come rise in Germany, one of the most politically advanced countries in the West.

Conservatives genuinely believed that they were on the "losing side of history." They firmly believed, as common wisdom both inside and outside academia, that the inevitable victory of the USSR was, well inevitable. Henrie said in his talk that if someone had asked him 5 minutes before the Berlin Wall fell if the Soviet Union would collapse, he would have laughed at such a ludicrous idea. (More on this thinking in John O'Sullivan's new book The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World; and a great review of the book over at Albion's Seedlings)

In fact, the fundamental event that places the conservative movement at a crossroads is the fall of the USSR. This allowed the rise of Neoonservatism and the New Right (mainly the Evangelical Protestants). Henrie described Neocons as "hard Wilsonians," who rediscovered the market in the 1970s, and wished to use market-based government-led solutions to domestic problems. It also caused conservatives to re-think this tragic sense of history.

The most successful way to govern the conservative movement, a task most successfully accomplished by Reagan, was to effectively partition these groups into separate spheres of influence. The libertarians were given domestic economic policy, the traditionalists domestic social policy, and the anti-communists foreign policy. In this way, Reagan seems to be the climactic figure for the conservative movement. After all, he defeated the Soviets and is mentioned about once every half minute at CPAC.

The election of Reagan and the eventual defeat of the USSR does not mean the conservative movement was successful, nor does it mean that they even set out on these goals. In fact, the movement has been challenged by defeat after defeat, and if the actions of the 2000-2006 Republican Congress and the first Bush Administration is any indication, conservatives generally deal better with defeat than with success.

Well, what about the 1990s? According to Henrie, conservatives who were in college during the 1990s saw Pat Buchanan as the savior of the movement, and the logical successor to Reagan. Buchanan was wildly popular within the movement, but it seems that now his diehard followers are seen as black sheep to a point.

It seems that now, this having been my third CPAC, Newt Gingrich is trying to position himself as the Reagan/Buchanan for this decade, and perhaps the next as well. He wants to be the godfather for this generation of collegiate conservatives, and seems to turn out some of the largest crowds at CPAC on a regular basis. I'm not sure if this is a good thing. Gingrich has a lot of ideas (the man is almost his own think tank) but they're not always good ideas. Especially given that he seems to speak mostly in rhetoric.

This is where conservatives face one of the two big crises of today. One, there is no charismatic leader to coalesce around, and conservatives on the whole seem less educated about their intellectual roots than the used to be, buying into sets of ideas that at one point were much more systemic than they are today.

Many conservatives on campuses today can point to what they are opposed to more readily than what they are for. This presents a challenge in finding that leader. It should be someone who is well rooted in the intellectual tradition, someone who makes policy decisions based on that tradition rather than from an abstracted set of ideas. This is what has happened with President Bush. He is "conservative" in that he employs conservatives and seems to be a neocon, but is not rooted in the tradition of Robert Taft or Ronald Reagan.

The second crisis is the challenge that Islamic terror poses to the country. Many of us see this as a "clash of civilizations," but Henrie more aptly defines it has a clash of civilization and barbarism. Henrie suggests that conservatives have lost the tragic sense of the future, but some, like Mark Steyn, certainly retain it about this conflict.

Islam is not a product of the left, like communism, socialism, and fascism. They are progressive in that they appear after democratic and republican forms of government. Henrie asserts that Islam is of the right, though really not an ideology at all, because of its inherit mysticism.

The Cold War and World War II were conflicts that spanned the world, but were fundamentally still of the West. Russia is one of the great western nations, which had gone astray in 1917. Because of this, neocons have come to believe that liberal democracy is inevitable in the Middle East just as it has established itself in the West. This is flawed because Islam is not of the West.

In it's mild forms, Islam has the grounds to be a well reasoned religion like Judaism or Christianity, but has deeply cut off it's philosophical interpretations of the Qur'an. Thus the radical elements, like Wahabbism, are able to assert itself at the forefront and radicalize many Muslims. And really it isn't the Muslims in the Middle East that are poised to bring the West to its knees, but Muslims now of Europe, where radical mosques are able to attract disaffected second generation Muslims.

I don't have a solution to either of these crises, as I am looking for someone to lead us forward, especially in 2008. This is the state of conservatism as I see it: looking for direction. Hopefully we will find one traveling from the right place.

Labels: Conservaism, CPAC

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:46 PM | Permalink | |

As mentioned in the previous post, this is post two of four on CPAC, and as indicated in the title, this one will focus on the 2008 elections and the ramifications of CPAC.

First, the John McCain no show. He claims a calendar conflict, but I don't buy it. Everyone else made the time to be there, and this would have been an important venue for him to attempt to rebuild some political capital with the grassroots.

Duncan Hunter I thought spoke well, though he is still an unknown Congressman from San Diego. The other Delawareans I was with had generally favorable things so say.

Mike Huckabee was the candidate that impressed me the most. I was not expecting much, if anything out of his speech, and had sort of forgotten he was even running. He gave one of the better speeches I saw at CPAC this year, and perhaps the best by a presidential candidate. He has agreed to sign the Americans for Tax Reform pledge to not raise taxes, which is good news for fiscal conservatives. Of the other Delaware people I was with, he seemed to garner the most favorable opinion post-speech, and several voted for him in the straw poll. They said he had realistic ideas, seems a solid conservative, and has an identity outside being a conservative. He is also the first governor in the nation to have a concealed carry permit, which is pretty cool.

Rudy Giuliani seemed to position himself as a leader in the Reagan model (though he might have mentioned Reagan least of all the people who spoke). Rudy said that we need leaders, not commenters, and promised fiscally conservative, optimistic leadership with a "peace through strength" foreign policy. He spoke to a packed audience, possibly the most packed of the entire weekend. I thought his speech was pretty good, but I think it probably came across better on television.

I saw Tom Tancredo at a reception Thursday evening with Ron Paul. Tancredo acted as if he were among friends, and was fairly candid for someone running for president. His feelings on Iraq aside, I really don't like Ron Paul. He's tried to combine Austrian economics with protectionism, I just don't think you can do that. As for Tanc's speech, I thought his little riff on "hyphenated" conservatism was interesting, and I liked it. So much for the paleocons who want to claim him as their own.

I don't like Mitt Romney. I really just can't think of one positive that he has. He acts too much like a politician for his own good. His speech was lame, and he only won the straw poll because he had the most paid staff in attendance. As for his association with Ann Coulter, he gets what he pays for.

Labels: 2008 Watch, CPAC, Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney, Tancredo

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:13 PM | Permalink | |

Sorry for not posting for most of last week, I was attending CPAC in Washington, and had every intention of blogging from the conference, but did not get the opportunity primarily due to the lack of time and free WiFi.

This will be the first of at least four posts on things that occurred at CPAC, with others focusing on 2008 (later tonight or tomorrow), global warming (sometime soon after that), and the state of conservatism today (that's gonna be a long one).

Here are some highlights that don't fit into any of the above:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said "Republicans [in Congress are] serious about returning to conservative values," having "learned our [their] lesson" and pledged to keep Congressional Democrats in line, claiming that since they came into power, not one "bad bill" had made its way to Bush's desk. He also said that the bill the Dems have pushing the final recommendations of the 9-11 Commission into law (all two of them), is actually centered around giving collective bargaining rights to civilian airport security screeners.

White House Spokesman Tony Snow called for conservatives to "take off the dark colored glasses," and gave a pretty inspiring speech. I've been a fan of of Snow for a while now, and what I really love about his speech was that he has mastered the technique of making the audience feel that he is letting us in on some big secret. It's wonderful, and even though I know it's a technique, it still makes me feel that way. He also used a good amount of humor, and seemed to be really enjoying himself.

Kellyanne Conway, a notable conservative spokesperson, on a panel with Mike Barone and others, said that "Hillary is not the Clinton America misses." She also finds it ironic that a "feminist icon" like Hillary "needs her man to get anywhere in politics." Conway did express her empathy for Mrs. Clinton by saying she feels kind of bad that she probably the only one running for president that is the second-best politician in their family.

Wayne LePierre, of the NRA, is one of the most dynamic speakers I've ever heard, and never miss his CPAC speeches. He talked about what the NRA is up to right now, including fighting the UN and working hard to get the legal guns confiscated in New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath back to their rightful owners. (More on that here and here from the JttR archives)

I went to an excellent panel on China and Venezuela, even if it seemed like both panelists were making the case that their area of expertise was the bigger threat.

Thor Halversson of the Human Rights Foundation talked about Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Though democratically elected, Chavez has been consolidating power ever since, and has gained more power by revamping the Venezuelan constitution. He is also working with other regional allies like Fidel Castro, as well as China and trying to curry favor with Russia by buying enormous stockpiles of AK-47s. Chavez has said he intends to rule until at least 2030, and the only institutional opposition he faces in his country is the Catholic Church.

Jed Babbin, author of Showdown: Why China Wants War with the U.S, said that great powers historically only rise out of war, and that China seems more and more like 1930s Germany. China's anti-satellite weaponry is a huge potential threat to the US, as are armed forces are dependent on satellites. He praised the Bush Administration for seeking strategic partners in the region such as India and Vietnam, who fear China's growing power.

Newt Gingrich spoke on his "Winning the Future" solutions...again. basically the same tune for three years now. He talked about some 2008 stuff that I'll cover in that post, but seemed to be mostly rhetoric in his speech, especially on foreign policy. Who doesn't want a strong America? Especially in the CPAC crowd. Sheesh.

And no, I did not watch Ann Coutler's speech. Nor Sean Hannity's.

A record 6,300 people registered for CPAC 2007.

Labels: China, Congress, CPAC, Gun Rights, Newt, Tony Snow, Venezuela

Posted by Ryan S. at 1:24 PM | Permalink | |