The Redhunter

As with every other speaker, he brought up Ronald Reagan as an inspiration. It's hard to overstate the influence of Reagan on modern conservatives, young and old alike. I can really think of no one with similar influence in the Democrat party. FDR is too long gone, and Clinton both too recent and too...unaccomplished.

One story he told was of an interview of big lib Paul Begalia that he did on his radio show. He presented a series of quotes about how bad a person Saddam Hussein was, about how he definately had WMD and needed to be takien out. Hannity told Begala that the quotes were from President Bush. "Do you think the president lied?" asked Hannity. "Definately yes!" replied Begalia. "Uh, you voted for John Kerry last time, didn't you?" asked Hannity. "Yes" from Begalia. Hannity shot back "Well, those quotes were really from him!" A furious Begala cried "You tricked me!"

LOL

He spoke of freedom and liberating Iraq and Afghanistan, and how women can now go to school and at least have a hope of equal opportunity. The world is a better place for these things.

Afterwards Hannity was outside in the hall, or rather in the doorway of a room adjacent tot he hall, surrounded I'm sure by tons of security. You can make him out at right under the camera. Obviously the crowd was going wild during all this.

Before Hannity went on stage there was a short debate on civil liberties and national security between Bob Barr and John Yoo. Barr is a former congressman, who now, among other things, serves on the board of directors of the NRA.

Despite that Yoo is a professor at UC Berkley, he was the one who defended the Patriot Act (he helped write it) and the way the Bush Administration has conducted itself. His main point was that we can have absolute civil rights or absolute security, but not both. Rather, he said, we need to strike a balance. The people we capture overseas are not entitled to Miranda warnings or necessarily lawyers and certainly not trials in civilian courts.

Barr said that he does not believe in a "balance" between civil rights and security. He said that we do not or should not engage in torture, and that much of the talk these days on the subject by defenders was word splitting.

While I ended up agreeing with Yoo more than Barr, anyone on the board of the NRA is a friend of mine.

I got more books signed today, one by the invaluable David Horowitz called Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom. As with Malkin the day before, he was gracious enough to pose for a photo. Fortunately my camera worked perfectly the first time around.

While at the Horowitz book signing I saw Phil Kiver, whom I'd met while countering the UPJ protest march this past January 27. He was signing his new book, a war journal of his time as an Army journalist in Iraq; 182 Days in Iraq, so of course I picked it up too.

I hadn't intended to listen to the panel on "The Future of Fusionism", but heard the last 15 minutes of their presentation when I came into the room early for the next group. Anyone who thinks that modern conservatism is monolithic, or that the CPAC organizers insisted on ideological conformity among speakers, didn't attend this panel. The only panelist I'd heard of was Donald Devine. It was sponsored by Reason magazine, which I've heard of but never read.

"Fusionism" is the attempted synthesis of libertarianism and traditionalism, though all of the panelists seemed to be pretty extreme libertarians from what I could tell. These guys were isolations in the old sense of the world; pull up the welcome mat and stay out of the affairs of the rest of the world. People could be dying right and left in some foreign country and the world going to hell and they wouldnt care, or at least do anything. I leard lines that may as well have come from Ted Kennedy; "the world hates us because of Iraq","Rick Santorum's defeat was the best thing that happened in the last election","opposition to gay marriage will destroy the GOP because all the young people are for it", and so on. Although they got their own panel, they're a fringe movement within conservatism and will thankfully never have much influence.

After the "fusionists" were done, the panel I really wanted to hear went on the dias. It was called Are we Safer Than on 9/10? National Security 5 Years Later. On the panel were Joel Mowbray, Ilan Berman, Chris Seiple, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, it being moderated by Kayne Robinson .

Seiple said that asking whether were safer or not was the wrong question. They are going to try and attack us again no matter what we do. The real question is "are we winning?" The way we know whether we're winning is 1) No attacks on the US, 2) We deny them the means of attack, and 3) We are able to expand freedom to the places where the terrorists come from. Guns are not enough, we need a "grand strategy" that consists of using the right words. Public opinion worldwide matters. We must also not be afraid to talk about faith and religion, because good theology defeats bad theology.

Berman talked about the necessity of missile defense. While groups like al Qaeda don't have missiles yet, we have seen what happened with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Further, terrorist states such as Iran are working on missiles and if we are not able to effect regime change one day they'll develop ones that can reach the US.

Gartenstein-Rosslisted successes and failures in the war. The successes were removing the Taliban, simply being engaged (unlike the 90s), domestic security measures, and understanding how the al Qaeda network operates (again unlike the 90s. On the failure side of the ledger he placed the Warziristan accords, problems in the Anbar province, an increase in Islamic radicalism, our military being overstretched, the new security measures being under attack domestically, and that many analyists and Westerners in general still don't know squat about Islam.

Mowbray spoke of the investigative work he did in uncovering the visas that the 9-11 terrorists used to gain entry into the United States. The visa forms were filled out incorrectly and should have been denied. The problem was with the State Department, which still does not see Saudi Arabia as a problem. He told of how shortly after the attacks they issued a press release in Saudi Arabia, in arabic, essentially telling Saudis "don't worry it'll be business as usual. To this day over 90% of all Saudis who apply for visas are approved. Career employees in the State Department see Israel as the root of all our problems. Unfortunately I wasn't surprised to hear this.

You may not know him, but former VA governor Jim Gilmore is runninging for president. Not a bad speaker, above average but not as good as Rudi, Mitt, or Newt. One thing he did which turned me off is that he attacked by name the other candidates as not being true conservatives. He was the only candidate that did this. He did it, I know, because he's virtually an unknown and wanted to generate some press. Nevertheless I found it distasteful.

Tom DeLay, of whom I'm not particularly fond, introducted David Horowitz, of whom I am. This panel was called No Retreat, No Surrender: Fighting the Shadow Party. Horowitz is a tough fighter as anyone who has followed his career knows. DeLay was hated by liberals mainly because he, too, was very effective in getting what he wanted.

Horowitz spoke about the difference between liberals and conservatives in their approach to government. Liberals go to Washington to change the world. Their causes are to them messianic missions. The left infiltrates institutions in order to undermine them. "I ought to know", he said, "because that's what I did when I was with the left." For the right politics is a necessity but isn't or shouldn't be a way of life. The "shadow party" consists of all of the leftist organizations who are all tied together in a kind of church. Horowitz has compiled a database of leftist groups and the information is available at his Discover The Network site.

Before Newt came on stage the CPAC organizers released the results of the straw polls that they'd taken during the conference. I recorded two of them.

Do you consider yourself a Ronald Reagan conservative or a George W Bush conservative?

Reagan conservative: 79%

Bush conservative 3%

(I'm not sure what happened to the rest, this is all from my notes)

Who is your first choice for president?

Romney 21%

Giuliani 17%

Brownback 15%

Gingrich 14%

McCain 12%

all others were below 5%

The last major speaker was Newt Gingrich. Unlike any other speaker, he entered from the back of the room and worked his way through the crowd to the front. It was a stroke of genius, as the crowd loved it and he shook hands the whole way. I was some distance away but standing on my chair could make him out.

His talk was typically Newt; intellectual and captivating. No matter what the subject, he has an absolute command of the material. He would slaughter any of the Democrats in a debate, especially intellectual lightweights like Barack Obama or John Edwards.

Given the distance and lighting, here's the best my little camera could do