I’ll have my thoughts on the Santorum speech later.
But for now, here’s the audio, from Save The GOP.
Archive for February, 2006
Time to update the Ayn Rand stamp.
There’s something immensly creepy about this poster. And not just that it’s from the MPAA.
Here’s a judge lying while taking her constitutional oath. Bitch.
None of them, if they’re upholding their constitutional oath. Now, if maybe we could screen judges at the front end on substantive constitutional issues we wouldn’t need this conservative crusade to undermine the judiciary.
Judicial review, you know, isn’t a modern innovation. It’s in the damned Constitution (not to mention The Federalist).
I’m on board, and with the ticket in that order
Published by February 9th, 2006 in Misc. CPAC. 1 Comment
(Sorry it’s blurry… I’m guessing you can make out the words.)
Some more t-shirt designs and posters.
And, fittingly, I’m now off to listen to Sen. Santorum.
Here’s Radio Row.
Flight simulator. Very cool. Very popular.
A bit one-dimensional in person. Wooden.
Here are the Newtbots, evangelizing on behalf of the former Speaker’s talk at the end of the conference.
I like the color choice: red.
One of the first things you’ll run into is the Condi ‘08 booth.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say, however, that she’s THE black Republican. There are others.
And now for some photoblogging.
Here’s a little tour of the convention floor, the entrance to which is pictured above.
Welcome Instapundit readers…
Will be blogging some more momentarily. Right now, I have to do a little thing I like to call "reporting." (Imagine George W. saying it… "reportin’.")
It’s for my forthcoming book: "The Elephant in the Room: Libertarians, the Christian Right and the Looming Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party."
It’s about the future of the Republican Party (will it continue to abandon its commitment to limited government, and what will it mean if it does) and is due out in September from Wiley publishing.
Sign up for a notice when the book hits stores by mailing me here.
Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) said the model for America’s border fence should be fence/wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories.
He also called illegal immigration a form of terrorism.
My thoughts: The anti-immigration folks want to peg their agenda to the War on Terror, but it’s worth remembering — as always — that a lot of people had agendas pre-9/11, and a lot of them think 9/11 is a great new way to package their cause. It doesn’t mean that any of their original motives have changed. And those listening to them should keep that in mind.
The real immigration action started off with Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.).
Above is a picture of the scattered standing ovation he received when he took the podium (I’d say about 5 percent stood, the rest applauded happily, but not wildly).
The content of the speech was nothing too surprising:
* End birthright citizenship
* Build a wall
“Open borders are wrong," Tancredo said. “No matter how good they are for the restaurant industry.”
Yes, God forbid the restaurant industry, the construction industry, fruit growers or any other industry do well.
So, here’s the rub with all the people who think that immigration is going to be the defining issue within the Republican Party for years to come. They’re wrong — and not just because their policies are based on economic ignorance and not-so-subtle racism.
Why? Because the modern Republican Party doesn’t work without a decent segment of the Hispanic vote. The party George W. Bush has built will lose if it morphs (back) into the old Republican Party that wants to keep brown people out.
The numbers don’t work. (And, well, the economy would fall apart if any of the anti-immigration folks got their way … but that’s another set of numbers.)
“It is the president who is out of step with his party, not Tom Tancredo," says Tancredo. That may be true with a certain segment of the GOP base. But presidents win in the center to the extent they restrain the ugliest impulses of their bases. Bush may be out of step with some conservative activists, but he’s in step with the American people.
As for things Tancredo said that I agreed with…
He did have some nice stuff to say about how George W. Bush has corrupted the Republican Party.
“We are not the party of bigger government," he said. And he said the GOP should admit its mistakes by repealing the Medicare prescription-drug bill and No Child Left Behind.
He’s right about all that, of course. But that’s the problem with expanding government. Once it’s done, it’s done. Neither of those programs can ever be repealed now (though NCLB could be reformed into somewhat decent shape, if you brought back the voucher provisions that were stripped out immediately when Congress took it up in 2001).
Oddest moment: "God bless Denmark," Tancredo declared, as an aside. There was some enthusiastic spontaneous applause … though not as much as for ending birthright citizenship.
Next up was former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.
He talked a little bit about immigration, but also focused a bit on the drift in the Republican Party.
“Some Republicans believe in tax and spend as well, he said. He took particular aim at Virginia Republicans, who, despite controlling both houses of the state legislature, haven’t cut taxes enough (according to Gilmore, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about internal [domestic?] Virginia politics).
Oddest moment: a spontaneous burst of applause when Gilmore blamed the Katrina mess on local authorities.
Today’s GOP: In charge of everything, but still happy when it can find someone else to blame.
So, George Will kicked things off this morning — first speech of CPAC 2006.
Went over his view of Iraq as a huge mistake. Neocons, he says, never ask: "But then what?"
His conclusion about Iraq: “We have to win in Iraq, and I think we will.”
But…
“It will not be pretty getting there, and what we leave behind will not be pretty.”
Immigration.
No wireless in the main ballroom this year (blogging by Treo).
Will report later.
On the train down to D.C. to blog CPAC for a second year in a row.
Plan to pass along lots of pictures of conservatives in their little conservative monkey suits.
Should be an interesting three days after all the drama of Year 1 of W2.
Also a nice break from spending all day every day locked up in my apartment crashing on book deadlines.
Stay tuned…
Here are all 12 Danish cartoons.
The teachers unions have absolutely, positively lost their Goddamned minds.
(via Eduwonk)
The editorial staff of the New York Press (led by my former New York Sun colleague and predecessor as editor of the opinion pages there, Harry Siegel) has just resigned en masse.
Over the Danish cartoons. The publisher, apparently, ordered a printing of the cartoons pulled at the last minute from an issue dedicated entirely to the controversy being caused by them.
In an email reprinted by The New York Observer, Siegel explains:
New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization.
Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.
We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we’d criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.
This was not an easy decision. I’ve been reading the Press since 1988 and have dreamed of running it for nearly as long. The paper’s editorial staff has worked impossibly hard hours and has come quite a ways in only a few months towards restoring the paper’s tarnished editorial reputation and credibility. I’m proud of the work we’ve done, and wish we’d had time to finish the job. I wish the Press all the best, and hope that under new ownership and leadership it can again be an invaluable read for all good Gothamites.
—Harry Siegel, EIC, on behalf the editorial staff
Good for them. Every paper in America should have printed the cartoons by now. As Harry mentions, The New York Sun deserves special credit for being (to the best of my knowledge) the first American newspaper to print them.
A comment thread discussing the move appears here.
Here’s my latest column in the N.Y. Post (and my first as an outside contributor, as opposed to editorial board member, yikes):
PRESIDENT Bush won’t lead on the issues that matter to conservatives,
so the Republicans in the House must. But will they? Yesterday, in
electing a successor to disgraced former Majority Leader Tom DeLay,
they gave their answer: a solid … maybe.
Full rub after the jump.
From the meme that brought you ‘Shining’
Published by February 2nd, 2006 in Misc. Miscellany. 1 Comment(link via Sullivan)
Maybe Andrew Sullivan should have used the word fellatory (as opposed to fellatial) to describe Fred Barnes’ Bush book: "Rebel-in-Chief." A William Safire column, not by William Safire, strangely, follows here.
Still, a blow job by any other name…
On CNN, they keep using cute little slugs like "Shirt Storm" and "Shirt Happens" for the Cindy Sheehan / State of the Union / arrested over a t-shirt story.
They’re cute and all, but I’m a bit surprised they’re kosher for a family-friendly network. Maybe someone’s just having a little too much fun in the control booth.
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