CPAC 2009 Live Feed

Here is the embedded live feed:

Live video chat by UstreamNot enough? Click for CPAC speaker archives and live chat session.

Denver Anti-Stimulus Rally: Videos

**Update: All videos locked and loaded (rally in 4 parts, chronologically ordered)

**Welcome Michelle Malkin readers! Thanks Hot Air! Scroll for videos . . .

Featuring Michelle Malkin, Jon Caldara, Jim Pfaff, Tom Tancredo, Dick Wadhams and many others . . .









Here's SP's photo essay of today's anti-stimulus pig roast, along with Peoples Press Collective, and the illustrious Michelle Malkin.

Night Twister: "Getting Connected In Colorado"

There are blog posts, and then, there are blog posts.

Fellow RMA blogger from Fort Collins, RMA radio co-host, and friend Randy Ketner of Night Twister has produced the THE blog post on the center-right in Colorado--including the GOP, libertarians (big and small L), free marketers, think tanks, etc., as well as city and county government links, local GOP party sites, online political activism, blogger alliances and much, much more.

The explanation:

Political activism is more than waxing philosophical and eviscerating politicians on blog sites and broadcast email messages. Real political activism is hard, time-consuming, and often boring, repetitive work. It means going to city council, county supervisor, and school board meetings. It’s walking precincts, making phone calls, and attending local political meetings. It also means being informed, and joining with others in keeping your representatives accountable. All of these things are the impetus behind this blog.

Knowing where to get timely information about what’s going on in your State is a huge part of the battle, especially in these days of information overload. We all have day jobs, family responsibilities and/or friends, and hopefully other interests. It’s actually alright to not know everything that’s going on everywhere all the time. Having access to the most important information means getting connected. Networking is vital to success in political activism.
. . .
What this means is, with my active involvement I can affect change in my community where it makes the biggest difference. This is not to say that national issues are not important; they most certainly are. The thing is, we can only make real changes there every 2 to 6 years. I can make a difference in my community every single day.

What will you find there? Links to the following:

Government
Political Organizations
Online Colorado Conservative Organizations
Colorado Bloggers & Alliances
Web 2.0
Online National Groups

So check out all this and more at Night Twister.

Where Do We Go From Here? Conservatism 2.0 Conference

Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds discuss the need for the GOP/conservatives/libertarians to continue to keep the "big tent" open and not circle the wagons and fire inward, as the right is often prone to do.

Second, a center-right new media/blogosphere convention in the style of a Kos-convention, without the moonbattery and tinfoil, of course. CPAC, held annually inside the beltway, would clearly not fit the bill.

Liberty On The Rocks Denver

Liberty on the Rocks:

Haven't heard of Liberty on the Rocks yet? It is a group of liberty minded individuals who meet on the first and third Wednesdays of every month in downtown Denver. Hear what the madam President and the regulars have to say.

Youth Movement--Not All Young People Are Obamatons

Young Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians (what, no monolithic vast right-wing conspiracy?) aren't prepared to concede the youth vote to Democrats, Obama, or socialism:

Wesley Dickinson, a 30-year-old Denver engineer, thinks the economy is forcing people near his age to confront politics more so than at any time since the 1970s economic downturn created a generation of Reagan Republicans. Since then, people have been able to live relatively comfortably and didn't care so much about what the government did; that no longer is true, he said.

"They haven't had to worry about the economy like our parents did," said Dickinson, a limited-government supporter who has had a keen interest in such things for many years. "The economy's been booming in general steady growth. And now we're getting into the first election times where people are scared."
. . .
Few young people read a printed paper, and many gathered at both Republican and Democratic young-voter gatherings in recent weeks said they don't own a television. They get their information from Web sites and even plan their social calendars through online networking sites such as Facebook.

And it is precisely because younger people can do almost anything in front of a computer monitor - organize a campaign event, donate money, air their opinions on a blog - that they are newly active, Justin Longo said. In the days of door-knocking and phone-calling drives 20 years ago, it was hard to hold down a full-time job and be an activist. Now, people of any income level and any work schedule can do so at any time.

"I'd like to think that without the Internet we would be so active. But I doubt it, because the costs of activism are so low this way," said Longo, 26, who is a "Web monkey" with the conservative Independence Institute in Golden. "With only a few key strokes, you put yourself in the role of an activist."

Internet users can find meetings or activities very specific to their peer and interest groups. This is how the postcard parties are organized. It's how 26-year-old Amanda Teresi founded Liberty on the Rocks, a group of free- market backers that gathers at bars twice a month in the Denver area to discuss politics or watch the presidential debate, as members did last week.

Activists from the center-right who can put to rest the image of the "good ol' boys" club of plder, blind GOP voters, with variations in ideology, diversity of backgrounds (the only true diversity), and a desire to foster advocacy of political positions with a decidedly non-progressive/liberal/socialist bent.

These aren't your typical post-grad, ex-College Republicans.

You can check out the musings and reports from Wes, Justin, and Amanda at Peoples Press Collective.

How The West Will Be Lost--Video Update

Last week SP attended and reported on a social conservative/libertarian summit in Denver that discussed Democrats' recent success in attempting to turn the intermountain West blue, and the disconcerting failure of the GOP in what was once viewed as a political stronghold.

Here is video of the discussion, via Jon Caldara's blog, who also has some reflections and a roundup:

How The West Will Be Lost

"How The West Will Be Lost: Democrats' Strategy To Turn The Mountain West Blue, And What Libertarians And Conservatives Can Do About It"

"We lost our values. We lost our way"--Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute




Left to right: Ryan Sager, Jim Pfaff, Brad Jones, Jon Caldara and Gene Healy

There was an AFF Roundtable in Denver on March 26 entitled "How the West will Be Lost: Democrats' Strategy to turn the Mountain West Blue, and What Libertarians and Conservatives Can Do About It"--featuring Jon Caldara, president, Independence Institute; Jim Pfaff, president, Colorado Family Council; Ryan Sager, author, Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party; Gene Healy, senior editor at the Cato Institute and author, Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power; moderated by Brad Jones, Facethestate.com.

Topics included:

Have Republicans and the Religious Right put more libertarian-leaning mountain states up for grabs?

Looking at the primaries, does Huckabee's success indicate the growing or waning influence of evangelicals in the Republican Party?

Does Ron Paul's fundraising success indicating a growing influence of libertarians? And what to make of McCain?

Face The State had a recap of the evening:

At a Wednesday night event moderated by Face The State's Managing Editor Brad Jones, libertarians and conservatives came together at the Oxford Hotel for a panel discussion on what can be done to save the American West from a Democrat takeover. The conclusion: Republicans face an uphill battle due to serious fractions within what was once a solid coalition.

Jim Pfaff, president of the Colorado Family Council, opened the dialogue by talking about the social conservative issues that evangelicals hold dear, including ending abortion and fighting the effort to recognize safe-sex partners as married. Calling himself a "Christian libertarian," Pfaff attempted to present an optimistic and united outlook on the ability of social conservatives and libertarians to unite for this November's general election.
. . .
Gene Healy, a senior editor at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. expressed concern with the fact that too many conservatives have bought the liberal line that the president should "be a soul nurturer, life coach, buddy and supreme warlord of the earth."

Healy said people should “abandon the false idol of partisanship” because according to his analysis, history demonstrates that one-party rule in Washington results in spending rates three times greater than when control of the three branches of government is split between the two major parties.

Ryan Sager's post-discussion analysis was decidedly pessimistic, reflecting the commentary of the gathering:

CHEERED as Republicans may be by the Clinton-Obama wars, the fact is that long-term trends still favor the Democrats this fall. To see the problem, consider the interior West - the eight states between the Midwest and the Pacific Coast: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

This week, I spoke at a panel put on here in Denver by the America's Future Foundation, a youth-oriented libertarian-conservative group. The topic: "How the West Will Be Lost."

In fact, having heard my fellow panelists' takes on the situation in Colorado and the rest of the region, the use of the future tense looks optimistic: The GOP is already well on its way to losing the West.

The reasons were well summed up by the president of Colorado's Independence Institute and a popular conservative radio talk-show host in the state, Jon Caldara: "We lost our values. We lost our way."
. . .
As Caldara put it: "Colorado is, in fact, the test tube of how to export liberal expansion to the Western states." A moderately conservative state has been turned Blue, Caldara says, because of "the absolute demolishing of what the Right stood for, how the Republican Party turned into something it was never meant to be and went away from Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan ideas."

Of course, Democrats have worked hard to capitalize on the Republicans' carelessness. Liberal groups funded by folks like billionaire Quark founder Tim Gill have turned discontent into votes. And now they have a model to use in the rest of the region.

Face The State may have a podcast of the event up in the next few days, and when they do, it'll be linked here.