Blogging from CPAC

The world already knows the big news about the annual straw poll at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference:  U.S. Representative Ron Paul  (R-Texas) was the winner among attendees as the most favored presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, followed distantly by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.  Paul's victory was met with boos from the audience, though as one person put it on Twitter, since only about a quarter of attendees voted in the straw poll, the majority were "booing themselves."

Now Glenn Beck is talking about how the Republican Party has lost its soul and needs redemption.  He's repeating his trope about being a recovering alcoholic blah blah blah.

Rather than watching Beck -- who despite his criticism of "clown shows" is an exemplar of clownishness -- I have been uploading to YouTube a number of short videos that I took over the past two days.

The first one garnered over 120 hits within the first hour it was on the Web:  Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud (www.goproud.org) standing up to the National Organization "for" Marriage and asking, "Who is the pansy at CPAC?"  (GOProud is a group of gay and lesbian conservatives.)

I also was able to get a few comments from Jacob Hornberger, introducing his organization, the Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org):

I made a special effort to get some short interviews from authors about their books.

For instance, here is young Jonathan Krohn talking about his book, Defining Conservatism:

I also spoke to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, about his book, Leave Us Alone, which makes the case for the "leave-us-alone coalition" of people who believe in limited government:

I also had a nice colloquy with the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, who was signing copies of a revised and updated edition of his book, Stealing Elections:

Two constitutional scholars, Bob Levy of the Cato Institute and Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation, spoke on a panel about judicial overreach. They each signed copies of their books in the CPAC exhibit area: Spalding's is called We Still Hold These Truths and Levy's is an examination of Supreme Court cases called The Dirty Dozen.

Last year there was a big Tea Party-related march on Washington on September 12, turning "9/12" into a new catchphrase. Colin Hanna, president of an organization called Let Freedom Ring, gathered together photos and text about th 9/12 March in a volume called Grandma's Not Shovel-Ready!



I caught U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in a corridor of the Wardman Park Marriott surrounded by a gaggle of fans, just as she was asked whether she is supporting Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty for President in 2012. Here's her response:

I had a nice chat with Frank Enten, who for more than 50 years has been in the business of producing and selling campaign buttons. (I bought two Goldwater buttons from the 1964 campaign and one unique Nixon button from either 1968 or 1972, which I may photograph and blog about later.) Enten is known as "the Button Man" and he's had quite a career:

Finally -- at least for now, as I have more video to edit and upload -- Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner offered a few words about CPAC and its participants:

Glenn Beck is still droning on, this time about bottoms (there are titters in the bloggers' room). I will have more videos and photos from CPAC 2010 later this weekend. Be sure to visit again to see what other surprises I have in store.

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