Tag: cpac

Jeb Bush and CPAC: how he answered some questions…

…and how you should ask them.

I suspect that these answers (via the Daily Signal) by Jeb Bush on immigration and Common Core questions will not much move the needle, one way or the other.

Jeb Bush is clearly a capable public speaker… but. He has some unpopular opinions on the subject, and that is the meat of it. Whether that hurts Jeb Bush in the primary any more than it has already is going to be the big question. Continue reading Jeb Bush and CPAC: how he answered some questions…

Jeb Bush opts to enter the lion’s den at CPAC.

(H/T: Hot Air) I must say, this is a smart move: “As the American Conservative Union puts final touches on its annual political conference next week, they’ve offered potential Republican presidential contenders the option of a moderated question-and-answer session instead speaking from a podium to the thousands of activists in attendance… One White House aspirant taking the group up on the offer is former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Republican sources told Bloomberg Politics.”  As long-time readers know, the RedState Gathering features something similar: our invited speakers are expected to take questions from the audience. We find that it works well, both from the candidates’ and the audience’s point of view, which is why we keep doing it.  Interesting that the ACU is trying something broadly similar at CPAC*. Continue reading Jeb Bush opts to enter the lion’s den at CPAC.

Back *from* #CPAC2013…

…odd mood this year.  Not as snarling as some, but the new location coupled with the ongoing controversies and mixed with the lack of a looming election cycle made it somewhat low-key for me.  Also: I found it surprisingly jarring to not have five billion Ron Paul supporters trying to get me to vote in that freaking straw poll.

Ach, well.  I ran into a goodly number of colleagues and peers, who mostly had flattering things to say about both RedState and myself. That’s always nice to hear.

…Well, that was certainly a day at CPAC.

My video camera is showing its age, the traditional Politician Migration Patterns were all messed up from CPAC being in a new site, and apparently my cell phone network has decided to go off the grid and go live in a shack in Wyoming.  Seriously, Verizon apparently erased the cell phone from the timeline itself; I can’t get them to admit that it ever existed, let alone that it exists now and has a phone number that I’d like to keep because that’s what’s on my business cards.

I suspect that there will be no CPAC attendance for me on Friday.  There’s some stuff that needs straightening out.

Moe Lane

PS: One bright spot of the day? I received some nice unsolicited compliments from various professional colleagues.  Flattering, but appreciated.

PPS: Other bright spot? Seeing a bunch of Senators speak who had been put there via the efforts of a lot of grassroots activists.

Tea Party News Network demonstrates how to ensure good publicity.

By stepping up to the plate:

The American Conservative Union (ACU) today announced that the Tea Party News Network will sponsor free WiFi for all CPAC 2013 attendees, including media.  The 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference will be held Thursday, March 14 – Saturday, March 16, 2013.

“We are thrilled that the Tea Party News Network stepped forward to sponsor Wifi for all conference attendees this year,” said ACU Chairman Al Cardenas.

“We’re delighted that we could provide free internet for all CPAC 2013 attendees,” said Scottie Nell Hughes, News Director of the Tea Party News Network. “We wanted to ensure that at the largest annual gathering of conservatives the thousands of bloggers and grassroots conservative activists have the ability to share their thoughts and message with the world.”

Via the Right Sphere.  There were a bunch of people covering CPAC who were kind of annoyed about this; the life of a conservative blogger is a life where you are expected to make bricks without straw, or sometimes even without clay* – and God knows that CPAC and the ACU are already in the middle of its perennial PR battle anyway. TPNN was pretty smart to volunteer to cover the email tab.

Moe Lane

PS: Mind you, the dedicated cellular access and cheap data plan that you can get from Apple for their iPads is a really good reason to acquire one of their tablets.  Now, if I could only get them to let us jailbreak the damned things…

*Thank you, Harry Turtledove.

Walp, the Maryland primary is today.

Thank God Perry’s still on the ballot: it’s about the only thing motivating me to vote in the primary.  Although that’s not really fair, given that we have a pretty big slate of candidates who want to go up against Ben Cardin in the Senate race.  I interviewed one of them (Dan Bongino) at CPAC, in fact.  Still, the Republican primary started too early and I am completely ready to see the next President kill ethanol subsidies once and for all, then urinate on the cooling ashes.

…OK, maybe I shouldn’t RedHot this one.

#rsrh CPAC moving to National Harbor.

Joy McCann has the details.  Short version: CPAC 2013 will be at a site with better parking, much worse commute if you don’t have a car.  I’ll add: expect a lot of complaining next year about the new venue.  People hate it when a site changes, unless the change is either truly trivial or the change is an improvement in every way.

Also: dagnabbit, this is going to complicate my life.  The commute really was convenient.