The Conservative Revolution

Kevin from Takimag.com has some interesting observations from the Campus Progress convention he attended over the weekend. He writes,

“While participating in Democratic campaigns, Campus Progress and the activists that work with it are building a force independent of partisan efforts—but not irrelevant to it. They understand that the role of activists is to push politicians towards an independently defined agenda rather than serving as cannon fodder.”

The same could be said of conservative activists. We must organize independent groups that are focused on ideas and policies first, and electoral politics second. That is why I constantly give young activists books to read and encourage them to sign up to receive journals like The Intercollegiate Review and The Freeman. Kevin continues by pointing out that campus leftists understand that “culture is the pivot for political movements, not elections.” But, too many young conservatives attend conferences to dress the part and hand out their resumes.

..the majority of young CPAC attendees believed the purpose of political action was wearing a suit and preparing for a career. It is the difference between activists and politicos. Many Beltway conservatives are not activists and despise those who engage in protests or think of political alternatives beyond voting for Team Red.

I’ve seen the eyes roll when I tell some of my colleagues about my efforts to crash MoveOn.org rallies or to organize our own protests. Some of our conservative friends think they are above protesting, and would rather sit around and smoke cigars and agree with one another. Instead, we’ve got to be out in the streets as often as the left is. This is one of the key themes of my book The Conservative Revolution: How to Win the Battle for College Campuses. It is also one of the things I tell young activists when I speak on college campuses. Kevin is dead on when he notes that, “The young Right has more to learn from the upstarts at Campus Progress than the other way around.”

The scandal surrounding the Dodd-Countrywide mortgage bailout bill continues to grow, as news has surfaced that Senator Barack Obama received a suspicious deal on a home mortgage in 2005 from Northern Trust in Illinois.

So much for the politics of “change.”

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As the Times of London reports, al Qaeda in Iraq has been demolished in Iraq. All that is left is a remnant of Islamist fighters. This is a good sign in the ongoing war against al Qaeda and its allies around the world. But there is still much work to be done.

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.

Robert Dreyfuss of the liberal magazine, The Nation, has an interesting piece in the latest edition of the magazine on Barack Obama’s shifting foreign policy views.

Though he is against the idea of the United States imposing democracy abroad, Obama does propose a sweeping nation-building and democracy-promotion program, including strengthening the controversial National Endowment for Democracy and constructing a civil-military apparatus that would deploy to rescue and rebuild failed and failing states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The magazine points out that it is difficult to decipher Obama’s beliefs from his rhetoric. Who is the real Barack Obama when it comes to foreign policy? The Obama that would pull our troops out of Iraq immediately or the Obama that would leave a “residual force” and safely withdraw the troops? These are questions that liberals and conservatives are only just beginning to ask.

This video is one of the most viewed on YouTube right now. It’s a clip of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) saying that oil and coal are “making us sick.”

I guess this means that we shouldn’t expect any pro-energy exploration bills out of this Congress anytime soon.