The Conservative Revolution

I’m here in Minneapolis today attending Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty — Rally for the Republic. Tucker Carlson kicked it off and talked about why Ron Paul’s message about liberty and free markets appeals to so many people. The list of speakers for the rest of the day includes Barry Goldwater, Jr., Bruce Kaufman, Jesse Ventura and of course, Ron Paul.

The turnout is good, and the energy is high here. There are quite a few vendors peddling the freedom message. Our booth has handouts on economic issues and individual liberty. We are getting a good response on our online privacy video petition campaign. People are very upset about Senator Chuck Grassley’s efforts to track online transactions and tax eBay power sellers. We will be able to put together a good montage of folks telling the Senator to stop trying to take away our freedom.

The event goes on until after 9:00pm tonite, and concludes with music by country singer Sara Evans. I’ll be posting updates from the Rally throughout the day.

UPDATE: Author Tom Woods is getting a rousing welcome right now. He is talking about the federal reserve, spending and the housing bailout. The crowd is clearly angry about the way the fed has mucked up monetary policy — and they are upset about the Fannie/Freddie disaster. Woods pointed out that both parties have been over-spending and over-regulating.

UPDATE: Jesse Ventura just spoke and rocked the house. He had some great lines on the 2nd amendment, the two-party system and civil liberties. He did seem to go off the ledge a bit in insinuating that 911 was perpetrated by someone other than Osama bin Laden. Jesse is a great speaker. I was only a few feet from the podium and really enjoyed hearing him speak.

I had quite a busy and interesting day today. Early this morning my colleague and I picked up our credentials and headed over to the GOP convention in St. Paul. We toured the arena (which was pretty much empty at the time) and walked through the media areas of MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.

The arena struck me as quite small compared to Obama-messiah’s venue. But I do think that it will make for a good place for McCain’s acceptance speech, if indeed he attends in person. There is still doubt about that given uncertainty about the situation in the Gulf.

One highlight of the day was meeting Jon Stewart, who was wandering around downtown St. Paul. I got a picture with him and told him not to tangle with the riot police. He seemed to get a kick out of that. We also saw Jon Voight, Sen. Norm Coleman, CBS News’ Bob Schieffer, CNN’s Dana Bash and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough getting ready for the convention.

People were just beginning to file into the arena as we went outside to watch the crazy protesters as they marched from the state capitol to the convention area.

I have some pictures and video, and will try to upload both as soon as I can. The leftist protesters (which had the usual suspects wearing Che t-shirts) was pretty mild where we were. But we did hear of attacks on city businesses and even a police car. Local Fox affiliate My Fox 9 has some great video footage of protesters biting off more than they could chew with police. Getting sprayed with mace does not look that fun.

Local media also has coverage of a press conference that the police chief is putting on. He called the day a success, although the radical leftists threw bleach on GOP delegates and had planned other more vicious attacks. I am convinced that these people would send members of the Republican Party to the guillotine if they could. They are modern day Jacobins, and ideological totalitarians that want to prevent their political enemies from even being able to speak. Although they are a fringe element on the left, they are still a bit scary.

I’ll try to post updates from the convention, and the nearby Ron Paul “Rally for the Republic” in Minneapolis, which FreedomWorks is co-sponsoring. It should be a fun few days here, and hopefully I will avoid the more violent leftists — and the mace.

Well, I can’t say I know that much about Sarah Palin. But all indications are that she is a conservative governor, mother of five and a reformer. She is pro-life, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and a supporter of ethics reform. She is the governor of Alaska, a former mayor of Wasilla and the runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant.

I am still forming my opinion on Gov. Palin, but at first glance she seems to be a solid choice. I do think that many women will vote for this ticket, which includes a smart, capable woman and an experienced senator who would make a solid commander-in-chief. I’ll be posting more as I find out more about Palin and develop my opinion about her.

McCain probably made a very good choice today, and really took the wind out of the sails of the Obama campaign. This race is going to be fascinating!

UPDATE: Here is what my fellow bloggers are saying about Sarah Palin.

My friend and colleague, Tom, has the best introduction to Sarah Palin on the web. Here it is.

The Fix
Red State
Marginal Revolution
Marc Ambinder
Out of Control
Cranmer
National Review
Hillary Clinton Forum
Tom Gaitens

UPDATE: My boss Dick Armey just made his views known to the public:

“She’s obviously a reformer,” said former House majority leader Dick Armey. If Obama, a first-term senator, tries to question Palin’s credentials, “he will get a big backfire,” Armey predicted.

UPDATE: Club for Growth President Pat Toomey likes Palin:

Palin also won quick confirmation from the fiscal conservative wing of the party in the form of Club For Growth president Pat Toomey. “At a time when many Republicans are still clinging to pork-barrel politics, Governor Palin has quickly become a leader on this issue,” said Toomey. “She is a principled reformer who understands how badly wasteful spending has marred the Republican brand.”

UPDATE: Larry Kudlow sings Palin’s praises on National Review:

In a blog post on the National Review’s web site this morning, Kudlow said he’d be “thrilled” if Palin were the pick. “She’s a strong pro-life, supply-side, drill-drill-drill ethics reformer who has worked hard to change the Ted Stevens culture-of-corruption problem in Alaska,” he said.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson argues that this was a good pick:

The pick appeals to the Hillary independent voter and forces Obama to go easy, since he doesn’t want both a primary and general election in which liberal women thought he and his MSNBC media henchmen took the sexist, mean-spirited low road. Given McCain’s 72 years, women will realize that the role and future of this VP is no token appointment.

Listen to this great interview of Stanley Kurtz, a writer for National Review Online and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Kurtz is reviewing the newly released Annenberg Papers, which apparently contain some interesting information about the relationship between Barack Obama and anti-American terrorist William Ayers.

Obama sent out an email to his supporters asking them to flood the WGN radio station with emails and phone calls. Here is an excerpt of Obama’s email:

Tonight, WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears. He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.

Here is National Review’s response:

Obama supporters risibly complain that shining a light on the Obama/Ayers relationship is a “smear” and smacks of “guilt by association.” A presidential candidate’s choice to associate himself with an unrepentant terrorist would be highly relevant in any event — does anyone think the Obamedia would keep mum if John McCain had a long-standing relationship with David Duke or an abortion-clinic bomber?

But we are talking about more than a mere “association.”

Bluntly, Obama has lied about his relationship with Ayers, whom he now dismisses as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Ayers and Obama have made joint appearances together; they have argued together for “reforms” of the criminal justice system to make it more criminal-friendly; Obama gushed with praise for Ayers’ 1997 polemical book on the Chicago courts; and they sat together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing enterprise that distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their ideological allies. Most significant, they worked closely together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).

This story is only going to become more and more important as the campaign goes on. I think that as more Americans read about the Ayers/Obama connection, they will feel very uncomfortable about handing the keys to the White House over to someone that lacks the judgment to stay away from unrepentant terrorists.

Yesterday, Steve, Francisco and I were interviewed by Michael O’Brien of The Christian Science Monitor about our new book about Barack Obama. You can read his story here.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

But a new book, “Who is the Real Barack Obama?” seeks to tread new ground; it is the first book written by the Democratic presidential nominee or his GOP counterpart, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) both by and for young voters…

The new book is a product of conversations between the trio during the Democratic primaries earlier this year. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was still the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, Steinhauser said, and a wealth of literature on Clinton’s record was readily available. But as Obama emerged as a more viable candidate, the three kept wondering: Who is the real Barack Obama?

As the Associated Press reports, the Obama campaign is trying to threaten the television stations that are running the Obama/Ayers ad put out by the American Issues Project. The ad educates voters about the relationship between Senator Obama and his terrorist friend William Ayers, who set off bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol building.

Obama’s target is an ad by the conservative American Issues Project, a nonprofit group that questions Obama’s ties to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization that took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The ad has opened a gash on the Obama campaign’s forehead, and conservatives need to continue to go after the Ayers connection. Ayers was a radical left-wing terrorist who declared war on the United States and as late as 2001 said that he “should have done more.” Why did Ayers host a fundraiser at his Chicago home for Senator Obama? How close where the two men? How does this reflect on Obama’s character and judgment?

My colleague Francisco Gonzalez looks at the Obama/Ayers connection in our book, Who is the REAL Barack Obama?. You can also read this great report from the Capital Research Center.

Here is the link to the audio from my interview yesterday on the Stephen Dinkel Show in New Mexico. We talked for 20 minutes about Barack Obama’s foreign policy and economics views. My co-authors Steve and Francisco were also interviewed later on the program.

If you haven’t bought the book, please do so! It is in the top 50,000 on Amazon.com, and with your help, we can keep it moving up in the rankings.

Regardless whether you believe Georgia or Russia is to blame for the ongoing conflict in the Caucasus, the Russians continue to show that they aim to use the war as an excuse to dominate the Georgians. As Reuters reports, the Russians continue to violate the terms of the cease-fire, and are blocking access to the Georgian port of Poti.

Russian forces dug trenches and built fortifications in key areas of Georgia Thursday, but also rolled columns of tanks north toward home, picking and choosing how their nation would comply with the terms of a peace accord.

Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has pledged his forces would pull back from Georgia by Friday, his troops appeared to be in no hurry—even settling down in strategic spots. This raised concerns about whether Moscow was aiming for a lengthy occupation of its smaller, pro-Western neighbor.

Some of my friends over at the Campaign for Liberty think he might. The word is that his training partner is a donor to the Ron Paul presidential campaign. How cool would it be for Michael Phelps to become a supporter of the freedom movement and even do an ad for Ron, or other limited government conservatives?

Here is an excerpt from the blog chatter on the subject.

His training partner, Erik Vendt, is already a dedicated follower of liberty, a $200 donor to the Ron Paul campaign (on December 16th no less), and doing his best to convince Phelps that freedom works.

I recently co-authored a new book about Senator Barack Obama that is now available at Barnes and Noble. It’s called, “Who is the REAL Barack Obama?”.

Here is the link to purchase the book online.

We also have a website where we post news and commentary about Obama’s candidacy. The website is http://www.whoistherealbarackobama.com

Please get your copy, write a favorable review and tell your friends!