Author: Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

Rep. Ron Paul, former Republican presidential candidate and leading light of the current libertarian grassroots movement, enjoyed a huge rock star moment at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), as he took the stage Friday to thunderous applause and a standing ovation in a ballroom filled to capacity.

Just two years ago, before the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Paul was practically persona non grata — this conservative movement had disdained his warnings about economic collapse and his belief that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unconstitutional and counterproductive. At the Republican National Convention, some of his delegates were silenced from declaring their vote during the main roll call. Paul himself — a sitting congressman — had his access to the floor restricted.

Times have changed. His movement has raised millions of dollars despite his failed candidacy and has gone on to grow grassroots organizations, including the Campaign for Liberty, which made sure it had a huge presence at CPAC this year. Though some libertarians who spoke with Foxnews.com said there are plenty of areas where they disagree, they have felt a better reception at CPAC this year, generally.

Paul has a lot to do with that. After sharing his long-held views on the war — “an unconstitutional war costs a lot of money and undermines the constitution. If you like small government, you need to work hard to have a strong national defense that is not so militant and not pretend we can tell the rest of the world how to live” — he found more common ground with the movement conservatives on economic issues.

But he reminded the audience that freedom doesn’t “only come in pieces” — the constitution protects both economic liberty and personal liberty. “For those who might disagree, I just urge you to think about it seriously.”

Paul seemed to want to bridge the long divide and was willing to make his case for the greater cause. “Something is coming together, something is brewing. Something big is going to come out of what is going on today.”

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for 37 years has entertained, buoyed, booed and endorsed Republican presidential aspirants. But one thing that conservative presidential hopefuls know: it’s usually a good idea to drop by and increase your profile with a good speech and a decent placement in the event’s popular straw poll.

Though there will be two more CPACs before the 2012  presidential race, that hasn’t stopped a number of Republican bright lights from trying to outshine each other with their speeches this year.

“You can’t tell me that wasn’t a campaign speech,” one veteran journalist offered to another after Mitt Romney took to the stage at CPAC on Thursday. He waxed nostalgic about the Bush Administration, he railed at the Obama fiscal polices, he seethed about the administration’s attempt to try 9/11 terror suspects in federal court — in other words, he pushed all the right buttons. “Bush kept us safe,” he said to thunderous applause. The Politico newspaper noted how Romney, who lost the GOP primary to John McCain in 2008, had been embraced as CPAC’s “favorite son” this year. (Though, judging from the buzz Sarah Palin still managed to create– even though she pointedly turned down an invitation to speak at the confab — Romney is probably lucky he didn’t have her as direct competition.)

Romney’s big splash made it more difficult for the others. Since the substance of the speeches were very much the same, it quickly became about style.

On Friday morning, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has been mentioned for years as a possible GOP presidential contender, tried his hand. Reviews weren’t exactly hot. “Romney (was) better at the big speech. Pawlenty (was) better at working the small room. The latter may be better in early primary states,” the National Journal’s Hotline suggested.

Though they may not be running for president, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, sure sounded like it on Friday. At the very least, they are jockeying for the role of GOP leader at a time when conservatives are seeking champions in congress. Bachmann sounded close to tears as she recalled patriots from American history who died for their cause. Pence brought audience members to their feet — one young conservative said she wanted to cry — with his call for a new conservative majority in Washington.

And while he might not be running for president, Pence struck the right note with the rightwing blogosphere — his base.

“This may be my most favorite speech yet,” said the blog The Right Scoop. “Mike Pence is my pick in 2012 should he run. He has been on of the most consistent conservatives and he gets it.”

Invoking heroes from the Revolutionary War to World War II, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, told her audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that they are the incarnation of these patriots, charged with “choosing greatness, not decline.”

President Barack Obama, she said, has set into place policies “intending to fail,” in essence, “choosing decline.”

Looking back into history more than once, Bachmann recalled one Democrat, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who she described as “taking a manageable recession and turning it into a Great Depression.” Obama is setting the nation on the same course, she claimed, supporting policies like national healthcare and energy reforms, and growing the budget deficit by trillions.

Obama’s policies also fly in the face of those rights envisioned by the Founding Fathers — who have been invoked by nearly every speaker at CPAC so far — particularly liberty and freedom.

“These are rights that government can never take away from us,” she said.

“What does that say about Obama’s thought police and Obama’s speech police,” she asked, without explanation.

The Minnesota Republican, who is known for her controversial statements as much as she is for her popularity among the tea party movement, generally stayed with the patriot theme Friday, giving her audience the major task of saving the nation — like the founders built the nation.

“The founders .. did not choose decline. They chose us, they chose greatness for us. And they were wise.”

The speakers participating in “Jihad: America’s Third Rail,” an “unofficial” panel at today’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) wanted their standing-room only audience to know that there’s more to fear than jihad — it’s Islam itself that is the threat.

Sentiments like that are what has made this panel — which just ended here at the Marriott Wardman Hotel in D.C — one of the more controversial at the three-day conservative confab.

“Everyone knows Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority,” said Robert Spencer, sarcastically and to a great amount of applause and guffaws. Spencer, executive director of Jihad Watch and associate director of the Freedom Defense Initiative, which he recently founded with Atlas Shrugged blogger Pamela Geller, told his audience everyone believes that “like they believe in Santa Claus though no one has ever seen it.”

He declared that “conservative media leaders even parrot this line” that Islam is a peaceful religion at its core.

So defined the event, which repeated the group’s message, that political correctness was preventing the American people — elected officials and the government included — from acknowledging — in Geller’s words — that Islamists “have infiltrated at every level of society and all levels of government.”

Spencer called recent complaints that full body scanners at airports violate the privacy and modesty of Muslim women according to Islamic law and attempts to accommodate them a “perversity,” since Muslims “themselves made (scanners) necessary.”

Wafa Sultan, author of A God Who Hates, argued that Islam is a tryannical religion and was roundly applauded when she was introduced as a “former Muslim.”

Islam is “the very same teaching that drove 19 terrorists to fly planes into the World Trade Center,” she said.

Steve Coughlin, who says he was fired from his job as a Pentagon analyst for his un-PC examination of the Koran as a justification for jihad, told the audience that there is no question in his mind that political correctness has undermined the government’s strategy in the War on Terror, including its inability to have foreseen the threat from Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychologist is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in November.

Coughlin said the threat of jihad is closer than we think, “you think they (jihadists) are fighting a war there? I think they are fighting a war right here.”

Others speakers included Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who is being investigated for hate speech in Austria for her critical seminars on Islam; Simon Weng, a former slave in Sudan; Anders Gravers, a Dane who wrote Stop the Islamization of Europe; and Lt. Col Allen West (Ret.), a candidate for congress in Florida.

The event was on CPAC’s schedule, but CPAC organizers said it was “unofficial” and sponsored by outside groups. Attendees were asked for picture identification because they did not want “certain people coming in,” said one guard. Geller had drawn controversy last year when she attempted to set up a similar forum, officially, featuring Dutch anti-Islamic activist Geert Wilders.

Former Congressman J.D Hayworth told Foxnews.com that he feels quite at home at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and was not hesitant to add that his primary opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, doesn’t have much in common with the grassroots activists here.

“He campaigns like a conservative — but legislates like a liberal,”  charged Hayworth, who hopes to oust the Arizona “maverick” from his three-term seat.

McCain was never the first choice of the CPAC crowd in years past, particularly in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. It was at CPAC that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he was dropping out of that race and effectively handing the conservative torch — and its support — over to McCain. McCain went on to lose the presidency to Obama in 2009 — the repercussions of which were flowing over at today’s event, where conservatives vowed to take Washington back.

“I get back to CPAC every chance I get,” declared Hayworth, who, dressed for the gym, just arrived on the red-eye from Arizona. He lost his own congressional seat in a challenge by Democrat Harry Mitchell in 2006, the beginning of the end of Republican control in Congress.

Hayworth, as if to justify his trip to DC during what is becoming a heated primary battle back home, said there are “plenty of conservative Arizona votes here,” plus, he added, his primary has “national implications for the conservative movement.”

Plus, “it’s the RIGHT thing to do.”

John McCain is not scheduled to attend the three-day CPAC event this year.

Washington’s newest senator, Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, says his truck is “right outside,” referring to his now famous pickup from his still-warm campaign trail. Not surprisingly, CPAC attendees went crazy this afternoon for this latest surprise at the annual conservative confab. “I can’t believe how much we accomplished,” he said.

Conservatives need to stop whining. That’s what producers and entertainment veterans Larry O’Connor and Kevin McKeever spent the morning telling attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference ( CPAC ). Want to get more conservative programming? Films? Theater? Want to work in the entertainment industry? Then “be an American, don’t give up — it’ll happen, if you’re good,” said McKeever. Just don’t whine that conservatives never get a break.

The two conservatives, who say they are a part of a “secret society” of like-minded folks behind and in front of the camera and on stage, don’t deny that some “ninety percent” of the industry is liberal. The very fact that they have to be part of a “secret society” that centers on networking and advancing the careers of conservatives in entertainment says they have a long way to go, but there are much more of them now than ever before.

“Up to 2 years ago, life for a conservative in Hollywood really sucked,” said O’Connor, who writes for Breitbart’s Big Hollywood and counts himself part of a growing group of conservatives making things happen for up-and-comers in L.A.

He said writers, especially, need to be “good” and not strive to be the next conservative splash. The only way they will be successful is to write stuff that is funny, touching and marketable, and to allow the conservative sensibilities to flow naturally. In other words, though it might seem unfair, no one is going to sell anything in Hollywood or New York if its marketed with in-your-face “conservative or libertarian themes.” Not only is that “boring,” said O’Connor, but a death knell in such a liberal towns.

“You are an artist first,” said McKeever, who runs Bank of Kev Productions.

Still, Hollywood is an industry “built on relationships” and conservatives are encouraged to make the journey, if only to enhance and defend the growing network and help change the face of the American entertainment culture, he added.

O’Connor concurred. “We need you there (in L.A), not here (in Washington).”

Dick Cheney just arrived to a thunderous standing ovation in Washington at the Conservative Political Action Conference  — a surprise appearance announced by his daughter Liz Cheney, who was speaking in the ballroom moments before.

“A welcome like that almost makes me want to run for office,” he said to another round of applause.

“But I’m not going to do it.”

He spoke briefly and left the stage, not before predicting that President Barack Obama would be a “one-term president.”

Old timers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are beaming today at what they say is a renaissance of sorts for the 36-year-old annual Washington event. Gathering this year for the next three days at the Marriott Wardman Hotel in northwest Washington, tens of thousands are expected, say CPAC officials, a 20 percent increase from last year’s confab.

“Some people are calling it the first CPAC of the Tea Party movement,” said Ian Walters, spokesman for the event. “Everyone here is totally energized, totally motivated, totally willing to hit the ground running.”

In recent times, the atmospherics were a bit more subdued, still stinging from big Republican losses in 2006 and the 2008 Presidential election. Longtime CPAC attendees say this year is different. There are more first-time students, more non-students, and a sense that 2010 will be their year.

“(CPAC) is definitely benefiting from the same passions” exhibited during the recent National Tea Party Convention, said Joel Mowbray, a frequent attendee and speaker representing the Leadership Institute.

As evidence, the cavernous ballroom was packed this morning for an opening keynote speech by former Florida State Rep. Marco Rubio, who is running against Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican Primary for U.S Senate. His candidacy has taken on the mantle of the movement and has flourished as a result, observers say.

The media has certainly noticed. Lines for media/blogger check-in were at least 30 deep at times in the morning, the longest in this writer’s memory. “It’s obvious there is an intense interest in what is going on here” said Walters. “The world is interested in what is going on at CPAC.”