Liberty Maven

Saturday was the final day of CPAC 2010 and it was a great one. I started the day by attending Ann Coulter’s speech in the main ballroom. She was funny and quick-witted as expected. Also, as expected, she continued playing the part of the neo-conservative poster girl. At one point she admitted, “If Ron Paul is behind it, and it has nothing to do with foreign policy, I agree.” Regardless of your opinion on Coulter it’s a good sign that Ron Paul is popular enough to warrant such discussion.

I then made my way to the friendly environs of the Young Americans for Liberty Youth Summit. This young group of American patriots left me impressed. There is no doubt that these students of today will be the liberty leaders of tomorrow.

Following the summit was a panel of speakers discussing why good conservatives are anti-war. The room was packed with two rows of people standing in the back. Philip Girardi, Karen Kwiatkowski, Bruce Fein, and Jacob Hornberger took turns speaking. All were excellent, but for me, Jacob Hornberger, was the best at clearly articulating all of the major arguments for a non-interventionist foreign policy. He did it with passion. It rivaled Judge Napolitano’s speech from the Liberty Forum the other night.

As I was sitting there amongst my libertarian-conservative brethren I couldn’t help but dream that some day maybe a panel like this will be in the main ballroom and the interventionists would be the smaller wing of the party relegated to a tertiary room during the conference. In fact, taking my dream further, I think it would be appropriate to one day see a lone neo-conservative “activist” handing out paper flyers to people preaching an interventionist foreign policy, only to see every single flyer crumpled up in the trash later in the day.

Upon leaving the talk I noticed a long throng of people waiting to get into the main ballroom. I chose not to wait in the line and instead sat down in a nice comfortable chair inside one of the overflow rooms to await the straw poll results and to watch Glenn Beck’s closing keynote.

After enduring a few speakers it was time to announce the straw poll results. As the data was revealed bit by bit my excitement grew because the data being presented suggested a potential Paul victory. The kicker was Jim DeMint getting the most votes for the best “image” poll. DeMint is a huge backer of Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve audit and I knew that there was no one else on the list that a Ron Paul person could support.

When they revealed the poll results, sure enough, Ron Paul won with 31% of the vote. This drew loud boos from the main ballroom, but in my overflow room there were mostly clapping and cheers. If you boo Ron Paul then you boo your Constitution.

CPAC offers a Saturday only pass, which is likely the reason, there were so many boos in the ballroom. The Saturday pass people filled up the main room early in the afternoon, then around 4pm I witnessed a volunteer tell people that it was unlikely that they would get in to the main room. This left many Ron Paul supporters filtering into the overflow rooms.

The straw poll results are not a true measure of a candidates likelihood of winning. The results demonstrate that Ron Paul has one of the most active and dedicated group of supporters in the Republican Party. Paul was the leading straw poll winner during his presidential campaign of 2008. This win could mark the 1st win for his 2012 campaign, if he chooses to run again.

Then it was time for Glenn Beck. There are many Ron Paul supporters who despise Beck. I’m not one of them. I think Beck is really good at what he does and he proved it last night. He hammered on Republicans and Democrats. He utilized some Ron Paul (and Tom Woods) talking points.

First, he educated people on the recession of 1920-1921 and compared it to the Great Depression showing that cutting spending and lower taxes help the economy. Then, in the only portion of his speech that touched on foreign policy, he professed we shouldn’t go overseas looking to spread democracy. Instead, Beck said we should set an example for other countries to emulate. I suppose I could have done without the now ubiquitous “morning in America” Reagan homage and hearing him say “I love Dick Cheney” just before being critical of good ole’ sure-shot Dick.

You can watch the entire Beck speech here at CSPAN.

You can view the full CPAC 2010 Straw Poll results here [PDF].

I leave CPAC with hope for the future of America. As long as organizations like the Campaign for Liberty and the Young Americans for Liberty exist, there will always be hope for freedom.