It doesn’t necessarily mean that Ron Paul will be the GOP nominee in 2012. Paul hasn’t even announced if he’s running yet. The victory’s meaning really has little to do with 2012 and much to do with the future direction of the Republican Party.

The organizers of CPAC sheepishly denounced their own straw poll prior to announcing Ron Paul as the winner. Appropriately enough, while they denounced the presidential preference question they gushed when talking about the results to the other questions in the poll. Yet the same people that voted for Ron Paul answered those other questions as well. Why did they not suggest that those results were skewed?

Yes, Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty made it easier for supporters to attend CPAC by offering discounted tickets and lodging packages. They did not “bus them in” as some suggested. The reason so many showed up at CPAC for Ron Paul is because they are true political activists. They are active, vocal, and dedicated to spreading the liberty message to those who are and aren’t willing to listen.  This is something the GOP has been missing for a long time.

It is mainly foreign policy differences that keep the old guard GOP from embracing these young Ron Paul activists. Perhaps if the rest of the Republican Party could ever understand the fundamental differences between…

1. preemptive war and national defense
2. isolationist and non-interventionist
3. anti-semitism and ending all foreign aid
4. blaming America and blaming American policy

…they could welcome Ron Paul and his supporters. The CPAC straw poll result suggests an effort should be made to understand and perhaps embrace these differences. After all, isn’t the ultimate Republican goal to defeat Obama in 2012? Seeing eye to eye with Ron Paul and his numerous activist supporters could go a long way toward that goal.

I have little hope this will happen, but in the long run it may not matter. Many of those young Ron Paul supporters are growing up, feeding on liberty, and will become office-seekers in the future.

The result of the CPAC straw poll does have meaning. It suggests the future is burning bright with the fire of liberty.

During Trump’s speech there were some vocal activists shouting out Ron Paul’s name, among other things. At one point when Trump mentioned there were no good GOP candidates the shouts of Ron Paul became too much for him. The video below shows what happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_-0hMID67A

Yes, the out-of-touch celebrity with lots of money reacts by telling the crowd that Ron Paul has zero chance of winning. I immediately said something that was later echoed by Rand Paul, “Trump has an even less of a chance of winning than Ron Paul”. That was only the beginning.

Next, Rand Paul delivered his excellent speech highlighted by the following quote, “If you refuse to acknowledge that there’s any waste in the military budget, you are a big government conservative.” Watch Rand Paul’s entire speech here.

Immediately following Rand Paul’s speech, it was time for the presentation of the Defender of the Constitution award to none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Giving Rummy this award is the equivalent of giving Ron Paul the Warmonger of the Year award. It truly boggles the mind. This was, naturally, not lost on the Ron Paul faithful still in the ballroom. Some loud boos were heard. Some shouts of “war monger” were heard. And a great number of people just stood up and walked silently out of the room in protest.

My initial take on this is that it’s OK to boo and shout from the point of introduction up to the point where the speech begins. Then the respectful thing to do would be to be silent or walk out silently. The minute you interfere with their speech you are being a thief of free speech and that’s not very libertarian is it?

However, this is Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld we are talking about. Do they deserve respect? Perhaps if they respected human liberty and actually defended the Constitution those boos today would have been cheers instead.

After dinner we attended the Liberty Forum with Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Jack Hunter, and Thomas Woods. It was a laid-back affair and enjoyable but was without the fiery speeches that marked last year’s Liberty Forum at CPAC when Judge Andrew Napolitano brought the house down with his great speech. I for one missed the Judge tonight.

Day 1 of CPAC was quite eventful. I’m sure tomorrow will bring more interesting moments. Ron Paul speaks in the main ballroom tomorrow afternoon and the cerebral strategists and the balls-to-the-wall activists will be there to applaud, cheer, or jeer. No matter what the media writes or other conservatives say, the goal will always be to promote liberty in the best way they as individuals see fit. And no matter the results, at least they are out here doing something for the cause of freedom.

Please take some time to watch video of the debate embedded below. It truly demonstrates the dividing line between non-intervention and intervention. Both Fein and Kuhner provide excellent arguments, however I feel that Fein missed an opportunity to point out a serious flaw in Kuhner’s interventionist logic.

First, Kuhner does not dispute and therefore admits Fein’s assertion that the war on terror is a perpetual war. Later, Kuhner cites putting the Japanese in interment camps during WWII was a necessary and temporary evil. He argues that during times of war we must be willing to sacrifice some of our liberties so that we can be more free down the road once the fighting is over.

Fein could have jumped on this point by asking Kuhner the following question:

If we are in a perpetual war aren’t the civil liberties sacrifices we are making also permanent?

Equating the war on terror with WWII is like saying Coca-cola and orange soda taste the same. I bet Kuhner and his interventionist peers would be unhappy if they ordered a Coke and were brought orange soda instead.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=60EDBA3CAFE9867F

But it is the difference between conservatives and those on the Left that we tend not to make horse’s rear ends of ourselves at rallies and protests. I don’t think I’ve ever read of a single conservative riot, no angry mobs of grown-ups running down the street overturning cars, setting fire to buildings, breaking windows, pillaging, and looting. But every time I see rallies on the Left, there they are obstructing traffic, breaking things, making their presence known through obscene gestures and foul language. None of that was in evidence at this day’s Tea Party protest.

We voiced our opinions on Mr. Obama, federal spending, politicians who won’t listen to us, liberty, freedom, the Constitution, you name it, we wrote it on out signs and discussed it with one another as the time passed. A finer group of people I could never find myself around. Thoughtful, opinionated, and, most importantly, intelligent.

We came, we made our point, and if the powers that be still won’t take notice of what we have to say, they’ll hear from us again this November.

The talk is in seven parts in the playlist below.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=26B927B136BECA17

As I sat in the audience following Judge Andrew Napolitano’s speech during the Liberty Forum at CPAC 2010 I couldn’t help but wish he was delivering it in the main ballroom on the final afternoon leading in to Glenn Beck’s keynote. Then again, he may have been booed, but that wouldn’t have stopped him.

While Glenn Beck’s speech was very good and included arguments the GOP needed to hear, the Judge’s speech was an uncompromising and no-holds-barred session of truth-telling.

Watch Judge Napolitano’s speech below. If you’d like to watch the entire Liberty Forum the complete playlist is available here and the question and answer session is here.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=640F410A38F85107

Editor’s Note: Sometimes it’s good to listen to the other side with an open mind because perhaps they know better. This article about Ron Paul was sent to us by our neo-conservative friend, Richard Deekbag, founder of the following website (we apologize for the length of the URL):

http://ohmygodronpaulwilleatallofourbabiesandourbabiesbabiesandtheirbabiesbabiesuntiltherearenobabiesleft.com/

I mean just look at the guy. Ron Paul is all skinny, old, and wrinkly. His speeches are rambling diatribes supporting the long debunked conspiracy theory known as the U.S. Constitution. Everyone knows the Constitution expired more than 100 years ago and has no place in our Conservative-Progressive-Democratic-Socialist-Liberal-Republican (ConProDemSocLibRep) society.

After all it was Ru Paul’s isolationist ideas that lead America into its darkest period following the Revolutionary War after his idiotic idols, the Founding Fathers, defeated the British occupiers. Well, they were more like friendly visitors than occupiers. Visitors that honored the American colonies by taxing them heavily and treating them like peasants.

Everyone knows by now that Ron Paul’s efforts to abolish the massively successful Federal Reserve bank is kookier than cookies. The Fed has been our savior over and over and over and over and over again over the years.  If it weren’t for the Fed the so-called “Great Depression” would have been much shorter. That’s a gigantic problem because we needed it to last much longer just to prove that government regulation is the lifeblood of the economy!

Ron Paul’s foreign policy ideas are moonbat crazy. His ideas violate the golden rule. You know, the whole “do unto others as you would have them do unto you thing”? We would be far less safe if we hadn’t flexed our military muscle in the Middle East. They only respect force and they’ve been cowering in fear of us for the last 10 years. Hopefully we’ll be able to show them who’s boss for at least 100 more years.

Ben Bernanke was overheard saying: “You can’t put a price tag on keeping America safe. Do you know where I can get discounted printer ink? After all we need to save money where we can in these trying times!”, according to a source who didn’t want to be named as a source and who spoke to me through telepathy.

It was so stupid that Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll. It was obviously rigged by his Campaign For Liberty organization and they were all young people anyway. Everyone knows the future of the GOP will come from the old people! At least the results of the poll were booed loudly which just proves that I’m right.

Not to mention Paul is an anti-semite because he wants to cut off foreign aid to all countries and the last time we checked, Israel was a country. It couldn’t possibly defend itself with a stockpile of only 400 or so nuclear bombs. They need our help!

He’s also an obvious racist because he has a long history of hate speech following the publication of some newsletters written by someone else 25 years ago. His racism is so rampant that one could pull just about any speech of his in his decades in Congress and find the bigotry. In fact here’s one called “Government and Racism“.

It’s so easy to imagine a Klan hood over his head whenever he’s on TV espousing the virtues of some of his lilly-white heroes like Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

Get this through your think skulls people, Ron Paul has no chance at being the next President of the United States. He shouldn’t run because all he will do is screw up the chances for the anointed Republican nominee, who won’t be a crazy, kooky, old, skinny, wrinkly, anti-semitic, racist, isolationist with a fetish for the supreme law of the land.

Don’t you understand, we hate Barack Obama more than we love the Constitution!

The last thing America needs is a candidate that adheres so rigidly to his principles and is logically consistent in both domestic and foreign policy.

And don’t get me started on his supporters.

These are the facts, I know because I was there.

1. Ron Paul’s keynote speech on Friday was the first speech in the main room to pack the house and require overflow seating in other rooms. He was welcomed with cheers as can be witnessed by watching the video of his speech. His supporters (31% apparently) had a chance to get into the main room to hear his speech.
2. Saturday, the Campaign For Liberty held a panel discussion that began at 2pm and didn’t end until nearly 4pm. By this time the line waiting to get into the main room was 8-10 deep and down the long hotel hallway. When I left the Campaign for Liberty panel I overheard a volunteer telling people in line that they would likely not get into the main room and should instead find an overflow room to watch the event.
3. CPAC sells Saturday-only tickets. A co-worker and his wife took advantage of this so they could see Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, and Glenn Beck. Many people, apparently, took advantage of this which left those that attended the conference all 3 days in overflow rooms.
4. Those that came on Saturday were not able to vote in the straw poll. The polling ended on Friday at 1pm.

So, those that were in the main ballroom during the straw poll announcement were mostly unfriendly to Ron Paul. I didn’t even know there were boos when they announced the results because in the overflow room I was in there were mostly cheers and clapping drowning out the boos from the main room.

It makes for a good story for the media, pointing out the boos, but if the room was full of Ron Paul supporters and Mitt Romney (or someone else) had won there would have been a large number of boos at the results.

Please note, I’m not suggesting that Ron Paul supporters were blocked from the main room on purpose. It’s just the way it ended up due to the logistics of so many people coming to CPAC on Saturday to listen to Glenn Beck, Coulter, and Gingrich. Most of these people were neo-conservatives antithetical to Ron Paul’s foreign policy of non-intervention who did not and could not vote in the straw poll.

It’s safe to say that if the panel at 2pm by the Campaign For Liberty called “Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terrorism” were held in the main room, the cheers would have drowned out the boos when the poll results were announced. Of course, Judging from the boos in the main room, there may have been a mutiny if the anti-war panel were held there.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

So if you believe Ron Paul is crazy on foreign policy I ask you to watch the following videos and learn why it’s quite possible Ron Paul is actually the sane and constitutional one on foreign policy.

If you don’t have 90 minutes to spare to watch both videos in their entirety then go to 16:55 of the 2nd video and just watch Jacob Hornberger’s speech. If you do have 90 minutes then please watch both parts in their entirety. This video is from last Saturday afternoon at CPAC 2010 from a panel discussion called, “Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terrorism”.

The panel is made up of:

• Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer.
• Karen Kwiatkowski, retired U.S Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency.
• Bruce Fein, associate deputy attorney general from 1981 to 1982 under President Ronald Reagan.
• Jacob Hornberger, Founder and President of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

CPAC 2010: “Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terrorism, Part 1″ from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

CPAC 2010: “Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terrorism, Part 2″ from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

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.

We made our way to a panel discussion called “Saving Freedom: Defending the Constitution”. The panelists included Steve Bierfeldt of the Campaign For Liberty. Bierfeldt was the man who was detained by the TSA for carrying a “suspicious” amount of cash. He fought the TSA and they modified their policy. The discussion from all the panelists were interesting and educational.

Bob Levy of CATO used his time to make the distinction between a living breathing document, textualism, original intent, and strict constructionism as they apply to the Constitution. Bierfeldt gave an excellent speech that focused on historical abuses of the Constitution. This gave him an opportunity to bash Lincoln and plug Tom DiLorenzo’s work on the topic. He ended by discussing the abuses of power and the legal cover the Patriot Act provides.

The Q & A portion ended with a man holding up a Federal Reserve Note and asking if paper money is constitutional. All the panelists answered in the negative though one pointed out that there is ample Supreme Court precedent to block any kind of effort to repeal the federal legal tender laws.

After the session ended we went to the main room and listened to Michelle Bachman finish her speech. She was pretty good, mentioning the threats to our economic liberty, but she didn’t mention auditing the Federal Reserve, at least not while I was there. We then left and had lunch.

Later in the day walked into the main room to find some seats for Ron Paul’s keynote speech. There were no seats available except for a bunch of reserved seats on the far side of the room. We were able to talk to a coordinator and get him to open the reserved section for us and many others milling about looking for empty seats.

While this was going on the Young Americans for Freedom students were delivering their 2 minute speeches on freedom. Some fireworks ensued. For a bit of background, Alexander McCobin of the Students for Liberty gave the following two minute speech. He gets booed as he praises CPAC for allowing GOProud to sponsor the conference. You can’t tell from the video, but the loudest boos (and nearly the only ones) came from one man sitting on the panel right next to McCobin as he was speaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVBQOoXXYLw

Later the man who booed McCobin the loudest, Ryan Sorba, author of “The Born Gay Hoax” took the podium for his anti-gay rant and for some unexplained reason chooses to call out Jeff Frazee, the head of the Young Americans for Liberty, an organization spawned from Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Frazee said he was just sitting there and suddenly Sorba chose to call him out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBlFflPOIg

I suppose Sorba assumed that members of Young Americans for Liberty in the audience were the ones booing and heckling him so he chose to attack Frazee. This kind of reminds me of our former president attacking Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11. How fitting.

Once all of this died down, it was time for Ron Paul. He’s not a great speaker, but his message did not disappoint. Yesterday I wrote how I thought the Campaign for Liberty was almost like a subversive organization at CPAC, but today Ron Paul proved that they belong and they are here to stay.

After Ron Paul brought the house down we had dinner. Mike had to rush home to attend to a personal matter. I stayed and went to Gary Johnson’s event. Mike Church and Tim Carney spoke first, then Johnson. Johnson is a subdued speaker, but he hits on all the important points. He made it known that he will not pander to the people by saying that we must cut medicare and legalize marijuana. It was a decent talk, but I think Johnson needs some work on his delivery and pace.

Following the talk I introduced myself to Matt Hawes of the Campaign for Liberty. We regularly exchange emails and it was nice to meet him face to face for the first time.

Tomorrow is the final day of CPAC 2010. I’ll be staying until the end so I’ll write another update tomorrow evening.

We arrived at the hotel around 11am, checked in and headed to the C4L booth to pick up our “credentials”. We then wandered around aimlessly for a bit looking for the “XPAC Lounge” to get good seats for the live Freedom Watch show set for 12:30pm.

Here are a few pics of the Judge preparing for the show. Click on them to see the larger versions.

Notice the backs of the Judge’s first guests, Tom DiLorenzo, Jacob Hornberger, and Tom Woods. The show began…

And at the end of the great show I met the producer George Szucs and the Judge. He thanked us for our work on FreedomWatchonFox.com and agreed to a picture.

We took a break for lunch and dinner then went to the Liberty Forum where Ron Paul and Judge Napolitano gave inspiring speeches. The Judge’s speech was amazing. They then took questions with Tom Woods moderating, going over the allotted time, of course. Interestingly, there were many questions on foreign policy from some that did not necessarily agree with Paul’s non-interventionism. He handled the questions well, but I’m not sure any minds were changed.

Following the forum, we headed down to the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) after party. While there we met Michael Maresco, aka the Ron Paul Rider, the man who rode a bike across America twice, spreading the liberty message. I use one of his pictures from his ride as my computer background. He thanked us for helping him spread the message about his ride from the beginning. What a nice guy. He was the one that did all the work and he was thanking us.

The Campaign for Liberty is everywhere here at CPAC. While we are definitely making a mark I still get the feeling we are the radical subversives of the conference. I’m really excited for the panel on Saturday at 2pm, “You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terror”. The only problem is that it is scheduled for the same time as the speech by Newt Gingrich. Is it too much to hope that they mix up the rooms so the Gingrich-loving interventionists get a dose of the Old Right philosophy of non-intervention?

The first day/night of CPAC is now complete. Look for the 2nd day update sometime tomorrow night or early Saturday morning.

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