Paul Harvey is gone. Harvey was a giant in the industry of radio broadcasting but he was a singularly different sort of news reporter. In a day when the goal of every other broadcaster seems to be to dive straight to the lowest common denominator, to celebrate to low born and venal, Harvey’s was always to uplift the listener and to celebrate the greatness of America.

With his easily parodied style, his was a distinctive voice. He was from a time when the sound was important, the delivery the thing. And deliver he did. His well used pause and distinctive cadence was so entirely compelling that one simply could not turn away.

But it wasn’t only the style and sound that interested Harvey. It was the content.

Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” segments always, always told the story of some man or woman that struggled hard through life until they found that one thing that brought them fame, fortune or adulation. Harvey meant these stories to give us all hope. His guiding principle was that “tomorrow is always better than today.”

Paul Harvey, gone at 90. He will be missed and we will wait a long, long time to see his like again… if we ever do.

It is not that, as Andrew Bolt notes, that the process has been so flawed to date that it’s fair to use the phrase “spivs and chiselers” without exaggerating. Very Commonwealth-y, but not exaggerating.

It is not that, as Gawker’s Owen Thomas notes, that it’s now come out that new chief vetter Gregory Craig’s wife herself apparently hasn’t been paying her business taxes, to the point where there’s now allegedly an investigation going on about that.

(Both links H/T Glenn Reynolds)

It is not even that the first reaction that everybody had - including you! Admit it - to hearing that Gov. Sebelius got the nod for HHS Secretary was “Hm. I wonder whether she’s paid her taxes.”

Nope. The funny part is that this process isn’t going to stop for months.

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Rush is just about to take the stage at CPAC. Lisa De Pasquale, who has put on a kickass CPAC this year, is on stage being recognized and introducing Rush Limbaugh.

THIS PLACE GOES WILD.

And El-Rushbo comes on stage. The crowd won’t settle down.

Now they are chanting. And Rush loves it.

Says Fox is carrying live, which means it is his first ever address to the nation.

“My security detail is headed by Joseph Stalin. I’m safe from any liberal attack because they’d be afraid of offending Stalin.”

Tells a good joke at Larry King’s expense. Crowd is eating this up.

[BTW: this is the first pretty much everyone has stayed for the end of CPAC]

Rush says, “Let me tell you who we conservatives are. We love people. When we look out over the United States of America . . . we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups, we don’t see victims, we don’t see people we want to exploit. We see potential.”

“We love the constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

Rush gives Dave Keane and Lisa De Pasquale the “terrorist fist bump.”

“We look over the country and see so much waste of potential by fifty years of a welfare state. . . . we love the people of this country and we want it to be the greatest country it can. But we understand as people created, we are all individuals and we are all different. There are no two people created created with equal outcomes — that’s up to them.”

“We don’t hate anybody. The racism in this country, let me deal with this head on . . . the racism of this country was on full display in the Democrat primary of last year.”

“It was not us asking whether Obama was authentic. We were asking if he was wrong. We concluded “yes.” We didn’t ask if he was authentically black.”

“We want everybody to succeed.”

“Everyone must pursue their desire with ambition and excellence.”

“Take a look at all the constituent groups depending on the Democrat party to improve their lives and you tell me if you find any whose lives have been improved. You can’t.”

“I want you and everyone around the nation to succeed. … I want any person or force of an overarching big government who would impede you to fail.”

Crowd Goes Nuts.

“Also for those of you in the drive by media, I have not needed a teleprompter for anything I’ve said. Nor do any of us need one because our beliefs are not the results of any contrivances or a deranged psychology. We don’t have to make notes about what we believe.”

“Don’t make the mistake that we are in the minority. The American people may not all vote the way we would wish them to, but more and more Americans live their lives as conservatives in one degree or another. And they are waiting for leadership. We need conservative leadership.”

“President Obama is one of the most gifted politicians, one of the most gifted men, that I’ve ever witnessed. He has extraordinary talents and skills that hardly anyone can surpass. It just breaks my heart that he does not use these gifts . . . to inspire the American people to be the best they can be.

“President Obama has the ability to inspire excellence in people’s pursuits, yet he pursues a path that punishes achievers. He speaks negatively of the country. He portrays America as a soup kitchen in a dark corner of the country.”

“Why does the President want to destroy [our way of life].”

He wants to know why achievement is now the focus of blame.

8 million people live in New York City and 40,000 pay upwards of 60% of New York City’s budget. The mayor won’t raise taxes on them lest they leave.

. . .

“The people who have achieved great things, most of it is not inherited. Most of it is from just plain entrepreneurial hard work.”

“They don’t have the right to take money from the back pocket of producers and give it to ACORN which will just advance the agenda of the Democrat party.”

“He’s so busy fomenting class envy in a created crisis, [Obama] has forgotten it is not his money to spend.”

“Most of the people in this country in poverty have just been beaten down.”

“The Barack Obama administration is actively working to expand the welfare state because he wants to control it.”

Takes on Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. They “get to sit around and act as innocent spectators and get to investigate what’s going on when they had the biggest role in causing it.”

Knocks Obama’s State of the Union. Tells a Joe Biden joke.

“You people at home think I told an ethnic joke about Bobby Jindal. I didn’t. I told a joke about the bigotry of the Vice President.”

“We want the best country we can have. We want the most prosperous country. . . and we just cringe to see capitalism under assault and the people that make this country work be made the enemy.”

Says Obama leaves out the 1982 recession, which was much worse, because we got out of that recession with tax cuts.

CROWD GOES WILD.

“It’s not about revenue to them, it’s about control.”

“President Obama, your agenda is not new, it’s not change, it’s not hope. Spending future generations further into debt is not compassion. . . . It is not their task to tear [this country] apart and rebuild it in their image.”

“Where is the compromise on all this spending? Where is the compromise on all this punishment of the achievers? Where is the compromise between good and evil? Should Jesus have cut a different deal?”

“We’re not quitting. We’re not giving up.”

“Now there are certain realities. We don’t have the votes on Capitol Hill to stop it. But we can slow it down and do the best we can to inform the American people of what’s in the law.”

“They are going to overreach. At some point people are going to realize this stuff is not possible. You can’t have people living in homes they cannot afford. Well you can for awhile, but not forever.”

Mentions the tea parties. Crowd loves it.

“Here’s the big question: where is the evidence that the people offering all this stuff have ever succeeded in any similar plans before? There’s none.”

“Then how’s he getting it done? Dumbed down public education. Emotions. And the ongoing . . . you know he could wipe out the GOP by inspiring this country to be the best it can be . . . he wants people to be fearful because that clears the deck for him to come in with his agenda, which is abject failure.”

“They’re not trying to build up the people at the bottom. They’re trying to tear the people down at the top. You’re successful, they whack you.”

Takes on John Kerry. Great punch.

“Obama has tried to emulate the lifestyle he’s attacking.”

“They want you to be happy because they’re going to get revenge for you. Your life won’t get any better, but somebody else’s life will be destroyed. And that’s sick.”

“58 million people voted against Obama. This was no landslide. It would have been more if we had a conservative nominee.’

“We do have an organizational problem. We do have factions seeking power . . . to redefine conservatism. The Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined and neither does conservatism. . . it is not something you can bend and shape and reform . . . it is forever.”

“You never hear a liberal say the era of FDR is over.”

“Obama can’t appeal to the American people without appealing to Reagan voters and we’ve got people on our side who want to throw them out. We’ve got to stamp this out or it will destroy us.”

“That we have to figure out how to get the Wal-Mart voters, we’ve got most of the Wal-Mart voters already. . . . there’s ego here too. These people want to lead. There will be difference factions lining up to define what conservatism is. Be wary of those whose definition is making liberals like us. They’ll never like us as long as we’re conservative . . . in the political arena they are our enemy.”

“There’s nothing stale about freedom. There’s nothing stale about liberty. Nothing stale whatsoever.”

“Freedom is the natural yearning of the human people . . . and the United States is the place where freedom flourishes.”

Takes on the conservatives who Obama had dinner with. “Some of these are the ones who say the era of Reagan is over.”

Rush tells the story and says that those conservatives Obama had dinner with got less coverage than him and he didn’t even know about the dinner because the media all assumed he’d been there.

“You owe [your children] the truth. You owe them the truth about values, morality, about politics. Next thing, we’ve got to stop treating voters as children. Somebody says they want something that’s bad for them, do you give it to them? You still have to have the ability to tell people right from wrong.”

“We’ve got to stand for what we believe and treat people as adults and understand they can learn. It’s called optimism.”

“Joe Biden again . . . Biden was on the CBS Early Show and he was asked . . . the anchorette, the anchor did a man on the street question and a man asked what was in the stimulus package for small business. Biden was clearly stumped because there isn’t anything in there. Biden said if there was a bridge between you and your customers, we’re going to build that bridge.”

Biden asked for the website number. “I realize those of you at home have never heard liberal democrats made fun of in this way. Get used to it.” Another fist bump.

“The President’s stimulus and TARP rely on one thing — the complacency of the American people. It relies on them being able to convince the American people that only government can fix it. . . . They don’t understand that Americans are a competitive people. We strive to win. Liberals have made efforts to shut aspects of that nature down. Wherever you live, when you were a child, in youth sports, are told not to keep score because the losers, it’s just not fair. . . . so let’s not keep score. Well here’s the dirty little secret — the kids are keeping score. You know they are. The kids don’t want to lose.”

“The complacency of the American people is something they are going to rely on along with authoritarian control. . . . We’re not going to sit idly by while the American dream is restructured.”

“We want the best - happiness - for everyone.”

“Now about my comment that I want Obama to fail . . . I love the Pittsburgh Steelers - - 15 seconds left in the game, I wanted Kurt Warner to fail.”

“This notion that I want the President to fail, this shows you a side of the problem we’ve got, this notion is just commonsense. Why in the world would we want rampant government growth? What possibly is in this that any of us want to succeed. Did the Democrats want the war in Iraq to fail? They not only wanted it to fail - they proclaimed it a failure.”

“They called General Petraeus a liar before he even testified.”

“We’re in the process of winning the war and it’s the last thing they wanted. They hoped George Bush would fail. What’s so strange about saying Barack Obama should fail if he’s going to structure this country so capitalize and individual liberty fail? Why would I want that to succeed?”

Crowd Goes Wild.

“I want the country to survive as you and I know it.”

“I don’t give other people the power to offend me and you shouldn’t either.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Democrat party has not just actively sought the failure of Republican Presidents and policies and now wars, the Democrat party . . . destroys lifes, reputations, and character.”

“Am I supposed to want this President to succeed?”

“We are in for a real battle. We’re talking about the United States of America . . . remaining the country we were all born into and reared into it. And it’s under assault . . . but it’s never been under assault like this before, from within.”

“so as you leave here, optimism, confidence, not guilt — it’s not worth it. . . realize there’s a way to persuade.”

“Stop thinking that we’re in the minority. Stop thinking that its being in the minority that liberates you. It is your freedom, your liberty, and your confidence that liberates you.”

Ends thanking the audience. Off hand libertarian reference to leaving people alone in their bedroom.

CPAC presents Rush the Defender of the Constitution award, which is a framed document written by Benjamin Franklin.

We have the results of the CPAC straw poll of preferences for the 2012 presidential race:

Mitt Romney — 20 percent
Bobby Jindal — 14 percent
Sarah Palin — 13 percent
Ron Paul — 13 percent
Newt Gingrich — 10 percent
Mike Huckabee — 7 percent
Mark Sanford — 4 percent
Rudy Giuliani — 3 percent
Tim Pawlenty — 2 percent
Charlie Crist — 1 percent

The remainder of the vote was undecided.

Gee. Who’d have thought that Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal could be so popular with the conservative base, given the way the Left constantly attacks them?

Here’s the thing: I’ve met Michael Barone. I know that he’s smart. Frighteningly so, in fact. And I know that he pays attention to details, in ways that usually startle the living life out of people who aren’t used to it. In other words, this is an aware guy that we’re talking about.

So why the surprise, here?

All of which brings to mind the report of a conservative blogger who watched George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural speech with a group of liberals. Every time Bush called for spreading freedom and democracy around the world, the crowd guffawed and groaned and jeered. For them, evidently, Bush was a figure of fun, and his calls for democracy and human rights laughable. The same people who decried his supposed authoritarian rule at home had nothing but contempt for his call for freedom and democracy abroad.

Beneath this stated contempt is, I think, something in the nature of secret guilt. Or rather, anger at the notion that Bush had stolen the issues of human rights and democracy from the liberals.

The desire to oppose the Iraq war root and branch, to denounce every aspect of it, imposed a duty to dismiss as laughable Bush’s stated objective — set out eloquently before the decision to take military action as well as after it — of advancing democracy in the Middle East. A duty to side with those, like the National Intelligence Council nominee, who have long held that governance in the style of Saudi Arabia or Syria is the best that can be hoped for in that region, and the best for all concerned. A duty to dismiss with contempt, or simply to ignore, the rather remarkable strides of the Iraqis themselves made after enduring decades of brutal tyranny.

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Jim Bunning is in an increasingly nasty fight with the Senate Republican leadership over his 2010 re-election campaign. While NRSC Chair John Cornyn and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell would be happy if he steps aside, they will not publicly acknowledge it. For his part, Bunning has said that he will seek re-election next year. But many wonder if the incumbent can win. He has raised little money and he barely prevailed in 2004. The big knock against him in that race was his ‘erratic’ behavior - and his recent antics give opponents plenty more ammunition for the charge.

And now - as if things couldn’t get any weirder - Bunning has reportedly threatened to resign his seat and allow Kentucky’s Democrat Governor to appoint his replacement:

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My three year old calls Ann “Wonder Woman.” She’s taking the stage at CPAC — introduced by Tom DeLay (leftist heads begin exploding now).

I’ll live blog the speech. Stay tuned . . .

She enters the hall to “We Will Rock You.”

The crowd loves her. “I’ve bee watching the MSNBC coverage of CPAC. Is there any other network where you know every host was at the alternative prom?”

She calls the media the government “guard dog” except Olbermann and Matthews who are government lap dogs.

“The media compared Obama to Jesus. I lost a bet. They do know who Jesus is. But as the leader of twelve apostles, even Jesus had more executive experience than Obama.”

“Apparently the media likes carpenters. It’s plumbers they hate.”

“Obama’s first word sounded like ‘entitlement.’”

“That right there proves the whole Jesus thing wrong. Would Jesus have had a play date with Damien?”

“I guess that’s the end of Obama’s honeymoon with the press. He’s not Jesus. Now he’s just Lincoln.”

“And I forget. How many times did Lincoln vote present?”

“Obama voted present over 100 times. The only time he wasn’t present was when Rev. Wright gave one of those hate filled speeches.”

“The press called Lincoln a baboon. If only Al Sharpton had been around, Lincoln would have known he was a victim of racism.”

“The press is still talking about the fist bump Lincoln gave Mary Todd the night he won the nomination. It was a big night for Mary Todd. She was finally proud of her country.”

“Wait until the press finds out that Obama sleeps through the night without wetting himself.”

“The one thing the press knows about Lincoln is that he put rivals on his cabinet. I’m not sure buying Clinton’s cabinet at fire sale prices is the same thing.”

“Obama’s basic message . . . was bringing people together. I’ve heard that speech since I was about nine years old. Even Richard Nixon . . . gave a speech in 1968 saying he saw a little girl holding a sign that read ‘bring us together again.’”

The theme is not new.

“If Obama thinks the people really want change, wait till 2012.”

“I think we all know where Clinton’s place called hope is. [pause] Anywhere Hillary isn’t.”

“Obama has the entire media, the European Union, and Oprah on his side. A poll in Germany said 80% of Germans liked Obama over McCain and we all know how infallible Germans are at picking leaders.”

“Meanwhile we were running John McCain. It’s amazing he lost by only 7% instead of 75%. Obama beating McCain is like George Foreman beating Helen Thomas in the seventh round on a technical knockout.”

“It’s amazing the media keeps comparing Obama to Lincoln and Reagan. The press apparently can’t think of a Democrat worthy enough to compare him to.” The house goes wild.

She says history shows that the public opinion of Republican Presidents always goes up and Dem Presidents always go down.

In Q&A, she got in a dig at John Edwards again. “Obama was asked what he would do if three U.S. cities were simultaneously hit by an attack. He said he’d send ambulances. John Edwards said he’d be right behind them chasing them. This shows how different I am from Obama. My first response would be ‘which three cities.’”

Emotionally unstable people, for reasons unknown to me, are frequent fabulists. I guess they need to compensate for the overly emotional life they suffer through. The lies help them cope. They become their reality and calm them.

Zachary Roth is apparently one of those people.

The New York Observer’s beleaguered media editor, Zachary Roth, “has quit,” according to Mediabistro. Word on the street since Roth took over the weekly’s press coverage in August, was that he might have been ill-prepared for the task. Roth was under so much pressure, in fact, that according to a source he broke down in the newsroom at one point.

It seems pretty certain now that he’s trying to rehabilitate himself as a left-wing hit man in the mode of David Brock, etc., by distorting Bobby Jindal’s story and then, as the facts come out, moving the goal posts further and further off the field.

Keith Olbermann suffers the same way, but then Olbermann is bat crap crazy. I don’t know whether this Roth guy is or not. But he’s definitely lying about Bobby Jindal — the liar accusing the honest person of lying. Typical leftist.

By the way, Ben Smith worked at the New York Observer for a while. Did he and Roth know each other there? Is that why he’s trying to carry water for Roth’s story?

You may have remembered that Ms. Daly had been placed by the Obama White House last month in its counsel office, despite the fact that she has no actual legal credentials. It was widely assumed - justifiably, in my opinion - that this was due to the fact that she’s quite the political sheet-sniffer, which was apparently what the administration thought that it needed right now.

Apparently the DNC needs her more:

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At 5:00 p.m. today at CPAC, Rush Limbaugh will close out the show. The audience will be huge. The speech will be awesome. And we’ll be bringing it to you live on RedState.

Oh, and if God smiles on me today, I’ll get to meet Rush.

It may be a Saturday, but things haven’t slowed down.

This is the best CPAC I’ve ever been to.

Instapundit linked to an article about the Tea Parties, and the tech that they’re using:

Anti-stimulus tea parties light up Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and social media

In the latest example of how user-produced media can capture so-called “massively-shared” events in a way mainstream media can’t, a wave of images, blog posts and videos from a nationwide protest has been washing across the Web. The protests, dubbed “tea parties” by participants, were held Friday in several U.S. cities including Portland and Washington, D.C. as a response to what demonstrators see as unfettered spending and encroaching government as represented by President Obama’s economic recovery plans.

[snip]

Though even a year ago it would’ve been a slow and difficult process to chronicle a widely scattered protest such as this, the online community is now mastering the art of high-speed media sharing, a trend that can unite geographically disparate communities via the Web. Much of the sharing is now facilitated by the fast-growing messaging site Twitter, where today the keyword “teaparty” was one of the most frequently used terms. Users sent out a flurry of updates about attendance, links to photos on Flickr and Photobucket, and videos on YouTube and other sites.

The protests appeared to be rather small and did not attract much coverage in the mainstream new media. But interested observers had a remote window into the activities taking place in cities such as Tulsa, Okla., Austin, Texas, Nashville, Chicago, Lansing, Mich., Houston, Hartford, Conn., and Los Angeles, where a group that gathered this morning on the Santa Monica pier. (This blog reports that, as a part of that action, former “Saturday Night Live” actor Victoria Jackson read the definition of “socialism”).

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With his debt-busting budget which contains a $trillion tax increase, President Obama plans to have the Federal government spend 25 percent of the entire U.S. economy - one out of every four dollars produced in the U.S.

Obama’s massive spending plan puts the Democrat-controlled Congress on track to double the national debt by 2010 - to $17.6 trillion, after just four years of controlling the national purse strings.

At FoxNews they tried to put $3.6 trillion in perspective:

• If you spent $1 million an hour, non-stop for 24 hours a day, you wouldn’t run out of money for 411 years.

• If you took 3.6 trillion one-dollar bills, and placed them end-to-end, that line of bills would reach from Capitol Hill to the sun and then back to Capitol Hill and then back to the sun — and then almost all the way back to Capitol Hill again.

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Today, President Obama visited Camp Lejeune, N.C., to declare his scheduled end to the war in Iraq on August 31, 2010:

Even though 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq, Obama claims “mission accomplished.”

I know, I know; Obama didn’t actually say “mission accomplished.” But then neither did President Bush, when he declared “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” in front of that banner requested by the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Today, Obama said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

Mission accomplished or not, we have been telling you for nearly a year that Obama would leave significant numbers of troops in Iraq and that his 16-month withdrawal timetable wasn’t doable.

California has always been a destructive force in American politics. All too often the worst ideas from the farthest Euro-left spectrum have leaked out of the Golden State to blight the rest of America. Just one of those currently destructive ideas is the absurdly stringent fuel economy standards that California has foolishly enacted. Several western states have pegged their standards to California’s and many other states are attempting to do the same. The current effort in Illinois is one of those attempts.

Illinois H.B. 422 (see .pdf of legislation), sponsored by Karen May (D, Highland Park) creates the Illinois Clean Air Act establishing new motor vehicle emission standards based on California’s Low Emission Vehicle Program requirements.

Many in the business community in Illinois oppose this legislation for the unduly stringent requirements it would impose on the state, among other reasons. But a compelling one for me is the simple matter of Illinois allowing its laws to be crafted by Californians. What sense does it make for a state in the central part of the country to allow a state thousands of miles away, one that has vastly different environmental conditions, to write laws that will affect its own citizens? This idea alone is so unAmerican that it boggles the mind.

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MSNBC took the occasion of a triple homicide on Chicago’s south side to push its own anti-”assault rifle” meme on February 27 by including the words “assault rifle” in the headline of its story on the incident. No other media source, however, took this unusual step. So, here we have some old fashioned bias by MSNBC.

MSNBC’s version of the story clumsily screams “Man charged in assault rifle killings of 3 teens” over the top of its AP wire feed. Yet, while every story in the news and certainly every AP story mentions that the killer used an “assault rifle,” only MSNBC put the words in the headline. This befits MSNBC’s anti-gun agenda, presumably.

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Well, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mark Morford out does himself with sycophantic, hyperbole over his Obammessiah, today, February 27. He so revels in hero worship for The One, it’s amazing that the White House doesn’t feel compelled to get an order of protection against this creepy columnist.

No one in the Old Media is more sold on The One and less credible for his girlish crush than Morford. He is a fount of mush as he wonders if he should be scared of today’s problems or suffused with lust in his heart for Obama (if you’ll remember the Carterism).

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Our friends over at Radio Equalizer caught liberal radio talker Mike Malloy in a bit of hypocrisy. Malloy obviously thought his wife was a scream as she pretended to be Governor Bobby Jindal portraying him as an outsourced computer tech from India replete with cutsey faux Indian accent. Malloy’s wife acted as if Jindal was the Simpson’s character Apu, or something.

Now, one cannot help but realize that if a conservative had indulged in such an outrageous parody of an ethnic politician, Mike Malloy would have eviscerated that action presenting it as a high crime. Yet, when he and his wife indulge in it… why it’s hilarious don’t you know?

It only goes to show the double standard of the left. For me but not for thee so often seems to be their guiding principle.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what real leadership looks like.

Conservative evangelical leader James Dobson has resigned as chairman of Focus on the Family but will continue to play a prominent role at the organization he founded more than three decades ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Dobson notified the board of his decision Wednesday, and the 950 employees of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based ministry were informed Friday morning at a monthly worship service, said Jim Daly, the group’s president and chief executive officer.

Dobson, 72, will continue to host Focus on the Family’s flagship radio program, write a monthly newsletter and speak out on moral issues, Daly said.

Dobson’s resignation as board chairman “lessens his administrative burden” and is the latest step in a succession plan, the group said. Dobson began relinquishing control six years ago by stepping down as president and CEO.

There are way too many organizations in the conservative movement that are dependent on their figure head. They are, in effect, employment centers for out of work big shots.

Look at Free Congress. God bless our dearly departed conservative icon Paul Weyrich, but Free Congress was his. It existed to promote him and his causes. With him gone, it’s folding up shop.

Does anyone think American Solutions would survive if Newt Gingrich keeled over tomorrow? And what about Freedom Works? For that matter, what about Leadership Institute after Morton Blackwell is gone? What about Eagle Forum after Phyllis Schafly? [NOTE: this is not to undermine or lessen the impact, importance, and contribution that all these people have made to the movement.]

What is the plan? Who is the leader? What is the mission?

In the conservative movement, there are a vast number of organizations consuming ungodly sums of money, taking that money out of productive channels, solely to give an icon a platform. When the person dies the organization dies and with it the money dies in waste.

This is why James Dobson is a truly great leader — he is willing to give up power because he understands the cause is larger than himself.

Dobson is committed to his cause. He won’t let Focus on the Family be about him. Not only does that show his humble Christian spirit, it shows him to be the epitome of a strong leader.

We need more James Dobsons.

Glenn Reynolds has two very large links (here and here [the latter being the main page; the link's goofed up for some reason]). See also Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, the Repurblican, Gateway Pundit, GayPatriot, Riehl World View, Ace of Spades, and a whole bunch of others for details. The biggest one was in St Louis, with about a thousand on hand; I’m going to guess that they probably broke ten thousand nationwide. Not bad for a movement two weeks old, and made up of a bunch of people who all work for a living.

At least, it’s not bad today. Clearly, now that we’re starting to understand the operating principles, the next wave of these are going to have to kick it up a notch…

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He’s already filed to run for the House seat on the Republican side. Charles is a Honolulu City Councilman, Army Reserve officer, and law professor; plugged into Facebook and MySpace; decently sound on the issues; and is apparently already endorsed by Gov. Lingle and the Hawaii GOP (H/T: BackyardConservative). Cook currently ranks it as D+7; but both Bush and Lingle did well in the district.

And, most importantly, fairly solid speculation has it that current incumbent Neil Abercrombie will be running for Governor next year. Even if he doesn’t get the nomination for that, Abercrombie’s focus will be elsewhere, and Djou’s actually doing well in fundraising so far. So keep an eye on this race; and if you’re a Republican from Hawaii, I suggest that you think about helping out with either time or money.

Because every Congressional race counts.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.