CPAC is a pay to attend event with limited seating. Its much, much cheaper for a campaign to win CPAC than it is to win the Ames Straw Poll. Any campaign with funding and foresight can win CPAC by arranging for supporters to buy enough tickets when they first become available to get the win and lock out supporters of other candidates who aren’t as organized but would have wanted to attend if tickets had been available.

If finances and health weren’t limiting factors, I’d have been there at CPAC this year pitching for Newt and attending all the learning workshops I could have. Heck I’d run my county caucus again and attend the state convention for Newt if I could figure out how to realistically be able to walk from the parking lot to the convention center, sit there all day, then walk back to my car, and drive myself home.

Anyway, out of the candidate speeches at CPAC, I thought Newt did a much better job of articulating conservatism than the other candidates…just as Newt always does and always has.

I’ve never really understood this “electability” thing. By the time the mainstream media is through with a republican candidate, that candidate is always damaged and “unelectable”. Goldwater was a madman who was going to trigger a nuclear war. Reagan was a cowboy who was going to trigger a nuclear war. Then later Reagan was sleepwalking through his presidency and was unelectable for his second term. Bush Jr, was an idiot whose ignorance was shown in his mangled speech patterns.

Now Newt is unelectable because he divorced his wife on her deathbed from cancer…except his ex-wife wasn’t on her deathbed and according to the adult children of the marriage, the wife wanted a divorce.

And Newt is unelectable due to his resigning in disgrace for being guilty of ethics charges. Except that Newt resigned due to an ethics charge (singular) and was later completely exonerated from all wrong-doing by an IRS investigation in that one matter.

And Newt is unelectable because all the republicans whose toes he stepped on as he was pushing the republicans into a majority in the House don’t like Newt. Hmmm, so people who don’t like Newt because he was busy pushing forward conservatism rather than catering to their egos, seniority, or moderate stances and that makes me want to vote against Newt, why?

Even if Newt was a perfect candidate in both his private life and conservative career, it still wouldn’t stop the Romney campaign and NRO from making up lies about Newt’s record like their “Newt hated Reagan” line that boosted Romney to a win in Florida.

So does Santorum have dings to his career? Absolutely. Look back on redstate a month ago for”What a Big Government Conservative Looks Like”. Its a stroll through Santorum’s dismal voting record.

For a more recent ding against Santorum, look at his behavior during that recent Romney campaign of lies about Newt/Reagan mentioned above. Santorum stood silently by, like the vast majority of supposedly conservative voices, while Newt was being smeared. Was Santorum unaware of Newt’s role in promoting conservatism during the 1980′s? Let’s look back to before Santorum would be benefiting from the lie…

http://www.scribd.com/doc/55495807/Understanding-Newt-Gingrich

“…this is what Gingrich did. Though his C-SPAN speeches and his GOPAC training tapes, he helped teach a generation of activists how to think and talk about political strategy. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), elected to the House in 1990 and the Senate in 1994, said: “I listened to the tapes all the time driving around in the car. They taught tactics you should use, basic philosophy, how to discuss the issues. I was a disciple.”And according to Paul Weyrich: “Many members have told me, ‘Until I heard Newt explain this, I never understood the context of my beliefs. I knew, of course,what I believed in–but I didn’t understand the crusade we are involved in.”

That was Santorum in 1995 quoted from an article which originally ran in the New Yorker. Santorum said he was taught conservatism and tactics from Newt’s tapes made in the Reagan years and was inspired by them to run for office. Santorum was in the House when Weyrich said other republican representatives were running around praising Newt.

So today, Santorum stood silently while the Romney campaign was telling what Santorum knew were deliberate, premeditated lies about Newt’s career. And Santorum was silent because the lie benefited him personally.

Knowingly being a party to a lie is no different morally than starting the lie. If you take away Santorum’s supposed high moral character and supposed christian (christ-like) life and see what he does when he thinks you won’t notice, what do you have left?

Not much, in my opinion. A big government “conservative” who has a record of spending like a drunken sailor, voting against conservative bills, and not much of a record of trying to fundamentally change the way Washington works.

What do you have left of Romney after you look at the behavior and lies he condones to be done on his behalf throughout his two presidential campaigns rather than his supposed high moral character and supposed christian (christ-like) life?

You have someone who spent most of his adult life not being a republican. Someone who spent most of his republican life repeatedly denying that he was a conservative. Someone who claims now to have always been a conservative but who in his previous elected posts promoted the liberal agenda rather than fighting for conservative causes because, if you take him at his word, because liberals outnumbered conservatives in his state legislature.

To say the least, I’m not comfortable with a supposed conservative whose *self-professed* definition of supporting conservatism is to roll over and play dead whenever your side is outnumbered by the bad guys.

I’m wondering what the country would be like today if Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Bethune, etc. from the first GOPAC group of recruits had shown up newly elected to congress in 1978, counted noses, then rolled over and played dead because they were outnumbered by the democrats.