CPAC Proves it - Republicans Debate, Democrats Follow the Party Line

It is anything but quiet at the American Conservative Union's 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Here are some of the details. **"It's time for a little rebellion on the battlefield of ideas," Texas Governor Rick Perry said at CPAC, being held outside Washington. Perry's remarks were enthusiastically received by the conservative activists at the annual meeting. Perry lauded the success of Republican-led states and lamented the growth of federal government : "Nowhere does the Constitution say we should federalize classrooms....Nowhere does it give federal officials primary responsibility over the air we breathe, the land we farm, the water we drink. And nowhere does it say Congress has the right to federalize health care." Perry, who is not running for re-election, says he'll make a decision about 2016 "in about 18 months," but he's already laying the groundwork with trips to the critical early-voting state of Iowa. **Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee attacked an intrusive federal government that "spies on its people and lies to its people....Mothers and fathers raise better children than the government ever will,...We don't need you picking everything from their menu to where they go to school." Huckabee also took aim at the Democrats' most likely 2016 presidential candidate. "Four Americans were murdered in Benghazi, and our government lied to us about what happened," he said. "With all due respect to Hillary Clinton, it does make a difference why they died and who did it." Huckabee also slammed President Obama's relationships with world leaders remarking, "The only time Vladimir Putin shivers is when he has his shirt off...[he is] not the least bit worried about what we think of him." After running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, Huckabee stayed on the sidelines in 2012 but has made it clear he's considering entering the 2016 race. Polls suggest he could have a shot - a CNN poll released last month showed that 14% of Republicans and GOP- leaning independents would support Huckabee if he were to run, putting him at the top of the list of potential GOP nominees. **Another past presudential candidate looking at a 2016 bid - former Senator Rick Santorum - will speak later on Friday. Santorum has been laying the groundwork for another campaign by visiting Iowa, keeping his former staffers close and maintaining an advocacy group that could help him get his campaign infrastructure up and running. ~~~~~ Potential presidential candidates aren't the only CPAC speakers slamming the Obama administration and advocating small government. Oliver North, a former United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a Fox News political commentator, said that America has a "leadership deficit disorder." US troops, he said, "deserve better than a commander in chief... garbed as a Nobel laureate... kowtowing to foreign leaders and apologizing for America. We don't know a head of state who guts our defenses and draws phony red lines with a pink crayon." ~~~~~ And there was controversy at CPAC, as well. **Congressman Paul Ryan's speech made news for the wrong reason. Ryan told the CPAC audience, citing Eloise Anderson, a member of Governor Scott Walker's cabinet : "This reminds me of a story that I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family and every day at school he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn't want a free lunch, he wanted his own lunch. One in a brown paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one because he said that he knew a kid with a brown paper bag had someone who cared for him." "This is what the left doesn't understand. We don't want people to leave the work force, we want them to share their skills and talent with the rest of us. People don't just want a life of comfort--they want a life of dignity. They want a life of self-determination. A life of equal outcomes is not nearly as enriching as a life of equal opportunity." Ryan was accused of lifting the story from a bestselling book titled  "An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny." BUT -- it seems that it was Anderson who attributed the story from the book to her own personal experience when she testified before a House Budget Committee hearing, where Ryan serves as Chairman. Ryan just repeated her story. A spokesperson for Anderson has now said that she misspoke. **And perhaps the biggest controversy surrounded Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who suggested that former GOP presidential candidates Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney “don’t stand for principle.” It was McCain who responded Friday, saying the feisty conservative had “crossed a line” and should apologize to war hero Dole : “He can say what he wants to about me and he can say anything he wants to about Mitt,” the Senator said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports." “But when he throws Bob Dole in there, I wonder if he thinks that Bob Dole stood for principle on that hilltop in Italy, when he was so gravely wounded and left part of his body there fighting for our country?” Cruz, in a speech Thursday at CPAC, told the crowd the three losing presidential candidates should have stood up for their views. “All of us remember President Dole, President McCain, and President Romney," Cruz said facetiously. “All of those those are good men, those are decent men — but when you don’t stand and draw a clear distinction, when you don’t stand for principle, Democrats celebrate,” he said. McCain said Cruz took a cheap shot at Dole. “Bob Dole is such a man of honor and integrity and principle, I hope that Ted Cruz will apologize to Bob Dole because that’s, that has crossed a line that, to me, is - leaves the realm of politics and discourse that we should have in America.” Dole was gravely wounded just two weeks before the end of the WWII after taking enemy fire in his right shoulder and back. He lost a kidney, use of his right arm and most of the feeling in his left arm. The 90-year-old former Kansas Senator defended himself after the interview, according to Politico, hammering Cruz for not doing his homework. “Cruz should check my voting record before making comments,” Dole said in a statement. “I was one of President Reagan’s strongest supporters, and my record is that of a traditional Republican conservative.” Cruz's spokeswoman Catherine Frazier called McCain’s critique a “distraction," noting that in his speech, Cruz said that he greatly respects these men, particularly the heroic military service of Senators Dole and McCain. “Suggesting anything otherwise is just an unnecessary distraction. He will not hesitate to talk about substantive matters of conservative principle that are important to bringing Republicans to victory – even if others may disagree.” Fellow conservative and former GOP Senator Rick Santorum sided with the defiant Cruz, saying the recent GOP standard-bearers weren’t conservative enough. "How did it work for the Republicans nominating moderate candidates in the last two presidential elections?" Santorum said during his speech Friday at CPAC, the Washington Post reports. "They put forth candidates who keep apologizing for the principles that they say they believe in, and then they lose." Santorum, who came in behind Romney in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, is a potential 2016 candidate. ~~~~~ Dear readers, two thoughts come to mind. First, Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum should consult Webster's Dictionary -- 'conservative' and 'principle' are not synonyms. One can be conservative or moderate or liberal and have no principles. One can be conservative or moderate or liberal and have principles. Re-read what they said, because not standing up "for their principles" became "not being conservative enough." And John McCain's response was not a "distraction." It was the Republican Party at its open and free-speaking best. And that must not change because it is the one thing that always separates liberty-loving GOPers from marching-to-the-numbers Democrats. The GOP may be less orderly than the Democrat Party, but if you want to hear real, important issues debated in the open, go to any GOP meeting. At a Democrat meeting, you will only hear the Party line that everyone must march to.