Keeping You Posted
As most of you know, we will convene in person on August 18th and 19th for the annual Gathering in Atlanta, Georgia. It has been a while since I gave an update, and wanted to let everyone know where things stand. We are at capacity, though I hope we can open a few more seats as we get closer.
We have confirmed, as of now, Senators Tim Scott and Tom Cotton, Governor Brian Kemp, and Vivek Ramaswamy. We are waiting for confirmation from Governor DeSantis and Ambassador Haley. Vice President Pence has a scheduling conflict he is trying to work around. He assured me personally last week at church that he wants to come and is trying to make it work.
I’m delighted to tell you Dr. Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation is going to join me to talk about the future of the right, as so many try to find common ground in these crazy times.
We have invites to Congressmen Chip Roy, Jim Bank, Governor Bill Lee, and a number of others we expect to be there.
We have invited and will have a representative from Meta to talk about conservative concerns with the platform. I don’t yet have confirmation on the speaker.
Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, and others have stepped up to sponsor the event with us. Any conservative group interested in a booth to promote their organization can reach out. We are happy to accommodate them. I’ll have a list of all the speakers and sponsors soon.
I’ll be sending out the hotel link shortly for reservations. Please get one if you can, otherwise we have to cover a room block, which I really don’t want to do. Frankly, we have found it harder to lock in sponsors this year as the economy turns south and organizations have slowed sponsorships of events. So you getting your hotel room will help us a ton.
As for the conversations, I want to focus on the future. What does it mean to be a Republican? How do we find common ground as conservatives? What path should we embrace for the future, and how should we deal with China, Russia, Ukraine, technology, and more? I’ll weave in questions from attendees too.
It’s time to focus on the future — of tech, of the right, of the nation, of our role in the world. We need to have those conversations, and I look forward to being on stage with a cross-section of the conservative movement to hear their thoughts on where we go from here.
Stay tuned for more.
Now…
Trump to CNN
I find it notable that Chris Licht has been able to get former President Trump on CNN to do a townhall event in New Hampshire.
The network has slowly been trying to show Republicans it will accommodate them and their views fairly. Booting Don Lemon one week and bringing Trump on for a townhall are intriguing. Will they grill him about January 6th and stolen elections? That might actually help him with his base if they do.
While Trump is doing an event with what some Republicans past their prime, as Don Lemon might say, still call the “Clinton News Network,” Trump has also doubled down on attacking DeSantis over COVID, citing California and other states as proof Florida’s refusal to do a hard lock down failed. Concurrently, Trump is attacking DeSantis, Haley, Pence, and others for wanting to engage in entitlement reform.
As a lifelong Republican and conservative, it is a bit disorienting to have the front-runner of the GOP attacking long-held GOP positions, echoing Democrat talking points. This whole moment in American politics continue to be surreal.
Democrats Really Screwed Themselves
Kevin McCarthy pulled off what Democrats were convinced he could not. He raised the debt ceiling and coupled it to spending cuts. Democrats presumed he could not get a deal done.
Now, it is the Democrats who have not voted to raise the debt ceiling.
Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellin, late yesterday, said June 1 is the drop dead date. Republicans are now making clear that the Democrats cannot get out of this without cuts. It is the Democrats who will now be provoking cuts. They will get no increase if they continue to insist on a clean debt ceiling increase.
The GOP put up their plan the Democrats demanded to see. The GOP got it passed. Democrats have no counter-proposal. Now, Joe Biden wants an emergency meeting. In the game of chicken, Republicans have nothing to lose by driving straight into the media hell storm that awaits them as the villains. They might as well force Biden to swerve or crash. That’s on Biden.
Was There a Shooting?
Democrats and the press are furious with Republicans pointing out the shooting in Texas involved illegal aliens, though at least one of the victims was a green card holder.
It was a shooting with an AR-15, but cannot go into the media narrative because the shooter was an illegal alien who had been deported five times and could not legally purchase an AR-15.
This so thoroughly upends the media narrative. The press has had to move on.
It is similar to the situation in Alabama where that mass shooting happened at a Sweet Sixteen birthday party. 32 people were wounded. 5 died. But the shooters were non-white as were the victims and no AR-15s were involved. So the media, instead, chose to focus on the eighty-something white man shooting, but not killing, the black teenager in Missouri on the same weekend.
Racial narratives trump all over coverage, even coverage of guns in America. It is just fascinating to watch.
It is not surprising that DJT has moved toward the left in his focus. He thinks he has strong support of the far right (his "base" from the past) and that is true, for now. But, his values are (1) make himself out to be the best at whatever he is doing and (2) prove that he did not causes losses in two midterms and in 2020 - in that order. Cruz was right, in 2016, when he said DJT did not have conservative values. He co-opted conservative values when he ran and the first three years of his presidency. That approach paid off "yuge" dividends for himself and for the country. But, he has moved to the left on the issues of alternative lifestyles, abortion, responses to the pandemic (though, at the time, no one really knew what the best path was) and, now, entitlement reform.
It is like he is proving himself to be the best at one thing - pandering to get what he wants (see points 1 and 2 above).
Trump and Madonna, both has-beens trying to stay relevant. Trump by proving himself a boob, Madonna just by showing hers.