CPAC Live Blog Friday 3/15/13
U.S. News and World Report will be bringing you the latest from the Conservative Political Action Conference, where several U.S. Senators and House members are expected to speak
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You can catch up on all the CPAC events you missed by checking out Thursday's live blog.
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@realdonaldtrump getting a solid round of applause after a well delivered speech #CPAC2013
— CPAC (@CPACnews) March 15, 2013 -
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., getting polite applause from fairly crowded ballroom at CPAC, but the audience appreciates it when he embraces Tea Party favorite Sen. Rand Paul, his fellow Kentucky senator. -
Paul beat McConnell's pick for the seat during a primary, but has since embraced his popular, libertarian junior counterpart.
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McConnell takes the gloves off - calls Democratic presidential hopefuls like an episode of the 'Golden Girls.'"
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"We've got Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan ... they've got Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden," he says.
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Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., who will speak at CPAC later Friday, is sitting down for an interview with Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin. Before the interview began, Bachmann took a moment to primp and fix Martin's hair.
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Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., elected in 2010, focuses her speech on national security.
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Ayotte has forged a strong alliance with Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., long foreign policy and national security GOP leaders.
The group has led the charge for more answers from the Obama administration on the deadly Benghazi attacks and against sequestration spending cuts to the military. -
Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham is currently speaking at a panel on why man-made global warming is fake.
Cunningham says "correlation is not causation," and notes that the number of pirates worldwide has also increased with the increase in temperatures. -
"Osama is dead ... but al Qaeda is very much alive," Ayotte says.
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A former New Hampshire attorney general, Ayotte pounds the Obama administration for reading Miranda rights to the recently captured al Qaeda spokesman.
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Ayotte, though even-toned, is getting a very strong reception from the audience with her vow to continue investigating what happened at the consulate in Benghazi.
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Ayotte receives standing ovation that McConnell did not.
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Harold Doiron, a retired NASA scientist, is part of a group of former NASA scientists and engineers who call themselves "The Right Climate Stuff" and believe global warming isn't man-made.
Today, Doiron is at CPAC to say that anyone who can "read a graph" can see that global temperatures are stable. -
Next up - former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Ryan also crafted a recently unveiled the controversial budget proposal that would balance the budget in 10 years.
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Ryan's address focuses almost solely on budget issues and visions - the crowd, mostly younger, also gives him a standing ovation.
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Lots of "Don't tread on me" flags at CPAC - often held by people in period dress.
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Former Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, speaking on a panel dissecting the 2012 election results, says it's obvious now Republicans were outperformed when it came to technology and turnout efforts.
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She adds that despite being a woman and mother of four girls, she was effectively portrayed as "anti-woman."
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Buerkle argues that GOP is party for "all people."
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Young boy takes aim with a laser gun at NRA booth at CPAC.
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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, makes a cameo at last night's Blogger Bash at CPAC.
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Buerkle: [Women] can't relate to Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They need a place to go.
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NRA's Wayne LaPIerre takes the stage to standing crowd at CPAC.
"I really appreciate that warm welcome. As you can imagine I don't get invited to many parties in this town," he says. -
LaPierre says that gun owners must spend time uniting to make sure that liberal attacks don't win.
"If we dare disagree they will scorn us, they will demonize us and they will try to shut us up," he says. "We will not be demonized and we will not be silent." -
According to NRA, gun ownership is at an all-time high, but thanks to their safety programs, gun accidents are at an all-time low.
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LaPierre calls universal background checks a "placebo pill."
Background checks once seemed like an area where bipartisan compromise could emerge, but the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday passed background checks legislation out of committee along party lines, 10 to 8.
LaPierre says that mentally ill need to be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, but argues that requiring background checks on private transfers is the wrong answer.
He says it creates a national registry that could be used against gun owners. It will be created, he says to "tax them or take them." -
LaPIerre accuses Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., of keeping an assault weapons ban in a drawer, waiting for an unspeakable tragedy to "push her political agenda."
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"The Vice President of the United States actually told women facing an attack to empty their shotguns into the air. Have they lost their minds over at the White House?" LaPIerre scolds Vice President Joe Biden. "You keep your advice, we'll keep our guns."
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LaPierre pushes to prosecute known criminals, put armed guards in schools, get the mentally ill off the streets and into treatment “and for god sakes, leave the rest of us alone.”
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At a forum of “How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Plastic Water Bottles, Fracking,” women talked about the growing amount of "food nannies," including First Lady Michelle Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“They want more kids eating government meals so there can be central control,” says Julie Gunlock, the director of the Women for Food Freedom Project. -
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., begins his CPAC remarks discussing the death of his nephew last night in Pittsburgh.
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More than any other speaker - including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Santorum has silenced and electrified this crowd.
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Part of it was the somber tone of the beginning of his remarks, part is that there's uncertainty about what the failed presidential candidate's message will be and part is his sermon-like delivery and rhetoric.
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"The left can always promise more stuff," he says.
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Santorum says, "we don't have the passion they do."
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Someone in the audience shouts, "Santorum 2016!" Another responds, "Rand Paul!"
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U.S. News' Robert Schlesinger has some thoughts on Wayne LaPierre's session today, calling it a 'Red Dawn' moment for the NRA leader.
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These two are advocates of the Association of Mature American Citizens, a conservative alternative to AARP that says it has more than 100,000 paid members.
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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, introducing Mitt Romney at CPAC, gets a big applause for mentioning state's voter ID law. She also vows to not follow other GOP governors in expanding Medicaid as a part of Obamacare. Also a crowd favorite.
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She call's Romney a "true servant leader" for coming back to CPAC after presidential loss to "talk about it."
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Mitt Romney gets giant standing ovation from the crowd.
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Romney says he left the race "disappointed" but "honored and humbled."
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He says it's time to learn from "my" and "our" mistakes.
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So far, Romney is just reprising anecdotal stories he gathered on the campaign trail and has used in campaign speeches.
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"We're a patriotic people," he says. "The heart of America is good."
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Romney seems to sidestep talking about his campaign's failure and points instead to success of 30 Republican governors.
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"These are the people we've got to listen to and make sure their message is heard loud and clear across the country," he says.
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Romney name checks Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie as people who shd be learned from ... of course they werent invited to #cpac2013
— Robert Schlesinger (@rschles) March 15, 2013 -
There really hasn't been anything new in Romney's speech other than the broad platitudes of his stump speech. But the crowd is receptive.
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While Mitt Romney talks about his campaign against President Obama in the big convention hall upstairs at CPAC, downstairs in the exhibition hall a group called the Freedom Center Students is encouraging people to wage an "Obama Awareness Campaign" that will "expose his radical agenda on your campus." According to the Southern Poverty Center, the Freedom Center is a far-right, anti-Muslim group.
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"I'm sorry I won't be your president, but I will be your co-worker and I'll work shoulder-to-shoulder alongside you," Romney says to cheers.
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Day 2 at CPAC has the libertarian quadrant well in the lead at the Young Americans for Liberty booth.
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As House Majority Leader Eric Cantor takes the stage, the CPAC audience has dwindled significantly.The Virginia congressman is leading off his speech with a focus toward education and school choice.
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That closes out our coverage of CPAC 2013. Thanks for watching!
