Herman Cain for President 2012? SRLC 2010 Roundup

New Orleans hosted the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) this year and I think a round-up of some observations might be of interest. Among the many fine speeches, Herman Cain was fabulous as always. Might Cain run for president in 2010? See an important Herman Cain video below.

First, blogger Carol Grace attended SRLC and sent notes via iphone, as well as photos. I have family in from out-of-state and and have only now had a chance to put her comments up for you:

Carol Grace

The 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference ends tonight with a gala, but for some of us non-party types it ended with Michael Steele's address.

We of the GOP (Grand Old Party, to some, but I like to think of it as Government Of the People) were immersed in three days of speech-making and workshop sessions designed to energize and expand the base. And indeed, if our party cannot be energized by the likes of J.C. Watts, Newt Gingrich, Liz Cheney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Pence then perhaps we don't need another turn on the Hill. But, as all conservatives know, another turn on the Hill is not only what we need, it is vital for the continuation of our great nation.

We were reminded by Newt that although we have been nick-named "The Party of No" by our Democratic counterparts, we only say "no" when the consequences of saying yes are devastating. We would just as soon be labeled "The Party of Yes," but we must be given something to which we can reasonably and conscientiously say "yes." Or, as Sarah Palin reminded us, not only are we "The Party of No," when it comes to our president's hair-brained ideas, we are "The Party of Hell, No."

The same theme ran through each speaker's oratory, and that theme was "repeal and replace." Repeal the laws designed not to make us better, but steepen the decline in which we find ourselves, and replace those laws (and lawmakers) with laws that will strengthen our economy and ensure our security, and with lawmakers who have the courage to do what is right. As Michael Steele said, "we all make mistakes, but losing in 2010 and again in 2012 is a mistake we cannot afford to make."

I cannot offer you my opinion of who was the best speaker or who had the best ideas. In my humble opinion, any and all of the persons who found their way to the podium in New Orleans would be better equipped to be our Commander in Chief than "The One" who currently occupies that office. I am so grateful that for a change the pool from which we will be able to elect our next leader is markedly deeper than in years past.

I heard quotes from Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp and knew that our current leaders are on the right track, and that is the pathway toward a brighter, stronger future. As Ted Cruz from Texas said, "It took a Jimmy Carter to give us a Ronald Reagan." If Jimmy Carter's reign could produce Ronald Reagan, imagine the great leader who will emerge as a result of Obama's single term in office. Our 45th President may just become Obama's finest legacy.

Carol J. Grace is a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.  She is a Christian, a Conservative, and a Republican.   Carol has one book of poetry, "Reflections of a Life Well Spent," published in 2008, and is working on a volume of political verse called "The Political Winds Still Blow."  She and her husband returned to Little Rock in 2006 after corporate assignments outside of Arkansas. Visit her blog at Seeking Holiness.

Melissa Clouthier, mentions something 'simmering below the surface" at SRLC:

Melissa Clouthier

But first principles are inconvenient when an old-guard politician is trying to keep power and money. And so beneath a placid, optimist surface, there is struggling. The struggle would seem to be philosophical: big government Republicans against tax-assailing and small government conservatives with some Tea Party help.

Clouthier talks about the inspiring Herman Cain, brings up the possibility of a presidential run - and quotes him referring to the possibility of "the dark horse" candidates. In Melissa's video, Cain clearly says while he has not made a desicison to run, he is considering it. I love Herman Cain! See his SRLC speech in the video below! Wooooooo Hoooooooo!

Then there is Texas Governor, Rick Perry, who Clouthier says gave a "barn burner" speech at SRLC, and it roused the crowd "in a major way."

Melissa Clouthier is a blogger at Dr. Melissa Clouthier, and at RightWingNews, and a mother:

Chiropractic was a profession where pantyhose and high heels were unnecessary which made it very appealing. I thought it would be good to have a “real” profession since writers don’t make money. Helping people feel better is fantastic. Chiropractic is the best health profession–instant gratification. It’d be cool to be a plastic surgeon, too.

Ericka Anderson, also writing at RightWingNews talks about blogging at these high-profile conferences:

Thankfully, the GOP gets it. Almost every event features special invites for bloggers, with VIP access and exclusive interviews with high profile individuals. House and Senate Republicans dominate Twitter, Facebook and blogging -- communicating regularly with the new media activists messaging in the battle online. The conservative movers and shakers online are faily young, offering a future of real opportunity and growth....

Anderson loved hearing the featured speakers: Sarah Palin, Mike Pence, Michael Steele, Bobby Jindal, and Newt Gingrich, but says:

...being with conservative bloggers in action some of the most politically impassioned folks I've met was the best part. Almost all of those I deal with are principled, accurate, dedicated and entertaining. They hold our politicians accountable, keep the eye of the news in the right place and rally the troops when it's crunch time. They are the secret weapon.

At TheOtherMcCain, see two 'man-on-the-street' videos of Brian Reilly, at SLRC. Reilly is a Republican running against Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in Florida's 20th District. Wasserman-Schultz is the congresswoman who told a townhall attendee recently that there was no mandate to buy health care in the new law! Brian Reilly is someone to get to know. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is someone to boot out of office.

 MB Snow at Political News Now has a video of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter speaking to the Conference. If you have watched McCotter much, you know he has a razor-sharp dry wit. At about 3 minutes in, he gets serious about the meaning of being a conservative.

Thanks to Smitty at TheOtherMcCain for the video.



Herman Cain at Southern Republican Leadership Conference 2010 (video)

Sakharov Widow: World Ignores Shalit Due to Anti-Semitism

By Findalis
many of the readers of this blog will recognize or remember who Andrei Sakharov was, or his widow Yelena Bonner. Or what they did for human rights and freedom in the Soviet Union. Many say that the Soviet Union would never had collapsed but for the tireless work of that remarkable couple. In the field of human rights, Yelena Bonner is not only an expert, she is one of the leading authorities. She speaks with the voice of the oppressed, having lived through the horrors of Stalinism and Soviet repression. There are very few in the world that can truly speak with such moral authority. Recently she gave a speech at the three-day Oslo Freedom Forum, a gathering in response to the Durban II conference. Here is some of that speech:

…At the age of 14, I was left without my parents. My father was executed, my mother spent 18 years in prison and exile. My grandmother raised me and my younger brother. The poet Vladimir Kornilov, who suffered the same fate, wrote: ‘And it felt that in those years we had no mothers. We had grandmothers.’ There were hundreds of thousands of such children… …Read Sakharov’s Memoirs. It’s a pity his Diaries haven’t been translated; they were published in Russia in 2006. Apparently, the West isn’t interested now in Sakharov. The West isn’t very interested in Russia either, a country that no longer has real elections, independent courts, or freedom of the press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists, and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss mainly? Gas and oil -- of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure and blackmail... Russia will remain the way it is now for decades, unless there is some violent upheaval. …They say people are coming together -- but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn’t because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein. Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews -- that is, Israel… So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak... At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven’t always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates. In many of Sakharov’s publications… [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: … “All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders.” “With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.” …Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it’s an old one): ‘Two states for two peoples.’ It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peace-making Quartet, made up of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia (some great peace-maker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed. According to the UN’s official definition, refugees are considered those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number -- about 700-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by the UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third, and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency’s report, , the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid. The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another five million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus, created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians – while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew already. The result is both strange and terrifying, not only because Israel will essentially be destroyed... Because the plan “two states for two peoples” is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same thing. A Judenrein Holy Land - the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today? And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It’s a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners? You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners’ everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House… But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit’s rights. The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents? And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release - and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes. Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism. Thirty-four years have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee). Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders, and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov’s ethical credo: “In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice."

It is time for the world to stop trying to appease the Arabs and listen to the truth. The true obstacle to peace in the region is not caused by Israel, but by the Arabs, who couldn't destroy Israel in battle and will attempt to destroy Israel through diplomatic means. And the world will let them. For it is acceptable to hate and despise the Jews. It is time for the world to listen to the voice of a woman who lived under some of the worst repression that humanity has imposed upon others. It is time to bring Gilad Shalit home.