United Liberty

Yesterday, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) joined Morning Joe to discuss spending and economics, foreign policy, Donald Trump and his straw poll victory at CPAC:

Since some are already jumping to conclusions, I don’t in any way condone what was said at CPAC. I don’t want to get in an unwinnable debate of opinions of the former Vice President. I’m simply saying that if you feel that way, say it somewhere else.

As libertarians, we are notoriously bad at politics. Partly because we are cynical about things actually changing, but also because we are so principled on certain issues, including opposition to unjustified war and distrust of the Federal Reserve, that we tend to render ourselves irrelevant before we even have a legitmate opportunity to establish our position.

The response is “but it shouldn’t be that way,” and you’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is reality, and sometimes we have to work within the system to achieve a desired change.

On Friday, CPAC attendees were given a surprise as former Vice President Dick Cheney showed up to intro Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense in the Bush Administration, who was set to receive the “Defender of the Constitution” Award from the American Conservative Union.

It was rumored early in the day that several dozen Campaign for Liberty members were going to stage a walkout during the presentation of the award. But I’m afraid the addition of Cheney to the stage was too much for some people to stand.

After a steady round of applause, someone or a group of people - presumably supporters of Ron Paul - began taunting Cheney from the crowd, shouting “war criminal,” calling Cheney “murdering scum,” asking “Where’s bin Laden” and for him to “show us the shekels.”

Below is a collection of several links that we didn’t get around to writing about, but still wanted to post for readers to examine. The stories typically range from news about prominent figures in the liberty movement, national politics, the nanny state, foreign policy and free markets.

For the second year in a row, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) won the CPAC presidential straw poll. According to organizers of CPAC, more than 11,000 people attended this year’s conference, with 3,742 of them casting ballots in the straw poll (also a record number).

Here are the results of the straw poll. You can see last year’s results here:

• Ron Paul: 30%
• Mitt Romney: 23%
• Gary Johnson: 6%
• Chris Christie: 6%
• Newt Gingrich: 5%
• Tim Pawlenty: 4%
• Michele Bachmann: 4%
• Mitch Daniels: 4%
• Sarah Palin: 3%
• Herman Cain: 2%
• Mike Huckabee: 2%
• Rick Santorum: 2%
• John Thune: 2%
• Jon Huntsman: 1%
• Haley Barbour: 1%
• Other: 5%
• Undecided: 1%

Other highlights from the straw poll:

We got a sneak preview of the first 15 minutes of Atlas Shrugged last night here at CPAC thanks to the folks at FreedomWorks. I’ll say this, the movie appears to be better than I expected.

Here is the trailer:

Welcome to the third, and final day of CPAC 2011. Among today’s speakers are Andrew Breitbart, David Horowitz, Rep. Connie Mack, John Bolton, Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg. Also, straw poll results will be announced later today.

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, came by Bloggers Row and sat down with me for a few minutes to discuss Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto (a book authored by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Kibbe), the tea party movement, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the movement’s prospects for 2012 and more.

You can download the podcast here (8.5MB/9min).

Dan Mitchell, an economist at the Cato Institute, stopped by Bloggers Row in between panels to talk spending, ObamaCare and the purpose of our nation’s military (our intervention and nation-building in other countries).

You can download the podcast here (4.6MB/5min).

We’re ready to go for Day 2 of CPAC. Doug Mataconis and I will be live-blogging throughout the day, hopefully with a better internet conncection than we had yesterday.

Today’s speakers will include Gov. Gary Johnson, Rep. Ron Paul, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Sen. Mike Lee. We’ll try to cover all of them, as well as hit some panels today. And by the way, I would be very surprised if Paul didn’t win the straw poll on Saturday. The building is full of libertarians (LPAC!).

Doug Mataconis, Brooklyn Roberts and maybe a few others will be live-blogging here throughout the weekend. We’ll be hitting as many panels and discussions as we can.

News broke this morning that Donald Trump, who is supposedly considering a bid for president, will speak at CPAC at 3pm.