No Runny Eggs

First things first, my many thanks to Mark Block, Fred Dooley, Erik Telford, and Americans for Prosperity for this opportunity. I can now tick off a couple more items on my “must do” list. Now that I’ve done that, and gathered as much reax as I could find, it’s time to try to put my thoughts in some semblance of order, and take the long view.

It is a big shame that Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson didn’t make themselves available to the bloggers and the press, and not just because we never got sound up on Bloggers’/Press Row. I wanted to see those two, especially Thompson, operate outside the safety net of a prepared speech and expected questions. To a lesser extent, I have the same complaint about Mitt Romney, though by that time, all the “real” media and almost all the bloggers had departed the Row. While Steve (no, NOT me), Fred and Leslie would’ve put up good questions, I know I wouldn’t have. While John McCain also was not available to the bloggers/media, that was more of a question of logistics (there was no place for Bloggers’/Media Row in the Hart Building).

Speaking of those questions, while the press dominated the Q&As with Ron Paul, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, the bloggers brave enough to ask questions (see above) did come up with some land mines. Paul definitely detonated one with Fred’s question (the 9th and last one).

The biggest limitation was that lack of audio up in Bloggers’ Row. Part of it was the fact that we had radio shows broadcasting live from the room all day (that’s the source of all the extraneous noise on my audio from Paul, Brownback and Huckabee), though it was never fixed or fixable. About the time I would catch up on blogging, I found myself too late for the afternoon session going on at that point. I made it worse by perpetuating the vicious cycle because the Wi-Fi didn’t make it all the way up to the room and the Mayflower charges an arm and a leg for wired access.

I mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again; if anybody has extended audio/video from the main hall or the afternoon sessions (yes, I know all about the Defending the Dream YouTube channel), I would like it.

Enough gripes; on to the candidates. Giuliani does indeed know his audience, and knows how to destroy the clock (I’ll get back to that). Paul is a 69-percenter (and that’s on the college 70%-to-pass scale); there’s a lot that I can relate to, yet the big negatives are completely insurmountable. Brownback doesn’t quite light my fire, though his prop of choice was great. Huckabee doesn’t know the first thing about federalism, and he’s too wedded to a national sales tax. Thompson would be a runaway in an earlier time (say, 1988 or perhaps as late as 1992), but he has some baggage. If I could ignore Romney’s past (especially on health care), I could warm up to him; unfortunately, I can’t.

On to the BIG controversy, at least for the Paul-nuts – the “silencing” of their man. That’s one of the reasons why I want the extended audio/video; I want to accurately time how long everybody got. I do know that all of the candidates ran over, and that Giuliani, who went first, went over the longest.

Mitigating that is the fact that the “minor” 3 all spent time with us bloggers and the media, while the “big” 4 (including McCain) did not. Even before one adds in the 3 stations that Paul did interviews on, he got better than 20 minutes of microphone time. I wish I had been better with the mike, but I’m still learning with that new piece of equipment as I picked it up earlier in the week and didn’t have a chance to find out its limitations.

Even with the problems in Bloggers’ Row, that was a blast. I got to meet a bunch of great people, some all-too-briefly, see some pros at work (no, I’m not talking about the press in the center of the room), and find out how at least some of the candidates handle less-than-scripted questions. If I weren’t so quiet,….

Other than missing the “working” sessions (note to self; pay for the ‘Net in the room next time so you don’t burn the “working” sessions catching up on blogging), it was simply an awesome time. Fred and I even got in some sightseeing on a foggy Saturday. Saturday, though he headed back to the hotel early. I will say that 1 hour in the Air and Space Museum is not nearly enough. Those pics will be up tomorrow.

I’m back home in south suburban Milwaukee, where it is just as hot and humid as it was in DC, but where it gets lighter earlier, and the beer is less-expensive. The laptop is back on charge after offloading all the pics and audio to the desktop, so it’s time to dig up some reax from the rest of Bloggers’ Row (and probably others in my quick search for reax) before I have my own:

– Let’s start off with my roomie Fred (Dooley, not Thompson). There’s too many posts there to link to them all, so just start reading. Oh, and the Unreal One is VERY lucky that The Hammer is a good sport.

– Mary Katharine Ham had a bunch of reax. First, she wasn’t exactly impressed by Thompson (tempered a bit later in the HotAir thread on that). Next, she raised the ire of the Paulnuts by pointing out that while Ron Paul got Gong-showed off the stage after 10 minutes, he spent forever and a half on Bloggers’/Media Row. Finally, she highlights Mike Huckabee’s defense of a smoking ban in Bloggers’/Media Row.

– Jim Geraghty, who had the benefit of being in the “overflow” section and thus had audio, panned Sam Brownback and got the quote of the day from Michael Steele, ripped Huckabee for the FairTax, and was impressed by Thompson both on the main stage and in front of the Virginia contingent, with plenty of quotes from both appearances (hmmm, one would think that he’s a FredHead ;-)

– Steve from Dry Fly Politics ran with a massive live-blog, including getting Mark Block in a cheesehead. He got questions in on the Row, so he wins the “Questioner of the Day” award. He’s officially a Romney man, so it’s no surprise that his take of the Romney speech reflects that.

– Jo Egelhoff wisely left her perch immediately to my right when she found out that audio from the main stage would not be forthcoming and picked up several snippets, including a focus on Vicki McKenna.

– Bruce from Gay Patriot, who got the almost-ultimate seat between the Hammer and Fausta Wertz, started off hustling between the Row and the main room, came back in time to take some stills of Paul and Brownback on the Row, and poor-audio-quality video of Huckabee (I will point out that the room was VERY noisy at that point; so noisy that most of MKH’s video appears to not be of good-enough quality for public consumption). He wraps it up with a wrap-up, which includes an ironic group that was up the hall from us.

– Matt Lewis had the view from the Green Room, and didn’t like Thompson. Scary thing is, he linked to the TownHall version of NRE, and since I pulled SiteMeter (TH’s counter of choice), and I deep-linked to my audio files, I don’t know how many went there from him.

– Matthew of Right Angle Blog noted Rudy Giuliani was channeling French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and lamented the fact that Paul always manages to piss him off while taking a shot at the presstitutes (Matthew had a better angle to see their nose-picking ways).

– Brendan Steinhauser, who will eventually have video up, noted that there was a lot of energy, and Thompson didn’t match it.

– Fausta Wertz (how I missed meeting her I’ll never know, or is it just my memory failing me?) takes some serious whacks at Paul Krugman with the rest of us at the summit as the bats.

– David Weigel found that the most-positive people in the crowd, at least in the day session, were Paul-nuts.

– SWAC Girl made a long drive, but got there in time to cover the White House briefing (Fred was scheduled, but due to a delay in check-in, he was unable to make it). She was impressed by Giuliani and Romney, and less-than-thrilled with Thompson.

– Rob Port grabbed his camera and had the pic of the day (you can go and click for it; I won’t spoil the surprise), and noted that McCain was a bit tired. He put up so many posts about Day 2 that I’ll just say look for the stuff with the “Defending the American Dream Summit” title.

– Added 7:45 am 10/7/2007 –

– Jawa Ragnar Danneskjold was somewhere in the fold, and was happy with Giuliani and Thopmson, as well as most of the fiscal portion of Paul’s speech, and was less-than-impressed with Brownback and Huckabee.

– enamored by Giuliani, and not so much by Thompson.

– Chief of Freedom Dogs got a connection in the main room and live-blogged from there.

If I missed anybody, pipe up, please. I’m especially looking for “independent” audio/video from the main room for the day sessions (they never did get the audio into Bloggers’ Row).

Thanks, Steve, for letting me liveblog the Americans for Prosperity “Defending the Dream” conference with you here on NRE.

It was great to meet you, Fred from Real Debate Wisconsin, Jo from Fox Politics, Jim from NRO’s Campaign Spot, Bruce from The Gay Patriot, Jason from Citizen Watchdogs, and many more.

If you–or any other Wisconsin bloggers, of any political persuasion–would like to drop by our office in Madison and get some hand’s on coaching on how to file an open records request, just shoot us an email.