With headline speakers Karl Rove, Tim Pawlenty, and Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Federation of College Republicans were among nearly 1,700 attendees to one of the largest State of Wisconsin Republican Conventions in recent memory. The group, consisting of nearly 35 members, trickled into the Hyatt-Regency Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, throughout the day Friday, May 21 but a core group arrived early in the morning Friday to help set up for the festivities and then along with others worked into the afternoon assisting candidates, promoting their campaigns and agendas. The main event on Friday evening was the chairman's reception held at the historic Harley-Davidson Museum. Celebrated Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty addressed a raucous crowd in the packed Rumble Room. Ryan talked about the insanity of health care reform and the Democrat's budget and fiscal messes while Governor Pawlenty spoke about similar issues and inspired those in the crowd to commit themselves to core values of fiscal conservatism. Soon after, shuttle buses provided rides back to the Hyatt where hospitality suites opened up for the remainder of the evening.
Convention started in earnest early Saturday morning and Charlotte Evans, the new WICR chair, spoke to the 1000 plus delegates in the Frontier Airlines Center, assuring them that the Wisconsin Federation of College Republicans were thoroughly and completely committed to the cause of bringing the State of Wisconsin back to Republican control in 2010. Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Reince Priebus addressed the crowd about the importance of uniting together to elect GOP majorities and clean up after the Democrat's failing policies. The high point of the convention that morning was the official Party endorsement of Scott Walker in the gubenatorial race. Scott won the endorsement over his closest challenger, former congressman Mark Neumann, by an overwhelming percentage setting the stage for the State Party to throw it's weight behind his campaign to defeat Tom Barrett, the hand-picked successor to governor Jim Doyle on the Democrat side. The rest of the convention was a long, drawn-out process with several votes and re-votes to make party endorsements in two crowded, multi-candidate Statewide races; one being Lt Governor and the other being the Senate race against stalwart Democrat Russ Feingold.
Perhaps the highlight of the entire convention occurred Saturday night during the Chairman's Banquet where Karl Rove was introduced as the keynote speaker. In the, hot and packed standing-room only venue, 600 of the convention followers heard the Architect of the George Bush 43 ascendancy give over an hour-long speech about the pressing issues of the 2010 election cycle, as well as some of the amazing experiences he has had in lifetime of giving speeches.
"And if you don't believe you go talk to the man who figured this all out," Rove said after introducing in detail, the major shenanigans in the health care bill. "His name is Paul Ryan."
The crowd rose to it's feet.
"The principle they forgot when it came to health care was this," he continued. "The American people pay attention. We're not that dumb. We're not that stupid. Think about this. If you go and take a look at the polls from January, February, and March of last year people by a margin of 2 to 1 supported health care reform. They thought it was a good idea, 'Yea, let's explore. We need to improve our system.' But then we started reading and watching. The President kicked off on March 5 of last year a 51-week drive for national health care. He gave 58 speeches, 2 nationally-televised addresses to the nation. He had a 59-41 margin in the Senate, he had a 255 to 178 in the house and this may shock ya, I know there are a lot of idealistic young people in here but the national media is sorta liberal and didn't challenge him. And guess what happened! People educated themselves, they talked to the doc down the street, they talked to the nurse, they talked to the hospital administrator, they talked to the drug saleswoman, they talked to the pharmacist. . .they educated themselves about it. By August of last year we were on fire and by the time it came around to the vote if you take all of the polls taken in the couple of weeks leading up to the vote, it was about 38% favoring bill presented by Obama and the Democrats in congress and 60% opposed and the strongly opposed outnumbered the strongly supported by 2 to 1. That's because the American people educated themselves."
Rove then completed his speech with a touching story about his experiences with wounded and fallen soldiers in the Military and in particular one individual soldier who had been shot 8 times, was in the process of having his face reconstructed, and was now more than willing to go back to Afghanistan for yet another tour of duty.
The convention wrapped up Sunday afternoon, after an endorsement of recently-announced candidate Ron Johnson in the Feingold Senate race, a long half day of votes, and a kick-off campaign rally by Walker and Johnson, weary delegates finally departed for home and while some of the College Republicans stayed around to help clean up after the festivities, many took after the weary convention-goers and slowly left Milwaukee, bringing their renewed passions back to home cities to help turn the tide in the State and national legislature.
Showing posts with label Karl Rove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karl Rove. Show all posts
Monday, May 24, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
CRs REPRESENT MIDWEST AT CLUB 100 REAGAN RANCH RETREAT
Three Wisconsin CRs represented the college campus conservatives at this year's Young America Foundation Club 100 Reagan Ranch Retreat held near Santa Barbara, CA from Thursday April 29 through Saturday May 1, 2010. Bobby Hamill and Jacob Kampen, of UW-Eau Claire; Charlotte Evans from Marquette University were all participants in the Club 100 event, part of a group 15 of the most active campus conservatives in nation as awarded by the Young America Foundation. http://www.yaf.org/Club100.aspx
"Essentially what it is, it is for those top students in the nation who are active with Young America Foundation throughout the year," Bobby Hamill said of the program. "By hosting different speakers or putting on different events such as 9/11 Never Forget, Freedom Week, No More Che Day, and other events that the Young America Foundation holds. So they have a point system and those students who have 100 points or more get awarded with a trip out to California that Young American Foundation provides for and it has a whole bunch of different events."
Organized primarily by Young America's Foundation Vice President Patrick Coyle, the first event of the three days was an overnight stay at the cabins in the El Capitan Canyon, where the gathering enjoyed a barbecue and were later joined by Southern California talk radio host Mark Larson. Ann McElhinney, writer and producer of the anti-Global Warming film Not Evil Just Wrong, spoke as well and then joined the group around a campfire.
Bobby and Karl
"One of the best things, obviously, was getting to hear from Karl Rove," Bobby Hamill said of his experience. "He had a phenomenal talk about his book (Courage and Consequence) which was interesting but everything he spoke about was great. He spoke a lot about his time serving with President Bush and working with him in the Oval Office, especially his experience of 9/11, what he remembers from that was pretty powerful, all of the stories that he had regarding that date, that was pretty neat. It was a great chance to spend all of this time with other College students and other University Students from around the country who share the same passion for politics as you do."
Rove joined the students for a private reception on Friday afternoon on the roof of the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara where he personally signed copies of Courage and Consequence. He then was the keynote speaker at a luncheon downstairs where he regaled the audience with his 9/11 accounts.
"The biggest thing that I actually would say is that the world of political activism is a small one," Charlotte Evans recalled about her important experiences at the retreat. The new chair of the Wisconsin CRs found herself in familiar company, despite the small number of activists who were awarded a trip to the event. "I ran into people whom I knew before, my roommate who I actually met last year at the Young America Foundation convention in Washington DC and that was kind of funny and everyone I met had already met someone else that I kind of knew. And it was really neat to be in the same environment that Ronald Reagan was in and how he was grounded and not only how he had the conservative values but also the traditional conservative lifestyle as well. You don't need to be a rich politician, you can be a real person, and you can be genuine person, you can be successful in politics, and you can be the best President we ever had."
Charlotte and Karl
After horseback riding at the Circle B Ranch, Reagan-style, indeed the culminating event of the weekend was a tour of the Reagan Ranch. High up in the mountains, Rancho del Cielo— meaning "Ranch in the Sky" is 688 acres of rolling, tree-covered hills that served for 25 years as a home and then as a retreat for Ronald Reagan during his presidency. Ana Lightle, tour guide, took the young activists through the ranch home, talked about his persona, his presidency, and how it helped him to become such a great leader.
"It is just really cool to talk to other campus activists," Charlotte recalled. "To see what other ideas they have and find out what was successful for them and figure out how we can implement that on our campus and learn from their mistakes and things that worked for them and things that weren't successful and things that got them in trouble and how we can build off of that so that Wisconsin doesn't have similar problems. I am just grateful that I got to go. I would actually consider almost everybody to be middle class there but they were differing degrees of middle class I suppose. There were people there who were in fancy dresses and had their hair all nice and I was there in my 'plaids'. Being able to ride horses on the mountains and being able see Reagan Ranch from their was cool too."
"Essentially what it is, it is for those top students in the nation who are active with Young America Foundation throughout the year," Bobby Hamill said of the program. "By hosting different speakers or putting on different events such as 9/11 Never Forget, Freedom Week, No More Che Day, and other events that the Young America Foundation holds. So they have a point system and those students who have 100 points or more get awarded with a trip out to California that Young American Foundation provides for and it has a whole bunch of different events."
Organized primarily by Young America's Foundation Vice President Patrick Coyle, the first event of the three days was an overnight stay at the cabins in the El Capitan Canyon, where the gathering enjoyed a barbecue and were later joined by Southern California talk radio host Mark Larson. Ann McElhinney, writer and producer of the anti-Global Warming film Not Evil Just Wrong, spoke as well and then joined the group around a campfire.
Bobby and Karl
"One of the best things, obviously, was getting to hear from Karl Rove," Bobby Hamill said of his experience. "He had a phenomenal talk about his book (Courage and Consequence) which was interesting but everything he spoke about was great. He spoke a lot about his time serving with President Bush and working with him in the Oval Office, especially his experience of 9/11, what he remembers from that was pretty powerful, all of the stories that he had regarding that date, that was pretty neat. It was a great chance to spend all of this time with other College students and other University Students from around the country who share the same passion for politics as you do."
Rove joined the students for a private reception on Friday afternoon on the roof of the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara where he personally signed copies of Courage and Consequence. He then was the keynote speaker at a luncheon downstairs where he regaled the audience with his 9/11 accounts.
"The biggest thing that I actually would say is that the world of political activism is a small one," Charlotte Evans recalled about her important experiences at the retreat. The new chair of the Wisconsin CRs found herself in familiar company, despite the small number of activists who were awarded a trip to the event. "I ran into people whom I knew before, my roommate who I actually met last year at the Young America Foundation convention in Washington DC and that was kind of funny and everyone I met had already met someone else that I kind of knew. And it was really neat to be in the same environment that Ronald Reagan was in and how he was grounded and not only how he had the conservative values but also the traditional conservative lifestyle as well. You don't need to be a rich politician, you can be a real person, and you can be genuine person, you can be successful in politics, and you can be the best President we ever had."
Charlotte and Karl
After horseback riding at the Circle B Ranch, Reagan-style, indeed the culminating event of the weekend was a tour of the Reagan Ranch. High up in the mountains, Rancho del Cielo— meaning "Ranch in the Sky" is 688 acres of rolling, tree-covered hills that served for 25 years as a home and then as a retreat for Ronald Reagan during his presidency. Ana Lightle, tour guide, took the young activists through the ranch home, talked about his persona, his presidency, and how it helped him to become such a great leader.
"It is just really cool to talk to other campus activists," Charlotte recalled. "To see what other ideas they have and find out what was successful for them and figure out how we can implement that on our campus and learn from their mistakes and things that worked for them and things that weren't successful and things that got them in trouble and how we can build off of that so that Wisconsin doesn't have similar problems. I am just grateful that I got to go. I would actually consider almost everybody to be middle class there but they were differing degrees of middle class I suppose. There were people there who were in fancy dresses and had their hair all nice and I was there in my 'plaids'. Being able to ride horses on the mountains and being able see Reagan Ranch from their was cool too."
2010 AWARD WINNERS FOR THE CLUB 100 REAGAN RANCH RETREAT SPONSORED BY THE YOUNG AMERICAN FOUNDATION.
•Travis Korson – George Washington University
•Danny Laub – St. Louis University
•Mick Paskiewicz – DePaul University
•Ryan McNicholas – University of California - Santa Barbara
•Charlotte Evans – Marquette University
•Chris Garcia – Pepperdine University
•Katie Poedtke – Fordham University
•Lauren Scirocco – Ramapo College
•John Masko – Wheeler School
•Kiana Dunn – San Pasqual High School
•Scott McAfee – Emory University
•Stephen Barkley – UNC-Greensboro
•Bobby Hamill – University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire
•Michael Boglovits – UNC-Greensboro
•Jacob Kampen – University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire
•Matt Capristo – University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
•John Eick – UNC-Chapel Hill
•Blayne Bennett – Arizona State University
•Janie Abel – Canisius College
•Joe Naron – George Washington University
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