bobbyw24
02-18-2010, 05:52 AM
When President George W. Bush and speechwriter Matt Latimer were going over a draft of a speech Bush was to deliver at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2008, the president had a question: “What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?” “Well, the conservative movement,” Latimer explained. “You know, the one that started back in the '60s when conservative groups first took root.” That movement.
According to Latimer's White House memoir, "Speech-Less," Bush leaned forward and said, “Let me tell you something. I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement.”
It was an astonishing thing to say. Here Bush was preparing to give a speech to CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists from around the country, which meets in Washington this week at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, and he was denying what he was about to see with his own two eyes.
President Barack Obama probably wishes Bush had been right about that. We know how his chief rival for the Democratic nomination feels about the conservative movement. During her husband's administration, Hillary Clinton called it the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a title that many cheeky movementarians decided to wear as a tin badge of honor.
It is not, really, a conspiracy. Members of the loose coalition that we call the conservative movement — lobbyists, think tank folks, congressional staffers, journalists, grass-roots activists et al. — do occasionally hold off-the-record meetings in our nation's capital, at the offices of Americans for Tax Reform on 12th Street, for instance. But those gatherings are notoriously leaky. Reporters are often in the room.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33094.html
According to Latimer's White House memoir, "Speech-Less," Bush leaned forward and said, “Let me tell you something. I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement.”
It was an astonishing thing to say. Here Bush was preparing to give a speech to CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists from around the country, which meets in Washington this week at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, and he was denying what he was about to see with his own two eyes.
President Barack Obama probably wishes Bush had been right about that. We know how his chief rival for the Democratic nomination feels about the conservative movement. During her husband's administration, Hillary Clinton called it the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a title that many cheeky movementarians decided to wear as a tin badge of honor.
It is not, really, a conspiracy. Members of the loose coalition that we call the conservative movement — lobbyists, think tank folks, congressional staffers, journalists, grass-roots activists et al. — do occasionally hold off-the-record meetings in our nation's capital, at the offices of Americans for Tax Reform on 12th Street, for instance. But those gatherings are notoriously leaky. Reporters are often in the room.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33094.html