Jared Bernstein, top economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, was on hand to defend the Democrats’ stimulus legislation, claiming that it’s “created or retained about 2 million jobs.” Also representing the left was Ron Blackwell, chief economist of the AFL-CIO, who advocated for a year-long extension of unemployment benefits, more emergency funding for states, and the creation of a new federal employment program akin to FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps.

Most speakers, though, rallied behind what’s likely to be the American Action Forum’s bread and butter: the advocation of job creation and economic development by way of freeing industry to do pretty much whatever it wants.

There was Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) arguing against cap-and-trade, card check and any more deficit spending. (He didn’t mention that he signed a letter this week requesting more Medicaid funding from Congress.) There was Stan Anderson, senior attorney for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, blasting the EPA as “enormously unhelpful” and promoting the further development of fossil fuels. (“Green jobs are not the short-term future,” he said.) There was William “Denny” Dennis, senior fellow at the NFIB Research Foundation, a small-business advocacy group, arguing that companies aren’t hiring in part because Congress hasn’t made the Bush tax cuts permanent. (“Uncertainty,” he said, is a greater hindrance to new hires than lack of available credit.) And there was Arnold Kling, former economist at the Federal Reserve and Freddie Mac, blasting the thought that more state funding would help the recovery. (If states are struggling financially, he said, they should simply slash salaries for teachers and cops.)

Finally, apropos of nothing, former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who heads the Forum, also stressed the importance of the United States having Israel’s back.

This group might be new, but don’t say it isn’t on message.

The electorate is split on whether they’d vote for Allen again — 36 percent say definitely no, 31 percent say definitely yes. This is the finding that leaps out:

That’s right: A majority of Hispanics, and 40 percent of African-Americans, would either vote for Allen or consider doing so. That’s interesting for a number of reasons. In 2006, while the “Macaca” scandal dragged him to defeat, Allen actually won 15 percent of the African-American vote. (The Hispanic vote, while growing fast, was too small to calculate.) I’ve heard Democrats talk down Allen’s chances of a 2012 comeback by predicting that the high African-American turnout that would come with an Obama re-election campaign would, presumably, bring out plenty of Democratic voters who’ll back Jim Webb. But Allen’s image among African-Americans is, for a defeated Republican who called a dark-skinned Indian man an obscure word for “monkey,” not that bad.

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Before this, there was…

Before that…

And before that…

Allen’s passing around a talking points two-pager that should bring a smile to anyone who covered his 2006 Senate race — it’s rife with football metaphors, casts the fight against cap-and-trade as a way to “play tenacious defense,” and packages all of this as a “Winning Energy Game Plan.” It’s a surprise that Allen is the president of AEFC, and not the “coach.”

ResurgentRepublic’s Advisory Board includes Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, George Allen, Bill Paxon, Vin Weber and Mary Matalin.

George Allen! Yes, all of these particulars know Allen well, but is this the first person you think of when Alex Trebek tells you “He is the future messaging leader of the Republican Party?”

Paxon is a former congressman who left his New York district in 1998 and Weber is a former congressman who left his Minnesota seat in 1992. Also:

The group’s National Survey Research Advisory Board includes Glen Bolger, Linda DiVall, Ed Goeas, John McLaughlin and Jan VanLohuizen.

Respectively, that’s the founder of Public Opinion Strategies, the founder of American Viewpoint, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 pollster, the founder of McLaughlin and Associates, and the founder of Voter Consumer Research.