It’s interesting that conservatives only notice “big government” when it’s something their political enemies want. When conservatives want it, apparently it doesn’t count.

• If a conservative wants a trillion-dollar foreign war, that doesn’t count.
• If a conservative wants a 700-billion-dollar bank bailout, that doesn’t count.
• If a conservative wants to spend billions fighting a needless and destructive War on Drugs, that doesn’t count.
• If a conservative wants to spend billions building border fences, that doesn’t count.
• If a conservative wants to “protect” the huge, unjust, and terribly inefficient Social Security and Medicare programs, that doesn’t count.
• If a conservative wants billions in farm subsidies, that doesn’t count.

It’s truly amazing how many things “don’t count.”

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh can’t ever be satisfied with enough military spending and foreign wars.

Conservatives like Mitt Romney want to force everyone to buy health insurance.

Conservatives like George W. Bush — well, his list of supporting big-government programs is almost endless.

Ronald Reagan, often praised as an icon of conservatism, signed massive spending bills that made his the biggest-spending administration (as a percentage of GDP) since World War II.

Indeed, as GOP leaders are busy screaming about the recent levels of deficit spending, it’s worth checking out the historic rise of the national debt — and which party controlled the White House when the biggest jumps occurred.

Adam Kokesh at an antiwar rally in September 2007 (Flickr: ragessos)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had barely begun to give his acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention when a clamor went up in the upper levels of St. Paul’s XCel Center. Adam Kokesh, a marine who had become a leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War, stood up and unfurled a banner with two sides. On the first side: “YOU CAN’T WIN AN OCCUPATION.” On the other side: “MCCAIN VOTES AGAINST VETS.”

[GOP1] Security guards went into action and dealt with Kokesh’s banner; an irritated crowd of Republicans chanted “USA” until the banner was removed. McCain moved right on, but Kokesh hadn’t finished yet.

“I’m grateful to the president of the United States for leading us in these dark days following the worst attack in American history,” said McCain.

“Ask McCain why he votes against veterans!” shouted Kokesh.

He didn’t get another chance to rain on McCain’s parade, but Kokesh remained proud of what he did. A video that cut together the interruption with jokes, subtitles, and a pounding soundtrack went up on Kokesh’s YouTube account. It’s still there, even though Kokesh’s relationship to the Republican Party is very different now. He’s a candidate for Congress in New Mexico’s 3rd district, looking like the Republican front-runner just one short year after he crashed the convention. Over the course of a year, he’s made the move from confrontation-seeking anti-war activist to clean-cut politician in the mold of the man he supported in 2008, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

“The ground has really shifted away from the neocon agenda,” Kokesh told TWI during a break in his campaign schedule. “There was no influx of young people getting into the Republican Party to support John McCain. By contrast, Ron Paul brought a huge number of young people into the Republican Party. It’s really exciting to see that happening again with my campaign.”

Kokesh’s move into electoral politics–he is 27 years old, and this is his first stab at campaigning–unifies two trends that have made the GOP that will fight the midterm elections dramatically different than the one Kokesh used to protest. The first is the rise of Ron Paul’s libertarianism. After years of obscurity, Paul came out of the 2008 elections with a national fundraising base and new respect for his ideas about war and economics among Republican activists and voters. The second trend is the Tea Party movement. After feeling ignored by George W. Bush’s Republicans, the conservative base has come together to demand commitment to the Constitution, commitment to small government values, and guarantees of national and state sovereignty.

“He never had an official role in the campaign, but we could count on him to energize people,” said Jesse Benton, Paul’s spokesman. Kokesh was a late addition to Paul’s 2008 “Rally for the Republic,” an event meant to “bring the Republican Party back to its roots” held in Minneapolis before McCain’s address to the RNC in 2008.

“I’d like to think that this symbolizes some good old-fashioned traditional conservatism making a comeback in the GOP,” said Benton. “Republicans have seen that running as the ‘war party’ is a loser for them.”

Today, Kokesh argues that the efforts of Paul supporters look more or less successful. Bush-era “neocons” are out of the political mainstream, replaced by people like him. “Our nation is drifting dangerously from freedom to fascism,” Kokesh said at a July 2008 rally for Paul in Washington, D.C.; at a 2007 Senate hearing, he was photographed holding up a tally of how many times then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had said “I don’t recall.” But rhetoric that sounded out of the mainstream that year sounds perfectly in line with the comments of Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) or Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and criticism of the GOP or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer controversial in the party’s grassroots.

“If you want to compare to Washington, yes, I’m a radical extremist,” Kokesh told TWI. “If you want to compare me to normal American values, I’m right in the middle of the road. I’m finding out that the grassroots of both parties are so grossly misrepresented by their representatives in Washington that we have more in common with each other.”

Depending on who’s analyzing the race, New Mexico’s third district is either an ideal or a poorly chosen battlefield for a candidate like Kokesh. It’s the most Democratic-leaning district in the state, having given 61 percent of the vote to the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), the freshman that Kokesh wants to challenge, won his election by 27 points, spending $1.5 million to fend off a Republican who spent only $190,000. One Democratic insider labeled Kokesh as an interesting candidate with an interesting strategy and no chance to win.

“There is almost zero chance this seat will change hands,” said David Wasserman, House race editor of the Cook Political Report, which ranks NM-3 the 133rd bluest seat in America. “It is just too Democratic.”

Still, Democrats and Republicans in the district, with the election 11 months away, expressed some respect for a first-time campaigner (Kokesh is 27 years old) who cleaned up for politics in a hurry. His connections to Ron Paul’s movement have allowed him to raise near $150,000 in a few months since entering the campaign in August.

“He’s an interesting candidate,” said Richard Ellenberg, chairman of the Santa Fe County Democratic Party. “There are some people who surprise me with–I almost want to call it their ‘star-struck’ approach to this campaign. They were star-struck by Obama and they’re star-struck by Kokesh.”

A spokeswoman for the New Mexico Republican Party told TWI that the presence of another candidate in the Republican primary–Tom Mullins, another first-time politician–prevents the party from saying anything more than how its members are “excited to have strong candidates in this district.” But John Otter, a founder of the Green Party of the United States who is the party’s treasurer in Santa Fe, said that Kokesh had a shot at winning over anti-war liberals.

“Personally, I’d vote for him,” said Otter. “I’d be be attracted to someone with a position against the war. Lujan was elected with liberal votes, and he’s just gone with the flow.”

Kokesh’s appeal has a lot to do with the hard-edged activism that launched his career. He has traded in military fatigues for suits and plaid shirts. “I think people have told him that the one-fisted Black Panther salute might not sell anymore,” said Jesse Benton. His message, however, is the same anti-war libertarian populism that used to get him kicked out of buildings.

“You can’t just start chanting ‘End the Fed’ at a GOP county meeting,” said Kokesh. “You have to take a step back and explain this perspective on monetary policy. But what’s so exciting now, in terms of the opportunity presented by this horrible economic situation is that you can start teaching these Austrian economic principles, and all of a sudden they don’t seem so abstract because you can connect them to what’s happening in real life.”

Mullins, who entered the race in October and is running a more traditional Republican campaign, has not chosen to make an issue out of Kokesh’s anti-war activism or argue that his opponent is out of the party mainstream. “I disagree with his characterization of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘occupations,’” said Mullins. “I think the president made the right decision, and we should finish the job, but to be honest the war doesn’t come up much right now.”

Kokesh agreed with Mullins, after smiling at how his opponent had tried to publicize his own libertarian credentials. (“He’s holding a copy of The Road to Serfdom on his website,” said Kokesh. “Of course, he’s also holding up a copy of Going Rogue.”) Anti-war activists are key to the Kokesh campaign. He received an attention-getting endorsement from former Sen. Mike Gravel, and he’s publicized his support from Tina Richards, a “marine mom” who gained notoriety after a heated 2007 confrontation with Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wisc.) over why Democrats refused to cut off funding for the Iraq War. But the issue that got him to confront John McCain isn’t motivating voters in New Mexico.

“Most of them don’t care, and that’s really sad,” said Kokesh. “It’s not just Republicans, but all voters. The Obama administration is keeping up the Bush policy of keeping Americans isolated from the war.”

But Democrats, even as they write off his chances at a win, say Kokesh’s transition from the anti-war movement to anti-Fed, libertarian populism is coming at a perfect time.

“I think he’s trying to pick up a national mantle, as a national personality in the Ron Paul mode,” said Ellenberg. “I think he’s been successful so far.”

Next to Rand Paul, the congressman’s son who is running strong for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, Johnson might be the best-liked politician among Paul supporters — e specially now that Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-S.C.) career has been shredded by a sex scandal.

Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina (Photos courtesy of Chuck DeVore, Agencia Brasil)

Carly Fiorina announced her 2010 campaign for California’s U.S. Senate seat in the usual way. She rolled out a new Website. She bounded across a stage at a “green detergents” factory to the strains of “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and gave a short speech about “solutions that work.” Then she added a step that has become more-or-less essential for serious Republicans–a conference call with conservative bloggers. Over 23 minutes, she fielded some of the friendlier questions she’d get all day, such as whether she’d learned anything from 2009′s successful Republican candidates that could help her in her challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

“My team knows very well how to run a campaign against a nasty Democrat,” said Fiorina.

[GOP1]Halfway through the call, however, conservative blogger Dan Riehl awoke the elephant in the room. Did Fiorina have anything to say to Chuck DeVore? One day earlier, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had endorsed DeVore, a Republican assemblyman from Irvine, Calif., who had been running against Boxer for months, and had pre-emptively attacked Fiorina for her allegedly liberal positions.

“I am a pro-life conservative,” said Fiorina. “I believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. I am a fiscal conservative. In other words, I share the conservative values that many Republican voters share, and have been public about that for a very long time.”

Riehl stayed on the line, posing more questions from the right about McCain-Feingold campaign legislation, and about regulation of the internet. “I’m just picking up on things that I’ve seen,” he said, “that have been used to come after you from the conservative base.” And Fiorina, who had not brought up DeVore, went after him for accepting DeMint’s endorsement. “I find it interesting,” she said, “that Chuck DeVore, a couple weeks ago, was claiming that he is an anti-establishment candidate and perhaps he isn’t quite so much.”

It was a punchy debut for a candidate who, if national Republicans had their way, would not be worrying about a primary. Getting Fiorina, the multi-millionaire former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to join the race, was a coup for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And in other public appearances, Fiorina has brushed DeVore aside. Her opponent, she says, is Boxer. The man who got into this race in November 2008 should be an afterthought. As DeVore ties Fiorina in the polls and turns conservative activists against her–as he talks bluntly about fascism and even about Barack Obama’s birth records–he’s forced Republicans to pay attention.

In the wake of the NY-23 special election debacle, where Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman united the national conservative movement against a liberal Republican candidate and let a Democrat sneak in to win a key congressional seat, Republican strategists are looking at more contested primaries than they’d like. While the Senate primary between Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) has gotten the most attention, there are primaries in Ohio, Kentucky, New Hampshire and to a lesser extent Illinois that pit experienced Republican politicians against more ideological activist candidates–some with deep pockets. Democrats who are running defense on their control of Congress are making all they can out of primary battles that, so far, have driven candidates such as Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) to dent their moderate credentials as they try to win over the party’s base.

The California primary is something of an aberration. DeVore has a longer political resume than Fiorina. Her political baptism came as an adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign. He worked for the Reagan administration and has been a member of the California legislature since 2005. He has a lengthy voting record and a longer rhetoric of conservative speeches and blog posts. Ever since it became clear that Fiorina might jump in the race, his small campaign staff has laid traps for her by portraying her as a closet moderate–the kind of candidate many Republicans believe they need in blue California, but not one the base should have to settle for.

“I’m a movement conservative,” DeVore told TWI. “I’ve been in the conservative movement since 1981. I was head of the College Republicans at Cal State-Fullerton.”

DeVore’s case to national activists has been bolstered by unexpectedly strong showings in the polls. According to a Field Poll conducted in October, Fiorina, who had once led DeVore 31-20 in trial heats, had fallen into a 21-20 tie. That Field Poll showed Boxer leading Fiorina by 14 points and DeVore by 17 points; a Rasmussen Poll conducted in September, before both candidates were in the race, showed the race closer, with DeVore outperforming Fiorina. And a November Los Angeles Times poll had DeVore and Fiorina tied at 27 percent each.

One Democratic strategist suggested that if DeVore and Fiorina were on equal financial footing, DeVore would be the stronger candidate. An October FEC report revealed that DeVore, having raised around $700,000, had blown through all but $60,000 of it. DeVore argues that this is more than previous candidates against Boxer have raised; other Republicans look at that as more proof that Fiorina’s potential to raise millions of dollars is another reason to back her. (When one blogger suggested that DeVore’s low fundraising numbers ruled him out as a serious candidate, he dove into the comment section to pronounce “DeVore Derangement Syndrome.”) One Republican strategist suggested to TWI that California Republicans, tired of watching obscure conservative candidates loose statewide elections, are ready to get behind Fiorina. They just didn’t want to throw DeVore under the bus while doing it.

DeVore, well aware of the buzz, has responded by keeping up aggressive web-driven campaigns against Fiorina and Boxer and holding out the possibility that he can raise more money. He told TWI that he’d had conversations with the Club for Growth, the conservative 527 whose money, according to the campaign, “put gas in the tank” for Doug Hoffman.

“I get dozens of emails from him every week, as do other activists,” said Ray McNalley, a Republican strategist in Sacramento. “He’s running a race that’s more aggressive, I think, than what you’ve seen from some of the last statewide Republican challenges. If he comes in with a couple bucks in the bank, if he exceeds expectations, he could light a fire out there.”

From the conservative activist’s perspective, DeVore’s an ideal candidate. After writing a war novel, “China Attacks,” in 2000, DeVore became a frequent reviewer at Amazon.com. His take-outs on action novels and political texts reveal more about his political thinking than most candidates would be comfortable divulging. On a Tom Clancy novel about the threat posed by Japan Devore wrote: “Replace “Japan” with “China” and the thesis holds together rather well in 2005.” On Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”: “Roosevelt’s New Deal had much in common with Mussolini’s fascism.” On the libertarian lessons of his state’s economic meltdown: “Gazing at California, [libertarian economist Friedrich von] Hayek would surely shake his head sadly.”

When he speaks at length about politics, DeVore reveals a sober view of his state’s constitutional woes. He was aware, he said, that liberals view California’s supermajority requirements for passing budgets and raising taxes as factors that wrecked the state. He disagrees.

“We’ve had this system in place for quite a while,” said DeVore, “but if you go back before these innovations of term limits, gerrymandering and donation limits, what you find is a remarkable amount of bipartisanship, of budgets getting passed on time. This kind of hyperpartisanship, I think, is a relatively modern invention.”

Asked about the use of the filibuster and senatorial holds in the body he wanted to join, DeVore suggested that presidents might deserve more deference than President Obama is currently getting. He recoiled at the idea of filibustering judges unless there was a reason to. Instead, he talked about issues he wanted to work on with Democrats, such as prison reform.

The quiet campaign against DeVore hasn’t really gotten into those issues. Republican strategists have heavily advertised DeVore’s friendship and connections with Floyd Brown, a Republican strategist who has “disputed” the president’s birth certificate–some of the most unpleasant material wound up in The Huffington Post, credited to a “Republican source.” DeVore acknowledged that Fiorina would cast him as an out-of-the-mainstream radical and make issues out of his connections.

“She’s going to do that,” said DeVore, “just like I’m going to remind people that John McCain and Olympia Snowe and Lindsay Graham are backing her.”

Nonetheless, asked what he thought of Brown’s ideas, DeVore didn’t take the chance to denounce “birther” rumors or the movement itself–which has been heavily active in California.

“The president is doing himself no favors by spending millions of dollars to block the release of documents surrounding his birth certificate,” said DeVore. “As long as the president keeps fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of such things, people are going to remain skeptical.” The door was left open, said DeVore, because Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign didn’t go after Obama’s qualifications when it had the chance, and because there were no statutory requirements for verifying a candidate’s citizenship.

Answers like that give ammunition to Fiorina’s supporters; they also ensure that the would-be-frontrunner can’t ignore the conservative movement’s preferred candidate. A week after the Fiorina conference call, her campaign created a Website, CallMeBarbara.com, dedicated to a June incident in which Boxer told a military witness to call her “senator” instead of “ma’am.” DeVore’s campaign made great hay out of the Boxer remarks in June, producing a parody Web video, milking the incident for all it was worth. When they saw Fiorina treading the same turf, they blasted out an email to reporters.

“If the Fiorina campaign intends to send out breathless asks with five-month lags,” wrote DeVore media adviser Joshua Trevino, “then I look forward to [a] March 2010 e-mail beginning, “How ’bout them Saints?”

At the same time, Paul is never going to out-Kentucky his opponent. He’s one of the 2010 upstarts casting his campaign as part of a nationwide movement to clean up Washington and radically roll back government.

My immediate concerns regarding government lie more on the Federal level than at the State level which is why I am aiming for a position in the Federal Government. As this would be a large personal change and require a firm commitment to public service, I made the decision early that I were make such a change, I would prefer to do it for 6 years (as a Senator) and not for 2 (as a Congressman).

There’s considerable irony here. Fifty-three years ago, John F. Kennedy famously beat Joseph Russo for a seat in Congress after a janitor, also named Joseph Russo, was placed on the ballot to help split the vote. Republicans might not get so lucky with this Kennedy. “I do not have a campaign fund,” he warns, “nor the ability to obtain the required signatures to get on the ballot.”

Values Voter Summit 2009 (Photo by: David Weigel)

As the fourth annual Values Voter Summit wound down, Benjamin Paulding found a seat near the lobby to relax and reflect. An 18-year-old student who was studying accounting at an online university, he had arrived under a cloud. He was leaving in a much better mood.

“I had been thinking that unless God turns something around, the nation was doomed,” said Paulding. “I think our doom is delayed now, because America is awakening. We woke up late, but we’re going to able to make a difference now.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Paulding’s new optimism wasn’t limited to the way Americans might turn against abortion or against gay marriage, even though multiple speakers at the two-day conference (a third day was limited to a morning worship session) had deployed deceptively positive poll numbers to argue that most voters now agreed that “abortion is immoral” or that same-sex marriage should remain illegal. He was increasingly convinced that his country was ready to turn away from the economic policies of President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats.

“Taxes are going to end up going up, especially if the health care bill passes,” said Paulding. “And all the debt–if you do the math it would cost $438,000 for each household to pay off the debt right now,” he said, quoting a number he’d researched on his own.

Paulding’s worries were reflected throughout the summit, in the halls and in the speeches from the main stage. While the second day of the conference was given over to more overtly social conservative causes than the first, from activists who demanded the “defunding” of Planned Parenthood, campaigning to ban gay marriage, and working in general to “save” the hearts and minds of fellow Americans, it also cemented a move toward economic and constitutional worries. Attendee after attendee told TWI that the size of the national debt and what they perceived as an abandonment of the Constitution’s original intent were worrying them as much as the assault on their values.

“For the Christian right, this needed to happen,” said Jamie Johnson, an Iowa activist who runs the conservative Faith and Freedom Network in that state, and who fell short in a 2008 bid for local office. “The shock of having a far-left president has awakened many who only thought about two issues.” Those issues had been gay rights and abortion. “They realize now that the founding fathers cared about many issues related to liberty and security and prosperity.”

“It started when Bush was still president,” said Johnson’s father Fred, attending the conference with him for the second consecutive year. “Most of us common people were thinking, ‘We play by the rules, and we provide for our families, and we have to bail out these folks because they were irresponsible?’”

The merger of mainstream Republican Party rhetoric and the priorities of “Christian right” activists happened naturally for people like Johnson and Paulding. It was also politically astute for a wing of the conservative movement that had, in recent years, become somewhat toxic. In a bland speech notable for its sudden embrace of economic populism, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) told the crowd that “just across the river, the signs are good that we’re about to see a low tax, pro-growth, pro-life government of Virginia.” He was referring to Robert McDonnell, a former Virginia attorney general whose commanding position in the off-year gubernatorial election has been endangered since The Washington Post reported on a 1989 thesis about a possible ultraconservative “family agenda” which McDonnell handed into Pat Robertson’s Regent University. Hours after Romney spoke, the newspaper released a poll showing McDonnell’s poll lead slipping from 15 points to four points.

Romney’s speech did not exactly electrify the Summit. Unlike most of the politicians who appeared before the respectful crowd, he used a TelePrompTer–its presence in the Saturday morning session inspired barbs from Family Research Council emcee Gil Mertz and Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), both of whom joked that the speech-making technology must have been there for President Obama. (Obama’s alleged inability to speak without a text is a popular conservative meme.) An unscientific straw poll of attendees found only 12.4 percent of them favoring a Romney nomination in 2012, less than half of the support found for former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.).

But if Romney didn’t have his “finger on the pulse” of Values Voters–as FRC’s Tony Perkins said of Huckabee–he got close the model for their rhetoric and political agenda. The overarching problem with the Obama administration, Romney argued, was that “big government activists” were “substitut[ing] their ideology for the wisdom and good sense of the American people.”

Even the activists who focused on the movement’s social agenda found their way to that argument. Lila Rose, a 21-year-old anti-abortion rights activist who has become famous in the movement for undercover exposes of Planned Parenthood clinics, dazzled the crowd with a terrifying, searching vision of how Americans could be turned against the practice. “This might sound a little strange,” said Rose, “but if I could insist, as long as they are legal in our nation, abortions would be done in the public square, until we were so sick of seeing them that we would do away with the injustice altogether. Maybe then we would value the unborn child as much as we value the one-year-old child who is just beginning to walk. Maybe then, we would hear angels singing, as we ponder the glory of human life.”

That was Rose’s emotional appeal. Her agenda, however, was all about taxation and government funding. She singled out, as the greatest achievement possibly brought about by her work, a move by the Tennessee state legislature to direct $1.1 million away from abortion providers. “Planned Parenthood,” said Rose, “you will be de-funded.” It evoked the good feelings that came from the recent de-funding of ACORN, and it brought out bursts of applause.

The economic appeal trickled down from the main stage, where every word was recorded by a bevy of cameras and tape recorders, and into the more obscure breakout sessions that closed the non-VIP portion of the summit. A session on the “New Masculinity” went deep into the reasons why, and how, conservatives could prevent children from entering pre-marital domestic partnerships or from embracing the “malady” of homosexuality. Michael Schwartz, the chief of staff to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), told the audience that praising one’s parents in nightly prayers could enforce the notion of marriage, and telling children that “all pornography is homosexual pornography” could prevent them from becoming perverted. The point, however, was that welfare and government acceptance of homosexuality were costing America its prosperity.

“Last year, forty percent of all children in this country were born to mothers who were not married,” said Schwartz. “That does not count the infants who were murdered before they were born. Eighty-two percent of African-American children do not have contact with their fathers.”

“Thank you, Great Society,” remarked one member of the audience, referring to the 1960s social programs that, according to the panelists, replaced the family with the state and led to not just economic destruction but weaker institutions.

The same concerns were voiced by Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas), a conservative who has gained support nationally with his robust defenses of states’ rights. “Americans are returning more and more to the words of our founding fathers,” said Perry, who claimed that “clashing values” were weakening the nation. President Obama’s policies were proof of liberals’ value; the relative success of Texas was proof that conservative morals and economics were the answer. “The states should no longer stand by,” said Perry, “and have our pockets picked, our futures mortgaged, and our rights taken away.”

But Perry also revealed how the rhetoric of states’ rights and de-funding controversial organizations was bound up in the teachings of the hard right. “Lately,” said Perry, “I’ve found myself going back to a book that’s titled ‘The 5,000 Year Leap.’”

There were head nods and noises of approval from many members of the audience. That book, written by the late ultra-conservative scholar-cum-conspiracy theorists Cleon Skousen, had been rescued from 28 years of obscurity by Glenn Beck. Perry gave an accurate summary of its content, telling the audiences that Skousen “shares his views of the foundational elements of our nation, placing a special emphasis in faith in God–I think undeniably a source of America’s remarkable success. He asserts that natural law, God’s law, is the basis of our nation’s laws.”

The message got through to the activists who left Washington a few hours later. President Obama’s programs were failing because they were socialist, and defied the Constitution. Fealty to the Constitution was bound to succeed, because America’s founding document was divinely inspired. In gearing up for the 2010 elections and making political hay out of the debt, and out of government funding for groups like Planned Parenthood and ACORN, this was the logic that should guide their campaigning.

“Great news for Rand Paul ahead of his scheduled ‘moneybomb’ internet fundraiser on August 20,” writes Joe Arnold in an analysis of the network’s poll. “It paints him as a legitimate candidate and not a fringe candidate.”

I profiled the younger Paul’s campaign last week.

“If the burden of all this thievery gets too thick,” says Chris, “and you can’t make it anymore? If that’s what’s necessary, that’s what’s necessary.”

In an interview at the Freedom’s Phoenix web site, Hancock conducts a longer interview with Chris and other protesters carrying guns at the rally.

“I’m almost always armed,” says Chris. “Sometimes when I take a shower I leave it on the sink.”

Watch the video after the jump.

Here’s a photo of Chris B. being interviewed by RP4409, from a forum at ArizonaShooting.com.

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) speaks at the Tax Day Tea Party in Columbia, S.C., on April 15. (YouTube: GovernorSanford)

At the Washington, D.C. office of FreedomWorks, the conservative non-profit that has promoted and trained organizers of anti-tax Tea Parties, no one knew what Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) was going to say. A TV was tuned to the press conference Sanford had called to explain a confusing four-day absence from the state, about which rumors had been multiplying in the local and national media. Staffers watched as the governor gave a strange, rambling statement about his “great adventures on the Appalachian Trail” and how he’d called the home office for his first gubernatorial race “Jurassic Park.” Eventually, agonizingly, he got to the point. He had been unfaithful to his wife with a woman in Argentina.

“I’ve let down a lot of people,” said Sanford.

That was an understatement.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“Overall, there’s a real feeling of disappointment around here,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of Federal and State Campaigns for FreedomWorks, and a key campaigner for the Tea Parties. “He really was a guy who united” — he paused — “or unites the different wings of the Republican Party. Economic conservatives, social conservatives, national security conservatives. After today? No way.”

Thanks to his early, insistent opposition to the economic stimulus package — a campaign that only ended this month when the South Carolina Supreme Court overruled Sanford’s attempt to turn down some of the federal aid appropriated by Congress — Sanford had risen quickly as a national spokesman for hard-core economic conservatism. The chairman (until Wednesday) of the Republican Governors’ Association, he had keynoted the Ronald Reagan Banquet at the Conservative Political Action Conference, cut a prominent TV ad explaining his opposition to the stimulus, and spoke at multiple anti-tax Tea Parties on April 15. He even led a “Tea Party 2.0″ national teleconference for the RGA, attempting to harness conservative excitement about the rallies into support for the GOP.

According to the governor’s own timeline, he and his wife Jenny Sanford had been “working through this thing for about the last five months,” meaning that he had been riven by the potential scandal during the entire period he spent making the case against Democratic economic plans. On Wednesday, conservative activists expressed shock, surprise, and a sense of betrayal at Sanford’s admission. They laughed off Sanford’s chances of a political comeback or a 2012 presidential bid. Some expressed sympathy for his family while some wrote him out of the “freedom movement,” worrying that his problems have robbed activists of a national voice at an incredibly important time.

“We’re going to press on,” said FreedomWorks’ Steinhauser. “There are going to be other leaders and activists, and hopefully elected officials, who will take the lead on these issues. If there’s another guy who wants to get involved in what we’re doing, we want to work with him.”

“It’s not helpful,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. “This is a guy who clearly could have been in the running as a serious presidential candidate with a serious record of cutting taxes and cutting spending.” But Norquist tempered his gloom with a joke. “It does indicate that men who oppose federal spending at the local level are irresistible to women.”

Many activists had previously believed Sanford’s original explanations for his trip — that he had been “doing some writing” or walking the Appalachian trial — and defended him from media attacks. The day before the press conference, RedState.com editor Erick Erickson published an essay on “the lesson of Mark Sanford’s hike,” calling it “refreshing that Mark Sanford is secure enough in himself and the people of South Carolina that he does not view himself as an indispensable man.”

Erickson was not so forgiving on Wednesday. “I think Governor Sanford needs to go crawl into a very dark hole where no one can see him or hear him and rehabilitate himself.” Erickson said in an email, ” In two years, when the country remains in the gutter, he’ll be able to rehabilitate himself.” Erickson was less worried, though, about potential blowback from Sanford’s scandal onto his supporters, because “the left will ignore his actual record and portray him as some sort of stalwart for Christianity and social values.”

According to David Boaz, the executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, which has hosted Sanford for speeches on privacy and the size of government, the scandal may very well set back the governor’s causes. “To not have him on the stage, when there’s not anybody else who can step in, is a serious problem,” Boaz explained. He suggested that the same dynamic was at work now; the “freedom movement” was gaining momentum, but it would be deprived of a leader who could frame their issues. “Sanford was not Reagan, at least not yet, but I think if more people got to know him they would have liked him. And now they won’t get to know him.”

Eric Odom, an activist who helped organized the Chicago Tea Party and runs TaxDayTeaParty.com, cited the Sanford meltdown as a reason why he opposed bringing partisanship into the debate over spending. “This may finally provoke Republicans into getting rid of the 11th Commandment [Reagan's maxim about not criticizing fellow Republicans] and defend those politicians who are preaching that they’re true conservative leaders while doing this kind of thing in the background.” Odom had found Sanford’s appropriation of the Tea Party name “distasteful,” even though he had been optimistic about the opportunity to bring independents into the fold. He hoped that Sanford’s own record could be examined fairly. “If he wants to fly to Argentina and have an affair,” said Odom, “it doesn’t change the fact that he ran his state wisely.”

Some of the most reluctant criticism of Sanford came from the office of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). The two men had been friends in Congress, and Paul considered Sanford one of the few Republicans he could support in a presidential bid. “He’s saddened and is thinking of the governor’s family,” said Paul’s spokesman Jesse Benton. “The freedom movement will continue to thank Mark Sanford for his leadership on fiscal discipline, and it will look to other people, like Sen. Jim DeMint, for future leadership and work on issues like accountability at the Federal Reserve.”

Other conservatives mentioned Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) as a leader who can take the mantle from Sanford, while few speculated on who they’d like to see as a “dark horse” presidential candidate representing their views.

“We’ll see,” said David Boaz. “Maybe all of the other Republicans will have affairs before 2012 and it’ll even the playing field.”

Note: An earlier version of this article states that Sanford had appeared at a “fundraising” dinner for CPAC.