CPAC 2015 Day One Live Blog

Welcome to my CPAC 2015 live blog of day one.  There is so much going on here and last year I found it best to journal throughout the day. Updates will be on top, refresh your browser to view updates (updates will be in EST).

12:53p – Going to abandon the live blog… speakers are too spread out and the internet has been spotty.  Check back to CaffeinatedThoughts.com for additional CPAC posts.  I’ll be tweeting additional updates as well.   The schedule this year just doesn’t lend itself to a day-long live blog.

11:23a – Came back to hear from a speaker from American Atheists… Interesting… The audience was politely silent.

10:43a – Taking a coffee break, can’t have caffeinated thoughts without caffeine.

10:38a – McClusky plugs the Cato Institute website.

10:36a – McGroarty plugs Parents Against the Common Core and Truth in American Education as places activists can go.

10:33a – McGroarty: Do parents have a say in what is going on?  Common Core has infiltrated private schools.  Charter schools can be run by corporate owned.  He’s concerned about strings attached.  McClusky acknowledged that vouchers can have regulations attached.

10:31a – McClusky: There would be a lot of national continuity and similarities anyway, we don’t need to force national standards.

10:29a – McClusky: We need to move away from centralization.  We need to move toward school choice and tie money to kids.

10:26a – McGroarty predicts that if a pro-Common Core GOP candidate is nominated, that candidate will be unelectable as Hillary Clinton doesn’t have Common Core baggage.

10:25a – McClusky notes that parents across the political spectrum are tired of test obsession.

10:20a – McClusky says that Common Core will be an issue in 2016 that is an indicator of where a candidate stands on a federal role in education.  McGroarty says people want to see if candidates are fighting Common Core.

10:15a – Both McClusky and McGroarty said that opposition to the Common Core has not been engineered or based on some grand strategy, but sprung up from the bottom up.  McClusky – people are rising up to oppose it.

10:13a – McClusky – if you can get out of the Common Core consortia (PARCC or Smarter Balanced) then your state can start to take back control of their education.

10:09a – McGroarty: “Parents are seeing what is coming home in their children’s backpacks and they are appalled.”

10:04a – Common Core panel with Emmett McGroarty of American Principles Project and Neal McClusky of the Cato Institute.  McClusky said we agree with advocates that the standards were created by NGO & CCSSO and that is where the agreement ends.

9:50p – Love: The Senate is slow…. Yes, yes it is.  Kind of like the internet here.

9:46p – Sasse: If we don’t have a sense of the meaning of work, if we don’t pass that off to the next generation, then the American experiment is not going to work for you.

9:41a – Sasse: We need more people involved in politics who don’t care about politics.

9:39a – Some sound system issues… now remedied.

9:33a – Love: My challenge to my colleagues is not to yield the moral high ground to the left.

9:31a – Love: Every program addressing poverty should be about making it temporary, not tolerable.

9:29a – Love – it’s time for the federal government to trust the American people.

9:20a – Panel session on reaching millennials with Congresswoman Mia Love (R-UT) and U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE).

9:12a – Lee gave a good brief explanation of federalism and the separation of powers in the Q&A section (they still asked him a couple questions even though he wasn’t running for President).  He expressed concern about how President Obama is violating this by his unprecedented use of his executive authority.

9:03a – U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) admitted he is not a running for president.  He said what he is looking for in a candidate is someone who is principles, positive and proven.

8:55a – CPAC is doing something new this year.  They are doing Q&A with prospective presidential candidates.  What I heard from Carson was positive, and pretty much the same speech I heard at the Iowa Freedom Summit.  You can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #CPACQ.

8:45a – as you can see from the picture below that we have some snow in the DC Metro area today and of course my rental car did not have a brush… nice.  The big story of the morning is the weather, attendance is fairly sparse.  Dr. Ben Carson was the first speaker which is not the choice slot to have today.  The forecast is that to clear up by noon.