Welcome to my CPAC 2015 live blog of day one. Â 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. Â Check back to CaffeinatedThoughts.com for additional CPAC posts. Â I’ll be tweeting additional updates as well. Â 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? Â Common Core has infiltrated private schools. Â Charter schools can be run by corporate owned. Â He’s concerned about strings attached. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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). Â 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. Â 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. Â They are doing Q&A with prospective presidential candidates. Â What I heard from Carson was positive, and pretty much the same speech I heard at the Iowa Freedom Summit. Â 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. Â The big story of the morning is the weather, attendance is fairly sparse. Â Dr. Ben Carson was the first speaker which is not the choice slot to have today. Â The forecast is that to clear up by noon.