It’s great to be back at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., this year at the Marriott Wardman Hotel on upper Connecticut. I have a long history with CPAC, having co-chaired it for several years during the early Reagan Administration, and recall one year in particular, when CPAC was scheduled the weekend before the Monday I took the District of Columbia bar exam. It was a great CPAC, I got to sit next to President Reagan on the podium, and after a couple nights of conservative socializing I still managed to pass the bar.

One of the meetings at CPAC I look forward to is the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union. At that meeting, the Board choses the winner of the annual Reagan Award, a $10,000 cash prize given to an exemplary conservative grassroots activist over the past year. Nominees this year included Tea Party leaders; Hannah Giles, who famously outed ACORN; Dave Bossie of Citizens United (who won the award almost twenty years ago); and several others. This year, the ACU board decided to give the award generically, not to just one person, but to the Tea Party movement in general, in the form of materials and financial support up to the $10,000 prize. There are several organizations that represent the Tea Party movement and the prize will be calibrated to be sure of supportng and encouraging the actual grass roots activists. The award will be formally announced at the CPAC dinner tonight featuring former Congressman J.C. Watts with remarks by RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.