Story Published:
Oct 16, 2009 at 2:02 AM PDT
Story Updated:
Oct 17, 2009 at 10:16 PM PDT
NEWPORT BEACH -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an expected 2012 Republican presidential candidate, and California Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are among the scheduled speakers at the two-day Western Conservative Political Action Conference which begins Friday in Newport Beach.
Pawlenty will be the keynote speaker at a dinner Friday night titled Advancing the Interests of Taxpayers in Times of Crisis.
Whitman, the former eBay chief executive officer, will speak at a VIP reception preceding the dinner. Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, will be the keynote speaker Saturday at a lunch titled Conservative Principles for Reinvigorating California's Economy.
Other speakers include Newport Beach Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who is running for the Republican Senate nomination, former California Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. and blogger Andrew Breitbart.
The conference has been held off and on for 15 years, but this weekend's event will be its third consecutive year and enthusiasm is at an all-time high thanks to President Barack Obama, according to Jim Lacy, chairman of the Western branch of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
"People are sick and tired of the mainstream media ogling over him," Lacy told City News Service. "We want to get out there so the opposition is shown, and we think as the facts get out on a number of his programs we can start to get the attention of the American people."
Lacy said the conference offers a healthy incubator for ideas that can help heal a conservative movement rocked by the unpopularity of then-President George W. Bush and congressional losses in 2006 and 2008.
The balm is bringing together the Reagan coalition of social and fiscal conservatives, Lacy said, citing the wide range of political philosophies of this weekend's speakers.
They include a centrist like Whitman and Gary Kreep, president of the U.S. Justice Foundation and a so-called "birther" attorney who alleges Obama cannot be president because he was not born in the United States, Lacy said.
Kreep has said he does not know whether Obama was born in the United States and has filed a federal lawsuit to find out, despite overwhelming evidence supporting Obama's birth in Hawaii.
Lacy thinks there's plenty of room under the Republican tent for the "birthers."
Lacy admits he initially thought those who challenged Obama's citizenship were "nutty," but the more he hears the more he wonders.
DeVore said California Republicans have a lot of work ahead of them because the brand has been tainted by "big-government" conservatives like Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"There are twin issues here -- certainly the growing enthusiasm is largely due to Obama, but there's another element -- it's not simply good enough to be defined as against something we also have to discuss what are we for," DeVore said.
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