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The Resurgent Gathering
A year ago, friends suggested I put together a conference of ideas for the conservative movement — something where actual conservatives get on stage and discuss ideas, not where people pay money to claim their ideas are conservative. I took up the challenge and the Resurgent Gathering comes to fruition on August 2-5, 2018, in Austin, TX.
Don’t take my word on it. The agenda is below. I’d love to see you there.
You’ll see one open slot. That was where EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was speaking until, umm, he could not come anymore.
Breakfast and lunch are included in the registration cost on the 3rd and 4th. The Sheraton Hotel in Austin, TX where we are having the event, is offering a hotel discount as well.
Resurgent Gathering, August 2-5, 2018, Austin, TX
August 2
6:00pm Welcome Reception
August 3
8:00 – 8:45 am BREAKFAST
8:15 – 8:45 am Susan Molanari of Google in conversation with Erick
9:00 – 9:30 Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas
9:30 – 10:00 Carly Fiorina, Chair of Unlocking Potential
10:00 – 10:30 OPEN
10:30 – 10:45 BREAK
10:45 – 11:30 Breakout Session
Using Facebook For Grassroots Organization=
11:45 – 12:45 pm LUNCH
12:00 – 12:30 1789 Alliance and Erick Erickson
1:00 – 1:30 Congressman Dave Brat of Virginia*
1:30 – 2:00 Warren Davidson, Congressman from Ohio
2:00 – 2:15 Ajit Pai, Chairman of the FCC
2:15 – 3:15 Ajit Pai and the Koch Institute
3:15 -3:30 Break
3:30 – 4:00 Facebook in Discussion with Erick Erickson
4:00 – 4:30 Chip Roy, Candidate for TX21
4:30 – 5:00 Wrap Up
August 4
8:30 – 9:15 am BREAKFAST
9:15: – 9:30 Welcome
9:30 – 10:00 State/Local Initiative Panel
10:00 – 10:45 Senator David Perdue of Georgia
10:45 – 11:00 BREAK
11:00 – 11:45 Breakout Session
Google Grassroots
11:50 – 12:20pm Senator Ted Cruz
12:20 – 1:15 pm LUNCH
12:30 – 1:00 Koch Representative in conversation with Erick
1:15 – 1:45 Matt Krause, Texas State Representative
1:45 – 2:15 Mark Walker, Congressman from North Carolina
2:15 – 2:45 Secretary of Energy Rick Perry*
2:45 – 3:00 BREAK
3:00 – 4:00 ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
TPPF
4:00 – 4:30 Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona
4:30 – 5:00 Host conversation (to be revealed)
5:00 – 5:30 Resurgent Presentation and wrap up
August 5
9:00 – 10:00 am Fellowship Message and Breakfast
*final confirmation forthcoming
Published in Meetups
Oh, hell. If you go back to the GOP primaries I probably declared him DOA on at least a half dozen occasions. He violated everything that I considered “normal” and “acceptable” in politics. And I surely “knew” he had no shot in the general election. But when you find yourself in a hole on those things the absolute best thing to do is stop digging.
As Selena Zito is fond of saying, Donald Trump did not create this moment in time, this moment in time created Donald Trump. He’s tapped into something that I now simply refuse to dismiss because it contradicts everything I thought I knew before November 8, 2016. I have chosen to constantly remind myself that it’s not 1988 anymore.
I’m not sure what your point is. I’ve never said Trump created this moment in time, I think Trump is a creation of and a reaction to Obama, and I think Trump’s ardent supporters are a creation of and a reaction to Obama’s ardent supporters.
Au contraire. I would suggest that the offense flagged is not that Trump is called an “orange overlord”. It is more likely the either direct or indirect inference that said “insider” is a member of a cult and one who has no reasoning to do anything other than what said Orange Overlord says.
The point is that I had been proven wrong so many times by Trump on his tactics that it made me stop with the knee jerk reactions to them. What’s the old line about insanity?
I also refuse to think that this is superficial as you suggest, that it’s only the reaction to the Obama years. That’s too self-absolving. I have maintained that when it comes to any analysis of our current political climate there are two fundamental questions that absolutely need to be asked: 1. What enabled Trump to capture the Republican nomination? And 2. What policies or actions did I personally support that allowed that to happen? If you’re answering the first and not the second you’re doing a disservice to yourself.
For myself, that is how my position evolved on trade. Where I was once a free trade absolutionist and preached the prosperity gospel of lifting the world out of poverty, I turned a blind eye to what was happening in my own community. It’s sooooo easy to yell, “Get off your lazy behind and move to where the jobs are!” and not deal with the reality of what we were creating in its wake.
But nobody, either right or left, wants to ask these questions. (And the left has their own unique set of questions but many overlap with ours.) We only want to embrace our political faith that says we have reached a cool, considered technocratic truth and dismiss the hard questions. “Hillary was a historically bad candidate,” or “Any Republican could have won” are panaceas.
Bingo. It was not Trump that created the “following”. The people in this Movement would have supported Ted Cruz or any other candidate who demonstrated that they were from the fighter caucus who was not content with the status quo. Been there, done that and it was always losing.
This is not “Trump’s” Movement. And he is not its most articulate champion.
However, he is its most effective leader. Bigly.
I think the HWs would have been happy to criticize Cruz if he won the Presidency. Like so many counter-factuals, we will never know.
But, then again, Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination, so I guess it is a good thing that we don’t have a family of international assassins living the White House.
If Ted Cruz was unable to volley off that from Trump, he would have been made mincemeat by Hillary.
Seriously? You’re still bringing the Cruz’ father taunt up? [shakes head]
It’s how I have answered. More than once. It’s also the tacit answer I’ve given by not saying much definite either way. But I bet it’s easy for those who assume they know which side I’m on to miss noticing this. After all, we often infer people’s positions by which outgroup we place them in. Members who perceive me — or any other Ricochetian — as “against them” are likely to infer certain political positions from that.
Perhaps more troubling to some, “ten years from now” is well after 2020. There’s an election in 2020, and while it’s statistically unlikely my state will swing, it appears morally important to some to know that their side has my vote ASAP. In that light, a noncommittal “ask me ten years from now” may seem treacherous, disloyal. What animosity must be holding me back if I’m not on board with them already?
My protest of, I’m not held back by animosity, I’m just a slow decider, is consistent with how I’ve treated other politicians, but I have reason to doubt it will be believed. For one thing, I admit that, if I’m pestered enough to make up my mind before I’m good and ready, I do tend to resent it a little. In the larger scheme of things, that resentment constitutes at most a minuscule bit of animosity, unlikely to matter long-term. In here-and-now skirmishes, though, those minuscules have a way of getting magnified beyond proportion. Which is one reason to answer by simply leaving some things unsaid, as I often have.
Then all it takes is some HWs, in context, to decide, rightly or wrongly, that mocking the President is meant as an attack on them to generate a flag.
You say “direct or indirect inference”. That is, you admit that the inferences generating these flags may be indirect, a product of who on Ricochet thinks who is against who, rather than being manifest in the offending comment itself. In practice, what this means is that mods see flags on the President being called mocking names from HW members.
This is sort of off-topic, but I like Zito’s reporting a lot. She does important work.
(Editing anomaly)
Are you saying it isn’t true?
@midgetfadedrattlesnake: since you are speaking about things about which the rest of us have no knowledge; I assume you are participating on this thread as a Moderator?
Also, you speak of flags being thrown for DT being referred to as an “Orange Overlord”. Since I threw several (rare for me) flags where those exact words were used, I can tell you that you are wrong.
The specific (or close enough) comment that I flagged was (someone who I am not going to name) claiming that I was: … too busy bowing to my Orange Overlord …
It was not the insult to DT that I flagged. It was the insult to me (an HW member)
It’s highly inappropriate for you to be speaking of behind the scenes activities at Ricochet about which members know no details. Worse, you made an assumption and then revealed it as fact. Worse still, and is so often the case with assumptions, you were wrong.
To clarify … yes, Trump said an untrue disparaging comment about Ted Cruz’ father. No, I don’t believe that Ted Cruz’ father had anything to do with the Kennedy assassination. Yes, I do think that Hillary’s team would have brought up something like this if Ted Cruz had been the nominee and he would have not responded well to her either.
And yes, I can’t believe grown adults are still bringing this up.
Why shouldn’t we be discussing this? Is it an acceptable tactic? Is it acceptable for anyone to do it, or just Trump?
Something important to realize is that HW is not a hive of MAGA. It’s also a place to share “What the heck is Trump thinking?” moments. I know of several members who have shared such sentiments in HW, often very forcefully. The reason such sentiments are not mentioned publicly is that Ricochet has both the HWs and a faction that very vigorously opposes them. The majority of members are not a party to this conflict.
However, if I posted a grievance with Trump on the Member, I would get lectures, I-told-you-sos, and general mockery from my opponents. Not most of Ricochet, mind you, but the other team, as it were. I do not pay a subscription for that.
Another thing is that Trump loves to speak tactically. He’s not an intellectual, he’s speaking something to get a given result. Trump often does something in order to provoke a reaction or set up a new bargaining position. I usually wait a bit to see what he is actually doing. Is it a set up, or is he really going for it?
It was a cheap shot, and I think Trump was lying about it. More to the point, I don’t think it even worked as a political gambit. You can make an argument for using an unethical technique if it achieves your goal (although you have to play that carefully lest you go over the edge), but there is no defense for a unethical action if it doesn’t even work. It does not matter who does it.
At the time that remark was made, I was virulently anti-Trump. I was a fan of Cruz and Walker in the primaries, and I did not vote for him in the general as Illinois will always vote Democrat thanks to the undead voting block.
It is interesting that Mr. Erickson seems to retain the rights to his “Gathering” franchise from his years at “the old site.” If memory serves, the first one there was in Austin also. As for Mr. Eriks…well, maybe its best to just leave it at a polite “No further comment.”
At a minimum, it is not clear to me that it didn’t work. Cruz was knocked out of the race shortly after this comment and Trump certainly paid no price for it.
Omega Paladin was the one who brought up the “Orange Overlord” example. Mods have seen so many insults in flags that they all sort of blur together, and I was just taking Omega Paladin at his word.
When 90% of media reports are irrefutably anti Trump, how does it feel to be adding your 5%? It would only be 85% without you.
But these pundits are also allowing themselves to be co-opted to add moral gravity to the bankrupt left.
We’ve been having Kathy Griffin fake fellatio on Anderson Cooper , who happens to be gay and birthed the other interpretation of teabagging for all of America to visualize, should be granted status to lecture us, interviewing in concern-troll-mode about Trump’s latest tweet?
The left media outlets have no credibility on these grounds, so they subcontract to disaffected Republicans to provide moral gravity. In their nuanced disagreements, these conservatives are attacking Trump on manner and morals, strangely wishing for his demise while profiting from policies.
So somethings wrong.
I’m a whore for my principles. -pretty much what I’m hearing.
Some of us are trying to affect outcomes of conservatism. We don’t have forever to act,. If you really buy into long-term strategies at this juncture, you are very wrong. Your heart’s in the right place but not your head.
And can you not recognize how every added slight by people billed as conservatives (who, as we speak are getting most of their policies enacted), are effectively given White Knight status as champions, and this should not prejudice Trump supporters?
Youse guys have no idea…
Yes, and those who are perceived as being “on the other team”, if they posted a grievance with Trump, they’d get general mockery from their opponents. In fact, they have. Moreover, the bad tends to drive out the good here: people who would express nuanced criticism find it easier to just not post on the topic at all. So… you win, I guess? But it does leave a remnant of the more bullheaded. Bullheadedness isn’t in itself a CoC violation, as I’d think many HWs can attest!
Getting these teams to play civilly isn’t easy, we realize (oh boy do we realize!). Each team would probably be more comfortable with the other team gone entirely, but that’s not gonna happen — to either team. The CoC is meant to proscribe forms of trolling, not particular teams.
Insults that are flagged? Or flags that are insults ?
If the insults/flags blur together, How can you speak so authoritatively about about people flagging comments where DT was insulted?
To repeat myself – I have flagged comments like that not because an insulting comment was made about DT. I flagged it because an insulting comment was made about me.
OK, but my conversation with Omega Paladin and what followed from it was not about you.
At some point I missed the coining of “HW,” and can’t seem to figure out what it means from context. Definition, plz.
HW stands for Happy Warriors, formerly known as the Rabble Alliance. A private Ricochet group. You can find their description by clicking on Groups and looking for Happy Warriors.
Um, I don’t think you have to be a Happy Warrior (although I am one) to read between the lines of the OP. Who decides what an “actual” conservative is, and where do I go to pick up my paycheck for claiming my ideas are conservative?
I was triggered by the language of the OP before I ever read any of these comments or anything about it on HW. Luckily, when you’ve been called everything from stupid to deplorable to racist, you’re fairly immune to the insults.
Just so’s you know, I’m not flagging any of youse. Carry on.