On the first spring-like weekend of the year, I motored out into the wilds of Harrisburg to attend the 2007 Pennsylvania Leadership Conference. The two day conference was hosted by the Pennsylvania Leadership Council, Inc with support from The Club for Growth - PA and the Commonwealth Foundation.

I was unable to attend Friday's lectures due to work commitments, so I set out early Saturday morning to attend this conference.

The Keynote speaker scheduled for Saturday was the Hon. Newt Gingrich. Arriving early, I had the opportunity to browse around the various booths set up outside the lecture rooms. While speaking with representatives from Newsguests.com, I mentioned the mobile blogging experiment of March 17th's Gathering of Eagles pro troop rally. They seemed quite interested in the concept and I'm hoping this will become a resource to build upon the success of the first mobile blogging experiment.

Never one who is backwards about being forward, I struck up conversations with other attendees and lecturers. Jethro Heiko, activist for Casino Free Philadelphia, explained his push to keep casinos from being built next to residential areas. I even had the opportunity for a photo op with one of the Speakers.




Yep, that is Newt Gingrich posing for a picture with yours truly. The  gentleman pictured to the left of Newt is a military pilot who has done tours in Iraq. On an aside note, I plan on forwarding Curt's investigation of Jamil Hussein to Kevin. I believe the two would have lots to discuss on that matter.

Newt's speech to a packed ballroom was far better than I expected. Several of his key points were dead on in political, conservative and rational sense.

• Change your perception of 'That's a good idea, but we can't do it because of..." to "Yes that is good point, however, have you considered this idea..."
•  An ATM in Slovenia can dole out money from your properly identified bank account on demand, yet today, the federal government can't locate 11 million illegal residents in the US.
• Limiting of personal choices by the government is never a good idea and only serves to remove power from the people. He used a brilliant analogy regarding the difference choice makes by comparing Medicaid/Medicare to a ocean cruise ship.
•  He shared some great statistics on the clean energy source that is nuclear power. Essentially if anyone is serious about reducing carbon emissions, nuclear power would have put us light years ahead of the established Kyoto goals.
•  In order to see a change in this country, the grassroots level is where to begin. The Presidency is too narrow in scope to affect real change, that comes from the ground level and upwards. He did state that he was not interested in running for President in 08 and cited the above as one of the reasons.
•  My one beef with his speech was an observation that he made regarding the audience being interested in changing the government. The audience cheered and clapped at that remark - I rolled my eyes. They got the change they were seeking in the 06 election cycle and they are NOT happy about it? The old axiom - 'Be careful of what you wish for.....you might get it' has never been more clearer than with this audience response. We, as conservatives, got what we wished for in 06 - CHANGE. Now we have to lie in the bed we made till 08. **SIGH**

At the end of the day, I do believe this conference was worth the early morning motoring and quite beneficial to my understanding of Pennsylvania politics.  

One other point that I almost forgot....the results of PLC's informal Presidential Straw Poll showed Fred Thompson far ahead of the rest of the pack of potiential RNC presidential nominees.