This weekend the national Republican Liberty Caucus held their biennial conference in Nashua. Hundreds descended upon the Crowne Plaza Hotel to partake in panel discussions, a straw poll vote and to hear speakers from Rand Paul and Ted Cruz to Trevor Loudon and Grover Norquist.
The event was in full swing on Friday morning with both Ted Cruz and Rand Paul speaking to the crowd. Throughout the weekend a straw poll was held which allowed people not in attendance to stop by and vote as well. The final results of the poll were announced Saturday night with Paul coming in first place with 445 votes and Cruz coming in with 330 votes. Ben Carson came in a distant third with 139 votes.
There were discussions on everything from the electoral process to elections as well as issues such as Common Core and Obamacare’s impact on small business. There were many New Hampshire state legislators in attendance as well as presidential candidates and ‘Liberty Republicans and activists’ from around the country. The event was their most well-attended biennial meeting yet and according to organizers was sold out.
Author and political activist from New Zealand Trevor Loudon was the keynote speaker during lunch on Saturday. He spoke about uniting the differing support among candidates with a White House cabinet list. As candidates drop out their supporters sometimes drop out with them. Rather than lose voters, bring the candidates back into the fold by having them be part of the ‘proposed’ elected cabinet.
Grover Norquist was the keynote speaker at dinner and reminded attendees of the advances liberty has made over the years. He cited several examples including school choice. People were horrified at talk of ‘school choice’ many years ago. Now it’s a regular topic in conversations and only Republicans support it. Former Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway spoke about reaching out to millennials and Aaron Day wrapped up the evening by call for a ‘New Day’ for New Hampshire.
Day, President of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, isn’t running for office but he spoke about electing Republicans who aren’t going to push entitlement programs onto taxpayers like Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion. This is the ‘Live Free or Die’ state not the grow entitlements, subsidies or government state. Day also noted that he is calling to ‘Draft Andy Sanborn for Governor.’ Sanborn was not at the event during the announcement for comment but this makes the governor’s race that much more interesting.
Today the event wrapped up with a Young Americans for Liberty presentation and one last panel in the morning. Given the change of tide, the next biennial conference will probably grow as well as it has each year since its inception. As more and more people realize just how far left Democrats and some in the Republican Party have shifted, they are realizing they need to do more to fight. The liberty movement has grown exponentially over the past 8 years in part thanks to Obama and people like Ron Paul. As one participant noted “Liberty never sleeps.”
