David Frum assesses Mitt Romney at CPAC

At one point, Romney’s text read: “the government doesn’t create jobs … only the private sector can do that.”

Romney pronounced the phrase as written, then paused. Problem: It’s not true. Romney spontaneously corrected himself: “in a lasting way.” Meaning: Yes, government purchasing can create employment, but only the private market can sustain economic expansion.

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There are dozens of countries where people can start businesses, compete with the rich and rise above their origins.

In fact, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development just this year released a detailed study of social mobility. Among developed countries, the United States actually ranks toward the back of the pack for social mobility, barely better than supposedly class-bound Britain. A child born poor in Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France (!) or Germany has a better chance of escaping poverty than a poor American.

There is evidence too that America has less social mobility today than it did a generation ago.

This information is not unconservative. Indeed it is conservatives who have identified some of the most important causes of America’s ossifying class structure: bad schools in poor areas, immigration policies that favor the unskilled.

(snip)

Romney’s unscripted self-edit revealed a man who knew and cared about the difference between fact and fantasy. In a conservative world distracted and deluded by the Sarah Palins and the Glenn Becks, that self-revelation is desperately needed –and desperately welcome.

CPAC greets guerilla journalist like rock star

James O’Keefe, the self-styled guerrilla investigative journalist celebrated for his video on ACORN and arrested last month in New Orleans in an attempted expose of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, got a rock star welcome at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday.

O’Keefe, 25, wasn’t scheduled to do any official events at CPAC, as the conference is known, but he attracted plenty of attention as he waded through the lobby of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, where the conference is taking place, posing for pictures with admiring fans who wished him well in his pending court case.

O’Keefe became a instant conservative celebrity last year when he and a partner, Hannah Giles, released secretly recorded videos of them posing as a pimp and prostitute while soliciting advice from employees of ACORN, the liberal community organizing group, on how to set up a brothel.

Sen. Jim DeMint denounces Democrats' "arrogance and audacious power grabs" at CPAC

The Democrats’ arrogance and audacious power grabs have made Americans stand up and say, "Enough is enough."

We now see all too clearly that the hope and change the Democrats had in mind was nothing more than a retread of the failed and discredited socialist policies that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world.

And now that the Democrat’s goals are glaringly obvious, the battle is between the American people and the Democrats ... and I like those odds!

Americans have been stunned by the fact that in the world’s greatest bastion of freedom, our government now owns the largest auto companies, the largest mortgage company, and the largest insurance company.

It controls our schools and is trying to take over our healthcare system.

The federal government is assaulting almost every sector of our free market economy.