Promoted by Jeff.

Okay, I have to admit I’ve been a little full of myself today what with the promotion of my first redstate diary, A Weekend of Firsts, Day One, to the front page. A very unexpected first, but very much appreciated (thank you, Jeff and to everyone else for all the kind comments). But I’ve come back down to earth, and we’re off to Day Two which started with a vanilla latte and the most important meal of the day – breakfast with Erick Erickson, Moe Lane, Brian Simpson, and Meredith from Big TV.

My newfound friends from yesterday weren’t heading over until later, so once again, I was on my own. And once again, I summoned up the nerve to sit down at a table where I didn’t recognize a soul. My entry into the conversation came when Meredith introduced herself as working with Big TV. I had finished Breitbart’s book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, during my flight to Charleston.  I will forever be grateful to Breitbart for his work in exposing the liberal media and liberal Hollywood, and I asked Meredith to pass that message along to him. Later, at this very gathering, I would find another reason to be grateful, but we’ll save that one for now.  Anxious to get to the first training session, I focused on eating and almost didn’t even notice that the guy who had just sat down in the empty chair to my right was Erick. Stay and schmooze or training sessions? I opted for training.

And we were off with Drew Ryun of American Majority, who was all about the Social Networking. He implored us to Twitter, Re-Tweet, blog, Facebook, Tag, link, sign up for Google Alerts, and kept talking about something called Google Juice (first time I’d ever heard of it). Was this the new term for drinking the Kool-Aid? No. A quick google of “Google Juice” reveals that it is,  in essence, “The value that Google gives to your site, for having a priceless link from a good site. The value adds up for each link, and you get better search rankings!” My understanding of this was kinda like trying to explain to my 80 year old mom this morning what a blog is and why I was so excited about it. But like my mom, I got that it’s a good thing. Hey, I got over my fear of HTML. I’ll figure it out or find someone who can. We learned about the “wikis” and the “pedias” – Ballotpedia here, Judgepedia here and Sunshine Review here. Useful resources in the war against big government!

Next up was Max Pappas from FreedomWorks PAC. Max won me over with a quote from P.J. O’Rourke. I can’t remember which one he used, so here’s one of my favorites:  “Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.”  Max enlightened us with a discussion of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. That’s the one that lays out the powers of Congress. The one they ignore. Yeah, that one.

Then came Michael Needham of Heritage Action for America, sister to The Heritage Foundation that takes their ideas and puts them into action. The big announcement here was that Heritage Action is releasing its first congressional scorecard, based on the actual votes of our representatives who, apparently, aren’t very happy about it. Should be fun.

What can I say about Governor Nikki Haley? First woman governor of South Carolina. Young, vibrant, warm, engaging, smart, savvy. And she knows how to give a rousing speech without a teleprompter. As exciting as the speech given at 1 pm EST was, Gov. Haley’s was my favorite. She is another voice for conservative women everywhere, including my new gal friends who had rejoined the party. Nikki for POTUS in 2020? Can you say First Dude Michael Haley? The NAG’s are just gonna have to get used to the fact that we’re not going away.

I was in desperate need of my daily intake of my favorite beverage – tea (sweet and over ice, sometimes with lemon and sometimes with mint from my herb garden). I’d have to settle for lunch with my friends and flagstaff who just happened to be sitting at the same table. You never know who you’re going to meet at redstate. We hit the buffet line, anxious to wolf down a sandwich and get back to the ballroom before the big event. Nobody else was going to get in line early, right? Wrong.

<a href=”“>The New Friends

Day Two and Day Three (The Beginning, The End and Coming Full Circle) to follow.