Things kicked off Thursday morning with great speakers like Florida Congressman Byron Donalds, podcast host Ben Ferguson, and North Carolina Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson. But it was a panel featuring Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle, Senior Townhall.com Columnist Kurt Schlichter, radio host Larry O'Connor, and podcast host Monica Crowley, where perhaps one of the "fathers" of CPAC was mentioned, Andrew Breitbart. O'Connor rightly mentioned the fact that many in the room, including himself, would not be where he is were it not for the influence of Breitbart. 

Andrew Breitbart's journey to his memorable appearance at CPAC started at the beginning of what would become modern-day conservative media. he was Matt Drudge's Lead Editor at the upstart "Drudge Report," and took a then-conservative Arianna Huffington under his wing, and helped her start the left-leaning "Huffington Post." He came back to Drudge and launched "Breitbart.com." Much of Drudge's content at the time was linked to Breitbart articles. He then launched several off-shoots of "Breitbart.com," including "BigGovernment.com."  

Andrew Breitbart was instrumental in developing what would come to be known as "citizen journalism." Average Americans who had no "journalistic" training began to see more and more that mainstream corporate media was not reporting the whole story, they were usually telling only one side and reporting it with a decidedly left-leaning bent. Or, they'd just ignore a story altogether. Breitbart took that old saying "invention is the mother of necessity," and boy did he run with it. A series of undercover videos exposed the community activist group ACORN and its employees appearing to assist an undercover journalist, James O'Keefe, and a female assistant posing as a prostitute and a pimp in an attempt to start up an underage prostitution ring. 

To those like Larry O'Connor who knew him best, Andrew Breitbart was known as a "happy warrior." He had no fear of calling out the mainstream media when they needed to be called out. But even when he held them accountable for their lazy journalism, O'Keefe described him as also not shying away from speaking and working with them. 

With the twelfth anniversary of his sudden death on March 1, 2012, approaching, it seems as natural as breathing to take notice of the fact that Andrew Breitbart's influence and spirit are very much alive and well at CPAC 2024. In 2011, I was a little baby blogger, just getting my political feet wet and starting in the political arena. I went to an event in my hometown of St. Louis called the "Smart Girl Summit," a gathering of conservative women. Andrew Breitbart spoke at the event. Even back then, he did not hold back about what conservatives were up against, what the fight against liberalism would entail, and that it would not be easy. After speaking, he took some questions. I knew this was my chance. I raised my hand and asked, "What advice would you give to someone just starting out in blogging?" He looked me dead in the eye and, in typical Breitbart fashion, said, "Get in their face." The rest, as they say, is history.

So, as the conservative faithful gather at CPAC 2024, we need to tell young people who might not know about him, how so much of Andrew Breitbart is here even 12 years later. Who knows, maybe somewhere in that crowd of young people, is the next Andrew Breitbart.