CPAC 2021 is turning out to be a stellar event. The speaker line up is keeping the crowd energized. And yes, I can tell, even with the masks, there are no frowns to be found (helpful hint, watch the corners of the eyes.) Well, I might have to walk that back a bit. There are a group of full-time employees, backed up by contracted personnel, fully bent on enforcing a mandate the Florida Governor has forbidden.

But I digress. I’m not here to write about the headliners or the mask police. My focus with this piece, is on the great Americans who have jobs and businesses, pay taxes, and pretty much keep this great big thing we call, these United States of America going. Not too long ago, I approached the idea of what we conservatives need to do to set our stance for 2022 and beyond.

In those previous pieces, I pointed out that although Presidential elections are the sexy, exciting part of politics, the in-between years are what is really important. These are the years we must do the hard, thankless work to set the conditions for future success. We discovered this the hard way in 5 critical states during the 2020 presidential election…and then again during the Georgia Senate runoff…a failure that cost us two seats that should have been a lock for us. Now, Democrat Chuck Schumer is in charge of the Senate, well, except when he needs to ask the harridan from California to back him up.

Again you might ask, as you often do in my articles, ”OK Ford, is this going somewhere? Yes, gentle readers, it is. Here is where we are going. We won the war of ideas from November 2016-November 2020. There is no doubt about that. We picked up seats in the House. President Trump made huge inroads in communities heretofore considered by the Democrats, chattel votes. He gained voting share of both Blacks and Hispanics. Our team made progress because of our ideas, ideas that made life better for all Americans, except possibly the political grifter class.

Where Team Conservative lost, was in advance “preparation of the administrative political battlefield,” so to speak. For instance, we failed to have sufficient trained, motivated and legally backed, poll watchers, dropbox monitors, and most importantly, counting observers. That last point is critical. We had not near enough people who were ready and willing to observe the vote counts. What folks we were able to muster, weren’t backed up by the on-call legal muscle to enforce the law.

Winning this war…and make no mistake about it folks, this is a war, is going to take a much deeper level of engagement. We’re in an existential fight for the very political soul of these United States. To win it, we are going to have to do a better job of recruiting, training, putting to good use, and providing support and encouragement, for our conservative ground troops. We have to find a way to keep them engaged in the years leading up to Presidential elections and midterms.

The good news is that the Democrats appear to have made our job much easier. They have angered enough of the Republican base to provide a large pool of potential volunteers for our cause. This was easy to see in every corner of CPAC 2021. Everywhere I turned, there was some smiling (yep, even behind the mask) volunteer in a blue shirt asking if he/she could somehow be of assistance.

Although the volunteers were under strict orders not to opine to the press about substantive matters, I was able to glean enough information to establish one vital piece of good news. Although the vast majority of the folks I spoke with had jobs and more than a few owned their own businesses, all the people I spoke with, believed that the small part they were playing this week, was important enough to step away from their lives back home, to come here and give freely of the time to advance our cause.

Who do we have to thank for this? Democrats, along with certain weak Republican enablers such as the Georgia Secretary of State, who helped them steal two Senate races after stealing their state Presidential Electors votes. These volunteers have decided to help make sure this doesn’t happen the next time around.

We need to nurture this attitude and employ it from now, all the way through 2022 and beyond. How we do this, is a subject for another time. For now, just a heartfelt Thank You! to all of these fine folks who have taken time away from their families and jobs at their own expense, just to help advance our cause. Huzzah!

Stay Tuned!