On Saturday Wisconsin conservatives convened in Milwaukee to talk elections and activism at the annual Defending the American Dream summit, hosted by David Koch’s conservative advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity.

The speaker’s list read like a who’s who of Wisconsin and national conservative all-stars, with not only Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on the docket, but also U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, AFP President Tim Phillips, blogger and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin, Wisconsin radio host Vicki McKenna, and national radio commentator Tony Katz.

The summit, the fifth such one held in the state, attracted a crowd of a bit over 800 people according to communications manager Jennifer Ridgely. At least a quarter of the audience said, when asked for a show of hands, that it was their first time at an AFP event. Most were over 40, according to another informal show of hands, but there were several children and babies there as well.

Visitors to the VIP section included several Republican members of the state Legislature: Reps. Robin Vos (who was also a speaker) and Jeff Fitzgerald, and Sens. Alberta Darling and Van Wanggaard. 

The Americans For Prosperity-funded summit has a stated aim of firing up and educating conservative activists. The word “grassroots” appeared in most of the panel descriptions. Speeches frequently mocked or attacked President Barack Obama, solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, gas prices, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Falk, the concept of a Republican “war on women,” the city of Madison, and liberals in general.

As AFPW director Luke Hilgemann said at the opening, Wisconsin is a battleground this year, “ground zero in defending the American dream,” following a year of protests and recall efforts that have made the state’s politics symbolically significant to the national movement.

“Wisconsin may be the turning point in this race,” said Rick Santorum, who according to a recent Rasmussen poll might have lost his previous lead in Wisconsin over Mitt Romney. In a lunchtime speech he was all stump, calling himself “the true conservative” in comparison to Romney, and the only one who could beat Obama in swing states like Wisconsin. A moderate like Romney, he said, would never make it.

“We need someone who…can talk to people, working people, who don’t want to be on food stamps and government benefits under this president,” he said. “We need someone who’s not a financier from Wall Street.”

Speakers repeatedly attacked the “Obamacare” Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will be tried in the Supreme Court over the next three days. Sen. Johnson has repeatedly said it was that law’s passage that spurred him to run against Russ Feingold. And Santorum made it the crux of his speech, calling Romney “uniquely unqualified” to defeat Obama on that issue, because of the similarities of Massachussetts’ own health insurance system enacted while Romney was governor there.

“There’s no more important legislative act that crushes that spirit, that changes that American dream, than of course Obamacare,” he said. “It is the one bill that brought me into this race because I know it is a game-changer for America. It will hurt our economic growth, it will stifle employment growth, it will explode the size and scale of the federal government.”

While not the main topic of the day the upcoming recall election for Governor Scott Walker got plenty of attention, too. During breaks, video rolled touting the benefits of Walker’s budget repair bill, products of the AFP- and MacIver Institute-funded "It’s Working Wisconsin" project.

“The best governor in America is Scott Walker,” AFP national director Tim Phillips told the crowd, to huge cheers.

Santorum called Walker, “great and courageous.”

“I just want to say to your governor I am for you, I am behind you, and I will do everything I can,” he said.

Consistently, too, speakers sought to drive home the vision of America that they see the left as threatening, one of small government, freedom for “job creators,” gun rights, and limited welfare benefits.

“America’s on the wrong track,” Ryan said. “If we don’t change course soon, the American idea could be lost for an entire generation. We could see the country that we know...slip into a path of death, of doubt, of decline.”

Ryan, who also touted his recently released budget outline as the best alternative to that path, said the fiscal math, and the ideological momentum of this year meant that the winner of the 2012 elections was likely to set the political agenda for decades to come.

Johnson had similar words about the gravity of the year’s elections. “This is a fight for our fundamental freedoms,” he said.

The day was not just speeches, though: it was also a training opportunity for those activists, so they could, as Malkin put it, counter the “false narratives” pushed by the left. Malkin was only the first to assert that the mainstream media either lied outright, or perpetuated distortion, and the theme of a need to step up the ideological fight against, for example, the “unspeakable things being said about Scott Walker” echoed throughout the day.

Malkin spoke of co-opting Twitter hashtags to change the message as one example, while radio host McKenna said the careful use of ridicule--saving it for the right targets--could make conservative messages more effective.

“Your purpose is power,” she said. “Mock the mockable, but target your criticism to Mark Pocan and Lena Taylor.”

McKenna said conservatives could also exploit reporters’ deadline pressure to get their message heard. By writing press releases, and calling themselves the president of a group that doesn’t exist, individuals can raise the chances of being quoted. “They are lazy and you can use that,” she said

Speaking in less partisan terms, former AFP strategist and now-vice president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity Eric Telford said activism was necessary to fill in the gaps left in the mainstream media by the layoffs of thousands of journalists in recent years. He urged the audience to begin covering local government meetings, looking up police reports on local leaders, and to share everything they could on sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Down the road, he said, these records could make the difference in vetting people who run for higher office.

I talked with about a dozen attendees, all of whom said they were at least on some level an activist already, having volunteered either for conservative candidates, or as part of local “Patriot” chapters.

Charles Graham of Oxford said he had been one of the lone counter-protestors on the Capitol Square during the budget repair bill protests last spring. “I got called a lot of names,” he said. He’d done phone calls to support Sen. Luther Olsen when he was threatened with recall, and, after retiring recently, he wants to do more.



A common theme in the crowd was indecision on Wisconsin’s upcoming presidential primary. One couple, from Mequon, said they were still not sure who they would vote for on April 3, though they preferred Santorum and Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney. Larry Cole, of Jefferson, said he was waiting to see what the candidates would say as they began their appearances in Wisconsin. “I’ll have to pray on it still,” said a woman wearing a “Granny Squad” t-shirt who has been making phone calls on behalf of conservative issues and candidates for years.

But Santorum’s speech was enough to win over Ken Butterfield, a Stevens Point bar owner who had been undecided until Saturday’s speech. “He’s the real conservative,” Butterfield said.

Regardless of which candidate they favored, those present overwhelmingly said they wanted to see Obama defeated, citing fears of how the country might change further--key words included “socialism” or even “Communism”--under his continued presidency.

Dennis Hafenbreadl and his wife were from Wausau, where they were active in phone call and literature distribution efforts on behalf of conservative candidates. He said he was first motivated to get involved as a result of Obama’s policies.

“Progressives have already fulfilled all their agendas,” Hafenbreadl said. “Now it’s just a matter of turning it to Communism.”

“We still can turn this country back, but it’s going to be hard.”

Christie Taylor

Contributor

Christie Taylor (@ctaylsaurus) covers science, environment, and, depending on the season, state politics for dane101. She verbs a lot of nouns, including rollerskates, radio, and Kurt Vonnegut. A Madison native, she's not sure she'll ever quite manage to leave Wisconsin, and that's just fine by her. Contact her at christie@dane101.com.