Palin to Attend Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Not Attend CPAC; Updated

Peter Hamby from CNN tweets:

No CPAC for Sarah Palin but she's speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in April in New Orleans. Much bigger stage.

Marc Ambinder is tweeting the same information as well.

(h/t Hedgehog Report)

Update by Doug: The SRLC's official press release, from Charlie Davis, follows:

Baton Rouge – LA) Governor Sarah Palin announced today that she will speak to the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans.

“I’m looking forward to addressing conservative activists from across the south at the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference. This is a great opportunity to listen and speak to those who are helping to set the direction of our party,” Governor Palin said.

SRLC 2010 will be held on April 8-11, 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana and will include the Republican Party’s activists, donors, elected officials and candidates from 14 southern states.

“We’re excited to have Governor Palin join us in New Orleans. She represents the future of the Republican Party and will be a huge draw for conservative activists from across the country,” SRLC Director Charlie Davis said.

Ben Smith at the Politico has also picked up on the story:

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference, taking place this April in New Orleans, just announced that Sarah Palin would be among the speakers.

“I’m looking forward to addressing conservative activists from across the south at the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference. This is a great opportunity to listen and speak to those who are helping to set the direction of our party,” she said in the anodyne press release.

But the event is the first event on the 2012 circuit at which she'll appear (she's skipping CPAC) and the first real chance to gauge the interest in her candidacy among the core of Republican activists and operatives.

The group's director, Charlie Davis, called her "the future of the Republican Party" as well as "a huge draw" in his press release.

I applaud Governor Palin for skipping David Keene's CPAC. In a rather extensive post last fall, we documented some of the reasons why it is wise for Governor Palin to distance herself from the self-dealing Washington insider. Here are a few excerpts from that post:

Keene’s attempt to portray himself as part of the current grassroots movement is both ludicrous and insulting to those in the movement. How can a guy who contributed to Arlen Specter’s campaign as recently as December 2007 be considered part of any conservative base? This was not an isolated occurrence. Ramesh Ponnuru noted in National Review that Keene, inexplicably, supported Specter in his primary contest with real grassroots conservative Pat Toomey in 2004. Toomey had the full support of the conservative base in 2004 (as he does now) yet Keene supported Specter. David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), an organization which, among other things, rates public officials on how conservative they are. In 2004, Specter received an ACU rating of 47. Toomey’s rating? 97. One wonders if Keene will back Specter (who is now a Democrat, by the way) against Toomey in 2010 as well.

Why would Keene, chairman of the ACU, back a candidate with an ACU rating of 47 against one with a rating of 97? Keene has had a long career as a Washington lobbyist. James Justin Wilson wrote an article for the National Review back in 2003 which chronicled the, shall we say, cozy relationship between Keene and Specter. Mr. Keene, it appears, has a long history of subordinating his principles to his business interests in classic Washington insider style. R. A. Mansour further illuminated Keene's corrupt self-dealing when she exposed a "pay-to-play" scheme in a post last summer. Is this what Keene means by stepping "up to the plate on matters of principle"?

Keene’s ACU also puts on the annual CPAC conference in Washington. CPAC originated in 1973 as a meeting of dedicated grassroots conservatives and is partially credited with the rise of Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s. David Keene assumed the chairmanship of the ACU in 1984 and since then CPAC has steadily strayed from its grassroots origins. Today it is the ultimate establishment event.

In the last three years CPAC has devolved into nothing more than an annual love fest for the most established of establishment Republicans, Mitt Romney. It should come as no surprise that David Keene supported Mitt Romney in 2008. However, I’m sure that Romney’s three consecutive victories in the CPAC straw polls is entirely coincidental. After all, the conservative base loves Romney, right? Readers may recall that Keene's CPAC invited Governor Palin to speak in February, then falsely claimed she backed out when she had never agreed to attend in the first place.

[...]

David Keene, of course, has a history of Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS). In July, Mitt Romney sycophant Ron Kessler “interviewed” fellow Romney supporter David Keene in an article for Newsmax. The general thrust of the article is that Governor Palin is not ready to run for president because, well, because she’s not Mitt Romney. Keene cited all the usual discredited talking points made by liberals and Republican elites to back up his assertion.

John Ziegler, famously, attempted to question Keene about his irrational hatred of Governor Palin at the Western CPAC conference (WCPAC) a couple weeks ago. Keene became agitated, peppering Ziegler with profanity and even threatening violence during the interview. You can read more about Keene’s bizarre behavior in a post by Tommy Report, which includes video of Keene’s encounter with Ziegler.

[...]

I feel compelled to make one last point. I wouldn't blame Governor Palin one bit if she skips Keene's increasingly irrelevant CPAC conference in 2010. Why should she legitimize it, and David Keene, with her presence? He is exactly the kind of self-dealing insider that Governor Palin has fought against her entire career.

Update by TR: CPAC, as some of you may know, has embarrassed itself by providing the John Birch Society with the opportunity to sponsor the event. Jonah Goldberg and Mark Krikorian of the National Review have both slammed CPAC for this decision. As you may recall, the late William F. Buckley did the conservative movement a great favor by purging this group from our ranks. It appears that CPAC disagrees with Buckley regarding the John Birch Society.

Update II by Doug: Via Mark Hemingway at the Washington Examiner:

In a post on Tuesday, "Mitt already gearing up for 2012? Who's Next?," I noted that Romney was scheduled to speak at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in April. The SRLC is already shaping up to be the unofficial kickoff of the GOP presidential campaign for 2012. But I also observed:

The real question is who's next? I'd keep an eye on the SRLC to see if any other would-be candidates are making preparations for the event. It's a pretty good indication they are running.

Well, I just got this announcement in my inbox.