1. When and why did you start CND?
A: Conservative News Daily (CND) has been in the "incubation" stage for about two years. Apart from the technical challenges of setting up an attractive and functional website, there was the need to assemble a like-minded team of thinkers and conservative news junkies.
Those of us who can remember a time before MTV may recall how cute it was when we started giving those Canadians their own MLB franchises, until the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series. Then it's wasn't cut any more. Denis Leary was right. We should have taken them back.
Liberals used to be kind of cute, too, with their fanciful utopian ideals, supposedly good intentions, and noble goals--they were the mental "Jerry's Kids" of politics, and who doesn't love "Jerry's Kids"? But now that Jerry's Kids are running the joint, it's not cute any more.
They must be stopped. And we want to help.
We officially launched on September 11, 2010, the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
For people who want a quick way to find out what's going on in the world, there is Drudge. And there is Drudge. And then, there is Drudge.
We love Drudge (both the guy and his site), but we don't think that conservatives are especially well served. There will be fantastic breaking news items of conservative interest, but to get to them you have to wade through stories about the shut-in with 200 cats ("House of Filth!"), the latest Paris Hilton drug arrest, and whether or not Lindsay Lohan is still a lesbian this week.
CND aims to fulfill the unmet needs of conservative readers by assembling the most relevant news, opinion, humor, and commentary of the day in one place. We also offer links to top conservative, liberal, and RINO websites and writers. We also offer our own unique content, most notably under our "Daily Rant" feature.
So basically, we take the best features of Drudge and put them together with the best blogs and sites on the internet, while also offering our own perspective on the news of the day. This unique combination makes CND the conservative reader's one stop shop.
2. Has President Obama been better or worse than you expected?
A: Like everyone who wasn't hypnotized by what the inimitable Mark Steyn calls Obama's "hopey changey" rhetoric, I knew that Obama would be bad. Even terrible. I compared George W. Bush to a mid-size earthquake, and predicted that Obama would be an Indonesia-style tsunami.
I was right, but the damage that the Obama regime has inflicted on the country has been at least slightly worse than I expected. He has, in fact, been quite successful in implementing his agenda: nationalizing major industries, "stimulus" plans that are little more than re-election slush funds, raising spending to critical levels that make tax cuts politically unpalatable, and passing budget-reducing "health care" legislation that--as every sentient being on the right knew--would neither reduce the budget nor provide health care. Stunning. Castro must be taking notes, and I'm sure that Gorbachev is wishing he had this guy as an advisor 20-some years ago.
Obama is Saul Alinsky. Understanding Obama is a simple as reading Rules for Radicals, which might as well be called Mein Kampf: The Sequel. As Jonah Goldberg has proven beyond a scintilla of doubt, extreme liberals are fascists and fascists are extreme liberals. This fantasy notion that fascism is a product of the right is being exploded daily by the current administration.
So, in sum, the current regime has failed to meet even my extremely low expectations.
3. Where do you see the Tea Party in two years?
A: This is great question, and I wish I had a crystal ball. To answer it, I have to separate what I want from what I predict.
What I want is for the Tea Party to take over the GOP and force the current RINO leadership to give up the pretense of belonging in the Party of Lincoln and become the "moderates" over at the DNC. American is a center-right country, so a well-run center-right party will always have the majority in Congress, and will usually win the White House. We are in the current mess because the RINO's in the GOP turned it into a center-left party, which allowed the Democrat Party to go to the far-left. So now we are ruled by extreme liberals, at best 15-20% of the electorate. So my hope is that the RINO's will leave the GOP and either join the Dems or form a third party to compete with the liberal brethren.
What I think will happen is slightly different. There is some chance that the Tea Party will become a victim of its own success. That is, if we win big in November, the raison d'etre of the Tea Party may vanish, and the Tea Party with it. I don't expect that, though. Whatever gains are made in the upcoming elections, there will be a great deal of work left to do, in order to restore our great Republic to the Constitutional basis on which it was founded. I believe that the Tea Party will become an increasingly powerful force in the GOP and in two years' time will be close to dominating it, but not quite there. Naturally I hope I'm wrong about that, as I'd love to see the Tea Party running the joint.
4. Is the Tea Party more conservative or libertarian to you?
A: Another good question. Let me preface my response by pointing out first of all that the Tea Party is a response to the complete absence of any party on the right. Ignore the banshees over at the DNC and the HuffPo. The GOP is currently at best a centrist party, and in my opinion is actually center-left, with admittedly some good conservatives in its ranks. If there had been anything approximating a center-right party to vote for, the Tea Party would never have risen up.
As it is, the Tea Party is an expression of what Rousseau called "The General Will." This is of course what the elite Beltway-types hate about it. There is no leader, so they can't use Alinsky's Rule #13, which calls for the target to isolated, personalized, and destroyed. You can't isolate a plurality of the American People, so unless and until it becomes a formal third party (which I would oppose) it simply can't be stopped. It's a thing of beauty--the People's behemoth.
That said, I think that the Tea Party is part conservative and part libertarian, which makes it 100% American. Conservatives and libertarians are generally of a mind on fiscal matters, and differ principally on defense policy and social issues. America's Christian heritage gives heft to the social concerns of conservatives, and what I call its "Gadsden Flag" tendencies makes it leery of using religion to to make policy.
So, since the Tea Party is focused on fiscal policy, I'd say it's more libertarian than conservative, but just by a hair.
5. Any favorite for 2012 yet?
A: Nope. I do have some non-starters, though. I would hate to see any retreads, like Mitt Romney (decent guy, but basically a good-looking version of Henry Waxman in a great suit), Newt Gingrich (how many times does one guy get to fail?), or the crypt-keeper with anger management issues that crossover Dems in SC and elsewhere nominated for us last time.
Sarah Palin could be great, and it is great political sport watching the libs get all murderously pavlovian at the sound of her name, but we're not backing anybody yet.
6. Why should readers bookmark your site?
That said, literally every conservative, libertarian, or moderate in America--and indeed worldwide--should read CND right after getting up in the morning, during lunch break, before going to bed, and as often as possible in between.
There is no other site anywhere on the internet that gives inquisitive, intelligent readers what they need to know when they need to know it, in a convenient, easily navigated format.
If you want stories about two-headed fish along with links to serious news items, then Drudge is your man. Great guy, innovator, and all of that.
If you just want the top news, commentary, humor, plus original content, then Conservative News Daily is the only site you'll need.
Thanks a lot for giving us a chance to chat today. We sincerely appreciate it!
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