Tonight was a fairly calm night at the SRLC. About twenty of us so-called media folk met up, had some beers, food and cigars, and had lots of fun talking for hours on end.
(Before going any further, many thanks to Ali Akbar for setting it up. Looking forward to a similar BlogBash at CPAC. )
Then we got to have Rick Santorum and Dick Morris come into the little get-together. Santorum was quite benevolent in giving each of us time to ask questions of him on any topic after finishing his appearance with Sean Hannity on FOX. Morris was also very gracious in bringing out his points of view on tomorrow's primary and the road ahead.
First, Santorum on the announcement that he indeed won the Iowa caucuses:
"It would have been nice to find out on Election night instead of now, but it's given us a bit of a bump in South Carolina over the last 24 hours. It would have taken some of the wind out of the sails of Mitt Romney's inevitaility argument.
Newt's a friend of mine too, as is Callista. I would just say this: I don't think it's a Romney v. Non-Romney race. There are three candidates in the race with a chance to be President, and one of the is a conservative while the other two are not reliable conservatives.
But it's helped over the past day or two."
He also spoke about SOPA and PIPA - a big topic among us here:
I have concerns abuot the Internet, period. I have seven children, and I know what the impact is. I do have concerns about that, and when I hear people say 'Don't touch the Internet, we should be able to do whatever we want', I recoil at that. No, there's nothing where people can do anything they want against the laws in this country, there are boundaries for everybody, and there are things that are right and things that are wrong.
People have intellectual property rights, people do make their lives from producing content and they, to the extent possible, should be protected. If the laws are not tough enough, then we're going to start discouraging people from content and we're going to see a negative consequence from that.
It's not just Hollywood, there's a lot of people producing content all over the place (many in the room nodded) and a lot of people have content that they use and create in order to make a living. Those folks have a right to be able do so and not have it sold from them."
Second, Dick Morris, who gave his thoughts on tomorrow - even with Santorum sitting at the same table (though he did apologize in advance):
"It's not just (Santorum) finishing third, one of them (Santorum or Gingrich) has to be close to Romney or top him. One of them has to come close enough to Romney to have a chance. I think it'll be a two-man race coming out of South Carolina.
I think the Republican nominee takes forty states in November, Heading into 2008, the Democrats had a +5 margin over Republicans nationally. This year, it's a -3 margin. The close states will be states like West Virginia or Delaware this time.
They could end up looking at 58 or even 60 seats in the Senate when it's all said and done."
Thanks also to the following who I got to meet tonight as well as yesterday:
The Other McCain - R. S. McCain
Franklin Center - Tabitha Hale
All Patriots Media - Tony Katz and Holly Bacon
WGST Atlanta - Rusty Humphries
Emerging Corruption - Anita MonCrief
RedState - Caleb Howe and Ben Howe
Shark Tank - Javier Manjares
If I forgot someone, feel free to yell at me in three weeks at CPAC, or yell below, or yell on Twitter.
Tomorrow, I will head to Columbia, where three of the four candidates will be having victory events - though only one will turn out to live up that name.
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