Contrasting an America that can versus an America that can’t, Gingrich compared America’s speed and might in winning WWII versus her current inability to seal its own border. In a lighter moment, the former Speaker contrasted the efficiency of package tracking by Federal Express with the government’s inability to track illegal immigrants, suggesting sending each one a package may be the best way to apprehend the latter.

He also mentioned repealing Obamacare, Dodd Frank, and Sarbanes Oxley on his first day in office. He stated his desire to be a “paycheck president” versus a “food stamp president,” a term he used to denigrate Barack Obama.

Calling for a Fall campaign focused on substance, Gingrich also mentioned eliminating the Capital Gains tax and implementing 100% expensing for all new equipment written off in one year to help get the economy growing. Additionally, he called for a modernization of the workforce, proposing that unemployment compensation be linked to business training programs to avoid paying people for 99 weeks “for doing nothing.”

The solutions were bold but would obviously involve more than giving one speech. He called for the elimination of the EPA, replacing it with a new agency that would take economics and business interests into account in all decision-making. On tax policy, Gingrich called for a 12.5% corporate tax rate, abolishing the death tax, and the option of a 15% flat tax for individuals he called a tax cut.

Citing the need to shrink spending to meet revenue levels and the replacement of the current Civil Service system with a new modern personnel management system, his remarks appeared to be well received. Gingrich also cited abolishing the Dept of Energy (DOE) and a task forced to be headed by Texas Governor Rick Perry focused on the 10th amendment to return power to the states, as appropriate.

Gingrich also called for an audit of the Federal Reserve and an end to Ben Bernanke’s term as Chair of the Federal Reserve. The former Speaker also called for a more honest foreign policy, one acknowledging the dangers of radical Islamists intent on doing America and Americans harm.

Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

One lady wearing an Occupy DC lapel pin proudly displayed a sign stating “Walmart for President.”

Although given multiple opportunities to explain what her sign meant, she stumbled aimlessly for the right words, eventually stating, “I’m going to have to think about that.”

Meanwhile, the Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields reports that protestors were paid $60 each to demonstrate against CPAC:

Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

One protester told TheDC that all the “Occupy” activists were being paid to protest, and that his union, Sheet Metal Workers Local 100, approached him about the money-making opportunity.

“I have nothing nice to say about Local 100. … They just told me ‘you wanna make sixty bucks? So c’mon,’” the protester said.

Fields adds that few of the protestors were willing to speak on camera.

Debbie Squires, associate director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association, explained to members of the House Education Committee why her association opposed allowing more cyber (or online) schools to operate in the state.

“Educators go through education for a reason,” Squires said. “They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That’s not necessarily true of an individual resident. I’m not saying they don’t want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint.”

Committee chairman Tom McMillin, a Republican, seemed taken aback by Squires’ comments.

“Wow … Parents don’t know what’s best for their child?” McMillin asked.

“I said they may want what’s best for their child (but) they may not know,” Squires replied.

Squires’ comments are noteworthy because they give parents and citizens a window into the minds of the nation’s self-proclaimed education experts. Despite their talk of “collaborating” with parents to reform public education, the establishment honestly believes that parents are too ignorant and ill-informed to choose the best learning option for their child.

Not only that, but they believe charter schools and cyber schools are consuming tax dollars that rightfully belong to the government-run public schools. They argue that the only thing preventing traditional public schools from producing amazing student results is a lack of money.

They claim to “know best about how to serve children.”

The facts suggest otherwise.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services, per pupil spending increased by 82.5 percent – in constant dollars – from the 1980-81 school year to the 2008-09 school year.

What did taxpayers get in return for their increased investment? From 1980 to 2010, Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) scores in critical reading dropped one point (from 502 to 501), while the average math SAT score increased a meager 24 points (492 to 516). (A score of 500 is considered to be average.)

The experts have had 30 years and untold billions of dollars to turn things around, and they haven’t.

It’s difficult to see how parents could do any worse.

And as I listened to Lee speak recently, February 8th, on Ed Schultz’s radio show, it dawned on me anew that responsibility for many of our nation’s current woes can be directly traced to the fact the we’ve placed congressional members and senators in power who know little to nothing about recent American history, much less events surrounding our nation’s founding.

For example, when Schultz asked Lee why anyone would think Congressional Republicans wanted to better the economy when their chief focus appears to be defeating the president, Lee concurred, in a round-about way, then said:

As I have scanned the annals of history, during the tenure of many presidents, obviously the recent presidents of JFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson, of Richard Nixon who was impeached, and subsequently Ford and Carter. I cannot find in the statement of a message of a minority leader, majority leader, or speaker, whose message has been defeat the commander-in-chief.

Wow. The “recent presidents” Lee referenced were JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. JFK died in 1963 and Carter left office in January of 1981. In other words, “recent” to Lee is somewhere between 31-to-49 years ago? Moreover, Lee said Nixon was impeached. Seriously folks, Nixon made history by becoming the first president in U.S. history to resign the office, and of course he resigned before charges of impeachment were brought against him.

(For the record, the only two presidents in U.S. history who were impeached were Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. And both of these presidents share a common denominator: their party affiliation was Democrat.)

But Lee kept going:

This is the most unusual historical period in our lifetimes. I frankly believe that it will be tainted, it will be known as the three ring circus, and it will be a shameful period. Because most times, no matter whether we are a divided government, which I’m arguing for vigorous take-back of the House by Democrats and the win of the president, because we have proven, in the 21st century by those who are elected by the Republicans, you can’t have an effective democratic divided government under the likes of this thinking.

What? The last time I heard something as broken and incoherent as this was when Miss Teen South Carolina tried to explain why a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map: “U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as.”

Seriously folks, maybe Miss Teen South Carolina should secure a place in congress so she and Rep. Lee could talk about our recent presidents JFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

I was a conservative governor.  I fought against long odds in a deep blue state.  I understand the battles that we, as conservatives, must fight because I have been on the front lines. (Update: In the speech as delivered, Romney described himself as having been “severely conservative.”)

Few conservatives will buy that. Mitt Romney governed as a Republican who could reach across party lines, not as a conservative willing to sacrifice his position for his values. Hence RomneyCare, which adorns the desk (at right) in the Romney portrait in the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Romney cites his stances on social issues as evidence of his conservatism in office, but the fact is that the most important social change of his era–a court decision legalizing gay marriage in the state–was largely out of his hands. I suspect that Romney’s glib reference to his opposition to that decision–”we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage”–will offend liberals without reassuring conservatives.

Romney could have owned up to the fact that he has departed considerably from conservative policy over the years, while stressing the key conservative principles upon which he has not yielded. But Romney went too far, claiming to be an across-the-board conservative, trying to be the “not-Romney” for whom many conservative voters still pine, rather than himself.

Santorum’s speech earlier in the program was, as Mike Flynn observed, disappointing, but when the former Pennsylvania senator talks about defending the idea that rights come from God and not the state, the audience senses that he is speaking from his deepest convictions.

Romney’s convictions are not conservative in a political sense. Romney did make one refreshingly honest admission today: “There are college students at this conference who are reading Burke and Hayek. When I was your age, you could have told me they were infielders for the Detroit Tigers.” Romney has failed to demonstrate, however, that Burke and Hayek are relevant in any way to what he has done thus far in his political career. Whenever he talks about the origins of his political views, as he did today, he mentions his father and his family.

Perhaps, then, Robert Filmer–author of Patriarcha, the seventeenth-century argument in favor of monarchy–is closer to Romney’s philosophical foundation.

That’s conservatism with a capital “C”–the idea that he is best fit to rule who has inherited the right. It’s not what most Americans would recognize today as conservatism, but it is what conservatism might have meant to the Founders, some of whom may have drawn inspiration for their revolution against the British Parliament from monarchist, rather than republican, principles.

Instead of trying to be “not-Romney,” the erstwhile Republican frontrunner should trumpet his true convictions–not as personal anecdote, but as political philosophy. He seems to believe he should govern because he has the right–so he should say so. He would be the regal president Alexander Hamilton always wanted, tightly restrained by the Constitution that Madison designed for the purpose.

What could be more conservative, and more American, than that?