Here’s my interview from Right Online with the amazing Michelle Malkin:

Yes, it’s been too long. I promised myself that I would begin podcasting again and I don’t want to not get along with me. Admittedly, I’m a bit out of practice but, hey, a bad podcast from me is still better than (insert awful experience here) . This episode is most a wrap-up of Right Online 2011.

Most of the Twitter folk are by now aware of the elaborate hoax that was played on many of us over the course of the past month. As I was the biggest cheerleader for the cause that wasn’t really a cause I thought I should address it. I think it’s important for people to understand the intricate details that were woven into this story to make it seem real and hope this will serve as a cautionary tale for all of us online.

Heads up: there were some sound issues today but I wanted to get this posted and didn’t have time to resolve them. The music kicks in very loudly after the Kruiser Kid intro so adjust your volume ahead of time!

Welcome to the “put up or shut up” phase of the 2010 election year.

For years, we conservatives have experienced a steady dose of buyer’s remorse with seemingly every Republican elected to represent us. Frustration and anger with the Obama/Pelosi/Reid three-headed bureaucratic monster but the seeds of crankiness were sown by a Republican Congress that spent money like a Kennedy kid on Spring Break.

We now face a unique set of circumstances leading into the fall elections and have a pretty clear choice in front of us: do we keep running candidates through the GOP mill and hope they don’t sell us out or do we go all-in for candidates who embody true conservative principles?

The reality is that several squishy (no backbone), moderate Republican candidates have already made it through their primaries and may be disappointing you in Washington in the near future. Why? Simple-the money is still flowing in the wrong direction.

While the Tea Parties have helped divert a lot of the cash flow away from the RNC and its ugly offspring, the NRSC and NRCC, several prominent PACs and other Beltway groups can still be game-changers for a candidate. They still cling to the old model of preferring to back someone they think can win rather than someone they think should win. It’s a thoroughly flawed way of helping candidates that may very well blow this opportunity we have and truly push the Republican party and, yes, all conservatives over the cliff that we were at the edge of in 2008.

Very few of these prominent national figures and organizations can be trusted to do the right thing right now. One only has to look at Sarah Palin’s clinically insane endorsement of Carly Fiorina over Chuck DeVore to see that no one at the top really gets it. The endorsement was a game-changer and it was all done in the name of electability. At the time, Devore’s polling numbers against Barbara Boxer for the general election were almost the same as Fiorina’s. He wasn’t polling as well against Tom Campbell in the primary but those paying attention knew that Campbell’s campaign was about to go belly up. Palin could have given DeVore the kind of fund raising push and recognition he needed to get through the primary and hammer Boxer in the general (trust me-he would destroy her in a debate).

There is now a great opportunity for those of us who truly want conservatives representing us in AZ-03. Pamela Gorman is running in a ten person primary against opponents who include a carpetbagger, a chronic liar and a liberal. She has a legislative record that any conservative can endorse. While Senate Majority Whip in Arizona, she fought her own party and Governor Jan Brewer on a tax increase that the Republicans were trying to shove down their constituents’ throats. It takes an extraordinary amount of backbone to be the party whip and tell the rest of the leadership off. It is also the kind of spine that’s been lacking in GOP leadership for far too long.

Pamela also co-sponsored a little bill known as SB-1070. It’s been in the news a couple of times lately. So we know where she stands on that mess.

If a serious conservative built a candidate from the ground up Pamela Gorman would inevitably be the end result.

Since she’s in a ten person race, Pamela doesn’t need a zillion votes to emerge victorious. And once through to the general, she’ll almost certainly win because it’s a good Republican district. So we’re looking at a vote that will actually be in Congress next year. Do you want a real conservative or a slightly modified version of Olympia Snowe?

I’ve also had the good fortune of getting to know Pamela during the past couple of months. She’s running because she wants to serve, not because she desperately needs elective office for ego gratification. She’s not married to politics and that in itself is a great reason to back a candidate.

This is not the time to start up the third party talk. It’s time to help true conservatives who are running to get the GOP back on track. The greatest thing about social media is that we can get to know candidates from around the country and help them even if we’ll never go near their districts.

My good friends at FTRRadio.com have declared today Pamela Gorman Day in an effort to help raise awareness and money for the campaign.

Any money is good for a campaign. One of the genius moves of the Obama campaign in 2008 was that it kept asking regular people for five or ten bucks. Over and over. Even in a bad economy, people can find five dollars for a good cause. The RNC still sends me snail mail that says “Even $100 will help.” Because they’ll never get it.

You don’t need to be a big money donor. Ten bucks from a thousand people spends just the same as a $10,000 check from a snotty fund raising dinner. And you don’t even have to shower to donate online.

Here is the link to Pamela Gorman’s donation page. Thanks in advance for stepping up and helping a most deserving conservative.

Most of you are now up to speed on all the nonsense at what could have been a focused effort to promote conservative activism at Western CPAC. If you aren’t, I would encourage everyone to take a trip through the posts written by the people who helped make the weekend worthwhile for me. Ed Morrissey, Melissa Clouthier, Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Ed Driscoll, John Schulenberg (Infidels Are Cool), as well as John Sexton and Morgen Richmond (Verum Serum) have excellent wrap-ups of the various outbursts of dementia and other highlights. Caleb Heimlich, Elizabeth Crum, Jon Fleischman and Rachel Alexander rounded out the under 90 crowd that spent most of the weekend dodging the expanding prostates that tend to dominate old-school conservative gatherings.

It is this group of people and others like them who make me stick around and fight the fight. Honestly, if I thought that conservatism had to remain in the hands of the guy I wrote about earlier and/or some of the zombie extras from an old George Romero movie I saw wandering around WCPAC, I’d have moved to Costa Rica this afternoon.

The single most energizing thing about the election of Barack Obama is that it’s made online conservative activists redouble our efforts to find new ways to get the job done. Blogging stalwarts have kept the pressure on while people like me have gone nuts on Twitter and Facebook. I won’t for a moment pretend that I did any of this by design, it’s all been a happy accident on my part but the gift horse’s mouth is wide open and I ain’t taking a peek.

The confusion on the right stems from the fact that conservative principles are enduring. This leads to a misbegotten belief among some that everything else about conservatism is supposed remain unchanging. In fact, everything but the principles should be in flux, especially in the modern political era.

So we now have friction between the “Well, we’ve always done it this way!” crowd and those of us who moved into the 21st Century as soon as it was available for occupancy. It would be nice to have everyone come along for the ride but some people just can’t seem to leave 1984.

As I said yesterday: fine, we don’t need them.

The exchange of information and ideas between the new media people this past weekend was invigorating and inspiring. We talked about local politics, national politics, entertainment (Andrew Breitbart had a great line about conservatives ponying up the money to make movies they like rather than whining all the time) and a variety of other subjects. We were always in a good mood, hopeful and solutions-oriented. That’s why we get so irritated with the birther/impeachment crowd that some would have everyone believe constitutes a significant part of the base.

Here’s the reality kids: the base is traditionally the part of a political movement that mobilizes and gives it the extra juice it needs to get through close elections with some success. The drooling checkbook hordes who keep hoping for some kind of magic birth certificate fairy to show up in lieu of cultivating articulate candidates who can speak about real conservative issues are stinking up the place and they need to go.

We are the Base. Resistance is futile.

While there was much that was disheartening going on at Western CPAC this past weekend, the new media people mentioned in this post can give even the most hard-core conservative cynic in the Lightbringer Era a positive, hopeful outlook.

And the rest of them are standing around screaming for us to get off their damn lawns…

Here’s a little non-political story I thought was worth passing along. This is for all the people wear the fact that they don’t “get” Twitter like some technophobic medal of honor.

A little over two weeks ago I bought a laptop connect card from AT&T. I’m going to hit the road pretty hard next month and I needed to be able to get online a lot without being dependent on wi-fi hot spots. I signed up for the maximium data plan, which was 5 gigs. Why they don’t have an unlimited option mystifies me but this seemed workable.

Ten days after I got the card I began receiving emails telling me that I was close to my maximum data transfer limit. This was just from normal usage. I wasn’t streaming a lot of music or downloading elf porn, I was mostly blogging and monitoring social media sites. Exactly two weeks after getting the card I was over the five gig limit and into over-use charge territory. Our tech affair was over before we ever had a chance to really get to know one another.

So I did what any devoted Twitter fan would do: I tweeted my disappointment. There wasn’t a lot of hyperbole, I merely stated that the card wasn’t working out for me and that I was returning it. A couple of people asked for specifics, I gave them and was ready to head down to the AT&T store.

Before I left, somebody from AT&T contacted me on Twitter and said she wanted to help. I got back to her right away and the company has been going out of its way to accommodate me. I’ve gotten 5 or 6 calls from them since Sunday and they’ve taken care of a couple important things already. It’s a lesson to other companies in the right way to use social media.

There are some long term solutions that may or may not come of this but the reaction and attentiveness of AT&T has ensured that I’ll be a customer for a long time.

I have no idea if they resonded to me simply because I have a lot of Twitter followers. If it is, it surely makes a case for building up one’s social media presence as much as possible.

I figured that the good deeds by the company deserved more than a quick tweet (they got a couple of those too). Now I have to see what else around here isn’t making me happy.