Raymmar on Radio Row – CPAC 2014

One of the main reasons I came to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC was to test my mettle on radio row. As a member of the Big Dawg Music Mafia I was asked to come and be the host of their on air broadcast for the three days they are on air here at CPAC.

Day 1

(Warning – rough audio due to technical difficulties) skip to 5 min mark for my monologue and then skip through the music by jumping to the 106 minute mark.

Day 1 on radio row was an absolute mess. No offense to the Lisa’s (Lisa Day & Lisa Mei) as much of this was beyond their control but we lost almost half of our broadcast time do to technical difficulties. The internet was not working consistently and it seemed as if the world was set on keeping us off the air. We got it together and were able to salvage the last hour of the broadcast. Hopefully day two goes a little smoother.

Michael McShane

We did get an opportunity to interview Michael McShane from the American Enterprise Institute.

Ben Doherty

Who has come to CPAC as my production assistant but he is also sits on the board of the Sarasota Young Republicans as well as being the founder of Bridge Education Abroad Institute which is an international study abroad organization.

Day 2

Day two went much smoother. We worked pretty hard yesterday to line up a number of interviews for this broadcast. Hoping that things would work out a little smoother and thankfully they did.

Project Red Leaf

Our first guests were John Publicover and Michael from Project Red Leaf. Halfway through the interview we were also joined by Michael Rubin who is an author and a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Michael spiced up the conversation with his perspective on engaging rogue regimes and talked a little bit about his book, “Dancing With The Devil”.

Bill Connor

Next on the show was Bill Connor who is running for Senate against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. He is a graduate of the Citadel and had some strong opinions about how to change things in Washington. Namely he was fully in support of term limits for all members of both the Senate and Congress.

Joe Kauffman

Following Bill Connor was another candidate, this time a congressional candidate from South Florida. Joe Kauffman, who is running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz wanted us to know that he thought Debbie was nothing more than a puppet for the current administration and that there was a massive conflict of interest in having her not only serve in Congress but in the fact that she also serves as the chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Curtis Davies

I met Curtis in the elevator on the first day of CPAC. He is from San Francisco and is running against Nancy Pelosi. He told me he believes in Universal Healthcare but he thinks we are doing it all wrong. He then told me he wanted to privatize the Post Office which I thought was rather hypocritical and lead me to challenge him a bit to further understand how he could contradict himself by wanting to privatize one bureaucracy and then begin to build another one.

Equality for Puerto Rico

I met Dr. Antonio Longo  at the Equality for Puerto Rico booth in the CPAC Hub and thought he would be great to have on air as they are fighting for the rights of Puerto Rico and their quest for statehood. This hits close to home for me since I am of Puerto Rican decent. We were also joined during this part of the interview by Alfonso Aguilar who is the Executive Director. With 61% of the Puerto Rican population voting in favor of becoming the next state these guys feel that within the next 5 years we might just see that happen.

In Search of Liberty

Norm Novitsky, stopped by the radio show to promote his upcoming movie titled “In Search of Liberty”. A movie about the constitution. The first question I asked was if the movie was going to suck because I feel like their art and messaging lacked a little refinement.

The film is not yet funded but they will be launching a Kickstarter campaign in the next week. He feels that “Failure is not an option” with regards to the funding of the film and has invested “more than $100,000” to the production of the film so far.

Tim Young

Tim Young is a conservative comic and Director of Marketing for the the Liberty Alliance. His forthcoming book, “I hate Republicans, I Hate Democrats” takes both political parties to task and exposes some of the hypocrisy of Washington politics.

National Organization for Marriage

Our final guest was Christopher Plante from the National Organization for Marriage. I wish I had been able to spend more time talking about this issue with him. Part of me is so conflicted with the whole gay marriage debate and thinks that the Conservatives and Republicans are really alienating a large section of the populous by focusing so much on this issue. While I have my own views on homosexuality and gay rights, I feel that there is definitely some room for compromise and understanding.

Wrapping up Day 2

That was all she wrote for day two on radio row and we already have a number of other interviews lined up for tomorrows show. I am trying to keep the blog as up to date as possible but with speaking, broadcasting and trying to actually take in some of the convention speakers it is almost impossible to find time to keep it all up to date.

There will be more pictures and hopefully some video to come so stay tuned for more updates from CPAC 2014.