Update:  Freedom's Lighthouse has a nice writeup on the debate's winners and losers.

The first to speak was the President of the Civitas Institute and former Chairman of the North Carolina GOP, Jack Hawke.  Mr. Hawke's experiences with the former President began at least as early as the 1968 GOP convention.  He relayed the story of Nixon's uncertain nomination prospects that year.  He told how North Carolina's own Jim Gardner, one of the men on the panel, tried valiantly to persuade undecided delegates to cast their votes for Mr. Reagan, only to have Senator Strom Thurmond come behind him and wrest those votes back into Nixon's column.  Nixon won the nomination that year, but Reagan's star had only just begun to shine on the national Republican scene.

Hawke then fast-forwarded to the later stages of Reagan's time in office.  He let the audience in on a little secret I thought was fascinating.  Some might remember the hesitation and disorientation Reagan displayed during press conferences.  Hawke remarked that when the press was not around, all that hesitation went away.  When he was with friends, he was sharp as a tack, Hawke said.

Congressman Patrick McHenry was only 1 year old when Ronald Reagan battled Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976.  Nevertheless, McHenry, the next to speak, contributed much to the discussion by drawing an interesting historic parallel to describe the current GOP in search of "the next Ronald Reagan."  McHenry likened Ronald Reagan to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in terms of the impact each man had on their respective ideologies in America.

FDR met the challenges he faced in the 1930's by implementing radical liberal policies, expanding the size of government and government influence into many areas of life which it had never before known.  Likewise, President Reagan brought in an era of conservative ideals, reducing the scope of federal control over and spending for domestic issues and building a strong military presence that forced the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and the end of the cold war soon after he left office.

Rather than finding the next Ronald Reagan which is impossible, McHenry continued, conservatives should be looking for a Ronald Reagan counterpart to FDR's Lyndon Johnson.  President Johnson was not the next FDR, but he did continue the FDR legacy of increased government influence by spreading the presence of federal bureaucracies into even more areas of life including the arts, the environment, and public education.  What conservatives need then is someone to further Reagan ideals and policies just as LBJ did for FDR.

Instead of taking a "student of history" approach to Reagan's legacy, Jim Gardner spoke from memory of his personal interaction with the President.  Gardner is a former congressman and lieutenant governor of North Carolina.  He was a key figure in the GOP's resurgence in this state and won his seat in Congress in 1966.  During the first few years of his public life, Gardner remembers a young Ronald Reagan delivering a speech that "knocked my socks off."  In it, Reagan shared in his easy-going, quiet style his philosophy of the role of government, giving a masterful description of conservatism that captivated Gardner.  Later, in 1968, Gardner was privileged to deliver the seconding speech for Reagan's nomination.

Although the Reagan Revolution sputtered that first go around, it won the 1980's and would become the beacon for conservatives.  Throughout that time, Gardner told us that Reagan never once wavered or compromised the principles he so eloquently put forth in that speech a generation before.  And through it all, he remained a gentleman, Gardner said.  In the early 90's, during Gardner's unsuccessful statehouse bid, Reagan came to North Carolina to support his campaign.  Although he was not the same man physically-speaking, Reagan gave yet another wonderful speech, framing a political career that spanned over 30 years and that was undeniably marked by principled, steadfast conservative values.  Gardner closed his time by reading a large portion of Reagan's farewell address in 1989.  America was back, Reagan said, and the Reagan Revolution had brought it back.

The last panelist to speak of was "the inside man" of the group.  Frank Gaffney served in the Defense Department under Reagan and saw first hand Reagan's policies at work, especially his foreign policy.  Right off the bat, Gaffney emphatically declared that Reagan' most significant accomplishment was that "he destroyed the Soviet Union and set millions of people free."  He then spent the next several moments relating how Reagan did it, pointing to 5 policies which produced that outcome.  In each case, Gaffney asserted, these same strategies could and should be used to confront and defeat our current mortal enemy, Islamo-fascism.

First Reagan was very clear about the nature of the enemy.  The "evil empire" label was not the enlightened approach; detente was.  Yet Reagan stuck to his guns.  We must do the same today in our fight against Islamo-fascists.  No longer should we cower to demands for political correctness.  Let's call these totalitarian despots what they are.  Second, Reagan reconstituted the military and intelligence services of this country.  Today we must do the same, understanding that the struggle we face is not confined to Iraq and Afghanistan, but to the entire world.

Third, Reagan was a master in political warfare, and his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate - "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - was a masterful stroke.  It discredited the Soviet apparatus and exposed it as the repressive regime it was.  We need to do the same.  One way Gaffney mentioned that we are trying to do that is through a documentary which we cannot see.  The film documents the millions of Muslims who are not Islamo-fascists and are willing to join with us in defeating that small and deadly group of radicals who have perverted their religion.  But we won't get to see it, because the Public Broadcasting System refuses to show it and the government agency which holds the rights to it will not release those rights so it can be shown elsewhere. (It truly makes me wonder who side they're on.)

The fourth policy Reagan implemented was a regional strategy to deny totalitarian Soviet control any advances.  He pressed them wherever they tried to gain new traction.  Whether through proxies or intelligence, Reagan never ceded ground anywhere in the world.  So, too, we must not allow the Islamo-fascists any safe havens whatsoever.

Lastly, Reagan took aim at the Soviet Union's cash flow by systematically cutting off funding from western sources.  This was exactly the opposite course of his detractors whose policies of detente were the very life support system that kept the Soviet Union in business.  Speaking directly to the audience, Gaffney said this is where we can make a real difference today.  He said we must start the process of removing our investments and our business from companies that continue to do business with our enemies.  Slowly but surely, we can constrict the ability of our enemies to fund their war of terror against us.  He closed by telling us that if we don't take the opportunity to make this conflict more manageable now, then we will surely confer on our children and grandchildren a much more dangerous and difficult task.

I was only in middle school when Reagan took office, and my interest in politics would not bloom until after he had left the White House.  So I don't have much detailed recollection of Reagan the President.  For that I am regretful.  I would love to have been engaged in following his time in public life, both to see the policies he championed and to better appreciate the skill and charisma with which he communicated the conservative message to his fellow Americans.  As I left this session - and many times during the two day conference - I felt myself longing for there to soon appear the next Ronald Reagan, or at least, as McHenry put it, someone who could continue the amazing conservative legacy Ronald Reagan has left for us.

Of course, many look at Fox News as being conservatively biased - especially when presented with the argument that the mainstream media is liberal - but that is fodder for another poll at another time (foreshadowing?).  This week's poll will find out how many among this audience agree with my assessment, how many believe the mainstream media report only the facts in an unslanted manner, and how many see a conservative spin on the evening news and in the morning paper.  The poll is located in the right sidebar.  Please be sure to cast your vote.

If there was a winner last night, I'd have to say Mitt Romney looked the most "presidential" of the ten contenders.  He came across as eloquent and conservative.  However, like many of the candidates on stage last night, he has an achilles heel - his Mormon religion.  Rudy has his liberal social views and plethora of personal missteps; McCain has Campaign Finance Reform, among other things; Romney his cultic religion.

That covers the top tier candidates.  Among them, it is clear Republicans do not have an "ideal" choice.  Among the second tier, the other seven men vary from impressive to laughable.  My favorite of the night was Duncan Hunter.  Like Romney, he was eloquent and presidential, and he brings legitimate conservative credentials to the table.  Ron Paul was the laughable one.  Note to Dr. Paul:  This was the GOP debate.  His views were by far the most libertarian of the group, and the quirkiness with which he delivered them just added to the "fish-out-of-water" impression he gave me.

Sam Brownback reflected views that are probably most like my own, though he has little chance to secure the nomination and would be much too polarizing a figure in the general election, I fear.  Still, it was good to see Christian conservative values trumpeted without compromise in a nationally-televised setting.  I may have deep-seeded qualms about his Roman Catholic theology, but its implications on the political scene are very similar to implications of my conservative Baptist mindset.

Rounding out the group were Gov. Gilmore, Gov. Thompson, Rep. Tancredo, and Gov. Huckabee.  I'm not sure why, but Gilmore didn't impress me.  For lack of a better description, I just didn't like him very much.  His softer pro-life position didn't help, either.  Tommy Thompson was also less than impressive I thought, which was surprising to me since I had heard so much good about his time as governor of Wisconsin.  Rep. Tancredo seemed to have the hardest time forming and speaking his thoughts.  His responses sounded like an engine sputtering on too lean a fuel mixture.  None of these three have any chance of winning the nomination.  I did get a positive impression of Gov. Huckabee.  If I didn't like Gilmore, Huckabee I liked.  He probably doesn't have much chance either, but he wouldn't be a bad choice for me personally.

The resounding message last night did not come from the candidates on stage.  It came from the legacy of the one in whose library the debate was held.  The message was that the next Ronald Reagan was nowhere to be found, and that's exactly what this country needs.  Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the men on display last night are a higher-quality group of presidential hopefuls than I had previously believed.  America would do well to choose one of them in November, 2008.

The forum centered mostly on four topics - what makes up a suitable sample of participants in a poll, current polling data for the major races in North Carolina in 2008, how framing the message in different ways can produce wildly inconsistent results, and what messages were received by the electorate in 2006.  Since the Civitas Institute's main focus is North Carolina politics, the discussion, except for some of the early nationwide presidential polls, was largely limited to this state.

For the first few minutes of our time, the panelists explained the methodology for determining "likely voters" in their sample.  Some polling firms poll simply on the basis of voter registration, others will inquire about their sample participants' enthusiasm about the upcoming election in order to arrive at a poll of likely voters, still others poll the general public at large without regard to voting status.  The Civitas Institute's polls only use what they call "decision makers" or those who have voted in the past and express at least a solid level of interest in the next elections.

Specifically, they limit the responses used in their polls to those who have voted in 2 out of the last 3 elections and who are expecting to vote in the next one.  These criteria lend credence to their results and improve the accuracy as shown in the actual results of future election contests.  Sloppiness among other polling firms in this regard contributes to many of the crazy polling results we have seen in the past.  One example given by the panel concerned the available voter information in the state of Florida.  When the latest database contained information last updated in 1999, TelOpinion decided not to conduct the poll.  Other firms went ahead and conducted their polls even with voting data that were over 7 years old.

On the current campaign front, recent polls gauging support for the GOP and Democratic presidential nominations were evaluated.  On the Democratic side, hometown boy John Edwards has maintained a lead from 2 to 6 points over both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama for the last three surveys polling North Carolina Democrats.  On the national scene, Rudy Giuliani has been polling very strongly with a double-digit lead over John McCain.  In North Carolina, GOP voters also prefer the mayor by double-digit margins.

At this point, I asked the panel if they had been able to gauge whether or not conservatives Christians were aware yet of Rudy's liberal social positions on gay rights and abortion.  The consensus was that they are not yet aware, a fact that may greatly inflate his current poll numbers.  When asked who the panel thought would eventually win the nomination, responses varied from "it's Rudy's to lose" to "it's a wide open race."  Interestingly, however, no one felt that McCain would come out on top.

The forum moved next from poll numbers to how the wording of poll questions can greatly influence a poll's findings.  This was the most intriguing and eye-opening segment of the discussion.  To illustrate just how important the framing of the message is, the panel showed us two polls which addressed the same issue in much different ways.  Here are the questions.  (Think about how you would answer each of them.)

Do you support or oppose legislation allowing a restaurant, bar and tavern owner to decide their own smoking policy as long as the policy was clearly posted at the entrance to their business?

This question would likely come from the proponents of laws protecting private property rights.  Following is the same issue, smoking in restaurants and bars, as it might be addressed by the anti-smoking lobby.

Do you think the state should pass a law banning smoking in all buildings open to the public, including bars and restaurants?

The results are telling and highlight the importance of knowing how an issue is addressed in the polls we see before making conclusions about how people genuinely feel about that issue.  A full 70% supported a restaurant owner's prerogative to set smoking policy in his or her own establishment.  Only 24% opposed.  On the flip side, 61% favored the smoking ban, and only 34% opposed it.  These are remarkably inconsistent results showing, I believe, a significant lack of understanding among voters of the issues we confront everyday.  And the flip-flopping numbers cross all major political ideologies.  In every case - Democrats, Republicans, Unaffiliated, Moderate, and Split-ticket voters - support for the restaurant owner's rights was at least 65% while support for a smoking ban, again in every case, was at least 57%.  Amazing.

The last segment of the forum examined GOP shortcomings in the election of 2006.  The conclusion from the panelists is that Republicans did a poor job of crafting and delivering a clear message to voters.  To support their claims, the panel pointed to two poll questions asked after the election was over last year.  Only 17% answered yes to this question (77% answered no):

At the state level, was there a particular issue you recall the Republicans promoted during the recent election?

Then this question was asked of non-voters:

If you had voted on November 7 for state legislature, would you have voted ... ?

The GOP won that meaningless "election" 37% to 31% over the Democrats, indicating, at least in North Carolina, both a lack of enthusiasm among GOP faithful and the lost potential of achieving a different outcome last November 7th.

This was a profitable and educational forum for me.  I learned some things about polling I did not know and clarified in my mind others which I had only vaguely felt.  In the end, as much as polls might have individual shortcomings, I believe the last two election cycles have proved an aggregation of many polls can produce fairly accurate predictions.  I'm looking forward to testing that hypothesis once again in 2008!