Make No Mistake, We're Alive and Kicking

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:59:14 +0000 – By Dan Gainor

Size does matter and that makes this year's gathering of conservatives in Washington all the more important. The Conservative Political Action Conference -- CPAC for short -- delivered record numbers of attendees for the annual mega-political event. An estimated 9,000 people signed up for an event that has drawn closer to 6,000 in the past.

Conservatives -- united not by party but by ideology -- flocked to Washington to see and hear Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and others map a path out of the wilderness and back into power.

While that road might appear rocky and wildly uphill, team Obama is doing its part, too, blazing the trail with trillion-dollar deficits, massive government and plans for to take away our guns.

Republicans at the conference are energized like no time I've seen in the past four CPAC events. They aren't led by a faux conservative like Sen. John McCain or an unpopular president. Instead, they are getting back to their roots and back to their ideals of smaller government and fiscal sanity.

It's a proven recipe with real results and given the large number of young conservative activists, the future might be bright indeed. Size does matter and the growth in the size of government might lead to the resurgence of the conservative movement.

Dan Gainor is Vice President for the Media Research Center's Business Media Institute. His column runs weekly on Foxnews.com. He also appears each Thursday on FoxNews.com's "Strategy Room." He can be found on both Twitter and Facebook.