{"id":2445803,"date":"2019-06-27T21:05:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T03:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=308631"},"modified":"2019-06-27T21:05:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T03:05:00","slug":"aspen-ideas-reporters-notebook-conservatives-barb-aspen-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-ideas-reporters-notebook-conservatives-barb-aspen-crowd\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Ideas Reporters Notebook: Conservatives barb Aspen crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Aspen Ideas Festival 2019 runs from June 23 to 29.<\/strong>
Ian Wagreich\/Aspen Institute<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Speakers at the Aspen Ideas Festival typically focus on issues of national and global concern, but a couple of conservatives took some shots Thursday at the very town that\u2019s hosting them.<\/p>\n

Karl Rove, a senior advisor to George W. Bush until Aug. 31, 2007, started his conversation with Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, with a good-natured dig at the seat of Pitkin County, which saw 69.7 percent of the vote favor Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks for having conservatives to the Aspen Institute,\u201d he said in a discussion titled \u201cThe Future of the Republican Party\u201d at Paepcke Auditorium. \u201cI remember coming to my first Aspen Institute in 2008 after leaving the White House, and they asked me to come and I checked into the hotel and they gave me my room key, and I\u2019m walking out of the lobby and across the driveway and up rolls a white Range Rover with four people inside all wearing their badges, and a guy leans out of the window and says, \u2018F\u2013k you, f\u2013k you, f\u2013k you,\u2019 and drives off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to myself, \u2018Tolerant Aspen as I know it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, Rove, when talking about the level of interest in the Democratic presidential primaries, questioned the sanity of those in the audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a brand new AP national opinion research poll on Democrats \u2014 only 35% of Democrats say they are paying much attention to the Democratic presidential primary contest,\u201d he said, \u201cand I suspect that surprises a lot of people in this room because it\u2019s clear that (those people in) this room, being at 9:10 on a nice Aspen morning, in a thing about the Republican\u2019s party\u2019s future, you are all political junkies and need help. Serious counseling and help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rove\u2019s remarks sparked chucks from the audience, but a later panelist\u2019s comments stuck a more serious tone before Rove injected more of his humor. .<\/p>\n

Near the closing of an afternoon panel talk also on the state of the GOP and its future, speaker David Azerrad teed off on a crowd he said looks down on \u201cordinary Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI sympathize with Americans who don\u2019t look like me, who don\u2019t worship the same god that I do, who aren\u2019t as cosmopolitan as I am,\u201d said Azerrad, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics and is the AWC Family Foundation fellow at the American Heritage Foundation. \u201cI would wish, and this is perhaps a message for the people of Aspen: You are the ruling class. You are the most credentialed, accomplished people who are running the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cTry to have a little bit more sympathy for people who don\u2019t look like you. Who cling to their guns and their religion. You don\u2019t need to spend all of your weekends with them, but there is such contempt amongst elites for ordinary Americans. They\u2019re not all racists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rove, a moderator in the discussion, stopped him there.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow watch out,\u201d he said of the audience. \u201cSome of these people are here to watch the exotics, but a lot of those people are fellow travelers with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aspen Ideas Festival 2019 runs from June 23 to 29.Ian Wagreich\/Aspen Institute Speakers at the Aspen Ideas Festival typically focus on issues of national and global concern, but a couple of conservatives took some shots Thursday at the very town that\u2019s hosting them. Karl Rove, a senior advisor to George W. Bush until Aug. 31, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 11:24:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}