Keeping Tabs on the Americans for Prosperity Summit

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So are the Kochs cowering from the exposure? Hardly. David Koch himself is speaking at tonight’s “Tribute to Ronald Reagan” Dinner, in between Siv Jensen, leader of the Norwegian Progress Party, and Tim Phillips, AFP’s president and public face.

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I’ve been to four other AFP conferences and it doesn’t seem like this year’s hook — easy access to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally — has changed the make-up of the crowd. It’s a tea party crowd, largely white (although I have yet to enter a room with an all-white crowd), fairly old, incredibly excited.

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Part of protecting the AFP brand was fighting back when Democrats attacked the organization; we saw a web ad AFP put together in response to an attack from President Obama. The audience was sold, and mostly wanted to know more about social media and the possibility of voter fraud or vote suppression. [Strategist Sean] Noble suggested that the fact that the Justice Department did not go after the New Black Panther Party, after two members were taped lurking outside of a polling place in 2008,

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“Because they didn’t prosecute,” said Noble, “there’s going to be less voter fraud, because there are going to be more antenna up.” He suggested that activists might want to follow the example of conservatives in Massachusetts in January 2009 who took video cameras to polls to film voters coming out and prevent them from voting twice, as they’d heard the SEIU was plotting to do.

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“It totally shut them down,” said Noble.

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“Alright!” said one voice in the crowd, as the rest of the room applauded.