We Want You! GOP Tech Summit

The Republican National Committee is hosting a Tech Summit on Friday, Feb. 13 (yes, we know) at our National Headquarters. This is an open invitation to participate. Please use the sign-up form here and identify your area of expertise. We look forward to a full day of your ideas.

Speakers will be given 5 minutes to present suggestions and opportunities for advancing the GOP's technology efforts. Registration is open until Wed., Feb. 11 at 11 p.m. ET. Time blocks for each area of interest will be communicated via e-mail no later than Thurs., Feb. 12 at Noon ET.

If you can get here, we'll hear you! 310 First Street SEWashington, DC 20003 (Map) If you can't attend in person please send thoughts via e-mail to ecampaign@gop.com and put "Tech Summit" in the subject line or call 202-863-8728.

Central Harlem Republicans Support Huckabee

Last week several members of the Harlem Republican Club Central gave support for the Mike Huckabee show. Huckabee always searching for real down home Southern cusine was delighted with the large turn-out of Harlem Republican Club Central members .

District Leader Denice Johns, Governer Huckabee and 2nd. Vice President Abbi Lee Rogers

Form Governer Mike Huckabee hosts "Huckabee" on FOX News Channel, which airs on Saturday evenings. A significant part of his adult life was spent as a pastor and denominational leader.

He became the youngest president ever of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, the largest denomination in Arkansas. Huckabee led rapidly growing congregations in Pine Bluff and Texarkana. He said those experiences gave him a deep sense of the problems faced by individuals and families.

Mitt Romney in 2012

BOSTON (AP) — Mitt Romney doesn't have a job for the first time in his adult life. That hardly means he's not working. In ways both subtle and overt, the 2008 Republican presidential contender, former Massachusetts governor, one-time Olympics chief and high-flying businessman is building toward a 2012 White House campaign by judiciously engaging and disengaging with the national debate.

On Tuesday, he's in Chicago to speak at a fundraiser for a prospective state treasurer candidate. On Wednesday, he's in Washington to headline a fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. On Thursday, he's again the keynote speaker at a fundraising dinner for Republicans in New York City.

After that, he's heading back to his oceanfront home in La Jolla, Calif., to continue writing newspaper columns and a political book. Based on the '60s tome "The American Challenge" by Frenchman Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, it will be aimed at shaking American economic and political complacency, he said.

Romney's also supervising the sale of houses he owns in Massachusetts and Utah, the type of excess real estate that brought ridicule to John McCain last fall. And his political action committee is seeding money to candidates across the country.

"This is a quiet time," Romney insisted Friday during a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Park City, Utah. He had just completed loading a U-Haul trailer with personal effects from the ski home he's selling and was about to set out — alone — for the 11 1/2-hour drive back to California.

The new face of the National Republican Party is Michael Steele

It's official. The new face of the National Republican Party is Michael Steele, a 50-year-old African American, the first in the history of Abraham Lincoln's party.
At a time when Barack Obama is serving as the first African American president in history, the move is an interesting play to corral minority voters who will be crucial to a Republican comeback.

But Steele is actually a Republican. A foe of abortion, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and native of that state regaled the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn., last year with his calls for offshore drilling. He got the whole convention floor to chant, "Drill, baby, drill," a call that echoed on the campaign trail whenever vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to it.
Michael Steele, who has argued the party needs to broaden its reach, won 91-77, in the sixth round of voting during the session in Washington after the three other candidates had dropped out. The last guy standing was Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, who belonged to a whites-only country club for years.

"As a little boy growing up in this town," a beaming Steele said in accepting the appointment, "this is awesome." We have a complete video and transcript of Steele's full remarks on the jump; scroll down or click on the "Read more" line below.

Promising to bring the party to every corner and every group in the nation's geography and warning obstructionists to "get ready to get knocked over," Steele said the party of Abraham Lincoln is a conservative party and "we will cede no ground to anyone on principles."