Former presidential candidate Herman Cain was a political outsider who was attacked by the permanent political class he wanted to uproot. In addition, he was a black conservative who was attacked by the institutional left for not conforming to their definition of what a black man’s politics should be. In essence, Cain was the quintessential figure the late Andrew Breitbart would rush to defend, and Breitbart ferociously did just that
So it was more than symbolic that, as part of his “Army of Davids” movement against the institutional left, Cain held a tribute to Breitbart on Sunday night at a reception at the Renaissance Hotel in Northern Virginia.
Larry Solov and Steve Bannon, dear friends of Breitbart’s who now lead his enterprise, and Sonnie Johnson, a Tea Party activist who introduced Breitbart at this year’s CPAC, spoke at the reception honoring Breitbart.
Bannon said that Breitbart hired people who were highly intelligent, highly educated, and were good investigative journalists, but the number one quality Breitbart required was that those who worked with him had “the fighting spirit.
He understood the stakes that we are fighting for,” Bannon said. “The fighting spirit was so important.”
Bannon said Breitbart drew people to him because he knew that an “army of Davids” was needed to take the country back, and this is why Breitbart also had an affinity for Cain.
Bannon movingly said Breitbart knew the America that had been passed down, in an unbroken chain, generation to generation, was at stake and threatened by the three things Breitbart wanted to take down and destroy: the institutional left, the Democrat Media Institutional Complex, and the permanent political class.
Johnson said she felt it was fate that the reception honoring Breitbart was being held at the Renaissance Hotel because conservatives were in the process of a renaissance of sorts, of which Breitbart played a seminal role.
Solov, who was also Breitbart’s best friend, put an exclamation mark on the evening by defining what Breitbart stood for and the inimitable and enduring legacy he left behind.
Solov described how his late friend was a self-described “reluctant cultural warrior” and recounted some of Breitbart’s more unconventional moments, such as when he roller bladed amongst liberal protesters at a Koch brothers event and later mocked the protesters by inviting them to join him at Applebee’s for a meal.
Solov also reminded the gathering of Breitbart’s prescience, highlighting his prophetic words in his CPAC speech in which he predicted exactly what the institutional left would do to politicize race in order to help Obama win in the fall, which is what Breitbart had always fought against.
Solov said Breitbart “fought to democratize and level the playing field of political discourse … and the battlefield was the media and the Hollywood apparatus.”
Too often, the institutional left bullies conservatives, and Solov said Breitbart always wanted to tell conservatives that they “should not be afraid and they have every right — and more — to hold their conservative beliefs and vocally express them.”
Standing up to bullies is what Breitbart was about at his core, Solov recounted, as Solov shared with the gathering that Breitbart had one rule of parenting. Solov said he often heard Breitbart tell his son that, “if you are on the schoolyard and you see a kid being bullied, you go up to the bully and you fight them. If you come home in trouble from your principal, you are not in trouble with me.”
Solov said that in 2007, Breitbart simply asked him, “Why don’t you become business partners with me (?) … and let’s change the world.”
And that he did.
“Andrew Breitbart has most certainly secured a place in the history books as a patriot and a fierce warrior who fought to preserve the best in each of us and in this great country … we are joined in this fight together,” Solov said.
After expressing how much he missed Breitbart, Solov addressed his late friend: “You started it. You showed us how. We are all infused with your fighting spirit. We are all Breitbart now.”
After Solov’s remarks, a video tribute to Breitbart was played, which concluded with the letters “WWBD (What Would Breitbart Do).”