The buzz that I’m picking up out of the RSC retreat earlier in the week hasn’t been great for Blunt. Apparently he showed little sign of knowing his audience, and was very transactional and mechanical in what he said. Boehner, on the other hand, is thought to have helped himself. He talked about his personal background–growing up as one of twelve children in a family with a bar in Cincinnati–and how he first came to Congress to help clean the place up. Shadegg apparently met what were the high expectations for him on his home turf.

The candidates spoke on Monday. The next day, Phil Gramm, George Will, and Newt Gingrich all spoke. I hear they all had very pro-change messages. Gingrich talked of how he is one of the architects of the GOP majority, but has been “sickened”–he used the word more than once–by what he has seen lately. Gramm and Will both argued that conservative voters are different from Democrats, and if they see too much in the way of loose and gross practices, they will simply sit on their hands on election day.