Sue Lani Madsen: ‘Controversial’ Tomi Lahren inspiring at GOP dinner

Tomi Lahren wasn’t what I was expecting. The best encounters with new people always start that way.

Lahren was in Spokane as the keynote speaker at this year’s Lincoln Day Dinner, hosted by the Spokane County Republicans. My only exposure to Lahren had been watching a few YouTube videos of her snarky political commentary permeated with salty language. Her critics call her a dumb blonde, an “airbrushed and photoshopped” bimbo and generally lacking intelligence. Those are just the printable comments.

When I sat down to interview Lahren before dinner, I found myself talking to a smart, gracious, lovely, well-educated, articulate young woman who always knew what she wanted to do and why. She majored in political science and broadcast journalism as the foundation for a career as a conservative opinion journalist. A South Dakota girl, her goal was to develop a platform to give a voice to the voiceless in Middle America. She’s made a go of it by the age of 24, a liberal arts graduate success story. But her critics were right about one thing: She’s blonde.

Lahren follows Allen West and Dinesh D’Souza as keynote speakers for the annual event. West spoke at a Lincoln County event the same year he appeared in Spokane. I was the emcee and he was the best guest I’ve ever worked with. He had a solid knowledge base to ad lib from and was a hit with the rural audience. I met D’Souza at a small dinner event at Whitworth University when his first book came out. He impressed me as a thoughtful and intelligent man with a sharp wit. All three deliver mainstream conservative messages with conviction and humor.

And all three have been labeled controversial. It’s not their message. It’s the progressive cultural narrative that claims women and minorities as “their” territory. All three are conservatives who don’t match the old-white-guy stereotype of the Republican Party.

Neither did the audience of 500 at the Davenport Grand. There was diversity of age, ethnicity and gender, plus a range of Spokane interpretations of what constitutes dressed up for Saturday night in a fancy hotel ballroom.

The controversial tag can’t be shrugged off as a matter of style. In her uncensored YouTube videos called “Final Thoughts,” Lahren sounds like she might be channeling her grandfather and her uncle, both combat-tested Marines. I asked her why the colorful language, and she admitted her parents hate it too. She claims it’s her passion spilling out spontaneously, but she understands it reflects the way many people in Middle America talk to each other and knows it connects with her online audience.

And after Kathy Griffin pushed the last barriers defining what constitutes decent speech off a cliff last week, swearing like a Marine hardly counts as controversial.

Lahren’s keynote speech was sharp, witty and clean. If the speaker had been former Attorney General Rob McKenna saying we need an end to crippling regulations like Obamacare, it would be called partisan but not controversial. And since Allen West and Dinesh D’Souza speak from the same worldview, the label clearly is about the messenger and not the message or its delivery.

In spite of women serving in elected party leadership at the national as well as state and local levels, Republicans struggle to overcome stereotypes over women’s issues, starting with disagreeing on what constitutes women’s issues. Four short videos fighting stereotypes and misinformation were unveiled at the end of the dinner, one featuring Republican women claiming a broad spectrum of issues as their own. Spokane County Republican Chairwoman Stephanie Cates energized the majority-female crowd when she said, “Women believe in more than just birth control.”

The videos perfectly meshed with the closing advice Lahren gave the crowd. Locally, encourage your candidates. On college campuses, explain economic reality to Bernie Sanders supporters. Like in Venezuela, what starts out as free stuff “turns into a black market for toilet paper.”

Lahren describes herself part of a new generation of media disrupters, going around the mainstream media directly to the people. “We’re the silent majority, but we’re getting louder,” Lahren said. “Tell your own story and don’t let opponents hijack the narrative.”