\nThank you to Jay and to Scott for those generous introductions. Both these men have made real contributions to our nation. It\u2019s good to be back at CPAC. I can\u2019t think of an audience I\u2019d rather be addressing today.
\nI spent the weekend in Vancouver. As always, the Olympic Games were inspiring. But in case you didn\u2019t hear the late-breaking news, the gold medal in the downhill was taken away from American Lindsey Vonn. It was determined that President Obama is going downhill faster than she is.
\nI\u2019m not telling you something you don\u2019t know when I say that our conservative movement took a real hit in the 2008 elections. The victors were not exactly gracious in their big win: Media legs were tingling. Time Magazine\u2019s cover pictured the Republican elephant and declared it an endangered species. The new president himself promised change of biblical proportion. And given his filibuster-proof Senate and lopsided House, he had everything he needed to deliver it.
\nThey won, we lost. But you know, you learn a lot about people when you see how they react to losing. We didn\u2019t serve up excuses or blame our fellow citizens. Instead, we listened to the American people, we sharpened our thinking and our arguments, we spoke with greater persuasiveness, we took our message to more journals and airwaves, and in the American tradition, some even brought attention to our cause with rallies and Tea parties.
\nI know that most of you have watched intently as the conservative comeback began in Virginia and exploded onto the scene in New Jersey. But as a Massachusetts man, who, like my fellow Bay-staters, has over the years, been understandably regarded somewhat suspiciously in gatherings like this, let me take just a moment to exalt in a Scott Brown victory!
\nFor that victory that stopped Obama\u2013care and turned back the Reid-Pelosi liberal tide, we have something to that you\u2019d never think you\u2019d hear at CPAC, \u201cThank you Massachusetts!\u201d
\n2009 was the President\u2019s turn to suffer losses, and not just at the ballot box, but also in bill after bill in Congress, and most importantly, in his failure to reignite the economy. In how he has responded to these defeats, too, we have learned a great about him and about his team.
\nHe began by claiming that he had not failed at all. Remember the B+ grade he gave himself for his first year? Tell that to the 4 million Americans who lost their jobs last year, and to the millions more who stopped looking. Explain that to the world\u2019s financial markets who gaped at trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Square that with the absence of any meaningful sanctions against Iran even as it funds terror and races to become a nuclear nation. President Obama\u2019s self-proclaimed B+ will go down in history as the biggest exaggeration since Al Gore\u2019s invention of the internet!
\nUnable to convince us that his failure was a success, he turned to the second dodge of losing teams: try to pin the blame on someone else. Did you see his State of the Union address? First, he took on the one group in the room that was restrained from responding\u2014the Supreme Court. The President found it inexplicable that the first amendment right of free speech should be guaranteed not just to labor union corporations and media corporations, but equally to all corporations, big and small. When it was all over, I think most Americans felt as I did: his noisy critique and bombast did not register as clear and convincingly as Justice Alito\u2019s silent lips forming these words: \u201cNot true!\u201d
\nNext he blamed the Republicans in the room, condescending to lecture them on the workings of the budget process, a process many of them had in fact mastered while he was still at Harvard Law School. He blamed Republicans for the gridlock that has blocked his favorite legislation; but he knows as well as we do that he did not need one single solitary Republican vote in either house to pass his legislation. It was Democrats who blocked him, Democrats who said \u201cno\u201d to his liberal agenda after they had been home to their districts and heard from the American people. As Everett Dirksen used to say, \u201cWhen they felt the heat, they saw the light.\u201d God bless every American who said no!
\nOf course, the President accuses us of being the party of \u201cno.\u201d It\u2019s as if he thinks that saying \u201cno\u201d is by definition a bad thing. In fact, it is right and praiseworthy to say no to bad things. It is right to say no to cap and trade, no to card check, no to government healthcare, and no to higher taxes. My party should never be a rubber stamp for rubber check spending.
\nBut before we move away from this \u201cno\u201d epithet the Democrats are fond of applying to us, let\u2019s ask the Obama folks why they say \u201cno\u201d –no to a balanced budget, no to reforming entitlements, no to malpractice reform, no to missile defense In Eastern Europe, no to prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal, and no to tax cuts that create new jobs. You see, we conservatives don\u2019t have a corner on saying no; we\u2019re just the ones who say it when that\u2019s the right thing to do!
\nAnd that leads us to who he has most recently charged with culpability for his failures: the American people. It seems that we have failed to understand his wise plans for us. If he just slows down, he reasons, and makes a concerted effort to explain Obama-care in a way even we can understand, if we just listen better, then we will get it.
\nActually, Americans have been listening quite attentively. And they have been watching. When he barred CSPAN from covering the healthcare deliberations, they saw President Obama break his promise of transparency. When the Democrat leadership was empowered to bribe Nebraska\u2019s Senator Nelson, they saw President Obama break his promise of a new kind of politics in Washington. And when he cut a special and certainly unconstitutional healthcare deal with the unions, they saw him not just break his promise, they saw the most blatant and reprehensible manifestation of political payoff in modern memory. No, Mr. President, the American people didn\u2019t hear and see too little, they saw too much!
\nHere again, with all due respect, President Obama fails to understand America. He said: \u201cWith all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, \u2018What\u2019s in it for me?\u2019\u201d That\u2019s not at all what they were asking. They were asking: \u201cWhat\u2019s in it for America?\u201d
\nAmerica will not endure government run healthcare, a new and expansive entitlement, an inexplicable and surely vanishing cut in Medicare and an even greater burden of taxes. Americans said no because Obama-care is bad care for America!
\nWhen it comes to shifting responsibility for failure, however, no one is a more frequent object of President Obama\u2019s reproach than President Bush. It\u2019s wearing so thin that even the late night shows make fun of it. I am convinced that history will judge President Bush far more kindly\u2014he pulled us from a deepening recession following the attack of 9-11, he overcame teachers unions to test school children and evaluate schools, he took down the Taliban, waged a war against the jihadists and was not afraid to call it what it is\u2014a war, and he kept us safe. I respect his silence even in the face of the assaults on his record that come from this administration. But at the same time, I also respect the loyalty and indefatigable defense of truth that comes from our \u201cI don\u2019t give a damn\u201d Vice President Dick Cheney!
\nI\u2019m afraid that after all the finger pointing is finished, it has become clear who is responsible for President Obama\u2019s lost year, the 10% unemployment year\u2014President Obama and his fellow Democrats. So when it comes to pinning blame, pin the tail on the donkeys.
\nThere\u2019s a good deal of conjecture about the cause of President Obama\u2019s failures. As he frequently reminds us, he assumed the presidency at a difficult time. That\u2019s the reason we argued during the campaign that these were not the times for on the job training. Had he or his advisors spent even a few years in the real economy, they would have learned that the number one cause of failure in the private sector is lack of focus, and that the first rule of turning around any troubled enterprise is focus, focus, focus. And so, when he assumed the presidency, his energy should have been focused on fixing the economy and creating jobs, and to succeeding in our fight against radical violent jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he applied his time and political capital to his ill-conceived healthcare takeover and to building his personal popularity in foreign countries. He failed to focus, and so he failed.
\nBut there was an even bigger problem than lack of focus. Ronald Reagan used to say this about liberals: \u201cIt\u2019s not that they\u2019re ignorant, it\u2019s that what they know is wrong.\u201d Too often, when it came to what President Obama knew, he was wrong.
\nHe correctly acknowledged that the government doesn\u2019t create jobs, that only the private sector can do that. He said that the government can create the conditions, the environment, which leads the private sector to add employment. But consider not what he said, but what he did last year, and ask whether it helped or hurt the environment for investment, growth, and new jobs.
\nAnnouncing 2011 tax increases for individuals and businesses and for capital gains, hurt.
\nPassing cap and trade, hurt.
\nGiving trial lawyers a free pass, hurt.
\nProposing card check to eliminate secret ballots in union elections, hurt.
\nHolding on to GM stock and insisting on calling the shots there, hurt.
\nMaking a grab for healthcare, almost 1\/5th of our economy, hurt.
\nBudgeting government deficits in the trillions, hurt.
\nAnd scapegoating and demonizing businesspeople, hurt.
\nPresident Obama instituted the most anti-growth, anti-investment, anti-jobs measures we\u2019ve seen in our lifetimes. He called his agenda ambitious. I call it reckless. He scared employers, so jobs were scarce. His nearly trillion dollar stimulus created not one net new job in the private sector, but it saved and grew jobs in the government sector– the one place we should have shed jobs. And even today, because he has been unwilling or unable to define the road ahead, uncertainty and lack of predictability permeate the private economy, and prolongs its stall. America is not better off than it was 1.8 trillion dollars ago.<\/p>\n
Will the economy and unemployment recover? Of course. Thanks to a vibrant and innovative citizenry, they always do. But this president will not deserve the credit he will undoubtedly claim. He has prolonged the recession, expanded the pain of unemployment, and added to the burden of debt we will leave future generations. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their team have failed the American people, and that is why their majority will be out the door. Isn\u2019t it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it?
\nThe people of America are looking to conservatives for leadership, and we must not fail them.
\nConservatism has had from its inception a vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda. That agenda should have three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.
\nWe will strengthen the economy by simplifying and lowering taxes, by replacing outmoded regulation with modern, dynamic regulation, by opening markets to American goods, by strengthening our currency and our capital markets, and by investing in research and basic science. Instead of leading the world in how much we borrow, we will make sure that we lead the world in how much we build and create and invest.
\nWe will strengthen our security by building missile defense, restoring our military might, and standing-by and strengthening our intelligence officers. And conservatives believe in providing constitutional rights to our citizens, not to enemy combatants like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed!
\nOn our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, \u201cYou have the right to remain silent!\u201d
\nOur conservative agenda strengthens our families in part by putting our schools on track to be the best in the world. Because great schools start with great teachers, we will insist on hiring teachers from the top third of college graduates, and we will give better teachers better pay. School accountability, school choice and cyber schools will be priorities. We will put parents and teachers back in charge of education, not the fat cat CEO\u2019s of the teachers unions!
\nStrong families will have excellent healthcare. Getting healthcare coverage for the uninsured should be accomplished at the state level, not a one-size-fits all Pelosi plan. The right way to rein-in healthcare cost is not by making it more like the Post Office, it\u2019s by making it more like a consumer-driven market. The answer for healthcare is market incentives not healthcare by a Godzilla-size government bureaucracy!
\nWhen it comes to our role in the world, our conservative agenda hews to the principles that have defined our nation\u2019s foreign policy for over six decades: we will promote and defend the American ideals of political freedom, free enterprise, and human rights. We will stand with our allies, and confront those who threaten peace and destroy liberty.
\nThere\u2019s much more on our positive, intellectually rigorous conservative agenda. Not all of it is popular. But the American people have shown that they are ready for truth to trump hope. The truth is that government is not the solution to all our problems.
\nThis year, I have taken the time to write a book that tells the truth about the challenges our nation faces, and about the conservative solutions needed to overcome them. I have titled it: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. I\u2019ve set up a booth outside so that you can buy a few hundred copies each. Well, maybe one or two.
\nSometimes I wonder whether Washington\u2019s liberal politicians understand the greatness of America. Let me explain why I say that.
\nAt Christmas-time, I was in Wal-Mart to buy some toys for my grandkids. As I waited in the check-out line, I took a good look around the store. I thought to myself of the impact Sam Walton had on his company. Sam Walton was all about good value on everything the customer might want. And so is Wal-Mart: rock bottom prices and tens of thousands of items.
\nThe impact that founders like Sam Walton have on their enterprises is actually quite remarkable. In many ways, Microsoft is a reflection of Bill Gates, just as Apple is of Steve Jobs. Disneyland is a permanent tribute to Walt Disney himself\u2014imaginative and whimsical. Virgin Airlines is as irreverent and edgy as its founder. As you look around you, you see that people shape enterprises, sometimes for many years even after they are gone.
\nPeople shape businesses.
\nPeople shape countries.
\nAmerica reflects the values of the people who first landed here, those who founded the nation, those who won our freedom, and those who made America the leader of the world.
\nAmerica was discovered and settled by pioneers.
\nLater, the founders launched an entirely new concept of nation, one where the people would be sovereign, not the king, not the state. And this would apply not just to government, but also to the American economy: the individual would pursue his or her happiness in freedom, independent from government dictate. Every American was free to be an inventor, an innovator, a founder. America became the land of opportunity and a nation of pioneers.
\nWe attracted people of pioneering spirit from around the world. They came here for freedom and opportunity, knowing that the cost was incredibly high: leaving behind family and the familiar, learning a new language, often living at first in poverty, sometimes facing prejudice, working long and hard hours.
\nAll of these pioneers built a nation of incomparable prosperity and unrivaled security.
\nAfter its founding, our national economy grew thanks to more pioneers\u2014people like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, William Procter and Robert Wood Johnson, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and Thomas Watson. These are names we know\u2014but the less well known are just as vital American innovators, and they number in the millions.
\nThat American pioneering spirit is what propelled us to master the industrial age just as today we marshal the information age.
\nThis course for America, chosen by the founders, has been settled for over 200 years. Ours is the creed of the pioneers, the innovators, the strivers who expect no guarantee of success, but ask only to live and work in freedom. This creed is under assault in Washington today. Liberals are convinced that government knows better than the people how to run our businesses, how to choose winning technologies, how to manage healthcare, how to grow an economy, and how to order our very lives. They want to gain through government takeover what they could never achieve in the competitive economy\u2014power and control over the people of America. If these liberal neo-monarchists succeed, they will kill the very spirit that has built the nation\u2014the innovating, inventing, creating, independent current that runs from coast to coast.
\nThis is the liberal agenda for government. It does not encourage pioneers, inventors and investors\u2014it suffocates them.
\nIn a world where others have lost their liberty by trading it away for the false promises of the state, we choose to hold to our founding principles. We will stop these power-seekers where they stand. We will keep America, America, by retaining its character as the land of opportunity. We welcome the entrepreneur, the inventor, the innovator. We will insist on greatness from every one of our citizens, and rather than apologizing for who we are or for what we have accomplished, we will celebrate our nation\u2019s strength and goodness. American patriots have defeated tyrants, liberated the oppressed, and rescued the afflicted. America\u2019s model of innovation, capitalism and free enterprise has lifted literally billons of the world\u2019s people out of poverty. America has been a force for good like no other in this world, and for that we make no apology.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mitt Romney’s CPAC experiences since 2007 have been fairly fraught affairs. On the one hand, he always wins the activist straw poll. On the other hand, exhibit halls at past CPACs have been thick with Romney critics — in 2007 one dressed as a dolphin and declared himself “Flip Romney.” None of that today. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}