y friends, it is good to be here at the 27th gathering of CPAC, the
Conservative Political Action Committee. Among today’s speakers, I may be
the only one who spoke at the first gathering CPAC, back in the Watergate
days of 1973.
Let me recall briefly the history of our movement. It took life in Chicago
in 1960, when Barry Goldwater stood up at that Republican convention and
roared: “Let’s grow up, conservatives, we can take this party back.” Four
years later, we did take our party back, and we nominated Mr. Conservative
himself for President of the United States.
But after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the liberal lie that
the American Right “created the climate” in which Lee Harvey Oswald, a
Communist, murdered the president, Sen. Goldwater went down to crushing
defeat—as did we. But we did not quit. Sixteen years later, we took back
our country, and elected Ronald Reagan President of the United States. It
is now forty years since I heard Barry Goldwater speak those words in
Chicago, twenty years since Ronald Reagan captured the White House. Let us
look back at what we have accomplished, and what we have failed to do—as
we conservatives set our compass for a new century.
In the field of electoral politics we have triumphed. In 1964 we captured
the Republican Party. In 1972, Richard Nixon routed FDR’s New Deal
Coalition, capturing 49 states, creating a “New Majority Party.” Woodstock
values were repudiated; then came Watergate. They said we were finished.
But in 1980 we came back again, and the golden age of modern conservatism
began.
Ronald Reagan restored the American spirit; he cut tax rates and unleashed
the mighty engines of private enterprise that roar on to this day. He
restored the might and morale of our armed forces. Greatest of all his
achievements, he led America to victory in the Cold War. Try as they
might, our liberal historians cannot deny the greatness of the real Man of
the Century: Ronald Wilson Reagan. But that was yesterday, my friends. Now
it is time that this generation of conservatives grew up and recognized
that the Cold War is over, that the Day of Reagan is past. We can’t go
home again.
Since Ronald Reagan returned to California a dozen years ago, his
movement has been wandering in the desert. With no Evil Empire, no Cold
War to unite us, we have subdivided into quarrelsome factions. In twelve
years, our victories have been few. Even those have left us with ashes in
our mouths. Our hopes of a second Revolution in 1994 sank in the mire of
the old politics of compromise and capitulation. It is a time for truth.
Since Reagan went home, Big Government has regained all its lost ground.
President Bush turned his back on conservatism, raised taxes, imposed
racial quotas on small business and declared that America’s mission in the
world was to create “a New World Order.” The cheers from the UN and
liberal media were thunderous.
As a result, the Republican party twice went down to defeat at the hands
of Mr. Clinton, winning 38% and 41% of the vote, the most lopsided
Republican defeats since the 1930s. But worse than defeat was the
conservatives’ loss of faith and confidence. You know the truth as well as
I: On issue after issue, Beltway Republicans have become the fellow
travelers and secret collaborators of William Jefferson Clinton.
Today, on foreign policy, trade policy, immigration policy, Big Government
and Beltway power, the two major parties have become inseparable twins. In
handing out permanent NATO war guarantees for all of Eastern Europe, Bill
Clinton trampled all over the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson—with the
backing of the Republican Party. In appeasing China with permanent MFN,
Bill Clinton today has the backing of the Republican Party. In his
unconstitutional war on Serbia, Mr. Clinton had the backing of the foreign
policy elite of the Republican Party. Bush and McCain were unhappy we
didn’t send in 200,000 American troops. That is not conservatism; that is
globalism -- and we reject it in the name of Washington, Jefferson, John
Quincy Adams, Ronald Reagan, and all the other great patriot-presidents
who put America First—ahead of anybody’s New World Order.
Clinton hails NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and globalization; and like trained
seals, Republicans clap in unison. Mr. Clinton favors open borders, a
million new immigrants a year, and handing over high-tech jobs to low-wage
workers from foreign lands. Bush and McCain cheer him on and the
Congressional Republicans applaud.
Clinton calls for a vast increase in lending authority for the IMF and
more foreign aid. A Republican Congress gives him everything he demands.
Clinton asks for billions more for the Department of Education; a
Republican Congress gives him more than he asks.
The Republican Party calls itself the party of limited government and low
taxes. But after four years of George Bush and five years of a Republican
Congress, can anyone name a single regulation that has been repealed, a
single agency that has been abolished, a single tax that has been cut?
Even that miserable little National Endowment for the Arts gamely soldiers
on. What we are witnessing in national politics is the triumph of an old
globalist named Carroll Quigley.
Years ago when Bill Clinton and I passed through Georgetown, there was a
renowned teacher who wrote a book called Tragedy and Hope. In it Dr.
Quigley wrote: The argument that the two parties should represent opposed
ideals and politics...of the Right and...the Left, is a foolish idea...the
two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can
‘throw the rascals out’ without leading to any profound or extensive
shifts in policy...” “It should be possible,” wrote Quigley, “to replace
one party with the other party which will pursue, with new vigor,
approximately the same basic policies.”
Quigley’s dream is America’s nightmare. Our two Beltway parties have
become two wings of the same bird of prey, two arms of one national
establishment that means to rule in perpetuity. Our two-party system is a
fraud, a sham, a delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big
Government, we have one-party government, one party press; and
conservatives are being played for suckers.
My friends, I left a Republican Party I served 35 years, because I believe
my country deserves a real choice, not a choice between a second Bush
Administration and a second Clinton Administration. We ought to have a
broader range of candidates than either the son of a U.S. Senator from St.
Alban’s and Harvard, or the son of a President from Andover and Yale. The
elites have two candidates; Middle America has none. We mean to change
that. Let me outline for you a Freedom Agenda, a Populist Agenda, a
Conservative Agenda, a Reform Agenda that, if I am nominated, we will
offer you and the American people.
First, we will not just prattle about the principle of federalism; we will
make constitutionalism our compass. As control of welfare was returned to
the states, we will return to parents, teachers and local school districts
the decisions about the primary and secondary education of their children.
We need a President who not only speaks up for parental choice, but who
will shut down the U.S. Department of Education. George Bush won’t; I
will. Goals 2000, School-to-Work, busing, the expulsion of God and the Ten
Commandments from our schools, the indoctrination of children in the
tenets of evolution and secular humanism, none of these were demanded by
parents. All were imposed by federal bureaucrats, judges or the NEA, the
dismal triangle that has made a hellish mess of American education. All
three need to be expelled from the classrooms of America like the
disruptive delinquents they are.
Half our federal Cabinet departments were created to service special
interests: Education, Housing, and Transportation should be abolished and
the money sent back in block grants to the states and taxpayers. If we
believe in states right and states’ responsibilities, let us begin acting
on that belief.
Second, if we are to survive as one nation and one people, and not break
down into an ethnic war of all against all, all discrimination must be
ended by the federal government. No man or woman should be held back
because of race, color, or creed; and no man or woman should be given
preferential treatment because of race, color or creed. Al Gore favors
racial preferences; Mr. Bush refuses to fight them; the Reform Party and I
will end them once and for all.
Unlike the timid and tongue-tied Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain, we are not
afraid to speak up loudly for the God-given right to life of the unborn.
Roe v Wade was an abomination; and if I name the next two Justices to the
Supreme Court, it can be overturned. If elected, on January 22, 2001, the
anniversary of Roe v Wade, I will issue an executive order overturning
every executive order Bill Clinton made to make abortion on demand the
policy of the United States Government.
Fourth, we will repeal the Bush and Clinton tax hikes, and tear the U.S.
tax code up by its roots, cut tax rates across the board, and shift the
burden off small businesses and American families onto global
corporations, foreign companies, and Chinese Communists, who will no
longer have overnight privileges in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Fifth, the looting of the American nation by global socialists of the IMF
and World Bank will end. The time for foreign aid has come—and gone. It is
a crime against justice that U.S. tax dollars are used to bail out the
failed investments of Wall Street bankers, and pay the bills of corrupt
regimes that vote against America’s interests again and again and again in
the United Nations.
That brings me to our sixth commitment. Kofi Annan has said that only the
United Nations can authorize the legitimate use of force in the world,
that national sovereignty must give way to the UN’s right to intervene
anywhere in defense of human rights. Under the new UN War Crimes Tribunal,
American pilots can now be seized and prosecuted without America’s
permission. Let me give you my word: When I raise my hand to take the
oath, all surrenders of American sovereignty to any and all institutions
of the New World Order come to an end. And if just one U.S. soldier,
sailor or airman is seized by any UN police, we will send the Marines to
get him back, and boot the United Nations so far out of the United States
the next General Assembly will meet in Katmandu. American sovereignty is
not negotiable, not now, not ever.
Seventh, the balance of power in the U.S. Government will be shifted away
from bureaucrats and judges, back to the elected representatives of the
American people. It is time to stop the kowtowing to the Supreme Court;
and to confront the Justices with the authority of the Constitution
itself, and the power of the people.
We shall begin real reform of our U.S. political system. The only people
who will contribute to election campaigns will be citizens who vote in
those campaigns, not corporations, and not unions. All contributions will
be voluntary. All “soft money” will be outlawed. Congressional pensions
shall be abolished. All members of Congress and federal judges will be
subject to term limits, and the Supreme Court will be marched back into
the narrow stalls intended for it by the Founding Fathers.
Eighth, as we are a republic, not an empire, all entangling alliances
dating to a Cold War that has been over ten years will be reviewed. It is
time the rich and prosperous nations of Asia and Europe started to carry,
themselves, the full cost of their own defense, and stopped the
freeloading off Uncle Sam.
Ninth, we will establish a new America First trade policy that cuts out
the cancerous Clinton trade deficits and gives goods Made in the USA the
same access to foreign markets that we give foreign goods in our markets.
And if the WTO objects to the new America First trade policy, then, it is
“adios muchachos” to the WTO. And unlike the Republican bellhops of the
Business Roundtable, we will not take orders from the Fortune 500.
Lately,
Thomas Donahue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned members of Congress
that if they vote against permanent MFN for China, they do so, “at their
peril.” Well, I have an e-mail for Mr. Donahue: Go back and tell the boys
at the Business Roundtable: Republicans may carry your golf bags; we
don’t. If you bring up permanent MFN for China in this session of
Congress, we will knock it down.
Finally, my friends, we cannot walk away from the cultural war for the
soul of America, because it is about who we are, what we believe, what we
stand for as a people. The outcome of that culture war will determine what
kind of people we are, and what kind of society we shall become. And the
ultimate question is this:
Is this God’s country? Are we commanded to conform our laws and our
society to His will? Or has God’s law been expelled forever from the
market place of American ideas and ideals? Once, we were God’s country. If
we have the courage of that generation of young conservatives who heard
Barry Goldwater and devoted their lives to the causes he and Ronald Reagan
pursued, we can and shall prevail.
That’s where we are going. Come follow us.
