The Conservative Future

And Democrats understand this.  I mean, that’s all they really understand.  So the Democratic Party portrays the Republican Party as enemies of women, children and the poor.  And it presents itself as the champions of the underdog, the powerless, the voiceless — women, children and the poor.

The way conservatives face an issue, it’s always administrative. It’s wasteful, it doesn’t work — very practical.  But it has no human, emotional presence.  We cannot continue to fight these programs as though they’re just wasteful.  Because people are willing to waste money if it “educates children,” if it “helps the sick,” and so forth.

What you’ll have to do — what the conservative movement has to do is to portray these programs as what they are — destructive.  Government programs are destructive.  In inner cities across America, millions of children every year — mainly black and Hispanic, mainly poor — are having their lives and life chances destroyed by school systems.  And of course, the city councils behind these programs are 100 percent controlled by the Democratic Party and progressives.  They have their boot heels on the necks of poor black and Hispanic children.

This is one of my greatest frustrations — why aren’t Republicans saying this?  Why aren’t we fighting healthcare?  If Obamacare goes through, yeah, it’ll be wasteful, so forth.  But if Obamacare goes through, only rich people will be able to afford decent medical care.  That’s the reality.

And I’m not going to get involved in who we’re picking for President, because I agree with Michele Bachmann on this — we need to proceed with the attack on the Democrats, and let the leaders emerge.

Finally, let me say this — the conservatives — we have to recognize that this is a problem with us — that Democrats are always promising people something.  And that — you know, that’s very powerful.  If you have something to fight for, it motivates you; it energizes you.

Republicans generally take a kind of no position, it’s an efficiency position, it’s a fixing-government position.  During the Cold War, we controlled the White House because we had one issue that people trusted us on, which was national security.  The country’s survival was threatened by the Soviet Union.  And Republicans could rally the people behind that.  That was a cause.  That made it a crusade.  That made it more than just a fix-it operation.

Barack Obama is the Soviet Union.  And let’s make this clear — Barack Obama did not come — he did not do this by himself.  The Democratic Party is a party which is anti-democratic.  It is — and this is one of the reasons for the current revolt.  They have utter contempt for the voters and for people.  They know how to blandish them.  They know how to fool them and manipulate them.  But they have contempt for the actual voters.

[I think] somebody challenged Hillary over her socialized medicine plan.  And her answer was that people don’t know what’s good for them.  And that’s what every leftist thinks, which is what the Democratic Party is run by.  Every leftist believes this — that people are brainwashed.  Well, you can see it in their postmortem for the recent election.

And that’s another huge advantage we have — that their ideology is making them really stupid politically.  Their explanation is that — we didn’t communicate, people didn’t understand how good all this stuff is for them.  People are stupid.  That’s their attitude.  And I  think it’s very important to tar and feather and destroy the Democratic Party, to [taint them].

One of the my other great frustrations was the Iraq war — that I thought that Bush was just tremendous in leading us into the Iraq war, for reasons I’ve laid out in two books — one is “Unholy Alliance,” and the other one is a book called “Party of Defeat,” about the Democrats and how they sabotage the war effort.

The biggest lie of the Iraq war is that Bush lied to the Democrats to snooker them into the war.  As you know, not only did Democrats support the war, but Hillary Clinton, John Kerry gave great speeches as to why it was absolutely essential to take out Saddam Hussein.

Three months after the war began, right after we liberated Baghdad, the Democrats changed 180 degrees and started attacking Bush.  “Bush lied, people died” was an official campaign of the Democratic National Committee.  Had nothing to do with the war.  It had to do with the fact that the political Left behind Howard Dean wanted to make him , was making Howard Dean the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

So for a political gain, Kerry and John Edwards switched 180 degrees, and they started to attack the war.  This was the most seditious, what the Democrats did.  They stabbed our troops in the back.  They called our war illegal, immoral.  They did enemy propaganda against our government, but mostly against our troops in the field.  They got our young people killed, and Republicans let them do it.

That has to change.  Cannot be afraid anymore of calling people saboteurs, anti-American, unpatriotic, undermining our security.  And we’re going to have to do it.  That’s the role of conservatives.  Because you’re not going to find a lot of Republicans in legislative office who will have the courage to do this.

I’m going to introduce one of our true leaders this afternoon, Newt Gingrich, who, if you read his book — I mean, Newt has got it now.  He is identifying the enemy, exactly who it is.  Gives me tremendous confidence for the conservative future as we move ahead.  Thank you.

Question and Answer

Q: I’m going to take the prerogative and ask the first question of Ron Radosh, and maybe the Congressman would have a response.  But Ron, if the Republicans in Congress are seen as compromising or accommodating too much, then the Tea Party’s going to light that flame again, and then we’re going to have this internal revolt, so — especially on the social programs.

So from reading what you’re saying, some government’s okay.  And I understand it’s a fine line.  But if we’re too compromising, then the Tea Party who put us into power is going to, I think, revolt.  But I’d like your comments, and then the Congressman’s comments.

Ron Radosh: Yeah.  The Tea Party is very important.  And it has raised the right issues.  But I’ve seen a few people, not many, saying that we should repeal everything, from the New Deal up, that is not constitutionally pure.  A few people have said that.  And that can’t be done.  You may wish it could be done.

FDR was very smart.  He said Social Security isn’t going to be funded out of taxes; it’s going to be funded from the deposits taken out of your paycheck.  And people are going to say, I contributed to it out of my paycheck, and therefore, you can’t take it away from me, because you’re taking away money I put in.

Now, it’s not solvent.  It’s going to fail.  That’s what I mean by “fiscally responsible.”  Conservatives have to tell the Americans the truth about the limits of these programs.  But if you go around campaigning on things like undoing the entire edifice of the welfare state, we’re going to lose.  Because a lot of the people who are supporting us now are going to go.  As much as they dislike the other party, they’re either not going to vote, or they’re going to vote for the people we have to prevent getting into office.

That’s what I mean.  It’s one thing to assert principles and try and argue for them and develop them, and develop support for them.  But to run on a maximal program that can be and possibly will be self-defeating — that’s my point.  And we can’t afford to lose.  We have to stop the fundamental transformation that Obama sought to bring to America.  We have to defeat him.

Congressman Steven King: I think it’s really important to have a hot fire burning there [that] takes America down the path that’ll take us to the next level up of our destiny.

I’m really glad to have the Tea Party engaged, and watch them grow from one little cell up to thousands of different cells of spontaneously grown Tea Parties.  When you think about how much difference that makes — this is a narrative that’s worthy of telling.

Last November — well, actually,  it was probably the last day of October in 2009 — they rolled out the House version of the healthcare bill — 1,994 pages, HR 3200.  The called a conference two hours later for Republicans.  And the staff had separated it by title, scanned it quickly, made a guess on what they thought was in it and gave us a presentation there.

And so we went into the conference, and they gave us the presentation.  And essentially, it was this — this is what we think is in it, this is our best guess.  We can’t kill this bill.  So essentially, it’s going to pass approximately on this date.  Buy your plane ticket to go home.

And I stood up, Michele Bachmann stood up, and others said, We’ve got to kill this bill.  Doesn’t matter whether you think it’s hard or not, or whether even you think it’s impossible; we’ve got to fight to kill this bill.  We walked down the Capitol steps.  And she turned to me and said, “We got to kill the bill.”  And I said, “Yes, we have to kill the bill.”  She said, “How do we do that?”  I said the only thing I know is what — I’d learned this from hunting pheasants with Colonel Bud Day — of, originally, Sioux City, but Florida, God bless him.  He had said, “The only thing I know is just call everybody to the Capitol.  Jam the Capitol, surround the Capitol.  Pack the place so nobody can get in or out.  They’ll have to give up.  They won’t be able to do business.”

And I relayed that to her.  And she said, “Can we do that?”  We’re walking down the steps yet.  I said, “I don’t know why we can’t do that.”  She said, “Let’s do that.”  We hit the bottom step, and there was a plan to call rallies into Washington.  Tens of thousands of people came.  And that was November 5^th, November 7^th.  We did everything we could to kill that bill in that fall, in November, just a little over a year ago.

Still, it went over to the Senate.  And there, they voted on Christmas Eve.  And I — communicating with Chuck Grassley — we could’ve bought another 12 hours in the Senate, and had the vote come 12 hours later.  And every Senator that stuck around for the vote would’ve been too late getting home for Christmas.  That was okay with me.  This was more important than Christmas with the family.

I said, “What are we going to do now,” after it passed the Senate.  He said, “Pray.  And pray for a win in the special election in Massachusetts.”  Who would’ve thought?

But you know the sequence of this.  On and on it went, till we got to March of this year.  We called another rally.  Tens of thousands of people again.  This time, probably for the first time ever, the American people came in such numbers that they actually surrounded the Capitol.  And not just hand-to-hand stretched thin, but six and eight deep in a ring around the Capitol, with thousands of people standing in the corners.

The American people did everything that they could do to, constitutionally and peacefully, petition the government for redress of grievances.  And still their hearts were hardened in that Congress.  And Nancy Pelosi walked through that crowd with her Regal Magnum gavel, in her let-them-eat-cake moment.

So we put up a great fight.  And I will tell that if every Republican in the House would’ve believed as strongly as a handful of us did, we would’ve killed that bill in the House, and it never would’ve been an issue in the Senate.  And we could have done the same thing with Cap and Tax, had we believed.  But you’ve got to believe.  And so that’s why it’s so important to have that push coming from the outside.

And so I’d say that to talk — things that we can do that are constructive — they get us down the line, though.  First, yes, we must finally repeal Obamacare, pull it out by the roots, root-and-branch, un-fund it, face the President down, stare him down.  Even if he shuts the government down, we shut Obamacare down.

And I will not rest until that’s done.  I have introduced the discharge petition — 173 signatures on it.  And I have pushed this.  We have open rules now, for the first time in awhile, where every — any member can introduce an amendment to any appropriations bill, and force a debate and a vote.

And I have said that I’m taking the blood oath to introduce the language in every appropriations bill that none of these funds, and no funds heretofore appropriated, shall be used to authorize or enforce Obamacare.  And we’ll do that in every one.

And in the interest of time, I’m going to concede this mic back, although I’ve got a couple other points I’d to make.  But I just appreciate the chance to make that point.

Q: I think Bob had a comment.

Emmett Tyrrell: Well, I’d like to pick up on something David said.  It is true that the political libido of the liberal is that of a nymphomaniac.  I mean, sometimes, a sex offender.  I mean, they’ll politicize anything to get their way.  The political libido of the conservative has heretofore been the political libido of a Victorian gent or lady.  And they are more polite.  And there are some things they’d rather do than politics.

But I think that’s changed, for the time being at any rate.  Because I think the Tea Party movement shows an enormous politicization of the American people and a politicization for the good.

Interestingly, when I brought this — this has been written about in my book, the conservative — “After the Hangover — The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery.”  And Michael Barone made the point that Tea Party movements have swept the country going back to the beginning, episodically.

1938 to 40 it looked like it was going to be possibly an overthrow of Franklin Roosevelt and an undoing of much of — some of the New Deal.  But World War II intervened.

The energy in the Tea Party movement today is the energy of a group of people that can change American politics for years to come because they are driven by freedom, liberty.  And that drive, that impetus, could indeed lead to certain aspects of the New Deal being disassembled, in which I would join the Tea Party in the disassemblage.

Q: Ron, do you have a comment?  Did you have something quick to say?

Ron Radosh: Yeah.  Just one thing, taking off from what David said I’m in complete agreement with — we must emphasize the un-democratic nature of the Democratic Party, and what it’s planning.

Two things. One, he talked about — that they really believe that they have the answers.  And they represent the American people.  It’s the old Thomas Frank book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”  I know what way Kansas should’ve voted.  What’s wrong with them?  Because I know.  That’s the arrogance of that argument.

The second point — this is very important — look at what the Democratic think tanks are doing.  Two important documents surfaced a few days ago.  Go to the website of the Center for American Progress, John Podesta’s group.  And what you will find there is an incredible statement by John Podesta.

He says it doesn’t matter how the people voted this time; that we lost and so many Republicans won.  We really have won because we represent the people; they don’t.  The people voted wrong.  And second, he says — what we have to do about it is bypass Congress.  The President alone can, in the remaining two years, put into effect our entire agenda, from Obamacare down, by executive fiat, without ever going to Congress.  And then he lays out how he can do this in every single area.

So, how are we going to stop that?  Podesta said it first — they’re the brain’s trust for the Administration.  I think the Administration is going to — they’re going to try and embolden Obama — listen to Podesta, he’s Obama’s man — and that they’re going to try and do just what Podesta said they should do.

Steven King: Well, when you say that, it makes me feel like a birddog on opening day.  I’d just love to get started on that.  If they want to come forward with a higher, loftier level of arrogance that has already knocked them flat on their back, bring it.

David Horowitz: I just wanted to jump in on that.  The perfectly accurate term for these Democrats is neo-Communists.  The Marxist theory of Stalinism is called Revolution from Above.  And that’s exactly, exactly the way they are thinking….

Steven King: Mike, I’d just like to complete my answer.  And that is, now the new majority in the House of Representatives has the power of the purse and the power of subpoena.  So we can address these things when we could not before.

David Horowitz: Use those subpoenas, please.

Q: Ron, I was puzzled initially at you making a big deal out of people wanting to repeal the New Deal.  Because I’ve been to lots of Tea Party events, and I’ve never seen any indication of any support for repealing Social Security.  And it seemed like you [went] from that into Sarah Palin and how  we have to avoid extremists.  We can’t have people running for President who are going to do these things that’ll turn off people.  And of all the possible candidates for President, I haven’t seen any who want to repeal Social Security.  And I just wonder where this comes from.

Ron Radosh: I –

Unidentified Audience Member: Sarah Palin — there might be other reasons not to vote for her.

Ron Radosh: Well, no, I didn’t mean to –

Unidentified Audience Member: But extremism isn’t –

Ron Radosh: — suggest Sarah Palin has endorsed that; it was some other people.  But I have seen at least two statements from lower-level Republicans arguing in just the way I phrased it.  I’m sorry I didn’t take them with me to get the exact citation.  But two people have made that as sort of a small undercurrent that you have, to go back and undo the entire — they argue that everything is unconstitutional.  Some people have said on Glenn Beck’s program everything that has come beforehand was a violation of the Constitution.

I think Sarah Palin is unelectable for a lot of other reasons.  And I just think, as much as David said, let them come, and the winner will rise up from above.  I think we can’t keep out of it.  We have to give our input.  Because these candidates are vying.  And people are going to have to pick and choose between them.  We have to pick and choose between them, too.

And I think — I wish — I think there’s enough indication that Palin is a lightning rod in such a way that she’ll become the issue.  I wish she would be a force behind the scenes — give her ideas, campaign for the ticket, work hard on behalf of a conservative resurgence, without having to run herself.  I think that would be a great role for her.

But I think that part of the idea of winning, I think — I don’t care if any of the other people I mentioned — which one ever arises to the top.  I didn’t mention Mitt Romney.  Some people are still for him.  I think Romney has the albatross of Massachusetts healthcare on his back.

Q: Yeah.  Two challenges that I see to the future of conservatism that’s seldom talked about is — first of all, I think that we’ve created a society with a culture of entitlement, number one.  You see that in our youth.  And number two, we have such a big, bloated bureaucracy at every level of government — local, state and federal.  And people vote in their self-interests.  How do you overcome those two big issues?

David Horowitz: I am hoping that the Republicans in Congress will target the public sector unions who are responsible for most of the growth of government.  I want to see hearings.  I would like to see — I don’t think this law could get through until the next election, when we’ll take majorities in both houses and the White House — but I’d like to see a Hatch Act for corporate government suppliers and government unions, defined [identically] as, say, 80 percent of their business is done with the government, or 80 percent of their members are government workers, and ban them from all political activity.  All of it.  Any funding, going out and doing the campaign work.  If the Republican Party doesn’t do something like this, you will know it’s suicidal.

These are the most dangerous operations in America.  These are run by Communists.  The head of the SEIU, an old SDS Leninist, totally tied into Obama and ACORN.  They’re the most dangerous force in America.  And I think it’s really — it’s easy to clip their wings by such a law.

Q: Emmett, I want to ask you a question.  Do you think, just as an aside, that during ’39, and [the] Tea Party movement in ’39 that was destroyed by the war –  what is to prevent the same diabolical progression, in that propagation of a war can be foisted upon us, and the Tea Party would end up having to lose its focus and its ability to [see] these changes because the Democrats [call] war, whether it’s a war of finances or a war of [actual] –

Emmett Tyrrell: Well, my answer is two-prong.  First of all, we’re treating liberalism today as we might’ve treated liberalism in the ‘50s, when they overwhelmed us — or the late ‘40s, when they overwhelmed us, when we weren’t even here.  Liberalism has steadily petered out as a fount of ideas.  That’s not to say that they’re not dangerous, but they have really petered out.

Oncoming is this love for freedom across America of the Tea Party movement.  I’ll make a personal anecdote.   Wednesday, I wrote a piece about — a facetious piece about the pat-down, in which I joked about it and joked about the scanners.  And by the time 4 o’clock in the afternoon had come by, I had Sean Hannity on the phone insisting I tell defend myself before all of his listeners.  And I said, Sean, the way you and — some woman who’d been violated — just explained it to me, you’ve won me over.  I’m in favor of doing something about these airport scanners.  In fact, I’m in favor of, now, profiling the people.

But I thought about that more and more and more.  And I thought, this is another manifestation of this love for liberty across the board in this country that’s sensible, that’s prudent, and that’s right.  And so, that’s another manifestation of the Tea Party movement.  I hope the Tea Party movement realizes how salutary they are, and how healthful they can be to us all.  So I think the petering out of liberalism is one thing.  It’s not what it used to be.  Liberalism is dead.

The new thing — the other thing that’s come along is this great resurgence of a love of liberty.  And by the way, I wouldn’t be surprised that many Democrats share it with you and will end up, if they’re properly approached — do I dare call them Reagan Democrats — they’ll come along to our point of view.

So I’m very optimistic about the future.  And David, I think that we conservatives have, up to a certain point, been pessimistic, and with good reason.  But now I think we have reason to be the party of optimism.

David Horowitz: It’s morning in America.

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