We’re going to have a deep conversation tonight about how to win. What's the proper way to win? What's the proper way to fight? What does winning actually look like? What does it mean to win the culture war? What does it mean to win the policy war? What do conservatives even stand for? We have to have those tough conversations.
It's really easy to bash the left - and I have a whole speech bashing the left - because you've got to talk about the problem. But then we have to have solutions. Sometimes we forget that part. Many Americans are worried right now, and rightfully so. I think there's a feeling out there that there might be an expiration date on our freedoms. You're watching what's going on, you're having trouble finding any glimmer of hope. People are getting angry, people are getting frustrated, people are desperate for answers on how we might reverse this trend.
And the truth is it won't be easy. To reverse course, we have to win elections. To win elections, we have to be persuasive, which is not to be confused with just being loud and angry. I can tell that you guys are ready to get to work on this, so I want to talk about how do we do this.
Let's review what's at stake first. It's been a little over a year since Democrats took full control. Senate, House and presidency. President Biden, in his own delusional headspace, is probably really proud of himself for setting so many records. Record inflation, record illegals crossing our border, highest crime waves of the century, record number of oil and gas pipelines canceled, record number of men defeating women in their own sport.
Those are not good records. Things are so bad for the Democrats that they aren't even trying to make the case anymore. Throughout our days in DC, we actually just vote on suspensions, which just means things we all agree on, pretty non-controversial votes, or bills that they've already passed a number of times.
They're just passing the time. It's like they've given up and, frankly, you would too if you've seen those polling numbers. Their Build Back Better plan went down in flames and they have yet to come up with a strategy to revive it.
I got to say, our Republican leadership deserves some credit on this. Deftly moving the legislative chess pieces around so that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would hold strong against the Build Back Better plan. That thing was dangerous and it's gone.
But they're still doing everything they can to push their agenda through other means. Even with these legislative failures, Joe Biden has still managed to harm our country by refusing to do his job. His refusal to stand with our allies and stand up to our enemies has precipitated disasters in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and soon Iran. His refusal to enforce our border laws has resulted in 7,000 illegal crossings a day. His refusal to lease federal land or water for oil exploration and his refusal to permit L&G export facilities and pipelines has poured cold water on the production expansion necessary to bring oil prices back down.
Now these policies - and this is just a few of them - they seem too crazy to be true. And I spend a lot of time thinking about this question: Why? Why do they believe this? Why would anyone favor policies that so obviously harm the country?
And I think it's complex. It's a lot of things, but I think it boils down to this: populism.
Doing what feels good instead of what is true and right. Now I don't like populism. Some people do. It depends on how you define it.
I define it this way: it's the political act of telling the public what they want to hear as opposed to the truth. It's affirming their feelings instead of presenting the true trade-offs associated with any given policy. It is a denial of the unintended consequences of policy making.
On our side, this embrace of populism has made us angry instead of inspiring. It made us demand $2,000 checks for people who never lost their jobs instead of advocating for personal fortitude and responsibility. It's not a good trend on the right and we should note it, but the left, this is what they do. They've always engaged in this strategy.
After all, what's the easiest way to get a vote? It’s bribery.
Bribery is the easiest way to get a vote. Bribing the voter. Promise you that your dreams will come true if you just elect me. And they ask, "What's your truth so I can affirm it. You're perfect the way you are. It's everyone else that's screwed up. You're fine. I'll fix it for you. Just elect me. I'll make them give you what you rightfully deserve."
Does that sound familiar from a lot of demagoguing leftist politicians? Now the problems never get solved, of course, and that's by design because grievance is powerful. Resentment is good. It keeps you mad. It keeps you engaged. It keeps you voting for the demagogues that shamelessly overpromise and bribe the citizenry.
And that's just a small part of it, of course. The deeper why on the left is control. The progressive disposition is the belief that human nature can be molded into utopia. The modern French revolutionaries, believing that all tradition and foundations can be thrown out in favor of some post-modern revolution. They chastise the Constitution and its protection of natural rights and checks and balances because such things get in the way of a rapid and transformative agenda. Just ask Woodrow Wilson. He hated the Constitution.
All cultural icons that do not affirm and support the post-modern woke lingo of critical race theory or intersectionality, well, they're canceled. Dr. Seuss, Aunt Jemima be damned.
Now here’s the good news. Parents are waking up to this, to the corruption of our school systems and they're fighting back and they're doing so because they know that this anti-American narrative, this idea that our founding should be torn down, should be deemed racist and evil, they know it's toxic. They know that it can never be replaced with anything good. They know that's such nihilistic revolutionary reasoning, it always ends up in bloodshed and despair.
Or in the case of the year 2020, CHAZ, in Seattle, or in the case of the 20th century, tens of millions dead, but progressives don't care because utopia is a powerful magnet and the progressive loves to chase it.
Now liberals, the few real ones that are left, they can't stand up to the progressives. There's no foundation for them. There's no set of limiting principles for the kind, compassionate, open-minded liberals - so they go along with the radical progressives who promise them their utopia.
The problems of our time become purposefully exaggerated by these radicals. The population purposefully terrified, so as to justify the most extreme solutions that result in the most possible control by the government.
You're told the world's going to end in 12 years if we don't blanket our landscapes with wind turbines and solar panels, but they scoff at building a new nuclear plant. You’re told that the only way to help black communities is to defund the police, even though 80% of the black community favors the same or more policing in their communities. You're told that the rich don't pay any taxes, but in reality, the Trump tax cuts made our system more progressive, wherein the top 1% pay 40% of all federal revenue. You're told that voter ID is voter suppression, even though three out of five Americans believe that voter ID is a good idea. You're told an open border is the only way to be considered compassionate, even though it's the open border that causes death and human trafficking and prevents legal immigrants from making it through our system in a timely manner.
Their solutions make no sense if one only thinks about it briefly, but that's not the point because control is the point. Chaos and crisis. They justify their quest for more power, terrify the public, then lock down their schools and their businesses, make you believe in injustice and crisis, and then bribe you with false promises.
This is the way of the progressive. That's why people are frustrated. And it seems like they're on offense all the time and we never are. Maybe that's true. But that's also our job as conservatives to be on defense, to defend the Constitution, defend our founding, defend traditions, defend the free market, defend the liberal ideas of individual dignity, due process, freedom of speech and, ultimately, defend the policies that actually work.
These things will always be under assault from the left and we will always be on defense. Get used to it. We can complain about it. We can let it demoralize us. We can turn on each other and call each other RINOs and sell-outs and establishment. We could. Plenty of people do to get attention, but that would be foolish.
We can't let this constant leftist assault demoralize our movement. We can't create these manufactured divisions within our own ranks. It should embolden us and unite us, as they expose their true colors and show their true radicalism.
So it's time we get smart about offering an alternative. Before that, we need a bit of a reset, I think, in how we fight. And I hear it all the time. For too long, Republicans in Washington, they refuse to fight. They were fine losing politely. They didn't want to alienate moderates or make the media mad by saying what we really thought.
Now, that's why President Trump won in 2016. He fought fiercely and didn't care about being polite when he did so. Now there's another element to this, however, that we sometimes forget.
That the point of fighting is to actually win. It's not just fighting for fighting's sake. It's not just pushing the limits to provoke the other side and cause a stir. That's not fighting. It's just dumb. And I think I know a thing or two about actual fighting. In combat, there's no glory in charging to your death. There's glory in winning. There's parallels between a winning strategy in war and a winning strategy in politics.
Now, in Afghanistan, it was not abnormal to receive enemy fire on patrol. It happened all the time. And when you get shot at, somebody who's maybe not as well trained, they might, because they saw some movies, they might think they should charge the hill. Take them out. Overwhelm them with fire power. Just kill some terrorists, just like in the movies. Makes for a great show, great TV ad. Die in a hail of gunfire.
But that's not the best strategy if you want to win the fight and live. Instead, we calm our breathing, we get our bearings, we set up a base of fire and maneuver element, communicate, and we move out. Put the enemy in a vulnerable position. We eliminate the threat without putting our team in unnecessary danger. It's not that sexy, but that's how it's done.
The same is true for a winning strategy in politics. The question is, do we want to still be winners? I hope so.
But let's be honest. These days we don't always reward the right people. We don't always reward those thoughtful hard workers who could recite Milton Friedman or William F. Buckley or make a persuasive argument about environmental policy, and persuade moderates to vote for us.
Sometimes the people who get rewarded are those who scream the loudest, shake their fists and say they're fighting for you. In reality, they're fighting for themselves. And they know this is true. They know that the quickest path, oftentimes, to a conservative's heart is not actually to confront Democrats, but to attack fellow Republicans. Tag them with that dreaded label RINO.
Don't fall for it. Stick together. We need it. We can't start looking like the left. It happens when people get frustrated, engaging in a cancel culture of our own, peddling grievance and victimhood, engaging in emotional reasoning and looking for reasons to be angry at each other instead of productive and persuasive. That's the hard truth. We need to recognize it.
The good news is there's a path out of it. Now the strategy's hard, just like real fighting is hard. It takes strategic thinking and wit. It means engaging in arguments with well-conceived, airtight logic. We’ve got to trip the leftists up. Fact check them. Know their arguments better than they do. Anticipate them.
It means presenting the conservative case without apology, but with a tone that a moderate audience can handle and then doing so across a wide variety of platforms because our goal, the path to winning, is to convince more people that our positions are right and persuade people outside our own tribe.
Fighting to win means actually understanding conservative principles and understanding how those principles make for superior governance and policy solutions. It means going to schools and universities and going on liberal media. It means calmly and intelligently having a debate on campus, not showing up just to trigger the libs and provoke somebody.
Conservatism is an easy, winning message if we deliver it with intellectual honesty and confidence and pride. We don't need to hide our principles or policies for moderates as many have done in the past. But, instead, explain why they work. We need to get into the debates on the hard stuff, the stuff we're not used to. Environmental policy, healthcare, immigration, and especially on the cultural issues.
And, to me, that last point's key because if we lose the cultural debate, we lose everything. All policy is downstream of culture, after all. So I made a list to guide us. It's a Conservative Guide to the Culture Wars. It's not exhaustive, but I think it's a pretty good start. So here it is:
1. America is worthy of our love and patriotism.
2. A victor mentality is better than a victim mentality.
3. Free speech is absolute and hate speech is not an objective term.
4. It doesn't matter what kind of gun you restrict. Criminals still hurt people, so let us protect ourselves.
5. You get to keep the wealth you create and pass it on to your kids.
6. The government has no right to shut down your business or invade your home without due process, even in a pandemic.
7. Women should not have to compete against men in women's sports.
8. Verifying ID to vote is not racist. It is common sense.
9. Borders and national sovereignty are not racist or xenophobic.
10. You can't have freedom without order, order without law, law without morality, morality without religion, or religion without God.
11. It's innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.
12. Personal responsibility is a virtue and it's a bedrock of a successful society.
13. A policy should create prosperity, not dependence.
14. Never give in to cancel culture.
15. The founding was in 1776, not 1619.
16. Stand for the anthem.
17. Policy that favors one race over another is not social justice. It is just racist.
18. It’s Latino, not Latinx.
19. Less abortion, more adoption.
20. No one has a right to someone else's money or services.
21. More police, not defund the police.
22. We don't tear up or hide from the past. We learn from it.
This is where we fight. A lot of these statements, they're moral statements. They're statements of principle. They lead to policy. And ask yourself, what is the left's version of that? They don't really have one.
That's what makes conservatism the winning argument - if we're willing to win. And this is where we fight.
No more self-pity, no more victimhood. We must be happy warriors and proudly tell the world why freedom is the path to prosperity.
So over the next few years, we're going to show the American people that conservatism means standing for one simple thing and that's policies that actually work. It's a governing philosophy based in process, not ideological outcomes, as the left prefers, but process.
Conservatism is a tradition. It's tried and true. It's based on time-tested principles. You guys call this event The Elephant Remembers. I didn't know why. So I asked and the answer – well honestly I still didn’t quite understand it – but it still sounds good!
So I'm going to offer you maybe a reason why that's actually a pretty good name for a Republican event. The Elephant Remembers. Because what do we remember?
We remember tradition. We remember things that work. We remember that our founders were students of history. They studied republics, they studied democracies. They studied law for centuries and they wrote down these ideas that we gathered from Athens and Rome and London and Jerusalem, and they wrote them down in Philadelphia in 1776, where we wrote the Declaration of Independence and said why governments exist. TO protect your inalienable rights. Then they wrote the Constitution, which tells us how to govern. Amazing documents. No other country has anything like them.
And so we used those documents and we use that tradition where we remember it. And then we solve problems within a framework of limiting principles that put guardrails on what government can realistically accomplish.
We ask proper questions before we jump to conclusions. Will this program be fiscally sustainable? Is the problem better solved at the local or community level? Does creating this service infringe on the individual rights of another in order to deliver it? Does this create dependency or prosperity?
Simple questions. And we don't believe in some kind of collective or generational guilt based on skin color. We believe in equality, true equality in the classical sense. We believe in meritocracies. We don't think that encouraging people to be on time is white supremacist ideology, as the wokes have said.
We're not about the policies that feel good or sound good, not the policies that Democrats use to bribe citizens for their vote. Free this and free that, but policies that are based on the timeless and universal principles that work for hardworking Americans, that work for their families, that work to improve their healthcare and their economy and to help their small business.
We believe in a certain tenet. When you maximize freedom, strong people will thrive. When you rely on and build upon the proven principles of free enterprise, the protection of natural rights, the institutional structures of a republic, you create a formula for boundless success and prosperity. Our founders knew that and they created the foundation for it in our Constitution. And I still believe it. And I think you do too.
And it's the values of the Republican Party that protect and promote these principles. It's the Republican Party that defends the greatest ideas and the greatest founding documents in history. It is the Republican Party that places faith in the individual to pursue their happiness without the weight of government on their back. The Republican Party is America's last great hope.
It is us who now defend the liberal values of free speech and due process and scientific debate. It is us who defend your right to start your business and build a life for your family and defend them from harm. We are the last defenders of the unborn, the last guardians of true equality and justice.
We're the last advocates for the importance of a Judeo-Christian moral framework and of the liberty of these moral truths underwrite. We're the ones who understand that, to be free, you must be responsible and strong and self-reliant, and that to coddle each generation is to weaken them and chip away at these precious freedoms.
We're a party that understands - now more than ever - that we have to speak out loudly and forcefully for these truths. And we will.
I'm optimistic. I hope you are too. And we have work to do and we have a country to fight for. And I'm proud to join you in that fight. And I'm so happy to be here with you today. Thank you so much for having me.
