Well, the Conservative Political Action Conference officially ended the other day on Saturday, March 16. It’s always a bittersweet feeling when this amazing conference comes to an end, but hopefully one final wrap-up can do it some justice.
Steve King
Rep. Steve King, though his speech was brief, made perhaps the most in-depth case as to why the Republican Party should focus not only on economic issues. According to King, the Republican Party will not re-brand conservatives and values.
A few moments more into his speech, he specifically mentioned life:
And so I think it’s our job to step up and defend our values, and defend the full spectrum of constitutional conservatism. I’ll stand there with all the people who want to re-brand the Republican party to work on the economic side of this agenda, but I invite them to come over with all of us, to work about the full, to work together on the full spectrum of constitutional conservatism, including life, and marriage, and the rule of law.
King went into further detail, mentioning how the life issue had affected him in his campaign. He was met with enthusiastic answers and cheers from the crowd:
And on the life question. It’s really pretty simple. I went through the toughest election of my life last fall … but they’re in the business of trying to undermine and weaken us and I didn’t back up on any principle. We debated the issue of life and I said my opponent, my leftist opponent, cannot answer two questions on life: is human life sacred in all of its forms, yes it is, at what moment does life begin … and the people on the other side of this question dare not answer either one of those questions, they know they lose the debate. I stood on life and I stood on marriage. And the, the thing that a bunch of people have been backing away from these challenges don’t seem to realize, I’m still standing. Now, now why is that? I didn’t run a campaign on jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, and beat that drum until I beat people into sleep. That’s part of it, all right, but all of the rest of this has to be added together or we can never reconstruct this country. We will not get the pillars of American exceptionalism put back together unless we have the full spectrum. If we can restore our families, and strengthen our faith, and protect innocent, unborn human life, instead of assaulting it with half a billion dollars appropriated to Planned Parenthood in a single year. That’s gotta go.
While Steve King was certainly not the only one to mention getting rid of ObamaCare, it was refreshing to hear such a call while continuing on the pro-life sentiment:
ObamaCare has gotta go. We can’t let up on ObamaCare and, and believe that somehow we’re going to capitulate to that side, because it erodes our vigor, it erodes our vitality, and it is an unconstitutional taking of God-given American liberty, and it’s got to go.
I didn’t know what to expect from CPAC, as to if there would be calls for moderating the social conservative view. Well, with the speeches I have highlighted so far, and Rep. Steve King particularly, I need not have worried about the commitment to life. There are still people in office who are dedicated to our cause.
Michele Bachmann
Someone who has also been a champion for the unborn, Rep. Michele Bachmann, also spoke Saturday morning. While she started off her speech in a joking manner, she got serious in reminding the audience that the conservative movement is who cares most, and one of those reasons has to do with the unborn:
But I want you to know with absolute confidence who it is that does care about you. It is this movement that’s represented in this room all across the country. It’s a movement that fundamentally cares so deeply and so personally about protecting innocent human life, about great institutions like the family … we care about these things so much because fundamentally we are the people who truly care about people. We love people in this country. And we want everyone to succeed in this country.
Rep. Bachmann also mentioned this caring movement again in her closing, which can certainly pertain to her earlier statements about “protecting innocent human life.”
We do it because we love. We do it because we care. This is who we are. This is our movement, the movement of love, the movement of care! We do this because we love each other and because we love our nation!
Cathy McMorris Rodgers
Though Rep. Cathy McMorris did not specifically mention abortion, she too echoed that the Republican Party needs not to become more moderate, but instead to stick to conservative principles and beliefs.
This weekend you’ve heard many wonderful speeches, talking about what conservatives need to do to win elections again. Now some say we need to moderate. Not me, and I bet not you either … and we can [get more votes] because, yes we can, more Americans are conservative than liberal. So we have to remind the American people what it is that we stand for and why conservative principles are the best opportunity for a better life.
Conservatives’ bedrock principle has always been individual liberty, a belief that our rights are given to us by our creator, not the government. The rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, individual liberty … we are successful when solid conservative principles are applied to the challenges of the time.
So there you have it: a refreshing amount of politicians have said at CPAC that the conservative movement and the Republican Party do not need to change, including and especially when it comes to life, the most important issue. Let us hope that the Republican Party will continue to take this message to heart in any and all future elections to come.
