Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of the speech given by Monica Crowley at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2012 Restoration Weekend. The event took place on Nov. 15th-18th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.
Monica Crowley: (Applause) Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. With that introduction Deborah already has me in tears. I’ve already lost my composure and I haven’t even started yet.
This is the second time that Deborah has introduced me. The first time was at a very wonderful lunch, very gracious lunch, that David threw for me back in June or early July when my book first came out. And, Deborah, thank you so much for your very kind words. These introductions keep getting better and better every time she gives them, so I think I’m going to have to, like, put her on my payroll or something and just bring her with me everywhere I go.
By the way, I’m very happy that when she introduced me and she was talking about my experiences working with President Nixon that she actually put the timeframe on my employment with President Nixon when she said I worked with him during the last years of his life, from 1990 until his death in ‘94. Because sometimes people don’t hear that part of it and they think I was in the Nixon White House and I have to correct them and say, “Oh, no, no. I was a mere embryo when he was elected President.”
In fact, I was giving a speech one time a couple of years ago. And I noticed a woman in the front row and she was looking at me after I’d been introduced as having worked for President Nixon. She was looking at me and she was sort of squinting. And at the end of my talk she came up to me and she said, “Monica, I just love you. I’m a big fan.“ I said, “Thank you so much.“ And she said, “Listen, can I ask you a question?“ And I said, “Sure, anything.“ So she leans into my ear and she whispered, “Girl, who is your plastic surgeon?” (Laughter) True story. I said, “No, no. You misunderstand.”
Before we get started – and we have so much to talk about, because we are fighting for the life of the country. And that is not an overstatement or an exaggeration. We are fighting for the life of America. Before we get started, I want to recognize a couple of people, first and foremost, David Horowitz. (Applause) David Horowitz and the Freedom Center, you are true patriots. You are on the front lines of our college campuses and every other part of America every day, tirelessly fighting for this country. This gracious event that you host us all every year, God bless you. Thank you so much.
Elizabeth Ruiz, are you in the room? This event would not come off without Elizabeth Ruiz (applause) or E, as I call her. She’s such a good friend and she puts this all together. Thank you so much.
Frank Gaffney, my good friend. Frank Gaffney? (Applause) Andrew McCarthy. (Applause) Andrew McCarthy, where are you? Be recognized, Andy McCar-…is he still in bed? (Laughter) Where is he? Andrew McCarthy, there you are!
Caroline Glick, who does incredible work. I know she brought her two young children with her, so she might not be in the room today. Want to recognize them. Oh, Caroline, yea! (Applause) All right. You made it!
Everybody in this room is an American patriot. We are all fighting for this country. We are now relying on a dwindling group of conservatives on Capitol Hill and I want to single out three who are in the room today. The true American hero, Allen West. (Applause) Is he here yet? Is Allen West here yet? Okay, he might not be here yet, but he needs to win this race. He’s going to be speaking later this morning. We need him. Okay? We need him.
The dynamite Louie Gohmert, where is he? (Applause) And the fearless Michele Bachmann. (Applause) God bless you.
And I know these are tough times for Conservatives, especially on Capitol Hill, given the Republican establishment, given our leadership on Capitol Hill. Everybody is running scared. These three American patriots are fearless. They don’t care what their own leadership thinks of them. They certainly don’t care what the other side of the aisle thinks of them. And they do not care what the New York Times editorial board thinks of them. They are out there with the truth and they’re fighting for America and they’re fighting for justice and they’re fighting for us every day. So God bless you. (Applause)
All right. Let’s get this party started. And by “party,” I mean, not just this room, although we are a party. And I don’t mean the Republican Party, although God knows that needs a hell of a lot of help and a hell of a lot of work. I mean the Conservative movement. And we’ve got to get this party started, because I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of being at a wake.
We have had a hell of a couple of weeks here. We have had a hurricane of epic proportions. We have had a sex scandal involving the person I would guess would be the least likely to have been caught having sex under a desk. We have now the real housewives of Tampa straight across our television sets. And last Tuesday night we had a national suicide. And that is not overstating the case.
The title of my book, What the Bleep Just Happened? – now more than ever we need to ask that question, “What the bleep just happened?“ There are many parts to this answer and I want to break it down because we need to be armed with the truth because we’re facing at least, at least, another four years of this. So we need to be reminded of what we are up against and what we are fighting against and what we are fighting for.
The short answer is that what the bleep just happened is that this country was taken over by the Star Wars Cantina. (Laughter) You know what I’m talking about, right? This country is now being run by the Star Wars Cantina. Every far left group, every radical, every Communist, every filthy Occupy Wall Street hippie, every abortion-on-demand sicko, every anti-American revolutionary who wants to take America down a notch or two or ten, every bearded anarchist – sorry, David (laughter). He’s no longer an anarchist, but he’s still bearded. Every aspect of America is now controlled by the Star Wars Cantina.
Alien forms, and I do mean alien forms because their philosophies, these people are fundamentally anti-American. And we cannot be afraid to say it. They are anti-…oh, are you calling the President anti-American? I’m calling his philosophy anti-American, because it is. (Applause) And they now control every aspect of America. They control the White House. They control the State Department. They control the Justice Department. They control every aspect of the Executive Branch, of course. They control the US Senate. They control the media, which is now completely corrupt, with a few pockets of exception. They control academia. They control entertainment. They control every part of the culture.
So when we now say we are outnumbered, we are. We are. Because over many decades the conservative movement was interested in just a couple of things – fiscal responsibility, the Constitution, you know, the really important stuff. And while we were interested in the really important stuff, in trying to project and defend the Constitution, and those great foundational principles that have always made America great, the left was burrowing in through every aspect of our society and our culture, grabbing control of the college campuses, grabbing control of entertainment.
And that’s how you really weave their way in. This is what the Communists did from the very beginning. 1950s Communist infiltration – what do you – everybody was focused on Alger Hiss. Right, very important. What they were doing under the radar was even more important, burrowing in to every aspect of our culture to bring us down from within.
And now what we have is that these people are no longer in the shadows. These people are front – right in front of us. They are leading us. They are the President of the United States. They are the Secretary of State. They are running every major media organization, again, with a couple of exceptions.
And what are they doing with all of this power? They are fundamentally transforming the nation. Not my words, Barack Obama’s words – “the fundamental transformation of the nation.“ What Obama did that was so brilliant four years ago was when he started talking about fundamental transformation – and he used a couple of other phrases, too, all meaning the same thing. He’d talk about remaking America. He talked about achieving a, quote, more perfect union.
What he did was throw those phrases out and then stand back and allow the American people to supply their own meanings to what we thought he meant by that. And so the American people, who don’t pay close enough attention to the reality, supplied their own meanings, thought, “Oh, we’ll finally get rid of George W. Bush,” or, “The economy is falling apart, so we’ll get somebody new who’s going to fix it.” Or the historical moment of the first black president. People supplied their own meaning to fundamental transformation.
What we have to recognize is don’t pay attention to what you think he meant. Pay attention to what he meant by fundamental transformation. And now we have four years of evidence as to what he meant by that fundamental transformation. And it is wholly anti-American.
For decades, the far left progressives have been at this – Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, straight up through 2008. And they have made enormous progress in establishing huge redistributive pillars in this country – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But it wasn’t until 1968, and I write about this in my book, where the far left extremists took over the Democratic Party. It’s a very important distinction that everybody in this room needs to be aware of so we can spread it far and wide. What you see with Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and so many others – this is not your father’s or grandfather’s Democratic Party.
Barack Obama is not Harry Truman, who dropped the A-bomb on Japan to stop World War II. Barack Obama is not John F. Kennedy, who lowered marginal tax rates to get economic growth and job creation. Barack Obama and the far left, they are a completely different ball of wax. Fundamentally anti-American to fundamentally transform America away from what has always made America great. That’s the point.
And let’s not lose sight of that. You know what’s driving me crazy? I’ll go on TV – the Happy Warrior theme, and that’s my brand and that’s the brand that I’m trying to get out to the Conservatives, to be a Happy Warrior and it’s so necessary, now more than ever. But on election night and the day after I was not a Happy Warrior. I was a very unhappy warrior.
In fact, Tuesday night, when the election results started coming in, I thought, “None of this makes any sense.“ And I’m sure you had this – I’m sure you’re still experiencing this because it’s completely surreal. But not a single election result that came in made any sense whatsoever. From the reelection of Barack Obama, which was really weird, I mean, weird for all of us, but think about just on another level. At Fox News, and I was there until about 6:00 that night, they were prepared for 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. They were getting prepared for days of recounts and legal challenges and so close and how are we going to do – 11:15, 11:30? Okay, well the presidency, okay, we can call that now. Barack Obama has been reelected. Nothing to see here. Move along.
What? What the bleep just happened? So from the reelection of Barack Obama all the way down to what Allen West is facing now here in Florida to Alan Grayson, who is the biggest far left kook you can ever imagine, and mentally unstable, by the way, getting his seat back, to not winning North Carolina, not winning the state of Florida. To California – California voters voting to raise taxes on themselves and voting to water down their three strikes and you’re out law. None of it made any sense.
And what I thought on Tuesday night before I went to bed, crying for my country, was that there was something bigger than voting going on here. And we have to go about this – I mean, we will talk about what we need to do on the ground. And we will talk about the grass roots and how we are now going to really struggle to get our country back. Because, you know what? The battle just got a heck of a lot tougher and that hill just got a heck of lot steeper. That doesn’t mean we don’t fight. We do. But the battle in front of us now just got a lot worse, and a lot tougher.
But we now need to fight it on a whole series of levels, not just grass roots, not just politically in the Congress, but on a spiritual level, because, “There’s something bigger than Phil,” going on here, to quote Mel Brooks. There’s something bigger than Phil happening here in the country. And we all have to be attuned to it.
1968, the Democratic Party gets hijacked by the far left. They always had the elements in it and, again, they had Teddy Roosevelt, they had Woodrow Wilson leading the charge. So they did have power in the past. But in 1968 they take full control of one of the two major political parties in America. And after 1968 they start nominating far left extremists after far left extremists for the presidency.
So we get George McGovern. We get Walter Mondale. We get Michael Dukakis. We get Al Gore. We get John Kerry. All kooks. And none of them could get elected president because America has always been a center-right country. Now, I’m exempting Jimmy Carter from this because Watergate was an aberration and that was a separate situation. But from 1968 the only time the Democratic Party did not nominate a kook, they won the presidency not once, but twice, and that was Bill Clinton.
Now, Clinton was kooky in other ways. (Laughter) And his wife is definitely a far left kook. But Bill Clinton was a pragmatist. Bill Clinton wanted to survive. And Bill Clinton wanted to thrive, not just for himself, although that’s primarily what drives Bill Clinton. He’s a classic narcissist. So of course he wanted to thrive and succeed. But he also wanted America to thrive and succeed, which is why he worked with a Republican Congress. He had to, but he did it, which is why he cut the capital gains tax rate, to get economic growth and job creation going. Which is why, when the Republicans came calling he agreed to cut spending and he went down that road. Okay? Bill Clinton is a classic old school Southern pragmatic Democrat.
Barack Obama is a far-left extremist, of the kind that took over his party in 1968. And from ‘68 on, again, none of these far-left extremists could get elected. It wasn’t until they found their perfect marriage of man and mission in Barack Obama that they were able to grab the brass ring of the presidency, huge majorities in the Congress, and do what they had been dying to do for decades, which is complete that fundamental transformation of the nation.
Remember, they have been putting up these redistributive pillars throughout history – Social Security, Medicare, and so on. The one thing that was missing? Healthcare, in a broad way that would include every American. You look at the history of socialist nations, one of the very first things the socialists do, as soon as they seize power is seize control of the healthcare system. Why? Because if the government controls your healthcare, the government controls you. The government is in your eyeball, and your ear canal, and places where the sun don’t shine. (Laughter) The government controls you.
That’s why he spent the first year and a half doing this. The American people were screaming for jobs and economic growth when he came in in January of 2009. What does he do? Classic leftist move; it’s all illusion. It’s all Alinsky packets. It’s all to keep people distracted.
So he sends Nancy Pelosi off to run wild in the Congress to come up with some stimulus bill that stimulated nothing but Democratic constituencies. And then he signs it. He didn’t even care what’s in it. He signs it. My work here on the economy is done. And he turns immediately to healthcare, again, to control you, the crown jewel of the socialist state, healthcare. That’s why they did it. Not a big mystery. None of this is a mystery when it comes to Obama and the far left, none of it.
And now we are in a situation where we have a much tougher battle ahead of us. I came across this quote from Ronald Reagan. You know, the choice that we had last Tuesday night was the choice between being enslaved by government or being the country that the founders envisioned, free. And we chose badly – well, not us, but the moronic other half of the country chose badly. And now we are all going to be stuck with this.
Ronald Reagan once said, quote, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them for them to do the same. Or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Has that day arrived? Are we here now? Are we now looking in the rearview mirror at what once made America free and great? I am a firm believer in dealing in reality. It’s all nice to say, “Okay, you know, we’re still a central-right country.“ I’m not so sure we are. I am not entirely convinced that we are.
The progressives have worked on this grand project for decades, as I said. Barack Obama and the far left Alinsky-ites and Chicago thugs he brought in with him have moved us to that tipping point that they so – that they have strived for for so many decades. What I mean by tipping point is, more people dependent on government than not. Altering the balance between the private sector and the government sector. It used to be in the America the balance was like this – private, government or public sector. Now it’s like this.
Barack Obama and the far left, when they came in in 2009, they realized they had a short opportunity to accelerate this country to the tipping point. And they weren’t about to blow it and they wasted no time. First thing Obama does, he comes in and they realized that in order to take down the American free market system they have to take down the four key pillars of the US economy. So they went after the industrial base with the cars. They went after the financial sector with the banks. They went after the healthcare sector with Obamacare. And they went after the energy sector.
If you want to take down American capitalism, you take down those four pillars holding up American capitalism, you have completed the destruction of American capitalism. And if you succeed in destroying American capitalism or so weakening it that it can’t function, then you destroy global capitalism because we’re it. We’re it. And that is the point.
David has been working on this, on these themes for years. Glenn Beck has done such great work in educating the American public about how this is all interrelated. Occupy Wall Street didn’t just spring from the earth organically, out of thin air. This was all part of the global socialist movement. You see it happening here, Western Europe, Israel. It’s happening everywhere. It’s all part of this grand project.
And, again, if you take down American capitalism or so gravely weaken it, you take down global capitalism. And, again, that’s the objective.
So Obama goes in. He attacks the four main pillars of the US economy. And no opposition, except from the Tea Party, thank God. The American media is so corrupt nobody raises an eyebrow that all of this is happening. If you had said to a person on the street five years ago, six years ago, ten years ago, the United States will have socialized medicine, they would have laughed in your face. And yet here we are.
In my book, every page has some piece of leftist madness, progressive insanity, anti-American – an anti-American assault on this country. Because every day that Obama has been President he has inflicted one or many of those on us. And yet, no resistance except from heroes and heroines like Louie Gohmert and Allen West and Michele Bachmann. The media just giggles like they did during that press conference this week. “Oh, Mr. President, you’re so…” The question is, “Are you awesome or super awesome?“ (Laughter) “Well, Candy, let me answer that as objectively as I can. I really think I’m super awesome.” (Laughter) No resistance.
Take one more step back. There are two big things happening here. Far left comes in and, yes, the specific things they do are attack the four main pillars of the US economy. But remember what the ultimate objective is. You grow government as fast and as widely as possible. And the objective of that is to make as many people dependent on government as possible.
And between those two things you have an endless feedback loop, because if you’re growing government while perpetuating a crappy economy, by the way – I would just point something out. Us normal Americans look at this economic situation and see a total disaster, a catastrophe – high unemployment, anemic economic growth, unprecedented spending, record breaking deficits and debt, socialized medicine that’s going to break the bank, record numbers of people in poverty, 50 million as of this week, 48 million people on food stamps, another record. We normal Americans look at this and see a disaster. Obama and the far left look at this and see a wild success, a wild success.
Think about it this way: Any normal President would be looking at 8%, 10% when Obama had it at 10.2 in October of ‘09. Any normal President would look at that unemployment rate and be flipping his lid. Obama never broke a sweat. He’s still not breaking a sweat. The unemployment rate going back up. And we all know how BLS fudges those numbers. Now, by the way, they can tell us the truth, which is now why the number’s over 400,000 new claims each week.
Obama never breaks a sweat. Why? Because this is all by design. He needs to perpetuate the crappy economy. He needs people out of work. He needs the chaos to sow the dependency. You get an endless feedback loop. The more people dependent on government the more justification you have for growing government and giving government more and more power and control over every American’s life. And, remember, the ultimate objective of both of those things is to create a permanent Democrat voting majority.
Have we gotten there yet? Well, Tuesday night looked like it. Tuesday night looked like it. Like I said, I am a firm believer in dealing with reality here. And in reality we have to confront the fact that Obama came close, if not has achieved, getting us to that tipping point. And once we’re there, the country is gone, gone.
The dependency part is just part of this equation. The far left – and all you have to do now is look at what’s unfolding in this Benghazi investigation. The far left is not just interested in redistributing wealth here at home, although that’s their main mission. If they were just limited to doing that, it would be horrifying and tough enough to throw into reverse. But that’s not what they’re limited to. Barack Obama and the far left seek to redistribute everything that has made America great, everything.
So, yes, our wealth here at home, of course. But our economic power, so weakening us that we are no longer globally competitive. In fact, in the four years that Barack Obama has been President, the United States of America has gone from being number 1 in global competitiveness to number 7 – again, all by design. You wonder why he’s not flipping out about this? This is the grand project, our economic power, our military power.
Frank Gaffney can speak to this, about the gutting of the defense budget something like $2 trillion over 10 year – which was probably a low ball. I mean, you know that Barack Obama wants to rip apart the Defense budget. Defense is the only thing, by the way, he’s willing to cut.
And what the Republicans need to be arguing, which, it’s such a common sense thing which every American can get, is all of these other issues – birth control, war on women, abortion – all of it, none of it matters if we are all dead. Defense is number one. And that’s the only thing he’s been willing to cut. (Applause)
Our military power, our economic power, our wealth here at home, our cultural appeal, elevating everybody else in the world so that they’re equal with the United States. Oh, hell, no. No. I like being number one. We’re all proud of being number one and we should all be fighting to stay number one. (Applause) There is no virtue, there is no virtue in saying, “Oh, we’re Americans and everybody is the same and we’re all on this great spaceship Earth together and we’re all equal.“ No, we are not equal. Generations before us fought and died for this flag and for the right for me to stand here and speak my mind and the right of all of you to have your own opinions. And we’re just going to give that up and say, “Oh, yes, well Zimbabwe is equal to us”? Oh, hell, no. Hell, no.
Because the ultimate thing that they are trying to redistribute – when I talk about wealth and – oh, by the way our borders, they’re trying to redistribute our borders. Eleven million new poor voters for them to get us not just across the tipping point but so far past it that you’ll never get a Republican President again. You’ll never get a Ronald Reagan, or you’ll never even get a George W. Bush. Forget it, it’s over.
And the Republicans, the dummies in Congress, present company excluded, of course, “Oh, we need to – “ Let me tell you something. I heard Ann talking last night about illegal immigration. When you go back and look at the history of this – and Rush Limbaugh’s been talking about this too, thank God. 1986, Ronald Reagan, huge amnesty, amnesty for millions of, particularly, Latinos who had come into the country illegally. You know what kind of support the Republican Party got out of that? Zero. In fact, it went down.
This is not a racial divide. This is not about appealing or even pandering to Latino voters by doing amnesty or open borders or whatever the heck is being bandied about now to try to get Latinos to pay attention. This is a dependency problem. This is a government dependency problem. It doesn’t matter what race. And don’t think for one second that Barack Obama and the far left don’t know that. We have to tackle the roots of government dependency.
The other day, when people jumped all over Mitt Romney in that conference call for – when he was talking about his loss and, yes, of course he made mistakes. Every presidential campaign makes mistakes. Barack Obama made mistakes aplenty. Remember, “Vote for me for revenge.“ Mitt Romney is not the problem here. The problem is government dependency and getting us to that tipping point, which they have – looks like they’ve succeeded in doing.
There’s some wiggle room for us here – and I want to get to this in a second – because it was so very close. So we still have a little bit of breathing room, but not much. Not much.
When Mitt Romney said, “Well, the other side essentially won because of all of the gifts” – he used the word “gifts” – all the gifts that Barack Obama and the far left are giving to minorities, to minorities, to black voters and Hispanic voters and women, he was absolutely right.
Now, he got criticized because he said it out loud. But you know, what, guys? We have to deal in reality. I’m sick and tired of the political correctness and, oh, he shouldn’t have used the word “gifts” and he shouldn’t have said “47%.“ (Applause) Deal in reality. The other side is Santa Claus. The other side is giving away all of these gifts. It’s called government dependency. It’s called social welfare programs. It’s all about bringing them in, and once you lock in that dependency you lock them in for life. And once you lock them in for life on dependency you lock in their vote. And then you get that majority. Period. End of story.
P.S., Mitt Romney was right and Bobby Jindal, who I love and respect so much – but for him to say, “No, we can’t be dividing people. You know, the Conservative movement, we can’t be dividing people.“ It’s not us doing the dividing. The other side has been slicing and dicing the American electorate for decades. Woman – it’s all identity politics to them – women, Latinos, black voters. And they have succeeded. They’ve had a lot of success doing it. It’s not us doing the dividing. But since they have succeeded in slicing and dicing the electorate, now we have to figure out a way to manage that, because now we are navigating a brand new America, with a brand new electorate because the left has had so much success. And we have to figure out a way to do it.
We have nothing to lose here. Michele Bachmann was right last night. We have nothing to lose. Our backs are against the wall here. And the founding fathers and every generation that has come before us, they’re counting on us. I don’t know about you; maybe this makes me weird, but I hear the voices of the founders. Maybe I’m hearing things. Maybe I’m going insane before my time, I don’t know. But I hear them. I hear Thomas Jefferson, I hear George Washington. I hear them. I hear the voices of the Greatest Generation, who I’ve loved and respect so much, who fought for this country in World War II, every military veteran. I hear them in my head, saying, “Fight for this. Fight for it, as tough as it’s going to be.”
You’ve got the grand projects of government dependency and the tipping point on the one hand. You’ve got the redistributing everything that has always made America great going on on the other hand. And so the question is – what do we do? And I think we go for broke. I think we go for broke, because we have nothing to lose.
President Nixon, one time when we were talking about the Vietnam War and his prosecution of it, he told a story one time. He was deliberating about doing the Christmas Day bombing of Cambodia because the Soviets, and to some extent the Chinese, but mostly the Soviets, they were bringing supply lines into the Communists in North Korea. And President Nixon – I’m sorry – North Vietnam. So President Nixon has to make a decision about whether or not to bomb those supply lines, which meant bringing the war into a third country, actually Cambodia and Laos. And so he has to make a decision. And you know what he told me? He said, “Took about five minutes to make the decision to bomb.“ And I said, “Well, why was that, Mr. President?“ And he said, “Well,” he said, “I realized that I was going to be criticized if I sent one plane or if I sent 1,000 planes. They were going to crucify me no matter what. So I went with the 1,000 planes.”
And that’s what we need to do. We need to send the 1,000 planes, because the left, the media, they’re going to crucify us no matter what. They already have. Look at what they have done to the Tea Party – fringe, nutcases. Now, I can see why the far left kooks would think that the Constitution and limited government, fiscal responsibility, were radical, because it’s certainly radical to them. But these are the very foundational principles of this country. And we need to figure out new ways of how to do it, how to fight for them. The old ways don’t work anymore.
I can’t say I have any easy, quick ideas to give you, because I don’t. And I think what we need to do, first and foremost, is take a deep breath. I think we are all exhausted from this fight, four long, exhausting years of economic destruction and presidential lies and national collapse. And now we’re facing four more years of those exact same things. I think we’re all tired, so I would recommend first and foremost, take a deep breath, get a little rest. Because the battles ahead are going to be very intense and a lot tougher than what we just went through over the last four years.
The second thing I would recommend is spending some time thinking. Thinking, not just running blindly into what we’ve always done in the past, and are we going to grasp at some candidate or we’ve got to grasp at something. Let’s spend some time thinking.
When President Nixon first came into office, January, 1969, he summoned his chief of staff on day one, Bob Haldeman, and he said, “Bob, have a seat. I’ve got something really important to tell you.“ And Haldeman said, “Okay, Mr. President, what? What is it?“ And he said, “I need you to build in one hour into my schedule every day where I have no meetings, no phone calls, nothing. One hour every afternoon.“ So Haldeman said, “Uh, Mr. President, you do realize you’re the new President, right? I mean, you do realize you’re President of the United States and you have stuff to do?“ And Nixon said, “Yeah, I know that, Bob. I know. I’m still asking for the hour every day.“ And so Haldeman said, “Well, what are you, Churchill now? You need a nap every day?“ And Nixon said, “No, Bob, I don’t need the hour to sleep. I need the hour to think.”
So many of our politicians don’t spend any time thinking, because they’re constantly raising money. They’re constantly in front of the cameras. They’re constantly racing to constituents and taking care of business. What we need in this country are strategic thinkers in the Conservative movement. And this doesn’t just mean folks on Capitol Hill. This means us. We need time to think.
Second thing – or third thing, I should say, is that rather than look to the Republican establishment which is, for all intents and purposes, worthless, pointless, useless, meaningless. (Applause) Forget for a second about the Republican Party. Focus on the Tea Party. Focus on the Conservative movement. And focus on groups, groups like the Freedom Center and David Horowitz. Support them however you can. Groups like Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, who are all doing great, on-the-ground grassroots.
People talk about how – what a failure Romney’s get-out-the-vote operation was, and it was. So we have a lot of work to do. But remember, the battle is not just there. It’s on all of these other levels – philosophical, spiritual, the whole thing. So we need to be looking more toward groups like the Freedom Center.
For example, I’ll give you another example. There’s a group called Ending Spending. And you probably haven’t heard of them. They don’t – they sort of fly below the radar. These are groups that are centered and focused around a single issue. Okay? Whether it’s freedom or ending spending. Ending Spending went into Nebraska. They focused on Deb Fischer, a real Tea Party Conservative. And they got her elected, around one issue, reining in government spending. These are the kinds of new things that we can be looking at here as we think about how we’re going to go forward.
I would just leave you with this one final thought. The conventional wisdom is that the founding fathers who I always hear in my head, that they gave us three branches of government. And it is true, they gave us the Executive and the Legislative and the Judiciary. But the founders also anticipated a moment during which all three branches of government would be in the crapper. And here we are.
The Executive is held by a radical redistributionist, bent on America’s destruction. Congress, present company excluded, of course, Congress cannot stop itself from spending us into oblivion and are raising our taxes in order to do it. And the Judiciary now is full of leftwing judges who are intent on legislating leftwing madness from the bench. All three branches are in the crapper.
So the founders anticipated this moment. They did. And that’s why they gave us a stealth fourth branch of government – us. (Applause) They gave America us, the American people, the ultimate lever of power.
Now has this country become so corrupted after the tipping point that we can’t get it back? No, I don’t believe that. I’m back to being a Happy Warrior. I’ve shed enough tears after Tuesday night and I’m ready to rock and roll. I’m ready to take this country back and I think we can still do it.
We don’t have much time, though, because remember, Obama won by 50.6%, so enough past the tipping point to get him elected, but still not enough to make it permanent. We have a window of opportunity here to bring America back, but we have to move fast. We’ve got to move fast. And the thing we need to recognize – we talk about those three branches of government. America is such a young country, 200-some-odd years old. We’re young. We’re babies, still. And therefore, the American mind in so many ways is still very young and naïve and idealistic.
And it’s okay to be idealistic, that’s a great strength. But when it lapses into naïveté, we’ve got to check ourselves here. We tend to think that there will always be something to stop some craziness, right? “Oh, the President’s not going to let that happen.“ Or, “Congress will be there. Thank God we’ve got a Republican Congress.“ And thank God we do, but – “Oh, they’ll stop some craziness.“ Or, “Well, we have the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court would never let anything as unconstitutional as socialized medicine go through.“ Or, “The courts will stop Sharia law because that’s a bridge too far in America.”
Guess what, guys? None of that holds true. We now know we cannot count on the Presidency, we cannot count on the Congress, and we cannot count on the Judiciary to stop any of this. It’s up to us to do it. It’s up to the founders’ fourth branch to do it. And as we navigate this new America in order to try to bring our country back, it is going to be exhausting and it is going to be a long haul.
But think about the generations that came before us that faced huge challenges – the founding fathers, that revolutionary first generation of Americans, through the Greatest Generation. And now it’s our turn. It’s our turn to be, in a different way, America’s Greatest Generation. And I have faith we can do it because we’re Americans. We’re Americans, baby. God bless you. God bless you so much. Thank you. (Applause)
Sure. Yes. I’m happy to take some questions.
Unidentified Audience Member: Right after the election, I read a quote from Valerie Jarrett.
Monica Crowley: Yes.
Unidentified Audience Member: And she made two very alarming points. One of them was she said, “Now that we’ve won this election we don’t have to worry about Congress.”
Monica Crowley: Right.
Unidentified Audience Member: The other one was, “Now we’re going to go get our enemies.“ I’ve heard a lot of people express more than alarm that we have to go forward to the next election, but alarm as to what’s going to happen between now and the next election, and even whether there will be a next election. What do you make of all this?
Monica Crowley: Okay. So the question was about Valerie Jarrett, who has no credentials or no portfolio whatsoever except being a friend of Barack Obama and she’s running the country. It’s beyond belief. She is – Valerie Jarrett is Iranian born and there was a rumor that she was actually leading secret talks with Iran. How scary is that? Okay? Don’t know whether or not that’s true, but it’s terrifying.
Two things about what you quoted from Valerie Jarrett. One is, when she said, “We don’t need to worry about Congress,” this has always been the case. It was nice when Obama had huge majorities his first year. That was great, easy for him, a snap. He doesn’t need Congress and he has never needed Congress.
Barack Obama set up a network of czars through whom he really exercises power. And he goes through the czars. He goes through the bureaucracies and he does it by executive order. Everything – there’s some fiscal issues he needs Congress on, put on a good show. But he can get around it anytime he wants. Look at the EPA regulations. EPA has gone wild, crushing American businesses.
Now you’ve got Secretary Sebelius about to implement Obamacare, going hog wild through her department. He doesn’t need the Congress; he never has. This man is operating as a dictator. And still no real resistance, no questioning from the press. So he’s never needed Congress; that’s number one.
Number two, when you use the word “enemies,” this is how they view not just the Republicans and the Tea Party and Conservatives. This is how they view every American who doesn’t agree with him. You’re an enemy. You’re an enemy of the state. You’re an enemy of him and therefore you must be destroyed. Because, remember, the ultimate enemy for them is the American system. The ultimate enemy to be defeated is American capitalism, the free market, and freedom.
So we can expect four more years of this and the amount of destruction that they can inflict on us in four more years is going to be atrocious. I didn’t think it could get any worse. When I wrote my book, I literally – I wrote the whole book in about four and a half months. And because I had to write it so fast I was doing sort of day-by-day research, day by day of the Obama presidency, right? And I would go, “Oh, my God, I forgot about this. This is totally crazy. I have to type out this out for the book.“ And I’d write it.
Next day, “Oh, my God, forgot about this. This is totally crazy. I have to write this up.“ I ended up with a 650 page manuscript because Obama’s insanity was so prolific. And I ended up handing it to my editor at Harper Collins whose eyes got huge when I put it on his desk. And he’s, like, “Okay, so I guess I have my weekend reading to do.“ And we ended up editing it. But I made sure when I was editing the book that I didn’t take out any of the substantive madness, but I took out extraneous paragraphs that I had written. But I wanted all the real policy madness to be in there, so that the American people knew.
And, look, we’re going to have four more years of this. Now, when people talk about, people talk about, “Well, we needed the debacle of 1964 and Barry Goldwater to come back with a Reagan in 1980.“ Or people will say, “Well –“ Like I heard Ann say last night about the traditional pattern that six years into a presidency you get – the party out of power gets a huge rebound.
Look, those are historical patterns. But what we’ve seen under Barack Obama over the last four years is none of that holds true. It doesn’t hold true. Why? I think a lot of reasons, namely the changing nature of the country, which he has accelerated. And also, he is the first black President. They cannot allow the first black President to fail. And so they won’t. And so whatever he wants to do he will get away with, period. And that’s why I am saying it is up to us. We need to regroup. We need to rethink our whole approach to this.
Look, the Tea Party had enormous success when we still had the momentum and the energy. We need to somehow summon that again. And that’s why I say I know we’re all exhausted, so we need a little bit of a rest, maybe just over the holidays, six more weeks of rest. After that, get ready.
Because the Tea Party had enormous success in bringing pressure to bear on our elected officials on getting candidates to run who really believed in our foundational principles. That’s what we’re going to need again. We’re going to need an injection into the American bloodstream by the American people. Not top down from the Republican establishment, but from the ground up, from us.
Oh, we’ve got to go. Okay. One more? One more quick one? Oh, I talked too long. Thank you guys, so much. God bless you. Thank you. (Applause)
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