Speech delivered Jan 14:
Below is the text of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s full speech to the
Republican National Committee in Charlotte, N.C. delivered Thursday night.
Thank you all for having me here tonight. And thank you
Reince for the outstanding leadership you provide to the Republican Party. And
I want to thank our great RNC members from Louisiana, Chairman Roger Villere,
National Committeewoman Lenar Whitney, and National Committeeman Ross Little
for all of their hard work.
Let me warn you in advance that I plan to talk big picture
here tonight, and I plan to say some things that may challenge your
assumptions.
You may not agree with all of it, but that’s ok, ours is a
party that can handle real discussions.
And now, after losing two Presidential elections in a row,
is certainly the time for some candid discussion.
The first concept I want to talk about is simply this – America is not the federal government.
Take a minute to let that thought sink in. America is not
the federal government.
In fact, America is not much about government at all. In
America, government is one of those things you have to have, but you sure don’t
want too much of it…kind of like your in-laws.
This is of course the polar opposite of the political debate
in our country today.
At present we have one party that wants to be
in charge of the federal government so they can expand it, and one party that
wants to be in charge of the federal government so they can get it under
control.
It’s a terrible debate, it’s a debate fought
entirely on our opponents’ terms.
A debate about which party can better manage
the federal government is a very small and shortsighted debate.
If our vision is not bigger than that, we do not deserve to win.
In our public discourse today, America is pretty much
defined by government, by the latest moves that occur in Washington.
If you landed from outer space…and read the news…and watched
TV for a week…you would have to conclude that Washington is the hub of America
and that what happens in Washington is what drives and dictates the success or
failure of America.
In addition to Washington, there are a bunch of outlying
areas we call states, but they are pretty much just adjuncts of the federal
government.
This is not the idea of America. But…this is what America
will become if we do not reorient our way of thinking right away.
As government grows ever larger, it will become what America
is all about…if we let it. This is our challenge; this is what we are here for.
Look at the debates that have dominated Washington in just
the last few weeks:
The fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling, and Joe Biden’s gun
control task force.
These are in reality sideshows in Washington that we have
allowed to take center stage in our country – and as conservatives, we are
falling into the sideshow trap.
All of these sideshow debates are about government.
Government and government power are the leading lady and the
leading man.
Today’s conservatism is completely wrapped up in solving the
hideous mess that is the federal budget, the burgeoning deficits, the mammoth
federal debt, the shortfall in our entitlement programs…even as we invent new
entitlement programs.
We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping.
This is a rigged game, and it is the wrong game for us to
play.
Today it’s the fiscal cliff, tomorrow it’s the fiscal
apocalypse, and then it will be the fiscal Armageddon.
But I have news for you; our government already went off the
fiscal cliff.
It happened years ago, and has happened every year for many
years.
Today’s conservatism is in love with zeroes.
We think if we can just unite behind a proposal to cut the
deficit and debt…if we can just put together a spreadsheet and a power point
and a TV ad….all will be well.
This obsession with zeroes has everyone in our party focused
on what? Government.
By obsessing with zeroes on the budget spreadsheet, we send
a not-so-subtle signal that the focus of our country is on the phony economy of
Washington – instead of the real economy out here in Charlotte, and Shreveport,
and Cheyenne.
We as Republicans have to accept that government number
crunching – even conservative number crunching – is not the answer to our
nation’s problems.
We also must face one more cold hard fact – Washington is so
dysfunctional that any budget proposal based on fiscal sanity will be deemed
‘not-serious’ by the media, it will fail in the Senate, and it won’t even make
it to the President’s desk where it would be vetoed anyway.
In fact, any serious proposal to restrain government growth
is immediately deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington. The Balanced Budget is
deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington.
Term Limits are deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington. Capping
federal growth by tying it to private sector economic growth is deemed
‘not-serious’ in Washington.
The truth is nothing serious is deemed serious in
Washington.
When then-Senator Obama voted against raising the debt
ceiling, he said he was doing so because the national debt was at an outrageous
8 trillion dollars…and he clarified for effect, saying that is “trillion with a
T.” Now President Obama has our
national debt over 16 trillion dollars and climbing…larger than our entire
economy. And he’s not worried about it in the
least.
He calls it progress. You remember his campaign slogan, he
says it is “Forward.”
I have news for the President – If Washington’s debt is
going forward, America’s economy is going backward. Instead of worrying about managing
government, it’s time for us to address how we can lead America… to a place
where she can once again become the land of opportunity, where she can
once again become a place of growth and opportunity.
We should [not] put all of our eggs in that basket.
Yes, we certainly do need folks in Washington who will
devote themselves to the task of stopping this President from taking America so
far off the ledge that we cannot get back.
We must do all we can to stop what is rapidly becoming the
bankrupting of our federal government. But
we as conservatives must dedicate our energies and our efforts to growing
America, to growing the American economy, to showing the younger generations
how America can win the future.
That path does not lie in government. If more
government were the answer, our economy would be booming right now. That path
has been tried.
You can’t hire enough government workers or give enough
taxpayer money to your friends who own green energy companies to create
prosperity. The facts are in, it’s a disaster.
Balancing our government’s books is not what matters most !! Government is not the end all and be all. The health of America is not about
government at all. Balancing government’s books is a nice goal, but that is not
our primary objective.
Our objective is to grow the private sector. We need to
focus our efforts on ideas to grow the American economy, not the government
economy.
If you take nothing else away from what I say
today, please understand this – We must not become the party of austerity. We
must become the party of growth. Of course we know that government is out of
control. The public knows that too. And yet we just lost an election.
Again, we cannot afford to fight on our
opponents’ terms. The Republican Party must become the party of growth, the
party of a prosperous future that is based in our economic growth and
opportunity that is based in every community in this great country and that is
not based in Washington, DC.
We have fallen into a trap of believing that the world
revolves around Washington, that the economy is based there. If we keep
believing that, government will grow so big that it will take us all down with
it.
If our end goal is to simply better manage the disaster that
is the federal government, count me out, I’m not signing up for that. It’s not
a goal worth attaining.
Which of you wants to sign up to help manage the slow
decline of the United States of America? I sure don’t. That’s what we have
Democrats for.
The Democrats promise to be the party of “more from
government,” but they are actually the party of less. They are the party of economic
contraction, austerity and less from the economy. The Republican Party is the
party of “more,” the party that creates “more from the economy.”
As Margaret Thatcher famously observed – first
you must win the argument, then you can win the elections. And by
the way, it’s time for all of us to remember that we are not in this just to
win elections.
We are in this to make America the greatest she can be, to
make America the prosperous land of opportunity that she can be. To do this, we
will certainly have to win some elections, but first we must win the argument.
If this election taught us anything – it is
that we will not win elections by simply pointing out the failures of the other
side. We must boldly paint the picture of what America can be, of just how
incredibly bright America’s future can be.
So…you ask…what does that future look like? How do we win this argument?
For
starters, we have to recalibrate the compass of conservatism. We do not need to change what we believe as
conservatives – our principles are timeless.
But we do need to re-orient our focus to the place where conservatism
thrives – in the real world beyond the Washington Beltway. We must lay out the contrast between
liberalism’s top-down government solutions and our Bottom-Up real world
philosophy. We believe in creating
abundance, not redistributing scarcity.
We should let the other side try to sell Washington’s
ability to help the economy, while we promote the entrepreneur, the risk-taker,
the self-employed woman who is one sale away from hiring her first employee.
Let the Democrats sell the stale power of more federal
programs, while we promote the rejuvenating power of new businesses.
We don’t believe old, top-down, industrial-age government
becomes a good idea just because it agrees with us or because we are running
it.
We must focus on the empowerment of citizens making relevant
and different decisions in their communities while Democrats sell factory-style
government that cranks out one dumbed-down answer for the whole country.
This means re-thinking nearly every social program in
Washington. Very few of them work in my view, and frankly, the one-size fits
all crowd has had its chance.
If any rational human being were to create our government
anew, today, from a blank piece of paper – we would have about one fourth of
the buildings we have in Washington and about half of the government workers.
We would replace most of its bureaucracy with a handful of
good websites.
If we created American government today, we would not dream
of taking money out of people’s pockets, sending it all the way to Washington,
handing it over to politicians and bureaucrats to staple thousands of pages of
artificial and political instructions to it, then wear that money out by grinding
it through the engine of bureaucratic friction…and then sending what’s left of
it back to the states, where it all started, in order to grow the American
economy.
What we are doing now to govern ourselves is not just wrong.
It is out of date and it is a failure.
We believe in planting the seeds of growth in the fertile
soil of your economy, where you live, where you work, invest, and dream, not in
the barren concrete of Washington.
If it’s worth doing, block grant it to the states.
If it’s something you don’t trust the states to do, then
maybe Washington shouldn’t do it at all.
We believe solving problems closer to home should always be
our first, not last, option.
We believe hiring others, far away, is the last and least
effective way to meet our social responsibilities to others.
States should not face a moral dilemma when they try to
right size their own budgets and federal strings stand in the way.
While the Democrats work on taking more from working
Americans, we should stand for radically simplifying our tax code – not for the
benefit of Washington, but to get Washington out of the way.
Get rid of the loopholes paid for by lobbyists and blow up
the incentives that Washington uses to coerce behavior from the top-down.
It shouldn’t be complicated for a taxpayer to fill out his
taxes…or to live his life without fear of the tax consequences of his or her
choices.
When it comes to education — let the Democrats extoll the
virtues of our hopelessly antiquated one-size-fits-all factory schools where
the child follows the dollars.
Meanwhile, let us feature the success of child-centered
education solutions that meet the needs of the digital age, education where the
dollars follow the child.
These are but a few examples of the way we must fight the
battle of ideas, or as Thatcher said, how we must win the argument.
One thing we have to get straight — Washington has spent a
generation trying to bribe our citizens and extort our states.
As Republicans, it’s time to quit arguing around the edges
of that corrupt system.
Now let me shift gears and speak to changes I believe we
must make if we are to win elections.
As I indicated before, I am not one of those who believe we
should moderate, equivocate, or otherwise abandon our principles.
This badly disappoints many of the liberals in the national
media of course. For them, real change means:
Supporting abortion on demand without apology
Abandoning traditional marriage between one man and one
woman
Embracing government growth as the key to American success
Agreeing to higher taxes every year to pay for government
expansion
And endorsing the enlightened policies of European socialism
That is what real change looks like to the New York Times
editorial board.
But that’s crazy talk. America already has one liberal
party, she doesn’t need another one.
Government spending still does not grow our economy.
American weakness on the world stage still does not lead to
peace.
Higher taxes still do not create prosperity for all. And
more government still does not grow jobs.
If you believe in higher taxes, more debt, more government spending,
weakness abroad, and taking guns from law-abiding citizens – you already have a
party that is well represented in Washington.
No, the Republican Party does not need to change our
principles…but we might need to change just about everything else we do.
Here
are seven things that I believe we must change
. . . . if we are to amass a following worthy
of our principles, and if we are to be in position to win elections and lead
America:
1. We must stop looking backward. We have to
boldly show what the future can look like with the free market policies that we
believe in. Many of our Governors are doing just that. Conservative ideals are
aspirational, and our country is aspirational. Nostalgia about the good old
days is heart-warming, but the battle of ideas must be waged in the future.
2. We must compete for every single vote. The
47 percent and the 53 percent. And any other combination of numbers that adds
up to 100 percent. President Barack Obama and the Democrats can continue trying
to divide America into groups of warring communities with competing interests,
but we will have none of it. We are going after every vote as we work to unite
all Americans.
3. We must reject identity politics. The old
notion that ours should be a colorblind society is the right one, and we should
pursue that with vigor. Identity politics is corrosive to the great American melting
pot and we reject it. We must reject the notion that demography is destiny, the
pathetic and simplistic notion that skin pigmentation dictates voter behavior.
We must treat all people as individuals rather than as members of special
interest groups. The first step in getting the voters to like you is to
demonstrate that you like them.
4. We must stop being the stupid party. It’s
time for a new Republican party that talks like adults. It’s time for us to
articulate our plans and visions for America in real terms. We had a number of
Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments.
We’ve had enough of that.
5. We must stop insulting the intelligence of
voters. We need to trust the smarts of the American people. We have to stop dumbing
down our ideas and stop reducing everything to mindless slogans and tag lines
for 30-second ads. We must be willing to provide details in describing our
views.
6. We must quit “big.” We are not the party of
big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, or
big anything. We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so
they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how
they can thrive. We are the party whose ideas will help the middle class, and
help more folks join the middle class. We are a populist party and need to make
that clear.
7. We must focus on real people outside of
Washington, not the lobbyists and government inside Washington. We must stop
competing with Democrats for the job of “Government Manager,” and lay out ideas
that can unleash the dynamic abilities of the American people. We need an equal
opportunity society, one in which government does not see its job as picking
winners and losers. Where do you go if you want special favors? Government.
Where do you go if you want a tax break? Government. Where do you go if you
want a handout? Government. This must stop. Our government must pursue a level
playing field. At present, government is the un-leveler of the playing field.
This is a pathway forward for the Republican Party, one that
honors our principles, the American people, and also, will help us win
elections.
Let me
conclude by making this observation – America is facing
her greatest choice, and the hour is late.
We can either go down the Government path or the American path. The left is trying to turn the government
path into the American path. Shame on us
if we let them do that.
We believe freedom incentivizes ordinary people to do
extraordinary things and that makes America an exceptional nation. In the last few years it has become
fashionable to talk about American Exceptionalism – the idea that this country
is better and different than any other on the planet.
As Republicans we have criticized President Obama for not
believing in American exceptionalism. It
is imperative that we not only promote America’s exceptionalism, we must also
define it.
During the inauguration I heard a lot of commentators remark
on the uniquely peaceful transfer of power we have in this country.
But let us not get confused….
Even as we must never take for granted the peaceful
transition of power, America is not great because of the design of our
government. Our nation is not
exceptional because of its commitment to free elections. The genius of America is that our strength
and power and growth come from the individual actions of our people.
Government does not order greatness. Government cannot
command outcomes that exceed those in other nations. But free individuals…taking risks…building
businesses…inventing things from thin air…and passing immutable values from one
generation to the next…that is the root of America’s greatness.
And that is our mission as we build a new Republican Party.
We must shift the eye line and the ambition of our
conservative movement away from managing government and toward the mission of
growth. It falls to us to show the
younger generations the wisdom and the great benefit of the American path. It falls to us to unleash a new dawning of
the American Dream – the dream my parents came to America for – a dream of
growth, prosperity, and equal opportunity.
It is our responsibility to seize this opportunity and lead
our country into a new era of possibility, progress, and prosperity. It falls to us to take the ever-fresh
principles of freedom and apply them to the future.
Make no mistake; I’m not calling for a period
of introspection and navel gazing. Far from it.
I’m calling for us to get busy winning the argument…and then, after
that…winning the next election.
Thank you, and may God richly bless you.
No comments:
Post a Comment