OK, so this was
supposed to be a You-Tube style video... we even shot it (fireside, no less). Sadly, the new technology we were trying out has some glitches (like, the camera and the new laptop don't want to talk to each other...)
So, instead of a new web video you get... the transcript of a video that never will be seen. Go figure.
Enjoy anyways.
*****
Hello. My name is Joshua Gross. I live in Lexington, South Carolina.
I’m talking with you today to share my thoughts on this election and to call you to action as a result of what happened yesterday.
For the last eight years, President George W. Bush has led America through difficult times, fighting a two-front war in Asia, after the deadliest terrorist attack in our nation’s history and dealing with numerous natural disasters at home and abroad.
Unfortunately, those crises left our President without bargaining chips when it came to dealing with corrupt Washington politicians in Congress. When those politicians came asking for money, President Bush apparently felt he had no choice but to give in to those demands, for fear of losing support for an increasingly unpopular war, despite the successes that war faced on the ground.
As a direct result, the Bush years will be remembered for their bipartisan Washington corruption, and for the massive load of federal debt left behind in their wake. Our national debt now stands at ten trillion dollars. In budgetary terms, the federal government is now five times as large as it was when Ronald Reagan took office in 1980 on his message that the Government was too big and spent too much. The recent bipartisan Wall Street bailout alone was $100B larger than the entire 1980 federal budget.
Yesterday’s election results can rightly be judged as the repudiation of President Bush’s policies (and his willing Republican accomplices in Congress) in exchange for amorphous promises of “hope” and “change”.
Now our country faces the farthest left-wing Socialist government in our history – top to bottom, led by Obama, Reid and Pelosi. If you’re hoping that Harry Reid is the Voice of Reason among those three, you are indeed in very deep trouble.
We in the conservative movement need to realize that the Founding Fathers vision of liberty was not what voters repudiated yesterday – they rejected what they saw as a third Bush term – hardly a conservative notion. Exit polls tell us that voters saw Republicans as “having lost our way” or being inept in governance. Only 9% of Americans thought Republicans were “too conservative.”
So,what do we need to do as conservatives? We need to get
back to the basics our Founding Fathers intended. We don’t need to be all things to all people – we need to be all things to the people in our conservative coalition. We need to be liberty-minded conservatives first and Republicans second. We need to realize that power for its own sake must never be the answer we seek; rather we seek to protect the rights and responsibilities of the individual free American to seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the manner that he or she sees fit.
In the past, our conservative coalition has stood on four legs of a stool. We must reaffirm our commitment to all four of those legs if we are to succeed.
We need to continue to stand up for life and for natural marriage. We need to stand against the corruption of higher taxes and Big Government Socialism while we stand for the dreams of individual liberty and responsibility embedded in our Constitution. We need to continue to stand for a strong military and against the threat of Islamist Sharia. And we need to provide for the basic needs of a nation, securing our borders and ensuring the rule of law. Over the next four years, we are going to have ample opportunity to fight each of these battles at every level of government.
We need to make these fights under a new generation of leaders at every level, from town councils to the U.S. Senate, in government and at the grassroots level of party politics.
We need new leaders in Congress who will stand up against the onslaught of Socialism over the next two years and lead under the banner of conservative vision.
We need new leaders in state legislatures – here in South Carolina and around the country – who will learn from the mistakes of Washington Republicans and stop the out of control government spending. This means making difficult and sometimes politically unpopular choices that the left will demagogue. Those choices must still be made, and must be explained in the larger framework of liberty and individual empowerment.
And we need new leaders at every level within our Party, from the precincts to the RNC. The conservative movement can retake our primacy within the structure of the Republican Party, but it will require focused effort on our part.
The character of this new generation of leaders will be forged in the fires of fierce opposition as we stand up for what is right. We will need to be reform minded – keeping in mind Lord Acton’s warning about the corruption of absolute power. And we will need to stand up for the values that unite us as conservatives.
I hope to be one of those leaders. And I hope that you will too. We have much work to be done, and many who will oppose us at every turn. I hope you will join us anyways.
May God Bless each of you, and may He bless the United States of America.
