Some of the Republican Party’s biggest stars descended upon George Washington’s Foggy Bottom Campus last week for the 34th Annual National Conservative Student Conference, sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation.
The weeklong conference featured former candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, including former Sen. Rick Santorum, R.-Pa.; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, as well as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and a host of other representatives, authors, activists and analysts. More than 300 students attended from around the country.
In his remarks, Mr. Gingrich had a few messages for students: keep innovating, know your American history and remain involved—and loud—in the political process.
He also outlined what he considers the three biggest threats to national security: radical Islamists, the rise of China’s military, and a cyber war and/or threat of an electromagnetic pulse—radiation that can burn out power lines and transformers on a widespread scale.
Mr. Gingrich challenged the students to be an innovating generation, and to “rebuild the American spirit and reject Obama’s arguments.”
“We don’t have to be a country of dependency and redistribution,” he said. “We can be a country of independent invention, massive prosperity and enormous opportunity.”
Echoing Mr. Gingrich’s call to students, Sen. Santorum called the upcoming 2012 presidential election a “turning point in American history.”
Recalling some of the rights outlined by the Continental Congress in the Declaration of Independence, Sen. Santorum told the students that he ran for president to protect these core values and ideals of America, and the fundamental freedoms of its citizens.
“For a long time in this country, we have been on a very slow road to gradually giving our freedoms away, gradually believing the siren song that the government can do better for us than we can do for ourselves,” he said. “…we have to win this election, because I believe the future of the republic is at stake.”
So, too, believes Rep. Bachmann. Calling this year’s election “the most important election of our lifetime,” Rep. Bachmann urged students to use their “spheres of influence” to be “uber community organizers” who leverage their friendships, Facebook and Twitter accounts and families to mobilize Republican support in November.
“This is not the election to sit it out,” she said. “This is not the election to dial back. You have less than 100 days to change the face of the United States and that will change the face of the world. You need to gear up. You need to stay involved.”
Under President Obama, Rep. Bachmann said, the national debt is growing at an unprecedented rate, recent college graduates have loans but no jobs to pay them back and the Middle East is on the verge of a war that, if it erupts, could have major implications for the U.S.
But one of the most troubling issues of all is President Obama’s signature health care law, Rep. Bachmann said. Saying it will affect Americans’ lives in “profound ways,” Rep. Bachmann warned reelecting President Obama means electing a “health care dictator who decides what we get and don’t get.” To repeal the law, Republicans will need the “triple crown,” or control of the House, Senate and presidency, she added.
On Friday, Gov. Walker entered a luncheon to a standing ovation from participants chanting “USA, USA, USA.”
Gov. Walker explained that his measure of a successful government is how few people—not how many—are dependent on government resources like unemployment. When people can control their own destiny and maintain their freedoms and liberties, he said, is when government succeeds.
Three points define Gov. Walker’s political philosophy on the economy. One: Like his grandmother always said, you shouldn’t spend more money than you have. Two: People create jobs, not the government. And three: A smaller government is a better government.
Gov. Walker closed by saying he is optimistic about the upcoming election and the country’s future. But the country needs citizens who have the courage to think about the long-term.
“What has made us arguably the greatest country in the history of the world,” Gov. Walker said, “is that in moments of crisis—economic or fiscal, military or spiritual—what has made America amazing is in those moments throughout our history, there have been men and women with courage to think more about the future of their children and their grandchildren than they have about their own political futures.”