40th Conservative Political Action Conference  ...Next >
March 15, 2013--After starting out his speech with a long string of jokes from his recent Gridiron Club appearance, Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA) said conservatives must "reorientate our way of thinking" away from "government side shows in Washington that we have allowed to take center stage."

"As conservatives we are falling into the side show trap.  All of these side show debates are about government.  Today's conservatism is far too wrapped up in solving the hideous mess that is the federal budget...  Today's conservatism is in love with zeroes.  We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping.  I'm here to tell you this is a rigged game.  It is the wrong game for us to be playing.  Yesterday it was the fiscal cliff.  Today it's the sequester and tomorrow it'll be the fiscal apocalypse and then it'll be fiscal amageddon." 

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"This obsession with zeroes has everyone in our party focused on what?  On 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, DC instead of the real economy out in Billings or Baton Rouge.  We as Republicans have to accept that government number crunching, even conservative number crunching is not the answer to our nation's problems."

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"If this election taught us anything, it's that we're not going to simply win elections by 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 might ask well what does that future look like?  How do we win this argument?  Well for starters we've got to recalibrate the compass of conservatism.  Now we don't need to change what we believe as conservatives.  Our principles are timeless...   But we do need to reorient our focus to the place were conservatism thrives in the real world beyond Washington and beyond the Beltway."  >

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