mandates and build diverse coalitions to overcome entrenched interest and not just the special interests in the other party, but those in his own party. the conservative candidate who ignores moderates is as misguided as the moderate candidate who ignores conservatives. the candidate we all deserve every one of us can attract both without alienating either. right now we don't have any candidates yet and everyone deserves an equal chance to meet that standard but make no mistake, that should be the standard. this leads me to my final point. meeting that standard that i've described, principled, positive and proven. it isn't just going to be up to the candidates themselves.

it's going to be up to us. every one of us and lots of other people all over the country just as businesses in the free market follow consumer demand, political candidates take their cues from the voters. we have the power in this process, but only if we're willing to use it. only if we're willing to expect more out of our would-be leaders and only if we're willing to expect more out of ourselves. we have a job to do, and that job is not just to find the guy that can shout freedom the loudest. it's not just the guy that can tell the best joe biden jokes. by the way, did you hear what joe biden said the other day? never mind -- it's too easy. if that's what conservatives reward, and if that's all they reward in the next year and over the next two days here at cpac, if that's what they reward with cheers and standing ovations and

straw poll votes, then that's all that we as conservatives will ever get, talking points and platitudes and empty promises, but when conservatives elevate on serious presidential candidates, candidates who are not principled, positive and proven, it's not the media's fault. it's not the establishment's fault. it's our fault and we can't let that happen. [ applause ] republican presidential candidates in 2016 are only going to be as conservatives demand them to be in 2015 and that's why we're here today. [ applause ] so let's demand, starting right here and right now that these candidates are going to be extraordinary. not one candidate we will support will be anything short

of that. [ applause ] imagine for a moment the impression this audience could leave a candidate if each of you refused to give a standing ovation to every trite one-liner or empty platitude or every hollow political slogan over the next day and a half and yes, you will hear some of those. or imagine if no one in the conservative movement, not a single soul donated a dime of their money or a moment of their time to any candidate who talks a big game about cutting big government and never gets around to explaining how he would fix broken government. [ applause ] i guarantee you every one of our serious presidential candidates would immediately run on a positive innovative and unapologetically conservative agenda. [ applause ]

yes, they would run on an agenda that would take our timeless principles and applies them to the unique challenges of our time. an agenda that empowers the individuals, the families and communities that washington's corrupt, nexus of big government, big business and big special interest leaves behind. [ applause ] imagine the conservative leader who would emerge from that campaign what he could do to reunite our party, to reconnect it with the american people and reform the government policies holding them back. that's a candidate and that's a campaign we can all look forward to. [ applause ] more importantly far more importantly, that's the candidate and that's the campaign the american people have been waiting for. it's the candidate americans

deserve and the one conservatives can produce. if and only if we stayed true to our own highest ideals. that's the candidate i'm looking for in 2016, and i am here to ask for your help to find him. thank you very much and may god bless the united states of america. [ applause ] >> good morning, senator lee. thank you for your remarks. i'm kimberly and i'm the moderator for all of the potential presidential candidates. are you sure you're not running? >> i'm sure. i'm sure. >> okay. but i can still ask you a couple of questions? >> absolutely. >> okay. the first question is from the twitter feed from conservatives across the country #cpaccue.

would you stand with congress if they choose to find dhs? >> would i stand with congress if they choose to fund dhs? >> yes, sir. >> this question is focusing on something that the president did in november. november of 2014. the president of the united states chose to effectively rewrite our immigration code. this is one of the solemn responsibilities given to congress under article 1, section 8 of the constitution. it's our right to write laws, all legislative power belongs to congress and we have a series of laws on the books that govern immigration and naturalization the process by which people come into the country and in some cases become assimilated as citizenses. the president issued an executive order that would make legal millions and millions of people who are currently inside the country illegally. our laws don't authorize this

action and so if it's carried out, if it's implemented this action will have the effect of undoing something that congress has done and doing so in a way that circumvents the constitution. now, we have the means at our disposal to stop that. the means to do this or the means described by james madison madison, we have to use the power of the purse and we have to withhold funding when the president does that. [ applause ] so if the question is whether i will vote to fund the president's executive amnesty program, no, i will not and i ask my colleagues in congress to stand with me. >> thank you for that answer. and since you're not running for president i want to just say we think you're great. >>> and the second -- >> no, i will be on the ballot in 2016 but it will be in one state, my home state of utah.

>> okay. sounds good. and the second and last question is what is your biggest criticism of president obama? you only have a couple of minutes to answer that by the way. >> there is a poem that comes to mind "let me count the ways." okay, so our founding fathers put together a government and they put together a government under a system a constitutional system that has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. [ applause ] we're great as americans and we've been successful as a country not because of who we are, but because of what we do. we're successful as a country because we believe in freedom and freedom is great not just because it's awesome in the abstract. freedom is great because of the

things that free people do when they a are allowed to be free and they come together and form voluntary associations like churches and synagogues and charitable organizations. the founding generation understood that free markets and voluntary associations like these don't happen. they can't happen if government becomes oppressive and they also understood something about power, that there's great harm that can come from government if you allow too much power to be concentrated in the hands of one person or in the hands of a few people and so they split up power very, very carefully. they split it up and you can see as british colonies we had experienced a lot of problems from this. we were subject to a national government that was too big, that was too expensive and that taxed us too much and regulated us too heavily and it was so far to the people and that was slow to respond to their needs. does any of that sound familiar?

and so when we set up the new government we instinctively split up power. we split it up along the horizontal access first. along the horizontal access and then we split it up on a vertical access meaning we put most of the power in the states and the local governments where the power was closest to the people and we put up few powers, with the few basic things and national defense copyrights and patents and the power to declare war and my favorite power of congress and a letter of mark and reprisal is the hall pass issue of congress it that allows you to be a pirate on the high seas in the name of the united states. really cool stuff. so they split it up by putting most of the power in the states and localities and they split it up within the federal government by saying congress will make the laws and the president will enforce the laws and the judiciary will interpret the laws. he's disregarded these powers.

these disregarded these limits and he's allowed too much power to accumulate in the federal government and he's drawn more and more of it in and most of this power he has put in the executive branch. he has put in himself. this, my friend is not a good way to run government. this, my friends is a way that leads to bad things. we've got to turn it around. we've got to bring back our separation of powers. we've got to bring back the power when it is limited at the federal level and we've got to restore a state of affairs that james madison described in federalist 45 when he said the powers of the federal govern amment are few and defined while those reserved to states are indefinite. when we reserve power for the people we all benefit. freedom is maximized and free markets and civil society will flourish and everyone in america does better. the poor get out of poverty. the middle class can get ahead and that's what we're about and that's what it means to be a

conservative and that's why i'm with you today. we have to restore the separations of power that have been lost. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> senator lee we so appreciate you being with us this morning. god bless. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪lf!÷ ♪ ♪ good morning. i'm wrathy williams from the republican national committee where i am the deputy press

secretary and i specialize in youth politics. so today i'm honored to be joined love charlie kirk and senator ben sasse from nebraska as we discuss the issues facing the party and our country moving forward. so without further]j ñ ado, i would like to throw it to senator saas to give a few remarks. he's the former college graduate >> thank you. you bet. >> good to be with you all. thanks for having us this morning. i am coming off of two really interesting experiences. i spent the last five years as a college president and when you are 37 look 27 and according to my wife, act 17 it's a little complicated to be a college president for the first time because you walk across campaign and people are trying to get you to pledge fraternities. they're trying to set you up with grurnd grads and there are all sort of big problems that

can develop, but i got to spend five years getting to know the youth of america and over the course of the last 18 months my wife and i and our three little kids, our girls that are 13 and 11 and our son is 3 spent 400 days living on a campaign bus there are lots of stories about a 3-year-old living for 400 days on a campaign bus, but that's for another session. we did nearly a thousand public events over the course of those 400 days and there is a lot to be pessimistic about in an american life and in american politics and you will hear a lot of that over the course of the next 12 hours. i want to tell you something to be optimistic about as we kick off my part of what will be on our panel together. there are in americans a deep -- there are deep reserves of feeling that america is a lot more about country music lyrics than it's about the federal register.

there is in america, a deep skepticism of the idea that you can centrally plan all of life. we have things that you will hear about. senator lee did a great job in the last session talking about the crisis of three branches of government that are separate, but equal and check and balance one another. there's polling that shows only 38% of the voting public even know that we have three branches of government. so when we have a crisis of a legislature that's for decades kicked legislative and law making authorities to the executive and we have an executive who is willing to just claim authorities that are not his own and that violate his constitutional oath, there is a crisis, but there is also great opportunity for us and that is that the american people deeply believe that meaning can't be centrally planned and isn't found in washington. so i want to give you just one picture and then we'll go to the next panelist. i want to give you one picture. we traveled across the state with the 23,000 pages of implementing regulations of obamacare. we put a metal rod to them.

they're about 9 1/2 feet of paper and we put it on a dolly and we took it into every town hall that we did across the state and we asked people a fundamental question, do you believe this is a picture of what the american founders intended that washington can essentially plan health care and we contrasted that 9 1/2 stack of paper with the homestead act of 1862. i live in a state that until the civil war was nebraska on every map had written across it the great american desert. and today nebraska is the most fruitful bread basket, not just of america, but the entire world. it's not just corn and beans. it's the largest cattle state in the union. take that, texas, but the homestead act of 1862 that created that framework for liberty is about a page and a half long. it's a completely different picture of what government was meant to do and so we played out a thought experiment in front of

nebraska anns and this works for millennials with the belief that every young person believes in obama's view of government, i don't think they do, and we played out the thought experiment. could you have president obama come to nebraska and stand on a homestead farm and read off his teleprompter that you didn't would that speech? it wouldn't make any sense and the people in my state and frankly, i think young people mostly, as well would look at the president not primarily in anger, but in confusion and they would say, sir, what are you talking about? our people built the farm the ranches, the schools, the churches and the not for profit associations and the cpacs, the local social clubs. almost everything meaningful in american life happens as senator lee happens by volunteerism and we have to recover that sense of telling the american story of washington existing to provide a framework for ordered liberty so that life can be lived out in local community. at the end of the day, the meaning of america is about that

voluntary civil society by which neighbors come to neighbor and solve their problems together not by the coercive powers of the state but by persuasion and by entrepreneurial activity and by families and local society and mediating institutions and i think we need to talk about that today. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you senator. next up, we have charlie kirk. millennials didn't understand economic issues as well as they should and decided to do something about it and we decided to found turning point usa. let's hear a little from him. [ applause ] >> thank you. a beautiful day here in d.c. it's unfortunate and i don't think barack obama is very happy and it's also golf weather. he's not going to be happy about that. i come from the beautiful city of chicago illinois. illinois is one of the few

states, one of the few states in the country that has term limits. however, it's a different type of term limit, our politician and they serve one term in office and one term in jail but it still counts. you know, when we ask for our governor's cell number we don't mean their phone. we mean their cell. however, thanks to the hard work of many people in this room and the dedication and the coalescence of concerted activism with hillary clinton and barack obama there is a republican governor in the state of illinois. >> and it's a testament to what hard grassroots work identification and a belief in fighting the left that their own game can do. this cycle is widely successful because the conservative movement came together and united around key uniting principles. i felt in 2012 we were more united than divided. what the left has been able to do successfully over the last couple of decades is been able

to work together and been able to believe with uniting principles. i think today as we'll hear from speakers from many different points of view we can learn from the left in this regard. left has been able to unite young people and old people around principles and be successful in that regard. i started an organization, turning point usa 2 of that years ago around two key values free markets and limited government. young people across the country are sick and tired of big government telling him how to live their life. they're struggling under the burden of student loans. they can't find jobs. they're sick of the government reading their text messages. our generation wholeheartedly bought the agenda of barack obama in 2008 and 2012. now they have to pay the price. i have a saying -- a young person voting for a democrat is like a chicken voting for colonel sanders. when barack obama lost the first

debate to governor romney in coll which i thought was one of the greatest nights in modern political history, barack obama went to valerie jarrett and demanded that he would be on a college campus the next day. he said get me on a college campus. he went to the university of wisconsin madison and 72,000 young people showed up and support. when barack obama needed a bailout, when he needed energy and enthusiasm, he went to the young people. he built his legions on the back of millennials. now our generation has an opportunity not just to reject that agenda but to pay an optimistic future of limited government, individual liberty and increase the economy around entrepreneurship and the american dream. our generation, our belief system will be paving the way for millennials for decades to come. i look forward to this panel. thank you so much. ëfinally we'll be hearing from representative mia love who truly needs no introduction.

>> thank you. oh wow, it is so nice to be in a friendly crowd here at cpac. well unlike the current occupants of the white house, i believe that given the opportunity, the american people will rise to the occasion. on their own. no ministate needed. no big government mandate required. we're americans and for over 200 years we have lended a hand and lifted the poor. we've lifted ourselves up. and made sure that we gave opportunity to anyone that was in need. given the opportunity we helped the neighbor, we helped the struggling student, parent or friend. given the opportunity we overcame overwhelming odds and drive innovations. but most of all, given the opportunity, the american people rally around a good cause whether it's down the street across town or around the world.

unfortunately, too many in washington don't trust the american people. they don't seem to want us to have the opportunities to rise to the occasion. they say just trust washington to do everything. to control your land, educate our children, to dictate every aspect of our lives. i think its time that we need to look within. but most of all, i think it is time for washington to trust the american people. given the opportunity, here today we must advance the conservative principles that have lifted more people out of poverty, fueled more freedom and driven more dreams than any set of principles in the history of the world. conservative principles and conservative policies work. i've seen them work. as a mother as a mayor, and i use them now as a member of congress. given the opportunity which

flows from our conservative values the american people will once again rise to the occasion to create jobs upward mobility, and build an even greater nation. for example -- imagine a health care system that is centered on service and measured by outcomes. not dictated by washington. now i know that it is hard for some of my colleagues in washington to contemplate, but imagine if health care dollars and decision making is kept with the patient, the families and their doctors. i can see american exceptionalism at work, creating a system where innovation, compassion and people drive the highest quality of care. now, imagine a single mother who is trapped in poverty by big government programs that prevent her from taking opportunities

and proving that she can rise to the occasion. i believe that that mother can, and will rise -- if she is given the opportunity to do so. in fact, most people who have risen out of poverty have done so in spite of big government. not because of big government programs. the focus of every program to help the poor should be centered on making poverty temporary, not just tolerable. the american people deserve the opportunity to rise to the occasion. but to be honest, this is not just about washington. it's about us. it's about you and me and what we are willing to do. last year my family and i were able to go to a hot air balloon festival and i was able to ride in a hot air balloon for the first time. on my own. and i've never done that before. and at the last minute they told me i could take one of my children with me. so i called my son payton, who's

7 years old, i said come jump on the balloon with me. he hesitated and resisted. and gosh, we had to launch and finally we just had to make -- we had to go without him. so i called my other daughter abby and she jumped in the balloon immediately and we took off. and we enjoyed the beauty of utah's landscapes. it was beautiful. until the weather started to change. i don't know if any of you have been on a hot air balloon when it's windy and you're trying to land, but needless to say, we ended up in the backyard of a neighbor. somebody's backyard. and my son payton had to watch all of the excitement from the ground because they were following with the car. so anyway we get out of the basket and my son payton runs over and he says, i'm redadyready, mom, i'm ready. it's my turn. and unfortunately with the now-windy conditions, all of the balloons had to stay on ground and the opportunity for him to soar and rise in the sky had come and gone.

i took that time to take payton aside and say remember this experience. remember today. because if you do not take opportunities that come to you, you never know if they'll come back. to paraphrase winston churchill, he said to every person there comes a moment when they're figuratively tapped on the shoulder and given the opportunity to do something special. what a tragedy it would be if that time finds them unwilling and unprepared for what would be his greatest moment. so my challenge to my colleagues in congress is to not yield the moral high grounds to the left, to get out of the way and allow the american people to rise. my challenge to the conservative movement is for us to be the group that promotes the ideas and the opportunities where people can come to this country

legally like my parents did with $10 in their pocket and live their version of the american dream. that given the opportunity our children can get a good education without mortgaging their future. and hard working families can save and lead a better, brighter future for their children. there are no small parts in the conservative movement. so my challenge to you my friends, is to be willing, be prepared for every opportunity. for every tap on the shoulder to show up, speak out, write in and stand strong for the policies and principles that have made america such a great extraordinary and exceptional place. may god bless you and may god continue to bless our still independent united states of america. thank you.

>> thank you, representative. so for the first question i wanteded to ask you senator. you were the president of midland college. you implemented a graduate in four years program that saw attendance saw afterwards. what were some of the hurdles implementing that and where did you come up with the idea and how did you do it? >> so i took over this 130-year-old lib rap arts college it my hometown that was looking at how to declare bankruptcy. ima he a turnaround guy by background. we went in and had an honest conversation with the faculty about the fact that the budget of this institution was dedicated to all of the tenured faqky in the departments that didn't have students. we had -- i kid you not -- 45 majors and minors 84% of our student body majored in only seven departments. that's not going to work. and it turns out if you tell the truth about the fact that people were not going to get paid at this place in the future, and you could not waste the crisis and you could use it to build something that focused on the students of tomorrow instead of financial commitments that were

made yesterday, reasonable people were willing to have that conversation but you couldn't meet something with nothing. you had to have a story of how we were going to serve the students of tomorrow. we said let's rebuild the institution for those students yet to come. it shouldn't take six years for a four-year degree. we'll give you better advising but you'll have to do the actual work of getting through the institution. happy to report our faculty, our star, our board, our donors pulled together and midland is the fastest growing school in the midwest now. >> well, congratulations. >> thanks. just following up on that, you were a very young college president. was there some skepticism when you took over? how did you handle some of the prejudice that goes against being a younger person? >> i mean i think fundamentally if you're talking about cause then all of a sudden the nouns are less important than the verbs. how many years you have in your life are less important than the mission and the direction you are outlining for the institution and we were able to pull together a lot of people to

pull on oars in the same direction. we just never really paid attention to the fact that i looked like i may be an undergrad. >> to you, charlie, you started this great organization as a national wide program. what was the catalyst for that? what came up with the idea, how did you implement it and it's hard as a young person to say this world's big and i'm only one person. but you took it by the reins and really ran with it. >> well, thank you. it was interesting as our organization continues to grow, the left wing equivalent of what we are trying to build and replicate is moveon.org or organizing for action. the story i tell, i was at a ohio state university football game in 2012 and i saw 1 1 staffers register something voters literally taking people by the collars to the polls. i don't see any grassroots equivalency on our side. i didn't see organization. i think it is a mistake to say the liberals invade higher education. they occupy higher education.

it is two totally different things. i saw the necessity and also the grassroots enthusiasm amongst lots of young people that wanted to elevate their activism level on campus to do more than just have a group or a chapter but to do something of substance and get more voters on the rolls, expand the electorate, gather data, make a wider impact. it is really just been an amazing environment. we've been able to create on over 750 campuses in all 50 states. or activists go from conservative libertarian,. we have to get into the arena and step up our gape andme and compete. >> representative love, if you were a little girl today coming to america -- >> the environment is a lot different than when my parents

actually emigrated to the united states. i am going to say legally. because i have to tell you that when they came in my father said that he learned the english language. he learned about american history. as a matter of fact, he learned about the constitution. he knew more about american history than most americans did at the time. and when he pledged his allegiance to the american flag the first time, not only did he know what he was saying but he meant every word of it. and it is really difficult now because we have made it difficult for people to come here and be able to work start off with just $10 in their pockets, have three jobs and save up for their dreams. most people now when they graduate are spending most of their time -- [ audio difficulty ]

>> hello. okay. there we go. i'm sure you didn't hear anything i said. right? anyway, i just talked about my parents who came here and worked really hard and studied the english language. learned how to speak english and studied the constitution and american history. when they pledged their allegiance to the american flag the first time they knew exactly what they were saying and they meant every word of it. my parents also had opportunities. they came here with just $10 and they had opportunities to work several jobs to make ends meatet. it is difficult today. i don't think that someone can come here legally today and do the same thing because we have made it impossible -- when i say "we," i'm talk being about the government. centralized government has made it impossible for people to save and start their dreams. most of the time you're paying the federal government back or you've been paying into their system an not your own home, not into your own communities and it

makes it very difficult for somebody to be able to start their own lives. we've got tovp change that. >> so, i think that you are three great people very successful, i would say. i would just go down line and say, what advice do you have to other young people who are looking to get involved or looking to run for office not only what would you say to hem, but how do you do it how do you go about building a coalition, how do you know it is your time to take that next step? >> i'll say something that might be a tiny bit counterintuitive. but i think we need more people that believe a little bit less in politics, serving in politics. you're going to hear a ton of politics over the next day and a half, and you're going to have some red meat moments that are going to feel great to cheer. and they should. and yet, at the same point, if we sound like liberals that we really believe that if we could elect the one right guy or gal

and we could pass the one right piece of legislation everything will be fixed, that isn't true. and real voters know that isn't true. and they want a world where people believe more in america and a little bit less in government and politics because almost everything that's meaningful in life happens upstream from politics. politics exists to create a framework for ordered liberty for all the places where real life and vitality are lived. i would say as a non-politics. i'm 52 days or something into the u.s. senate so i've not yet been corrupted. i think we need more people that really aren't obsessing about politics. i would urge folks to be able to tell the story of the meaning of america that has politics as only a small part of it. if you can't do that, then running for office is probably the wrong clois forhoice for you because it will be crack. >> i agree a lot with what you're saying. i find so many individuals on the left, they make politics their career an their livelihood. that's why they continually vote

not for the interests of the next generation but for their own and their obsession is growing government and that is their business just as any business owner wants to grow their enterprise. even many people on the republican side are the same they want to grow the enterprise. the thing i'll say to you young people in this audience, especially in your campus, don't be afraid to be bold and courageous and do things that would stand up against the professors or the establish ms that ments that be. there are forces across campuses on the college to try. if anyone finds what our organization is doing of interest, there are sign-up cards on every single chair and red shirdz arets are ready to collect them at the door. be active. it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be on a type of college campus environment where you can have that kind of energy and enthusiasm and have real

lults results while you are still in the formation stages of some of these ideas and take advantage of that if you can. >> there is this old saying in law that what was meant to be used as a shoeld shall not be used as a sword. i'm actually 52 days in congress also and i see that all of these programs that are meant to help the poor and the most vulnerable among us are the programs that hurt those that they vow to protect. so this is government that was set up by our forefathers which meant to be a shield. now it is being used as a sword against us against hard working american people. so what i would say -- the advice i would give to the youth, the advice i could give to every american is to recognize that. recognize even though something has a really pretty title, you have to ask yourself does it give you more power or does it give washington more power? and we have to be very cautious about those things because that is a tool that is being used to take freedoms away from us.

we have to trust ourselves. we have to trust ourselves to take opportunities and rise on our own because independent people are the ones that give back. independent people are the ones that make families work communities work their states work. washington can't do that. and so if i'm doing my job you guys need to make sure that you're looking at me and my state certainly is looking at me, but my job is to make sure that washington gets smaller so that people are bigger. >> there are obviously obstacles facing our youth today in terms of trying to succeed finding the right career path. what do you think some of those obstacles are that didn't exist for you and how do you think that we can go back to providing a path to the american dream for everybody? >> great question. i think because we believe that most everything that's important happens outside of government it's important for us to be able to talk about the problems and the crises we face without

assuming that there's necessarily any governmental fix. i do think this is an addiction of the right as much as the left a lot of the time. there is some data that suggests that 18 to 24-year-old males play, on average, 5 1/2 hours a day of video games. i'm not disparaging one month poorly spent your sophomore year in college with that addiction, but at the end of the day if you believe that one-third of your waking hours are spent in a consultive activity i worry about whether our forefathers had perspective of what life lived well looks like. government doesn't give us rights. nature and nature's god gives us rights. we're froo he to live out a life of gratitude to god by serving our flab and workneighbor and working in our communities to do productive things. if we don't have a sense of the meaning work, if we don't pass that on to the next generation,

then the american experiment isn't going to make a lot of sense to you. i'm only 43 years old, but when i went off to college 25 years ago, pretty much everybody i knew had worked growing up. i got bussed out to walk beans and to tassel corn in the fields of nebraska. those of you who aren't from ag states, i don't know how you gets your kids character but you must have some ideas. if what's happening now is the next generation is never around work and productive activity and they don't know that work is a way to live out a life of gratitude and to serve and produce, then we've got a crisis and politics can't fix that. we need a cultural recovery of the sense and dignity of the individual and what she and he can build. >> charlie, i know you're engaging with young people all across the country. i went to a very liberal school myself. i oftentimes found myself in classrooms, conversations being dominated by the left and i'm the only one on the right

speaking. how do you engage in these conversations? what's your 30-second elevator speech that gets them interested and gets them caring? because right now i feel a lot of young people aren't as informed about politics but more it is a cultural thing to them. >> it is interesting. the liberal professors are very tolerant of other beliefs as long as you hold their own. and this is widespread. a lot of young people, unfortunately, are becoming increasingly apathetic. as i mentioned in my remarks. our generation wholeheartedly endorsed and was excited and was enthusiastic about barack obama in 2008 and 2012. you've seen a cleedecline in voting trends and activism and campaigns in local politics. some of the messaging we use, how do you describe the ails of this administration over the last six years or big government for that matter the last 40 years? how do you describe that in a sound bite? we always lose the sound bite war. somebody one time said to me big government really suction. i'm like, you're right.

so we came up with "big government sucks." and it does. it works really well on college campuses to say this is what we stand for, we stand for individual liberty, freedom in the marketplace. i think we're seeing trends that young people are being able to experience the fruits of the free market on a firsthand basis, whether uber, netflix twitter and facebook. you can see the difference between oligarchic crony capitalism and -- literally on your smartphone when you use uber, you can see how inefficient taxis used to be and how uber and everybody in this room who uses it understands it completely. i think we're seeing those trends grow. we have to be unafraid to articulate them and empower our youth to advance it on these college campuses. >> terrific. thank you. representative love, i asked the senator this as well. but i'm very curious. hurdles that existed for you, as compared to me and how do you think that we can overcome them

as a generation or my generation overcome new hurdled that are facing us. >> you know there's this -- i don't know if everybody realizes this, but there's this fourth branch of government that's created that's there now which is called the federal bureaucracyies bureaucracies. they don't hold any elections. they are not accountable to you or i. they're not voted in by any of us. what's difficult now they can just decide they make up a rule and congress if they want to change it have to get it out of committee, then they have to go into the house pass it in the house, then they've go the to go to the senate and see -- the senate's slow, guys. they're slow. they have to go through the senate, get 60 votes in order to get it to a vote. then they have to vote on that. then it gross to the president's desk. the reason why the three branches of government work slowly is because the

forefathers didn't want it to be easy for people to make policies against the american people. and what's happening is that now we've got this slow process up against this bureaucracy that can do whatever they want to do. let me just tell you right now, their job is to keep their job. that is their job. and we have got to do everything we can to cut the bloodline which is the funding to those bureaucracies. and so those -- what i would say is that you know we have to make sure that we rally with each other in that cause. we have to make sure that we are immovable in that cause and we have to also make sure that i don't believe that you can change public policy without garnering public opinion. in other words, do not -- when i talk about giving the moral high ground to the left we shall not give the moral high ground to the left. we are the ones that care about the poor. we are the ones that care about everyone being able to come from

the lowest common denominator up. not the left. the left actually does the opposite. they bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator and i refuse to yield the moral high ground and we cannot do that. >> so we've covered a lot of topics. we have only five minutes here so it is going to be a quick little thing here but i was interested in the fact that culture kept coming up and how politics isn't the answer. just down the line, closing remarks and if you could comment on how we better involve ourselves in culture and how we become a bigger influence there. i would be very interested. senator? >> yeah. so it is partly how-to. but ima he a business turnaround guy by background but i'm a historian by training and we have to know american history if we're going to pass on a free country to the next generation. president reagan believed we were always only one generation away from the exstinkstinction of freedom and it requires us to teach it to the next generation.

it just reminds me of the sort of 18, '20s '30s and '40s when americans were trying to figure out how we became so dynamic. while we won american revolution, brits were distracted in france and they were going to back back in the war of 1812 and beat us then. all of a sudden this free country is spawning not just a dynamic economy but a really dynamic culture. in 1820s and '30s you have the canal revolution and what would be the rise of the railroad revolution. europeans couldn't make sense of it and they wanted to understand it. so they hired a guy to come to the u.s. to report back on how the central planners had done this. right? he came from europe and he was going to explain american vitality and dynamism so he came to washington, d.c. to figure out how, as mia rightly said, the bureaucrats and the fourth branch must have centrally planned all this stuff. and he got to washington and he realized this is a swamp and nothing here is really the

source of this dynamism. so he left washington and he went out to 18 of the then 25 states and he tried to make sense of why america was blossoming and flowering. and he wrote back a series of book reports or travel logs to the french and more broadly to europeans explaining american dynamism. and it was a book report on the rotary club. fundamentallyrican dynamism isn't about the coercive powers of government. it's about all that happens in public life and culture and mediating institutions because neighbors have better ideas than bureaucrats and they go and persuade a neighbor to join them in that not-for-profit cause or to buy their better mouse trap. and if we can't tell that story of an america that's much bigger than federal bureaucracies, we're going to lose. so we have to become great story tellers, optimistic cheery, happy warriors who believe in the dignity of people and the dignity of work and lots of those cultural things that

happen dynamically in american life well upstream from politics. >> terrific. charlie? >> i think to your point about culture, everyone -- whoever watched the oscars saw how far left they hijacked that whole stage and they advanced lies on the national stage. my only advice to this -- i'll keep it brief -- is if you engage with individuals on social media and other circuits that continually advance these falsehoods, do not be afraid to call out engage in this discussion and discourse about -- i find so many conservatives across the country, young and old that are afraid -- i don't know if i want to get in that conversation. well there's unbelievable intellectual ammunition out there. we have the best think tanks in the world. let's be more like a battle tank in the movement and use that ammunition in those kind of discourses and conversations because you can't allow the culture to continually be hijacked by the bad guys because they're going to continue to spread falsehoods and it seeps then into the minds of our youth. >> representative? >> i'll end with this because this story actually just sums it

all up. i was given the opportunity to go to the university of chicago to speak to some black aspiring attorneys. and i was told i shouldn't go because these people love barack obama and they're going to hate me and eat me alive. i just thought, well if i can't go and speak to them, then there's no point in me doing this. so i went and i told them my story, i told them where i was from. i told them about my parents' story. one lady stood up and said i don't understand how you can be a black female from utah, lds, republican, living in today's america. it makes no sense. and i said, it's because i refuse to fit this mold that society says i need to fit into. imagine if people like martin luther king decided to take that government, said that he was a second-class citizen, we wouldn't be here today. so, you don't have to listen to my policies. you don't have to even follow

them. but preserve your right to make your own decisions for your own family and in your own communities. because unlike washington i believe you're capable of doing that. i can tell you -- i can tell you that i am so proud that i come from the state of utah because i was elected not because of or in spite of my color. i was elected not because of or in spite of my gender. i was elected because of the policies and the principles that bleed in. american exceptionalism. i believe in this country. just to finish off. i want you to know, we are not done. we are just getting started and i believe that we can build an even greater nation than we've ever seen. we just need to make sure that we believe in ourselves. >> well, i want to thank all of you for participating and giving

this great insight. i think we had a great discussion here, especially about the american dream and how we can make it accessible to all. i think it is one of the big hurdles we have facing us. the most important take-away for me is we have to talk to our youth, get out into communities and reach out into culture. it is not just about politics because so much of america isn't based in d.c. but it is actually with the rotary clubs or college campuses. so i want to thank you all for being here. ♪

>> good morning. so glad to be here with a full room. thank you all so much for coming to this exceptionally important panel that we're going to talk about what's next for common core. the political future. and i just wanted to say a quick thank you to dan schneider and matt schlap and carly fiorina. we're always so happy to be here and it is great to be down closer with everybody. it is a great setup and we're so excited to have a wonderful conference with you. what a testament to cpac that they're starting off the first day with such an important topic about education and the common core because i think that when we consider some of our most critical problems facing the country, whether it's joblessness or poverty crime so much of it -- the root of the problem really starts with our failing education system. i think we all realize that there are far too many children

who really don't have an opportunity to start life on the right foot. but, while we all have the same goals in mind, i think that we also realize that there are a lot of differences in how we believe we should achieve and change the situation that we have. so of course one side of the conservative aisle laments the absence of a marketplace in education. they believe that we need more decentralization, more competition in order to have a vibrant education system in america. and on the other side we have something very different where we believe that we need to have more consistent standards through the common core in order to keep schools accountable and to prepare students for college, for life, for their careers. so the debate over common core has become one about standards, are they too rigid too weak, too political. it's become about costs does it cost states more to complement common core than they'll receive in their subsidies. it is about freedom, the role of

parents versus that of government. and it is about politic and what it means for the upcoming elections. so here to discuss this really critical issue not only dividing the country but at risk of dividing conservatives and the republican party, are two fantastic education analysts who know this thisissue not only as policy experts but also as parents. kneel mccluskey, from the tay toe institute for educational freedom. he taught high school english and was a freelance reporter covering municipal government and education in new jersey. he holds and undergraduate degree from georgetown university, a masters from rutgers and recently received his ph.d from george mason. he's also the automatic author of "feds in the classroom, how big government clupts, cripples and compromises american education." he has two school age children. to my left emmy leads the american principles project in

its decision to defendant parental rights. co-author of "controlling education from the top, why common core is bad for america." he is co-founder of truth truthinamericaneducation.com, a nationwide network of individuals and organizations that shed light on the common core system. also a graduate of georgetown university and fordham school of law. emmitt also has two school age children. neal, i'd love to start with you. i think a lot of people here today know the basics about common core but others may not. i thought it might be good to start with what is common core and what are some of the misperceptions that we might have about it. >> yeah. so there are a lot of misconceptions about common core. most basically what it is is you can say, i think with most people agreeing, at a minimum, it is a set of standards in math and reading developed by the government and that is where any

agreement ends. the reality is it goes beyond just being some guidelines as it is often presented but it is specifically about structuring the curriculum in math and english and with a connection to science and social studies, and it's connected to federally funded tests, the park test and sbac test, on which schools and districts are held accountable. so your district or your school can be punished by how you do on those tests. of course, what is tested is what's taught. that is why this is about curriculum. the other misconception people say, well, states voluntarily adopted the common core. you can only say voluntary if you were also willing to say if somebody mugged you and then, if you'd like your money back, all you have to do is give me your car and you then have voluntary given your car, then you can say

it is voluntary. the reality is the federal government first said in 2009 if you wanted part of $4.35 billion, the race to the top, you had to, among other things, then they said if you want a waiver out of the no child left behind act -- and almost every state wanted a waiver -- you only had two standards options. either the common core which almost every state had already promised to adopt to try to get race to the top money. or you could have your state -- or a state college or university system certify your standards as college and career ready. the reality is what common core actually is, is it's very much curriculum standards -- not just standards but about your specific curriculum, and it is federally driven. >> neal says common core is all about curriculum. i know that this is what's really important to you the content that we're finding is becoming so controversial, whether we are talking about

climate change or sex ed or american history, evolution. all of these topics are becoming sort of at the center of the debate. what can you add about the content of common core that's so concerning? >> well, here's what's happening. this is why this movement -- it is a movement. it is a national movement has taken off so quickly and i think, frankly caught many politicians on both sides of the aisle by surprise. what's happening is that parents are looking at what's coming home in their children's backpacks and they're appalled. they're doing research and they're finding out that the common core locks children in to an inferior low-quality education. to put it briefly, in math common core ends in grade 11 with half an algebra 2 course. even the chief architect of the common core math standards said

common core is not for s.t.e.m. common core is not for admission to a competitive four-year private or public university if you want to study the humanities. so in brief what happens is starting in the early grades common core before it teaches the standard way to solve a problem, in math, it teaches -- mandates the teaching of fuzzy math or strategies for approaching problems. what are these strategies? they're things like counting on your fingers. drawing pictures. working with head nods to solve problems. and then common core teaches the standard way of solving problem called a standard algorithm. so what happens is the needed progression gets slowed down. so that by eighth grade, as one of the foremost mathematicians in the world ifand a standards

expert from stanford said by eighth grade student on common core is one or two years behind their peers in high-performing countries. or their peers in states that have good standards. so that's the problem. then common core gets even worse in high school. it throws out euclidian geometry in favor of a method of teaching geometry that has failed everywhere in the world it's been implemented k-12. that's now our national system of teaching geometry. then it goes on to algebra 2. but it only teaches half the course, throwing out half of trigonometry. you're left with a child who does not even have a pathway to

calculus or precalculus by 12th grade. >> i would think even if we could come to this perfect curriculum that everyone in this room could agree on, what's left for parents? what if you have a child that's really strong in the sciences, another child that's really strong in the arts. do youu6=j have any say in their curriculum under this core? >> this is the second part of what is driving this movement. parents were upset with this process that neal described. they started peeling back the layers of the onion and they realized that neither they nor their elected legislators had any say in what was being billed as a transformation of education for every child in america. and they're upset about that and they're going to war -- i use that in the figurative sense -- they're going to war against -- against anything that interferes with their right to have a say in what their chirp learn.

and that includes -- that includes republicans in congress, that includes democrats in congress, it includes the current attempt to reauthorize no child left behind. this is a very very strong movement. it is a very passionate movement, and it's one that is growing by the day. >> it sounds like they have a lot of work to do, because you're saying that parents don't have a say. but if i'm correct, neal 45 states and the district of columbia have adopted common core. is that correct? we only have alaska, nebraska texas, my state of virginia that initially refused, right? then we had minnesota who only adopted the ela or english language arts standards. now indiana and oklahoma have dropped out. south carolina looks poised to drop out next year. is that correct? so maybe you can give us a little lay of the land. what's coming down the pike, where are the states going, are they pushing back now. >> yeah, so if you include south carolina you'd have about 42 states that are with us. but understand this year south

carolina's actually part of it. where you've seen actually across the country -- and you've seen it in the blue states like new york, you've seen it in red states like arizona. there's been, as emmitt described, a huge really grassroots parent-driven revolt against the common core. understanding that common core was adopted in a process for race to the top where governor and a chief state school officer just signed a promise that said we want this money and we promise we'll adopt common core. and then if anybody in the state objected, they would lose that money or the possibility to get that money. and all this happened during the great recession when everybody was focused on the recession, not a small part of the stimulus relatively small compared to the whole stimulus, that handed over control of the curriculum of their schools to the federal government. they weren't paying attention to that. it wasn't until this hit districts around 2011 2012 that

suddenly the public became aware that this often very strange curriculum was being imposed on their schools and that's when people started to+zuñ say very loudly, what is it? where did it come from? i don't like.like, how do we get rid of it. the problem in most states that have outright tried to repeal it is, for several years now the whole education system has been moved to align with common core. most states are giving common core aligned tests and they have to give these tests as part of the no child left behind act. and so what we've seen it many states try and outright eliminate the common core but that's been very hard because of the investment they made when people didn't know it was happening. what we have seen -- and this may be where you get the most movement, although it is very important for states to say we don't want this -- lots of states have dropped out of the two federally funded testing

consortium -- park and sbac. and if you can get out of the tests and your state can run its own test, for all intents and purposes, you can begin to reclaim control of your state's education system. you can start to do what the constitution requires, was that the federal government not control in he of this and that the state, local governments, and yidideally parents through school choice control education. >> it seems like we have the potential to see like we did with obama the difference in the strategy or o approach we take to rolling this back. on the one hand it is grassroots, on the other hand, politico wrote an article this week talking about how republican lawmakers are trying to sabotage the law, the idea they're trying to defund it throughá*÷ textbooks and tests. do you have a sense which will be the better strategy? >> i'm even at a loss to call it

a strategy because truly what is driving this is the mom sitting down reading through these laws and making -- connecting the dots and getting on the phone and talking with other moms.÷v5 many of these have not been involved in paying attention to politics before. i'm also at a loss, the democratic party of the state of washington recently passed a resolution condemning common core. the teachers unions are starting to speak out against it. so i really don't think that this is just a republican versus democrat movement. but i am certain about one thing. what has changed is now people are starting to look at that division of powers between the national government and the state governments and they're starting to realize that it is meant toú, protect their personal rights and their ability to

direct government and they're starting to have a personal attachment to making sure that we remain faithful to that division of powers. i think that that is -- that's going to really dramatically change the political landscape in the coming years. >> i think emmitt made a crucial point, which is that opposition to common core is not something that is controlled or orchestrated or engineered or even guysstrategized from the top-down. our groups aren't coordinating grassroots opposition. this is something that we've really seen grow in every state really from the bottom-up. generally speaking common core support -- there are a lot of people like common core who i think are well intentioned think we need certain standards for everybody. i think that that's wrong but i think they're well intentioned. but a lot of the support for common core is i think more

centrally strategized. u.s. chamber of commerce and groups like that had very concerted campaigns to try to support common core. i think it is really important to know this is just people who are unhappy about what's happening in their schools and are rising up to oppose it. >> the strategy of the proponents has always rested on certain talking points. i think it is important to realize those talking points were crafted -- that strategy was crafted before the common core was drafted. and those talking points are, well this is state-led. as neal described, it is not. that the standards will be rigorous internationally benchmarked. and evidence based. the fact of the matter is none of those things are true. but they're hanging on to those talking points because really if people realize -- which is what's happening -- that those talking points are false, the common core collapses. that's what we're seeing. >> unwith of the otherone of the other

talking points is that all the opposition to common core is politically driven. i read one article this week where one of the more prominent supporters about common core say this is all about the conservatives' dislike for the president. i think we all agree that's far from the truth. but it does bring us back to the issue of the political ramifications of this and what does this mean. we're all thinking about the 2016 election. what does this mean for the presidential election. we're seeing all of the different presidential candidates starting to throw their hats into the ring. maybe we should take a minute and sort of think about what this will look like in another nine, ten months from now. what can we expect from the different presidential candidates on the republican side. >> i think the first thing that's important about this is it's tutly lyabsolutedy -- the jumping off point is the common core itself. but this has really become a bigger debate about what is the

role of government generally, what is the role of the federal government, then what is the role of government in education. and i think that what you're seeing is, yes, there's opposition to the common core. there's a lot in the common core as curriculum -- or as content people don't like. i think there is a fair amount of misinformation about what is or is not in there. for instance, sex education is not in the common core. but what is clearly become the central part of now burgeoning presidential election is what possible justification is there for the federal government to be pushing one curriculum and -- because that's really what these standards are about, it is about shaping the curriculum pushing that on every school, and therefore every student -- at least public school and public student. although private schools are also affected -- in america. and so you start to see people like rand paul talk about this. you're seeing jeb bush talk about, well, we at least need to have high standards. maybe not the common core now

but at least high standards for everybody. and the question is always going to be, but who is it that should choose these standards. i think that's how this debate is shaping up. then the question is well how crucial will it be to somebody whether they're for or against the common core. that i don't know, but it is certainly a good indicator -- or one indicator of where candidates stand on the role of the federal government in education. >> i think the question in the republican nomination process is not going to be are you for or against the common core. question is are you going to be -- are you fighting the common core and are you fighting for change in the federal government that will prevent this travesty like this from ever happening again. and that's what candidates are going to have to answer. what are they going to do. i think the voters want

acknowledgement that the common core is a poor quality and was forced upon them because if candidates don't acknowledge that, then they're not facing the truth. and the indication and the fear then will be well, they're really not going to fight this. but people realize that when the federal government is dictating education, they have no control over that. and why is that? it is because the federal government acts through the state governments. the state executive branch, to be specific. so there's this conversation going on between the federal government, which has the conditional money. so the states look to the federal executive and they start doing what the federal executive wants. they adopt their policies. it really doesn't matter who is in office. they tend to adopt those policies. to the exclusion of their legislators and to the exclusion of their people. and that's what people are

realizing, that as long as that conversation is going on for that conditional money that extra money -- that's how that 10% of an education budget really controls policy -- as long as that conversation is going on, people now realize they're being cut out. they and their desires and their needs and their children are being cut out of the decision making. so i think this represents a very profound change in america. people are realizing that that division of powers is very personal thing. temperatures a very, very personal concept meant to protect their rights and their liberties. >> well, neal, you covered new jersey politics. you're from new jersey. i'm thinking about this politically. i mean is this going to become one of these -- i was for it before i was against it kind of moments for the republican party. and just this last week i guess it was chris christie sort of did an about-face on this issue. is it going to be enough to turn away from it or are we going to have to see our candidates

actually start to attack it at its core for what it is? >> my suspicion -- and from what we've been able to observe -- is that states, whether they're red or blue, are all facing opposition to the common core. and even people who once were sort of enthusiastic, i think, about supporting it -- or at least they weren't afraid to say they liked it are now turning against it. i think this is in part though because they've started to really grasp what this means. because in particular which right now we have for the first time states are giving these park tests, the sbac test the federally funded test that go with the common core. and across the political spectrum or the ideological spectrum youicfs see lots of parents who are just angry about this. they see how much time it is taking up with testing. the infatuation with testing. they may or may not even like what's in the common core but they really don't like the testing. how it is then going to be

connected to evaluating teachers with be potentially evaluating students. and so because it's become real to everybody now it's not just a negligence, but their kids are actually sitting through these things. you have opposition in new jersey. you have it in blue new york. you have it in red arizona. you have it really across the country and i think everybody regardless of party who's running for an office, anybody running for president's going to have to talk about is it appropriate -- that is constitutional -- for the federal government to try and impose uniformity and test obsession on everyone. i don't think many -- i don't get the sense many politicians are going to at least full-throatedly say, yes, we should do things the way we've been doing them. >> it's not surprising that we as conservatives, by extension republicans, are having this conversation. but i do think it is interesting that we're going to see it come up i think in democratic circles. right? emmitt, i think when we look at how democrats will handle this, i was going to read a brief

excerpt from a "new york times" article last spring where it said, "it is no the just conservatives who have turned against the common core. leaders of major teachers unions are also pushing back because of the new more difficult tests aligned to the standards that are being used to evaluate both students and teachers." it is giving teachers a whole lot less freedom and flexibility for the good ones it makes it difficult for the bad ones, they're always testing. where are the democrats going to fall on this? >> they'll be opposed to it. this is not a stagnant movement. i think almost all of the presidential candidates on the republican side will be against the common core. that could fracture the vote and you could end up with a pro-common core nominee. so what will happen in the general. i think that pro-common core nominee will go against likely hillary clinton who does not

really have common core baggage. and that is going to make the republican candidate i think unelectable at this time. because you're going to have the conservative votes will be disappointed. their turnout will be suppressed and low. i think you'll have the moderate votes or the apolitical votes will vote for the other candidate or the one who doesn't have the common core baggage. and mrs. clinton is very smart very shrewd. she will be able to criticize this and it will almost sound like a republican criticizing the republican nominee. she'll criticize it for the decision making. she'll criticize it for the heavy handedness of the federal government. she'll criticize it because all these leaders got -- signed on to the standards and committed

to the standards before they were drafted. on and on and on. it will be very, very embarrass embarrassing for the republican nominee. >> hillary's also come out in favor of stricter standards from time to time. is that right? you think when push comes to shove, we'll take the anti-government role. >> but the common core -- the promise was that these would be good standards. and they're not. they're poor standards, and they're not evidence based. the ela standards english standards shifts from the study of classic literature to informational text. informational texts are simpler texts. they're text meant to clearly convey a message to a broad audience. so you don't get those analytical abilities. you don't learn -- you don't get the acquisition of vocabulary or learn how to express yourselves in verbal and written form, as much as those who study classic

literature. >> do they use primary text in the common core? >> common core doesn't exclude primary text. but i think the difference is the quality of the text. text. studies show that people who read classic narrative literature are better readers period than those who read informational texts. they are even better readers of informational texts. so this common core idea of reading more informational text and less classic literature has no evidentiary basis. >> your thoughts on that? >> yeah. i think one of the things important to take from this is whatever the quality of the common core, the fact of the matter is first, most basically all kids arepkr different. and this is something we lose sight of in this debate. all kids learn different things at different rates at different desires, abilities, goals in life. and to think that it makes sense to have one set of standards

that do have a heavy impact on curriculum for everyone is just nonsensical nonsensical. this is why our fight needs to be away from centralizing more, fralzing. and i think what's crucial and what research suggests the key to educational success is move to school choice. em power kids and families to choose schools. give educators free -- [ applause ] i'm glad to hear school choice gets applause. everything else we said probably deserves boos. truly. and give educators freedom to try different things. why? because nobody is omniscient. nobody knows -- if the were possible to have one best curriculum for all kids, nobody knows what it is. therefore you have got to allow other ideas to compete with each other and see what works best for different subsets of kids. and something crucial we never

had national debate on is there research basis to say that having national standards leads to better outcomes? when there was a little bit of talk of this when people who supported national standards thought maybe there would have to be a national debate. they would say well every country that does better has national standards so therefore we need them. the reality is most that have done better have national standards but some don't. also countries that do worse on international tests have national standards but some don't. there's no correlation, in other words, between national standards and outcomes. and i should know. the neighbors to the north, canada they don't even have any sort of the national department of education. further looking at the research shows there is no research evidence to say having national standards leads to better outcomes. so the much of the promise about

common core is if we just nationalize they will get better. and we never even got to talk about is there evidence to support it. >> in the larger culture that we live. in today in all areas of our life we're moving away from standardization. tonight i can watch whatever i want on tv at whatever time. i can customize my groceries and have them delivered to my door. i can go online and work with a personal stylist to make my unique style at affordable prices. everything is moving away from standardization. yet when government gets into the business of running whether it's healthcare and education. we find it is the absolute opposite. so all of this talk about well, republicans push back or democrats push back. does t not matter? will this bill just fall of its own weight because it doesn't fit with our culture today? >> i don't know that it will fall of its own weight it. may. but there is ajc? sort of simplistic power to the argument

that says ssays, well we want to do is hold everybody to the same high standard. the assumption is that all kids are the same. but peopleyr1w hear this in politics and of course nobody wants to be the person who says well i won't hold them to high standards. and all kids are different and we p county alldon't all agree on what high standards is. and people will tend to choose -- and we see this over in over not just in education. they will tend to choose the same things. to speak the same language as other people to. know a certain amount of math, to know the same american culture and history. that's how we interact and how we succeed. so you would actually have lots of national continuity and similarities it's just we wouldn't try to force a single model on everyone knowing that one model doesn't work best for everyone. >> you would have competition for -- as opposed to monopoly, that is common core. and you brought up school

choice. and i think it's worth bringing up two points when we talk about school choice. i think for about 20 or 30 years, the republican mantra on education has pretty much been school choice, school choice, school choice. and when people ran for political office on the republican side, they dropped a few lines on school choice and then moved onto the next issue. the real principle is -- are parents empowered? do parents have a say in what's going on? and if you look at what happened to the school choice in indiana there is a voucher law. but the voucher law was tied to the state test. the state test is a common core test. as a result now all the catholic schools in indiana are teaching common core. and what's happened since then is the states just keep attaching strings to the

voucher. and on the charter school side, we have to be careful. many charter schools are corporate owned. there is even chains of charter schools. they can be even owned by corporations that aren't based here in the united states. so through that mechanism parents could actually be disempowered. through both of those mechanisms parents could be disempowered. >> and the tax method approach? would that protect parents from government intervention because it's their dollars. >> there are in charter schools. what they don't often realize is the charter schools are public schools. they have to go do a public entity, usually the school district with which they want to compete, ironically and get a charter to operate. that means they have to follow state standards, give state tests, things like that. and then more people know generally you can get a voucher, is what people think of in order

to go to private school. but emmett is right. what we've seen is that vouchers will certainly better than the status quo tend to get a lot of regulations ss placed on them because the people say look the state is taking my money and giving it to someone else and i want that school to teach what i want to teach and use the money how i want it used. and we've seen tax programs are the much less regulated. and although you get a tax credit when you send your child to public school. and that's certainly something you should get. and when an individual donates to a organization that gives out scholarships, you get school choice but they are not regulated. because one you choose whether to go to that school. and two in many states you can choose among lots of groups that give out scholarships. more freedom tends to mean less regulation. and there is one other burgeoning option i should point

out. the education savings accounts. they have them in arizona and just starting in florida. and there is a problem in that yaw get the money directly from the state. there is a regulation issue through be you essentially your child gets money into an account they can use for any educational expense. a computer going to public school. a private tuition. it could be you save it and use it for college. again the important thing is there is more freedom involved and tends to lead to less regulation. >> to wrap up i would love maybe your final policy and political predictions of whereas going to happen? what should people be looking for and where maybe people can take a little action themselves so they leave cpac feeling there is something they can do. whether getting out there with the organization or speaking with lawmakers -- >> we'll leave the recorded conch of cpac to take you live now to the conservative political action conference

where we'll hear from republican governor scott walker and bobby jindal. also sarah palin will be speaking. governor walker now appearing. >> to me they were like super heros. bigger than life. being the son of a small town preacher and a mom who was a part time secretary our family didn't have the money to go so some of the historic sites like we have in here in the nation's capitol. so years ago, a year or so after i was governor we had the chance top')=áá )rp we jumped at it. and we got up early in the morning and we went past the liberty bell and then to independence hall. and i got to tell you as someone who loved our founders i was ready to be blown away. and if any of you ever been there you know the room itself is not much bigger than this stage. as we looked at the chairs and the desk. they're not much different than the ones you are in right now.

except they are a little older there than these. but it made me think for a moment these were ordinary person who did something squiet extraordinary. they didn't just risk their political careers. they didn't just risk ventures. they literally risked their lives for the freedoms we all have today. moments like that remind me that what makes america great, what makes us exceptional, what makes us arguably the greatest country in the history of the world is that in moments of the crisis, economic or fiscal military or spiritual, there have been men and women throughout our history that stood up and make decisions that think about more about the future of thinker children and grandchildren than think did about their own political futures. ladies and gentlemen here tonight this is one of those moments in american history.

[ applause ] let this be the time when we can tell future generations what we did to make america great again. right? that is why we created our american revival.com to get out and tell the story about what we need to to to transform america, to reignite the american spirit to move this great country forward. but, you know, the biggest challenge to that is just up the way. just down the river up the potomac to washington. or as i like to call it 68 square miles surrounded by reality. right? today in washington we have a president who thinks we grow the economy by growing washington. think about that. in the last year we saw a report that showed that six out of the top ten counties six of the top ten wealthiest counties

according to median income are right here in the d.c. area. they think growing the economy is growing washington. i got news for them. believe in america that growing economy in cities and towns and villages all across this great country. we think that is the way to go forward. we understand that people create jobs, not the government. and we're going to help the people of this great country create more jobs, more careers, create more opportunity. now up the way there in washington we have a president who measures success in government by how many people are dependent on the government. we should measure success by just the opposite by how many people are no longer dependent on the government. we understand true freedom prosperity does not come from

the mighty hand of the government it. comes from empowering people to live their own lives and control their own destinyies. that is the american way. here in america there is a reason we celebrate the 4th of july and not april 15th. because in america we celebrate our independence from the government, not our dependence on it. [ applause ] that's right. our independence from the government. not our dependence on it. that is the american way. and up the way in washington we have a president, a president who draws lines in the sand and fails to act. a president who calls isis the jv club. who calls yemen a success. who calls iran a country we can do business with. and to add insult to injury whose former secretary of state actually gave a reset button to

the russians. a reset button. we need a leader in america who stands up and realizes that radical islamic terrorism is a threat to our way of life and to all freedom-loving people around the world. [ applause ] we need -- we need a president, a leader, who will stand up and say we will take the fight to them and not wait till they bring the fight to american soil for our children and our grandchildren. we need a leader who will stand with israel. [ applause ] and we need a leader who understands that when the prime minister and leader of our long time ally asks to come to congress to share his concerns about iran we should show him

and his country our respect. [ applause ] we need to show the world that in america you have no better ally and no greater enemy. in america we will stand up for what is right and stand against what is wrong. that is what we need in america. you know i think back to 2009 when we were first thinking about running for governor. we sat down and thought about it. and we talked about it. we ultimately prayed about it. and we knew it would be tough. but we got in that race for governor back then because we were worried that our sons who are now 19 and 20 would grow up in a state that wasn't as great as the one we grew up. and as parents that was unacceptable. so today, many years later i'm proud to tell you that because of our reforms, our state is

indeed better than the state i grew up in. [ applause ] we took on the powerful special interests in washington. and we returned the power back into the hands of the hard-working taxpayers. they didn't like that. they tried to recall me. they made me their number one target. but in the end we showed that we can fight and win for the hard-working taxpayer. [ applause ] because of that in our state we don't have seniority or tenure anymore. we can hire and fire based on merit. we can pay based on performance. we can put the best and the brightest in our classrooms and we can keep them there. [ applause ] and you know what? it's working. it's working. our school scores are better. act scores are second best in

the country. graduation rates up over the past four years. reading scores are up over the past four years. because we put the power in the hands of the hard working taxpayers and the people they elect to run school boards. on top after that we were age to take a state where the unemployment in 2010 was 9% at its peak. it's now down to 5.2%. [ applause ] we are a state that has been taxed and taxed and taxed. and today i'm proud to say after four years of governor we reduced the burden on hard working taxpayers by nearly $2 billion. and get this. a typical homeowner in our state is paying less in property taxes now than they were paying four years ago, when my budget is done over the next two years in 2016, they will pay less than they paid in 2010. how many other governors in america can say that.

[ applause ] we've led the way with lawsuit and regulatory reform. we defunded planned parenthood and signed pro life legislation. we enacted concealed carry and passed castle doctrine. and we passed a law in our state that says if you want to vote you need to vote legally. it should be easy to vote but hard to cheat. in our state we passed law that says you need a photo id to vote in the state of wisconsin. [ applause ] and just breaking, as of next week wisconsin will become the 25th state in america that allows workers the freedom to choose whether they want to work for a company and be in a union

or not. [ applause ] so how did we do that in a state that hasn't gone -- [ apparently the protesters come from wisconsin as well. but as long as i'm a leader i'll continue to stand up for hard working taxpayers going forward. [ applause ] [ applause ] we want in wisconsin a state that hasn't gone republican for president since 1984. that is more than 30 years ago.

in fact that was back when i was in high school. and i actually had a full head of hair. but you know how where he did it? we did it without compromising. we stood up and said a what we were going to do. and we did. and we showed that fighting and winning for the hard working taxpayers could make a difference. and not only did our base stand up for us, we wop won our last election with more than 12% of the independents. they want somebody whose going to fight and win every day for the hard working tax pavers. that's what we need in the country going forward. so the last thing i'd say as we close here. and we'll take some questions. is that we need your help. you know, i mention going to philadelphia at the beginning of my comments. and one of the things i loved one of the things i loved about going to independence hall was standing there early in the morning and looking at all those desk and chairs and seeing the

chair up in the front where george washington sat for nearly three months. and you know the story of that t legend goes james madison said that ben franklin looked at that chair day after day and wondered -- because on the back of the chair is a half rising sun. and he wondered if the message was that the sun was ridesing or ing rising or setting. and madison says he believed at the end of their time he believed that the sun was indeed rising just as their country was. and today i believe we need to go back and look at the founding principles of this great country. not to go back in time. don't confuse that. not to go back in time but rather use it as a guide as we go down the path to bailed brighter erer future or our children and their children. we need your help moving forward. we need your help making america great again. if we can do it in wisconsin we can do it across america.

thanks for letting me come out and share with you. [ applause ] governor walker. ned ryan. merge majority. would like to know should you become commander in chief how do you deal with threats such as isis? >> well the answer is three things. sometimes in the media they don't understand i get a threat assessment from the fbi and the general. i i've been concerned about that threat not just abroad but here in mesh soil.american soil. you have seen reported stories of what we see in the twin cities and some issues there. i think it is clear. i think of my two sons. one of whom is with me today.

the other will bebe here over the weekend. and i want a commander in chief who will do everything ina power to ensure that the threat from radical islamic terrorists do not wash up in american soil. we is will have someone who leads and ultimately will send a message not only will we protect american soil but do not take this on freedom loving people anywhere else in the world. we need that confidence. if i can take on a hundred thousand protesters, i can do the same across the world. applaud [ applause ] >> governor walker in recent times obviously with the economy and jobs it's been hard for the american youth. how do you plan to impart hope to the american youth for the future to give them opportunity to give them jobs? >> when i think i mentioned i got a 19 and 20-year-old who are proud of the fact that in you are a last campaign as tight as was being the number one target

in the labor unions. we went on one exit poll 49 to 48 amongst 18 to 20-year-olds. and why is that? why? it wasn't just technology. we did a lot of that. partnered with google and others to get our message out there. i think talking not just to my son bus others like we just heard from what young leaders in america is not unlike the what the rest of us want. want us to take the power out of washington. the power structure is broken. what they believe is a top down government knows best. i think the rest of us particularly young leaders understand the way to grow the economy and the future of this country is to build the economy from the ground up. toe say that if you want to start your cree, if you want to start a business you should about have the wait. the left t liberals, they are the ones that want to push you down. they are the ones that want to say wait your turn. you can't do it until you go through multiple layers of permits and other things.

we should be the ones that spend a very open message to say in america if you want to live the american dream, we're going to make it as easy as possible to do. i think that resonates not only with young people but all freedom-loving people in this great country. [ applause ] >> governor walker, we've been seeing in the news recently the fcc's plan to regulate the internet. what would be your plan to deal with that attempt to regulate the internet? >> well those the sorts of things we're going to talk about going forward should i choose to be a candidate. but on that or any other principle to me the guiding principle should be freedom. to me the more free young makes things, the more you open. we want a free and open society. we want the government out of the way. we want to make it as easy and accessible as possible and that is what we're going to do in any decisions going forward 140u8d we choose. my lawyers love that when i say

that. as we're exploring a campaign should we choose to run finish the highest office in the land. >> last question. >> i did run in track. i was good at the half mile and the quarter mile. and i've been running three times in the last four years. so i'm getting used to it. >> as a ryan i support your history. do you support raising the minimum wage. >> i think in my state and across this country we need to talk about how we can lift up people with the education and the skills they need to succeed at jobs that pay three or four or five times the minimum wage. i'll let the left worry about how low they want people to be. i want to have everyone in this country be able to live their piece of the american dream get the government out of the way and help them get the skills they need to support their families going forward. >> governor walker. you are done.

thank you so much for answering those questions. >> thank you. thanks everybody. appreciate it. [ applause ] >> right the american people are smarter than griffin credit for. we work with a hundreds of

policies here. >> what makes it unique is our commitment to deliver the news in fair trust worthy manner. >> we sent a team to the u.s. mexico border. >> this is josh siegel with the daily signal. >> it meant going to the steps of the supreme court as decisions were being handed down. >> we're here where it's -- >> and we've worked with veteran investigative reporter sheryl at kin sons. >> i have far more freedom than i had in the last few years at my former job. >> the media landscape is constantly changing and we want to be on the cutting edge. >> they have been willing to let the stories tell themselves and go in whatever direction the stories go. >> not a question of whether we can drive the media narrative. it is only a question of whether we have the courage to capitalize on the opportunity right in front of us.

that is the daily signal. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome governor bobby jindal. ♪ [ applause ] thank you y'all very much, thank y'all very very much. it is great to be here with you. how great is it to be with thousands of fellow conservatives who understand we've got to get our country back on the right track. [ applause ] i want to talk to you about three things today. first, we must -- we must repeal every single word of obamacare.

[ applause ] not a little bit. but all of it. and the reason i start here. i'm not going spend a lot of time telling you why obamacare is so bad. we know it was built on broken promises. president obama told us he was going to cut our premiums 2500 dollars. we didn't do it. he said if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. not true. if you like your healthy plan you can keep it. not true. i don't have to tell you we didn't government bureaucrats between doctors and their patients but i am here to tell you you may not know. this troubles me greatly. at the same time that republicans in washington are about to wave the white flag of surrender on amnesty they are about to wave the white flag of surrender on repealing obamacare. andem i'm here to tell you we won't stand for that. [ applause ] you now have republicans in washington d.c. telling us what

we can't repeal all of the tax increases. so we'll just keep smaller tax increases. republicans in washington telling us you can't get rid of this entitlement program without creating another. you have republicans in washington telling us the way to count success is not by reduceing cost and empowering patients but rather counting how many people have insurance cards, where they have meaningful to affordable care or access to the doctors they want in their networks. i'm here to tell you i don't know about you. i don't remember during these campaign ads last november, i don't remember them saying we're just going to repeal the easy parts of obamacare. they want elections in red states. they want elections in blue states. they want elections in the purple states and one of the most important issues, one of the most important promises they made, was if we gave them the majority they would we peel and

replace every world.d. it is time for them to govern the way they campaign and get rid of obamacare. [ applause ] we don't need to obamacare lithe. we don't need a second democratic party. we don't need to be liberal. we don't need to be cheaper liberal democrats. we need to be principled conservative republicans. this election wasn't about getting a nicer office for senator mitch mcconnell. this is about taking our country back and it starts by repealing obamacare. [ applause ] noup the second thing we've got do and the common thing in all of these things is showing the incompetence of washington d.c. the second thing we need to do. i'm in federal court right now suing arne duncan to make it clear we need to remove common core from every classroom in america.

[ applause ] now why do we care so much about common core? we care about education because first it is important for us to grow our economy. studies have shown we could add trillions to our economy if we would just catch up with other industrialized competitive countries. we could also earns thousands of dollars more, our children f we had great teachers in their classrooms. so it is important to us economically. secondly we care about education because it is who we are. we are aspirational. we believe the circumstances of your birth don't determine your outcomes as an adult. you shouldn't have to be born to the wealthy persons or the right zip code to do great things in our country. [ applause ] third and most importantly, the reason we care about education, the reason we fund public education and america in the first place is because we are a

self-governing republic. we need to teach the next generation to be critical independent thinkers. we need to teach them to be able to make informed decisions for themselves and others. when they vote in elections. we also need to train the next generation of leaders. for these and many reason, first of all we object to common core. because the federal government has no right imposing curriculum, imposing content standards in local classrooms when these decisions have always been made by local parents, by teachers. by local leaders. there is a 10th amendment to the constitution specifically to prohibit the growth of the federal government into areas like k-12 education. we've have seen the government get more involved, more expansive, more intrusive. it must stop. it must stop here. we must repeal common core. [ applause ]

but make no mistakes. for the left this is that pattern. this is the same group that doesn't think you and i are smart enough to exercise our lijts liberty rights. we're not smart enough to buy our own insurance. think they think we're not smart enough to own guns. they think if you live in new york city you're not smart enough to get a big gulp. they think we're not smart enough to pick the right educational option for our children. the reality is in dollars need the follow the child instead of making the child follow the dollars. we trust bureaucrats to make the best decisions for their kids. and whether home schooling or parochial scoops or online programs or charter schools. we trust the parents. we got that done in louisiana. the teachers said this. poor parents don't have a clue when it comes to making choices for their kids. let me repeat that.

parents don't have a clue when it comes to making choices for their kids. when they are really honest that is what this common core debate is really about. they don't trust us to be smart enough to educate our own children. they think if the elites in d.c. don't force us. if they don't force us to adopt their standards their curriculum, their test, we're not smart enough to educate our children. well the founding fathers got it right. they knew the purpose of the federal government of a limited federal government was to secure but not create our god-given rights. [ applause ] now the second practical reason we oppose common core -- and i would invite any parent that is undecided about this. look at the standards, look at the content themselves. i've done that. my little boy is now a third grader. he was a second grader last year. if you are undecided about common core, look atys9ñ)q math standards. look at how they are teaching math. this is the new new math is what i call it.

my little boy was in the second grade last year. he's a good student. great grades in math. brings home his math tests. gets all the answers right. very simple math. 18 plus 4 is 22. that kind of math problems. gets it all right. the problem was the second half. there the teacher said you have to explain why your answers are right using common core methodology. so now instead of 18 plus 4 it is 20 minus 2 plus 4 and you have to draw circles it takes about six steps to explain your answers. i love my little boy. but he was seven at the time. he has the attention span of a gnat. so this is what he wrote in response to every single question when the teacher said explain why your answer is right, anticipating these six complicates steps. for every single question he wrote just because it is.

teachers send home the test. she goes i don't know what to do with this. my wife talked to my son and then called me over and said you need to talk to your son. when he's my son he's never done anything good by the way. i sat down. i honestly couldn't chide him. after a couple of minutes i said go outside and play. i can't tell him he did anything wrong. here is final thing i'll say about common core before the third topic. do you think the math standards are bad? the ela standards are bad? what would happen if the federal government were defining making standards for how we teach american history to our kids? under this administration american history would be all about victimization. it wouldn't be about american exception lism the way that you and i learned about why this is the greatest country in the history of the world. we've got to stop common core but not just stop it.

we've got to stoop the next iteration. this isn't the first and won't be the last time the federal government tries to interfere in our local classrooms. is secondly. let's repeal common core. [ applause ] thirdly and more important than obama and the other are. this is much more important than the first two issues. as a country we must fight and win. we must win the war against radical islamic terrorism. [ applause ] i want to share something with you that brings no joy to my heart. i want to share something that i don't say as the republican a parts orn conservative or ideological reasons. i say this with a heavy heart.

i honestly do. president obama has disqualified himself, he has shown himself incapable of being our commander in chief. [ applause ] now why do i say that? these barbarians they are murdering journalists for drawing cartoons they don't like. beheaded 21 egyptian coptic christians for their believes. put it all on social media as a recruiting tool. murdering, killing torturing christians muslims, other religious minorities. this is what our president has to say. he says we are not at war with islam. well certainly we're not at war with islam. but we are at w