t also have republican governorships as well. i think you will see these state examples. unfortunately with some of the great leaders in washington, and the house and senate, it is more difficult for them to emerge when it comes to presidential time. they have the taint of washington on them. they say, what have you done for me lately? they say, i talked up this bill. they repeat the question. governors will have something to say. i believe the bench -- we will be the bottom-up party then, we are not now. we see did the ground game to the original top-down party. if we can get back to that where we knocked on the doors, have fun tears standing up said a

senior centers and libraries -- knocked on doors in senior centers and libraries. making robo calls. we get to be the bottom-up hardy again in our infrastructure, the way we can gauge the voters. i believe we would be the bottom-up party. it's as people emerge. they will come to the top. i would say, the we look at them as presidential candidates, it is not fair to them or us. we are the free market, pro- competition movement. why do we not welcome that in our primary system? it makes no sense to me whatsoever. let me just add, there are many

losses in the united states senate rate for this year. there is so much comfort each about murdoch come a nobody paid attention to the fact that you had all of these hand- picked establishment candidates who lost. who were not named aiken and murdoch. in new mexico, montana, florida, ohio. virginia. deb fisher one in nebraska. she was the third choice. she is now a u.s. century bank do not let the people -- they have all the sources, all the money. how do i expend those losses? no competition. clearing the field. when george w. bush was told that he could win, the very first primary comp petition -- contest emma john mccain beat him in points, he became a

better candidate overnight. all of a sudden, somebody beat him. he became a much better candidate overnight and became a two term residents. we should want competition. that person never is ready for prime time. i think some of these governors are terrific. this movement should come up with a job description. if you are going to hire at national review, posted job description. . why are we not doing that? it is not a litmus test. what should your skills be, your belief system. i think we will have to nominate people who are relatable. who have an everyman story. we have that on our side much more than they have that. what is so everyman about john kerry or rockefeller? , because these people i am sure you are aware, voters

do not ask, do i like you? they ask, are you like me? are you like me? do we have anything in common? what is our connect tissue: should mark -- connective tissue? there is always one. people raise children every day. ross perot was worth four times the amount of money that mitt romney is, and he got a lot of people to believe he was a populist. he was for the middle class. we have to have equal who have an everyman and everyone's story to which people can't relate. it is incredibly important. >> one thing -- we cannot over emphasize the top down mentality that you talked about. the most successful part of the conservative movement in the last two years has and what? tea party. did that start in washington? no. it was because of washington. but the fact is, that came from

a conservative grassroots. a lot of people talk about the sophistication of the left for voter turnout. they were more sophisticated even at the digital level. but to your point, they touched people personally. we counted how many robo calls went in. they can't determine new doors they actually knocked on. they did a mix of new and old style. part of it was their campaign on the ground never went home. in ohio, they have been there for four years. many of our state and local places -- we have to revisit that. a lot of directives come from the national level. that has not been a good thing. >> i have to say, my son is here with me, and he spent all of last summer and endless hours in 99 degrees e knocking on doors in virginia.

there were plenty of people -- [applause]>> there were some, but not near the levels. >> i would just point out, i agree that the ground game on the part of the democrats was better. you know, you notice these things and they go by in your peripheral vision and you see a flashing yellow lights and think, i should be paying attention to that. and you forget it. that flashing yellow lights with all those loader registration movements that the democrats are always doing -- every now and then you go, another group funded by george or somebody. they will go registered new voters. these thoughts and then forgot. they did not forget about it. they were registering their single women and minorities and immigrants and the one. we were not. there weren't 93 million

registered voters who did not vote this last election. that is not unusual. when you consider that half of them probably married voters and that romney won married voters by 54%, wouldn't it be advisable for us, in addition to fine tuning our message and in addition to focusing on having a better competition for candidates, wouldn't it be better for us to focus on bringing out our voters? they are out there. married women, married men, tend to vote republican. >> i want to answer that. in addition to registering people, people who follow me on twitter know i watch way too much msnbc. sometimes i get the impression that people are not looking at what the other side is doing. it wasn't just voter registration. there was also convincing people

that republicans were suppressing the black and other minority vote. i think there was a total lack of realization on the right that this is going on. the left truly believes and convinces -- it uses the strategy that republicans are trying to suppress the vote. when we don't -- we don't even pay attention to what the other side is doing. how the heck are we going -- >> at the national level, i did not see people fighting back. when the right was challenged on those things, where did you see as really fighting back on that issue? frankly, when things happen with murdoch and others, people scattered like crazy. nobody was standing up trying to say -- >> that is because there was no way to defend what they said. >> i think the murdoch thing was a little bit different. the fact is, we were not even

prepared for -- we were not out front proactively talking about the issue. we let them do the groundwork and talk about the war on women. when that happened, the grounds more fertile for people to buy buy into and believe it. they had not heard anybody at the national level making a pro- life case in a good way. early making a positive case. they were not really talking about that issue this time. , a pro-choicet fundraising pack -- they train their candidates. they bring them in, give them -- murder boards where they fire question of them. >> i think they put a microchip in each of them. >> [laughter]they want more women, more pro-choice women candidates. we need to do that, not

necessarily to get pro-life women candidates, but just to train our candidates how you answer. because the press is very liberal. when they present a question on abortion, they always go to the vulnerability of conservatives. they say, where do you stand on rate? that is a tough question. she could get these candidates in a room and say, when you get that question, you say that is a very hard question. i have struggled with that personally. i would like to ask my opponent how he feels about abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy. or partial-birth abortion. those are hard western for their side. -- hard questions for their side. we have to be ready to do that and turn the tables. [applause] >> one thing she said was really important, not said by conservatives and the media --

one of my 10 reasons why we lost. conservative cocoons equals self inflicted media bias. i absolutely believe that. people believe obama or romney was going to win, based on where they get their news and information. she is saying that we do not pay enough attention to what the other side is doing. i do not want your blood pressure to go up when you hear the lies or read some of the nonsense, but it is really important to see what is going on. not as some covert operation, just to understand. i do a lot of cnn. i talked to democratic strategists. i talked to people who are practitioners. they barely broke a sweat. i thought romney did very well in that one debate, and they were not arrogant. they were confident. they had a plan of action. every day, they showed up to work, sometimes they were still

at work, and put one foot in front of the other and eight by day, for 12 months, 20 months, they implemented that plan of action. the work was tedious. the work is drudgery sometimes. it is boring. it is cold outside, it is hot outside. the work is not glamorous. the goal was glamorous to them. the goal was to reelect barack obama. i think a lot of people on our side got caught up in the glamour of the process. we need to be willing to do the work. they have always been the worker bees. you can see that this time. they raised all this money. the old saying is very true in politics as well as foolish wealthy men -- the fastest way to make a small fortune into a very large one and waste most of it. that is what happens in politics. you have much money and not enough appreciation for it and

utilization of grassroots techniques. pay attention to what the other side is doing. you will learn, and it will make you think. you will say wow, this looks really smart. you can look online at inside the cave. you will learn very quickly what the plan was from the obama people from the left. if he can win -- the next time the mainstream media tells you which republicans can win, run the other way. they know exactly who can beaten. they put one or two names in their polling, they start talking about just one or two republicans on all their talk shows. they start writing comments about just one or two republicans who can win. do you really think they want a republican to win? think about that. we are taking our cues about who can win four years before we are supposed about, from people who do not not want us to win. >> on the point about listening

to the other side, one of -- i think it is about engagement. one of my biggest pet peeves is people complaining about washington. there is a role for that. there is justification for that. it is not just a matter of not being on the defensive in the debate. bringing up the hard cases for the other guy. it is also about making long- term arguments about what government has done. all too often, not just our candidates but people on the front lines often find our content with the talking points. the clinton problem is that it's a political problem. -- cocoon problem is not just a political problem. how to reengage more -- people in this room in impacting this

argument. creating a space where politicians are more comfortable doing it. >> one challenge that we have with appealing to women voters, i think it is also true of men who are -- who only have a high school diploma are have trouble finding a good job. and obama's america, we are all having trouble finding a good job. [laughter] women think that when they are voting for democrats they are voting for security. single women, many of whom have children and who feel quite vulnerable to job losses or any change in the economy or anything that might around in their own lives -- might go wrong in their own lives. they want that safety net. it is not an easy sell, but we

have to make the case that what you think is security is not. because, as will soon be obvious in states that have followed this model of a larger and larger public sector and more and more benefits, states like california, illinois, new york, they are going to go bankrupt and come to the federal government for a bailout. we have to be ready to hammer home the point that -- what good is it that you voted for security when, now your benefits will not be able to be paid for. it is no longer a public that can afford it. >> this seems like a deeper pot -- deeper cultural problem. how do you convince them that the government is not their husband? a woman has written about how you convince them, when you have

this pop-culture suggesting that guys are losers. dads are losers on every comedy show. how do we fix that environment? policy wise, culturally, this is for anybody. >> it is a huge cultural problem that we have. the flight from heritage. it is frustrating -- marriage. it is frustrating because you do not want to seem preachy to people about how to live their lives. yet, we know for a fact that people who get married -- people who -- the liberal foundation about 20 years ago did a study, much quoted since then, and they found that if you just did three things in american life, you would not be poor. that was, refrain from having

children until you got married, get married and stay married, get a job, any job. you did not have to graduate from high school. if you did those three things, you would not be poor. unfortunately, when you tell people that, it seems as if you're being judgmental and you are preaching. there is a certain amount of preaching that is going to be necessary. charles murray said in his fantastic book, what we have now is a bifurcated society where the upper classes are still getting married and staying married at roughly the rates that they did in the 1950 p's. they are fine, their kids are doing well. their kids are getting into college. a professor at cornell said he looked around the classroom and relies that every single kid in his class came from a [no

audio]we have this bifurcated world where the middle and upper classes are marrying, raising their kids in a wholesome environment and doing well, and the rest of society, the bottom half, is fleeting marriage and is suffering as a consequence. as murray said in his book, if the upper classes would simply preach with a prop is, he would -- preach what they practice, you would eventually get somewhere. >> we have an entire population now i women who choose not to marry and choose not to be mothers. it is not a circumstance, it is a lifestyle. consumer america has dealt with this for years.

consumer america has to sell soup, food, and cars every day. political america shows up once every two done, four, and six years and tries to sell itself. the other said exit them as consumers. to get down to their *. -- asterisk. number seven on my list, it might, to numbered two by the time the election comes around, i read a book six years ago -- nobody read it because it did not insult anyone. let me just tell you, on page 25

of that book come we predicted that the next political demographic group would be unmarried women. because you look at census data. we look at cultural indicators. he started to look at sheer numbers. in this election, in 2008, unmarried women voted two to one for obama. in 2012, married women -- unmarried women, 221 for obama. mitt romney carried married women. the problem is, the trend is going in the opposite direction. the challenge for republicans is that unmarried women are a growth market. the are all over the age of 18. they are mostly eligible to vote. they do look at government as a safety net, not as a trampoline. a security. maybe subsistence for some. maybe a supplement for others. they also -- i think the obama

people were worried about many women this time. what they did, not to unmarried women, but what they did to women overall is, they waged a phony war on women. it started a year ago. i remember hearing it super bowl weekend. they waged this war on women and they took a 45-year-old never married, childless woman who, exit six figure income -- make a six-figure income. she alone is responsible to pay her monthly bills. she is scary to the obama reelection campaign. she is economically savvy. she is part of the ownership investors society. she is part of his upside down approval rating on the economy. yes, they took her and scared her into believing that the republicans want to deny you

contraception. denied you a portion. control your life. they talk to women for the links down an entire year create -- from the waist down for an entire year. they took her and brought her back. let me just say two quick things. i do have blinders on women. true things about women voters. go back to 2010, a majority of women voted republican. two years later, after obama carried women by 13 points, a majority of women voted republican. more women voted republican than democratic at the congressional level. what was the message? did anybody talk about abortion or contraception in 2010?

of course not. it was spending and the debt. think about what the messages where that compelled women. government spending too much money. the bailout suspending the stimulus and the crown jewel, obamacare. i did not hear hear much about this time. second thing, stop allowing the left to talk about women's health. if they want to talk about abortion, let's talk about abortion. contraception, let's have that talk. how dare you call it women's health grou. [applause] what's the number one killer? cardiovascular disease. where is obesity and nutrition. where is long-term care for the widows question ma? i will not allow planned parenthood and the rest of the crew to get away with talking about women's health. you should not let them. can we stop talking about women's issues?

i have been in politics only 25 years. i have never in my life heard anybody talk about men's issues. have you? [laughter]i have never heard it in my life. what is a women's issue? women, men who like women or have women in their lives, daughters and nieces and wives and girlfriends -- stop talking about women's issues. do not even cede back ground. we believe women talk about all issues. i think we subtly seed that ground. to allow that to even be waged on the floor of women's issues and health. >> i agree with that point. my question is, why do we? why are we show defensive? even women candidates are defensive on this matter.

or just exposing the lie. but abortion is women's health. >> i do not know what it was this election cycle. we do train our candidate, maybe not to the extent that we should, but this is not todd akin's first time to run for office. he has talked about these things before. he went off message on it. i think that so many people on the conservative side were so sure that this would be nothing but about the economy. the economy was the number one issue. even though everybody did say, economy, economy, they were clearly thinking about other things. folks in many places were not prepared to take on some of these battles and proactively go after it like you are talking about. windows things on the war on women came out.

not enough. not with the force they came out on their side. we put all our eggs in one basket and people were not prepared this time around. >> there were a few myths. one that should not get established after 2012 is that women trip to the polls to vote on the issue of contraception and abortion. that is not supported by the exit poll data at all. abortion and contraception barely registered on the list of issues that women cared about. or men, for that matter. that is one thing. another thing to bear in mind is, all the polling, this is been true for decades and has not changed very much, is that when you look at voters who say that abortion is very important to them and influences their vote for a candidate, it is split about evenly pro-life and pro-choice. the notion that this is an

issue that is particularly harmful to republican candidates is just not true. it is not borne out by the evidence. >> this could be for anyone. you look at words and messages and how they resonate with people. it strikes me that even beyond the woman's health lies, that we talk in terms that people do not understand. my earrings come from hobby lobby appreciation day. to support them, because they are in this lawsuit against obama's justice department. -they are evangelical christians and believe that being religious does not just mean that you be religious on sundays. we have privatized religion to such a great extent here. some of us may be obsessed about this issue.

we talk about freedom and religious freedom and conscience -- my sense is most of america has no idea what we are talking about. i think we have different senses of what freedom is. maybe freedom means increased access to contraception. how do we get a common vocabulary again? >> that is a great question. on the freedom of conscience and religious liberty, that was about a year ago as well, i think the left really feared that percolating. that is why they turned into an argument about contraception. i have to out fear your fear. i have to out celebrity your liberty. -- out-liberty your liberty. if we start each sentence with a question -- is it fair that the government, and then fill in the blank with anything you want. worshipu you can't

your god. else you that you can't send your kid to a better school. is it fair that the government tells you that you can't run that business? basically, it is what they do without saying it. i think that should be a common language. start with a solution. we have this terrible habit of starting with the problem. we depress the heck out of half of americans before we've even get to a semi-colon. begin with the solution. say, i have this great three- part plan to do x. if you say, oh my god, johnny can't read and joey is a thug and jenny is getting -- i am going to turn the channel. i am going to go back to reality tv, it is less incendiary.

i also happen to be somebody who believes that we cannot lexicon our way into prosperity and into explaining who we are two different group in this country. and the reason i say that, it is harder to be us. you cannot say and seven seconds, what free markets and limited government really means. it takes a little bit of explanation. you cannot put it in a handy soundbite. at the same time, you have to be willing to say when somebody is not telling the truth. nobody on tv is ever under oath. remember that the next time you hear a bunch of nonsense. even the president or in his speech the other day that made you so crazy with the liberal mlness, he had already taken te oath, that was done.

yes, there is a common way of speaking. engage people in the conversation. we tend to lecture them. stop talking to them like you are a financial planner. talk to them like you are their neighbor. we talk like their financial planners or accountants or dentists. three people you do not like to deal with. >> we are in a tough position. at this point in american street, -- american history, we are at a tipping point. the democratic party -- it did not begin with obama, he has just accelerated a trend that was well-established, the party of creating a larger and larger states, more and more benefit, sucking more and more out of the private sector to create a larger public sector. so, the undesirable job of republicans was to say, i am

here to take away your goodies because it is not good for you and it will bankrupt everybody. it is awfully hard to deliver that message in a positive way. the only positive way you can deliver it is to talk about growth, because we have seen the effects of growth under reagan and what that does. you can make the -- and under clinton, too, to be fair. for a variety reasons, mostly to do with the republican house. with growth, you can make your deficits a little bit more manageable. it is not easy to be the messenger who says, we promised too much, we cannot afford it, we are out of money, we are going to go bankrupt. somebody has to deliver that message or we are going over the real life. not the fiscal cliff writ >> it is definitely harder. people just accept on the conservative side, it is going to be harder for you.

that just because of the liberal media bias. but because your messages harder. the reality is, you are kind of like the parent. here is why you have to eat your vegetables and pay your bills. and the other guy comes out, and he is the best friend. most people -- who would you rather hang out with? some of it is, how do you lecture people versus finding where they are and listening to their need and approaching it in a different manner. we cannot change what our policies are. we do have to think about, how do we really get people to understand them better without just talking to them and saying, here is the rentable and what this policy will do. meet them where they are, it takes more time, but we can't just wait and do it in an election cycle. we have to invest in this. there may be a silver lining out of this election, it helps us see where we are. what if romney had one?

it would certainly be far better. one of the things for the public really is, i do not think they are big government folks, but we are at that tipping point. heritage chooses a study every year, the dependency is going up every year. it is not just people you think of on welfare. it is what many people called middle-class america, dependent in some shape or form on government programs. i think it is why you see, when you ask people if government should cut spending, everybody says yes. then you look at, what you want to cut? not usually what i am getting. still, as much as they think spending is a problem, they do not truly believe that the biggest drivers of it are the biggest drivers of it, and like social security and medicare and

medicaid. as we all know, that is the big elephant in the room. they say foreign aid, nasa, get rid of the department of education. i think that's a great idea for . number of reasons area the fact is, you could do a lot of what people on the right and left on to do in terms of their hat -- pet cuts, and it would do nothing to the long-term trajectory we are on. >> we did a bus tour this year with family research council. we teamed up on this money and his book to a lot of churches. the people willing to listen to it. even among conservative audiences, it is tough to get people to say, those are the programs that we truly have to take on. it is an uphill battle.

i think it is one we will be forced into by the very nature of where we are. >> p.j. o'rourke in one of his books has a passage where he says, the democrats are the party of santa claus. santa claus is a wonderful, jolly guy in a red suit who loves everyone and gives everybody presents. he gives you exactly what you want. all you have to do is ask. the republicans are the party of god. god is kind of a stern fellow. he demands good behavior. he has been known to punish people for not doing what they are supposed to do. it is hard to get into his celestial country club. in every way, santa claus is superior to god. except, there is no such thing as santa claus. [laughter][applause]x if my children are watching, she is kidding. they better not be watching.

>> if your kids are watching c- span at 10:15 at night, -- >> let me say something about messaging and the economy. it is true -- if we look at things in a linear fashion, which i believe is what happened this time. exhibit a, obama is upside down in his approval ratings on every economic usher. it is accepted wisdom that he had a negative job approval on handling the economy, taxes, unemployment, spending, gas prices. we are not the only people who knew that. chicago knew that, too. they were good to do something about that. then it was, about 42%. romney has been a job creator. he has made things. he has balanced budgets. he has hired and fired people.

he will take a business experience and put it to washington. a couple things wrong with that. one is, the economy by itself, romney and obama were 43 and 44% each. you need 51% or above to win. the obama people kept adding points for women, immigration, hurricane sandy. they were able to get their realization that economy may be most important,, but it is not the only thing. you only had to choose one candidate, you do not have to choose one issue. where do people who believe in free well, human reason, intelligence and your ability and have issues that are important to you. now republicans dealing with fiscal cliff and debt ceiling and sequestration -- the average

family in this country lives with debt. quite a bit of that. they do not look at that as a bad thing. it is what enables them to own a home. to send a kid to college. to buy a car. to start a business. to have a credit card that lets them go out to dinner once or twice a month. go on a family vacation. i do not think that makes them take. it makes them live their lives responsibly. they have jobs. to say, that is a four letter word. you can't turn that into chileans. his whole thing about job creators, that is fine. republicans on that space now. later contentment cannot most americans right now are neither job creators nor jobs acres --

job seekers. the vast majority of households in this country are jobholders. not job creators. what was the message exactly? i do not know, and i paid attention. i look silly what the message should be to them. -- i know what the message should be to them. my household has two or three jobs, we are not worried about losing our jobs. the jobs bill longer enough. when you are a kid and your father had a job, it was enough. then one day, it was not enough. clear mother had to go get one. it is not enough to get ahead. we need to tell people why the job is not enough.

where is all your money going? why can you not get ahead? why can't you afford things that people who don't work seem to be able to afford. how did that happen. >> i went to go a step further with the concept of free will and god and parents. god gives us rules. with the growth of government and dependency, civil society has been stifled. how do we build people up? people want responsibility. or have we changed so fundamentally that we cannot fix civil society again? our message is not all negative.

we have to take steps back and make sacrifices, but there is also this level of building people up and being exceptional again. how do we get there? >> people need basic things to be happy. if you start of the granular level, they need security, love , to feel respected, they need a community. when i think of single women like the julia cartoon that the obama people put out, and the single women turning to government as obama would prefer. he says, this is what unites us. that is what we all have in common. i think of this is looking for love in all the wrong places. the government is just too big.

too impersonal. two dysfunctional. it has to provide basic things, but when it comes to community building. making people feel that they are necessary and needed. those are churches, community groups, schools. those are the places where people get their real sense of identity and fulfillment. of course, through their families. i think we have to not give up that message about wanting to belong. people will always want to belong. to redirect it and say, you can have so much more of a meaningful relationship and community spirit at the smaller level then you can at the community and towns in churches and so on then you can in the abstract federal government in washington d.c.

>> had a we get to that message? is it a cultural issue? >> it is predominantly cultural. that is not the top down. if we can understand and reach people culturally, we can then engage them politically. we are missing that etiquette -- predicate. so much handwringing about reaching hispanics and asians. this idea that hispanics and asians would not respond to a conservative religious message is belied by the fact that they are very religious people who are still an active part of family formation in this nation

where those numbers are way down among our overall population. if you look at some of the suburbs around our cities in this country, fairfax county, virginia, the catholic churches. the asians and hispanics are filling the pews. the whites are out jogging and having brunch. they are religious people with large, multigenerational families. we have ceded them, thinking we need to come up with a new strategy. we really have to go where they are and figure out who they are, not they will what is your number one issue. what if religion is not even an issue? it is part of their being.

we take the time, culturally, to understand people. also to recognize, americans have this idea that, here is the pie. if you say i am religious and i am not religious, somehow you are judging me, or we do not agree on everything. if you say one thing -- sometimes it does not even apply to the individual. we need to appreciate and recognize that we are not that important areas if you

understand them as people first, then you can approach them with politics. the problem is trying to get them politically. and then backing in. we have an laying short shrift with them. critics there have been some real political battles. >> i do not think i saw that read. so much of that issue in terms of what has been positive, the strides we have made in turning people on that has been what has happened culturally in terms of the pregnancy resource centers and people helping women who need heart. defund planned parenthood, great idea. when people see that, we see them coming alongside people, that makes a difference. these choice battles i go on -- there is no better way to line

up with folks for people who not in voting line with us and said, we are here for you. when you see what happened in the d.c. public school system, the monsoon care so much about their children, where they were, a lot of conservatives standing alongside them. not people on the left. those folks were not there. the union was not there. we have to look for more of those opportunities. in talking about the charles murray book, it is not all about politics. family formation and keeping families together and helping people make the right choices early on will go a long way on how they vote and a lot of other things. we cannot ignore that. we cannot first the ballot box to force -- it is easier to vote, harder to do some of the other things. >> carter made the points on the

pro-life panel, about lazy slander against pro-lifers. we only care about the baby until it's born, then forget about it. it strikes me, there is lazy slander against conservatives on a lot of issues. it is easy to believe, because it would be really hard to care for that woman or have anything to do with her and support her for 18 years. it is easy to believe. people believe it, because they do not see the examples of what is actually happening on the ground, churches or other community groups. it strikes me. there was a "new york times" piece on pregnancy centers a few weeks ago. they do happen sometimes. it strikes me -- isn't it may be the most important things that conservatives could do, raising children to encourage

them to go into hollywood, the arts -- >> the universities. the mainstream media. at the end of the day, we are talking to a limited audience. is that what the most important point we can take from this election is? >> i do think that we have to try to infiltrate to the degree that we can. i am struck, after this election, that i actually disagree with charles krauthammer, i think we are no longer a center-right country. the first time we elected barack obama, you could have made that case. but not the second time. this does represent a shift.

my sense is that we now have to go back to first principles and start re-arguing things that we did not think were even up for grabs. we thought, everybody knows that the socialist model is a failure. we thought eastern europe emerge from 40 years of repression and that argument was one, it was over. well, it looks like it -- >> i completely agree with mona. more and more people, and sells conservative. how do you define conservative? that is the question. i think that we may have thought -- does not mean they have the fundamental print books and values that we might share. in terms of how those might be lived out and it translated to policy, there is a bigger disconnect and we have good

credit to. >> one of the greatest gift i ever got was being shown that there are conservatives in hollywood. he was not a heritage foundation, i hang out and study first principles kind of guy, but he got them in his. that is is what i think we are talking about. so many of these people in hollywood, good people who were raised by good families and for whatever reason encountered something good, religion or the constitution or -- and they write scripts. they might be directors. there the guy at the table when a comedy series is being written. but strikes me. if we can teach people first and

goals -- first principles, i can create beautiful things. it is actually possible. we are not victims of these institutions. which yes, obviously have been poisoned. >> i also think that young people are being very idealistic. they are uniquely open to arguments about compassion. if we present the pro-life issue in terms of compassion. we might get more of a hearing then we would expect. >> i think others to speak on college campuses would probably agree. they are desperate for something different. they see what is happening demographically. they see their own families and what has happened. they do not want that for themselves. if they can be presented and

alternative, they will grab onto it quicker than we realize. we think they are so cool and they want something new. yes, they do want something new. something grounded in something old. >> as conservatives, we inherited seek social justice. it was all about targeting a younger audience, college and under, who are concerned and want to do something. what is the role of society? what is the role of government? the role of church? it is not that there is absolutely no role for government, but it is a much more limited role than we are currently experiencing as a country. if you really want to help people, -- we should people who had been in one place, they were now somewhere else, and how they got there. was it being on a welfare check? was it somebody handing out free needles because they were a drug addict? how did they get where they were?

sometimes it was a religious experience. sometimes it was a neighborhood. i think as the students went through that, it gave them the opportunity to explore, how do you truly help question mark it was not saying, here is a policy paper. it was not saying there is no role for government. it was giving stories and ideas. i think we can do more and more of telling the stories. we highlight good things that work. we can always do more of that. when people see it, it makes a huge difference. as opposed to being a sterile, principal or policy. we want to feel good about it. >> there are two with a message to people, whether they are consumers, voters, your neighbor. you either shock the conscience were you when the heart. shock the conscience is pretty obvious. we do not always have to have

our hair and pants on fire. it does not always have to be an anti-obama statement. i prefer to ignore him more than anything. [laughter] on day i will wake up, and she will not be president. [applause] i spent time with people who are useful to advancing the ideas and the belief system that we have in free and religious liberties and government and the family etc.. the shock the conscience we get. what about warm the hearts. that is important. people say it will not move voters. it will get them to listen, maybe. a combination of different audiences in consumer america. i keep going back to that because most people do not wake up and refer to themselves or their upcoming day according to their political affiliation.

what is it they are saying when they wake up question mark they saying i am republican, conservative, i will sleep till noon? a are saying, i am late for work. i am tired. is it snowing? i am a mother of three. what is it they are saying? we are supposed to believe that we do not have a solution for everything. the individual and his or her community and local structures -- they have the solutions. we love to talk a good game about thrift and all this money wasted in the campaign. about the value of the individual. we run around telling them what is best for them. we have to modulate a little bit. i did not say moderate. modulate once in a while. tone, and constant as well. >> thank you, everybody, for coming tonight.

[applause] i have to remind you that the breakfast buffet starts at 7:45 in the morning and the program begins at 8:10. thank you again. [applause] >> today on c-span, "washington journal" with your calls, tweets, and e-mails. later, live coverage of the national review conservative summit. >> next, a conversation about the military's decision to list -- lift the ban on women in combat. with kayla williams, an iraq war veteran. and we will talk about college graduation rates with ohio state university president gordon. university president gordon.