buchanan. [applause] >> thank you very much. i enjoy speaking to young people. you give me great hope and inspire me. there is great reason in this part of the world to be discouraged. i enjoy being among those young. we are in a situation in this country where you all are coming to a conference today, talking about leadership. with other conferences, the reason you were drawn to washington was to meet and mingle with other leaders, leaders in our country, as you perceive it and to get to know little bit about politics. i have been in politics since i was your age. just about that. i worked first with richard nixon, you may have read about him in your history books. i have a good sense of what politics is all about, the good and bad. i have a sense of what makes a leader. i have seen people emerge, become terrific leaders in this country, and others with great hope. you have so much faith that that would going to happen to you have seen that falter. i want to talk about that, in a little bit about leadership. let's talk about those who are here in this town. you

pat buchanan, a new gingrich and others. i think what happens in american political history certain ideas dominates and certain political imperatives shape the landscape and over time they start to wane as new political questions arise and new players come onto the scene to change political identity. but in some ways like democratic liberalism in the '70s the republican right has run at of gas were in the drug of splintering it with a major internal fight over the future direction of the party. it was interesting to see in the republican primary you had a whole range of candidates none of them who could fully credibly claim conservative credentials but yet all of them invoking reagan over and over. >> host: what does that mean for the south? >> is very much in play the way it has not been in a generation. the last national presidential election resaw it in north carolina georgia, mississippi across the south i think black voters are playing a more rolled 1/2 and latino voters are playing a more decisive role and white voters

>> i think as bay buchanan said, you will have a lot. i think we have seen a situation where the kinds of changes his administration is trying to put in place are so drastic that i think fairly quickly it will be evident that those fundamental values that define conservatism, the government not being in control of every aspect of your life, strong national defense, low taxes, supporting the private sector as the engine of growth, all of those issues will be challenged. in my view, reminding people of what conservatives have stood for and what those values are that we believe has made not just conservatism and effective movement but has made america a great nation, i suspect there'll be a lot of independence -- independents. we saw a poll, when you ask people if their conservative or liberal, 30% said they were conservative. i think 19% said liberal. -- 38% said conservative, 19% said liberal. people tend to identify with those basic values we believe in, and i suspect we will have a lot of material, whether the health-care battle, domest

something really depressing, and maybe martin you don't want to listen to this but i was reading buchanan's byography of reagan and he was talking about regulate engine 1983, 1984, he had an 8 the% approval rating among the young, 82%. this reminded me last fall i was talking to someone about how i became a conservative when i was talking to a teenager and i said there was a discredited incumbent who was in time of economic turmoil and seemed to be out of events abroad and out of control and this amazingly articulate and change came on to the stage and at some point through this lit any i said oh, damn! you know? because we have the exact opposite happening now. and how you kind of crack the nut of appealing to youth again, i'm not sure i have an answer but a lot of it comes about by having answers to the key questions of the day. it's not as though reagan i think explicitly went out of his way to appeal to youth. it's just that he seemed to have a better way. and a forward-looking attitude. >> experimental and i think naturally graph tate to folks who are in motion as opposed to in reactio

>> i think as buchanan said, you will have a lot. i do think we have seen a situation where the kind of changes this administration is trying to put in place are so drastic a think pretty quickly it will become evident those fundamental values that define conservatism left government not being in control of every aspect of your life, strong national defense of low taxes and supporting the private sector as the engine of growth all those issues i think will be challenged and are being challenged and so in my view reminding people what conservatives have stood for and what the values are that we believe has made not just conservatism and effective movement but america a great nation i suspect there will be a lot of independents and you're seeing this already. i saw the last couple of days when you ask people are the conservative or liberal 30% of the people said they were conservative and i think it was 19% who said they were liberal, so people tend to identify themselves with those basic values we believe in and i suspect you will hav

i notice that both you and bay buchanan touched on the word "character" and it's something that our society doesn't seem to value much anymore. and i'm a firm believer that the two most influential persons in shaping someone's character is their parents. what do you think about that? >> well, as a mom and by the way i have two children that are in your age range. i have a son who's 21 and a daughter who's 20 and a son who's 16. i would say the greatest calling for a woman who becomes a mother is to put everything she can into those precious lives that were placed in her precious arms. that's the greatest calling of dads too and we have a tremendous responsibility to shape the character every single day and to make it our focus. my books are all about that. are about that commitment everyday. i want my kids to know i love them enough to dare to challenge the status quo every single day. and to dare to build into them very purposefully those character qualities. but let me just quickly say, too, i know that it's very painful in our nation that for every 100 babies that are born in this countr

conversations] >> our coverage of the conservative leadership summit continues with commentator buchanan. this is hosted by the clare boothe luce institute in washington. it's an hour and 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> okay. let's try this again. thank you all of you for coming. those of us here with us today at the u.s. capitol and the c-span audience across america and around the world welcome to the luce policy institute's 2009 conservative leadership seminar i'm alyssa cordova and i'm the director for the luce institute america's organization for conservative women. our mission is to prepare women for effective leadership and promote conservative women throughout the country. we do this through a variety of unique student initiatives including our campus lecture program, which features many speakers you'll hear from today. you'll notice that today's speakers also featured in the lecture program are marked in your agendas with an asterisk and i'm proud to announce a brand-new addition of a distinguished speakers. rebecca hagelin, students will greatly benefit from her expert

. >> bay buchanan is speaking next, right, michelle. and she does this better than i do it. the most important thing for you is to actually do it. to actually raise your hand and stand up and you will have maybe the first couple of times you do it people will shout you down or try to glare you town. just ignore that. just say what you believe. try to sound reasonable. personally, i think that instead of taking the most -- i don't want to say extreme because that's what the left does to us. have some common ground. sound reasonable so that folks can identify with what you're talking about but stand -- be very clear about what you believe and why you believe it. because what you are doing is suggesting to them something that they've never considered before. so it's not in my mind -- it's not really an option and bay gives a great example on abortion. i don't know what different people's views are but i'll remind her to be sure to do that. it may be that when a young woman faces that choice, which we have as americans now, she will remember that student who stood up and had a d