-By Warner Todd Huston
Senator Jim DeMint (R, SC) is well known as the most conservative man in the upper chamber. He gave a rousing speech here at CPAC and afterward told a small gathering of us that many of the points he made will appear in his forthcoming book, Now or Never, Saving America From Economic Collapse. That message is, he said, that we have only a short time to turn this mess around and get this country back on track.
DeMint said that we need to remind our people — or in too many cases teach them from scratch — about America’s exceptionalism, but we also need to learn what changed from the days when our exceptionalism was better understood by the people. DeMint also noted that one of the problems we have to over come is that the Democrats agenda now prevents them from working in any way with the GOP and because their agenda is so extreme we just can’t compromise with them any more.
“Something’s gotta give,” DeMint said, “We have about a year before its too late
DeMint was asked about Florida Senator Marco Rubio and he couldn’t say enough good things about the young legislator. “Marco has been very smart in picking his battles,” DeMint said. “He’s not out there yapping at the president every day. But just like he has with the freedom of conscience issue he’s taken the lead, he’s become the face of that issue. He can, he’s Catholic. So he’s playing a role and he’s been very smart in picking his battles.”
DeMint also talked a bit about immigration saying that as Republicans we believe in immigration. “We need to reform our system,” DeMint said. But he went on to scold Democrats for their cynical part in the discussion over illegal immigration.
“The political agenda of the Democrats is to just take more than 10 million illegals here and make them voters as quickly as they can because they know it’ll change the political dynamic. I just think that totally denigrates our heritage of immigration,” he said.
DeMint was disgusted with the Democrat’s seeming desire to break the system and to push their agenda in front of those that have been patiently awaiting in other countries for their turn to come here legally.
But there is no working with the Democrats, said DeMint. “The Democrats will not allow anything but blanket amnesty because they want voters and they want union members… It’s hard to work with the Democrats on this because they have a political agenda not necessarily an economic agenda.”
DeMint also had good words to say about Ted Cruz, a candidate for Senate out of Texas. “Ted’s tenacious, he’s young — again a great new face for the Republican Party — and his opposition, as good a people as they are, I’ve seen it for years that they’re not going to come up here [Washington] and rock the boat. They’re not going to get in one of our party leader’s face and say, ‘We can’t do this.’ Ted will, I don’t think he needs to be loved. And that’s what I’m looking for, somebody that can be completely isolated from the establishment here and still go home and feel good about himself.”
Finally, I asked DeMint about how we as conservatives and Republicans can get the word out to voters of how the Democrats have for now more than 1,000 days refused to obey the law and do their duty to propose and help pass a full federal budget.
“The president will present a budget,” DeMint said, “I think what we need to do is use that to help Americans understand the priorities of Obama and the Democrat Party and then in a month or so Paul Ryan will come out with his budget, which I think you’ll see Republicans unite around, which will take our spending back towards balance over time and at the same time reforms for Medicare and probably social security and the tax code. We need to use this as something to not only remind people that the Democrats don’t want to do a budget in the Senate because it tells people what they want to do. And they’re not going to do one this year even though Kent Conrad had wanted to do one [House Leader] Harry Reid said no. They’d much rather attack our budget then defend theirs.”
Senator DeMint went on to say that Democrats “think Americans are stupid and I think we have at least 51% of Americans that are not and that’s what I’m counting on.”
After talking a little more about his book we bid the Senator farewell.
Senator Jim DeMint and me
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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