Western Conservative Conference Tackles Issues In Phoenix

• 10 years ago

By Dexter Duggan

2/23/14

Written for Arizona Daily Independent

Western Conservative Conference tackles issues in Phoenix

     Topics at the Western Conservative Conference for political activists in downtown Phoenix included warnings of potential financial ruin for the United States, political strategizing, Obamacare, media, gun ownership and immigration.

     About 450 people from Arizona and out of state attended speeches and panels at the Phoenix Convention Center on Feb. 22. A “roast” of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio occurred later that evening, with about 650 people registered.

     Starting the day, U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon (R.-Ariz.), the conference chairman, pointed to the nation’s dangerously high $17.5 trillion debt, a figure that doesn’t even take into account huge additional liabilities.

     “Please, folks, don’t shy away from this fight” to save the nation, Salmon said. “It’s real, it’s real… But we’ve got to fight for everything we’ve got,” just like the founding patriots.

      Salmon said the Republican-majority U.S. House has passed 40 jobs bills to help the nation, but Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, to prevent action, keeps them gathering dust on his desk.

     Conference keynoter Herman Cain, a successful businessman and candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, said the nation’s real unemployment rate is between 12 percent and 13 percent – not the economic recovery that’s being asserted, he said.

     Cain said the unemployment figure was “fudged” in 2012 to bring it below eight percent to make Barack Obama look better in his re-election campaign, and has continued to be “fudged” lower.

     “If the unemployment rate is 6.6 percent, I am Santa Claus from the North Pole,” said Cain, a former deputy chairman and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

     After the Congressional Budget Office recently said Obamacare will result in significant job losses, Cain said, administration officials and Democratic politicians denied this. “Stupid and gullible people are running America. Stay informed,” Cain said.

     Beginning his talk shortly before 10 a.m., Cain quickly cited the U.S. Declaration of Independence as asserting the right of the people to alter or abolish government when it becomes destructive of their inalienable rights.

     “We’re not divided based on color,” the black conservative told the applauding audience. “I’m here. You’re here. Where’s the division?”

     The Obama administration, Cain continued, has divided the nation between the political class and the working class. And, he said, the political class — which he described as “the ruling class” — is not only Democrats but also some Republicans.

     “Yes, we’re gonna get scarred and marred… Get up and shake off the dust and get back in the arena,” said Cain, who also is a national talk-radio host heard in the Phoenix area on KFNX (1100 AM).

     Cain concluded to a standing ovation: “The working class matters. Let’s make some noise and take back America.”

     U.S. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), former treasurer of Maricopa County, warned that the latest estimate of U.S. debt and underfunded liabilities is $205 trillion, while the entire wealth of the world may be $185 trillion.

     “You have an obligation to save this republic,” Schweikert told a morning general session of the conference. “…We can save this country,” but he wasn’t sure how much longer that would be possible when the political left controls both the presidency and U.S. Senate.

     Republican activists may prefer to go to meetings to debate the Constitution, Schweikert said, but for the next few months it’s important to get out and walk the neighborhoods, looking for independent voters to establish rapport with.

     He told of an instance when some local Republicans debated among themselves for four hours while 15 Democrats in Ahwatukee got out their water bottles and walked the neighborhoods. Which group, Schweikert asked, had more effect on the elections?

     However, he added, Democrats face a problem now because of political burdens like Obamacare.

     Because he rides elevators in Washington, D.C., Schweikert said, he overhears conversations among Democrats who “are absolutely panic-stricken because the public is finding out” what a massive failure they are. Democrats are looking for some way to divert voters’ attention, he said.

     Tea Party activist and commentator Scottie Nell Hughes told the morning general session that “the only group that [liberals] refuse to help … they even refuse to acknowledge, is the conservative woman…

     “In the mind of the modern American liberal,” Hughes continued, the only reason women cling to their Bibles and guns is because some man told them to.

     There’s a tough fight coming up, she said. If people think Barack Obama is bad for the nation, they “haven’t seen anything yet” if Hillary Clinton is elected president in 2016.

     Mrs. Clinton wants to open U.S. borders, choose people’s doctors for them, and protect unsafe abortion clinics, Hughes said, warning of a future Clinton administration with far-left New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as attorney general, and current Atty. Gen. Eric Holder as a Supreme Court justice.    

     During a panel on Obamacare, participant Eric Novack, M.D., said the national medical program demonstrates the politicization of health care.

     “Whoever can lobby the best, whoever can make the best pitch” to Congress, will get their interests covered, Novack said.

     He urged that people give illustrations on a personal level, not using big analogies, to show Obamacare’s negatives.

     At a panel about attacks being launched against the Tea Party, the topic arose of whether to start another political party.

     Jennifer Burke, national outreach director of TheTeaParty.net, said this would be the wrong direction to take.

     “Progressive Marxists took [the Democratic Party] over. They didn’t start a Progressive Marxist Party,” she said. “… On the left, they’re out-and-about proud… All we’re asking the Republican Party do is adhere to their own platform.”

     Bringing the GOP back to its principles “isn’t an overnight victory we’re going to win,” she said, but the Marxists didn’t take over the Democrats overnight, either.

     Burke said that if people went back and read their father’s Democratic Party platform from a few decades ago, it sounds pretty conservative.

     Tea Party activist Darla Dawald said she tells liberals that they, too, need to take back their party from those who’ve taken it over.

     At a luncheon featuring speakers on the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms, U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said, “If we lose this battle, it’s really our children who lose.”

     Franks noted various 20^th Century tyrannies that disarmed their populaces then rounded up the unwanted to exterminate them, including the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Communist China, Turkey and Cambodia.

     Politicians can have armed guards to protect them, Franks said, but little children’s schools have only a sign, “No guns allowed.”

     At a panel on media bias, Brian Calle, opinion editor at the Orange County, Calif., Register, said “perspective segregation” is occurring, where left- and right-wingers each watch only their own opinion sites.

     This doesn’t allow one side to persuade the other of the correctness of its views, he said.

     Calle said he asked one of the classes he taught at Cal State Fullerton where the students got their news. The response was social media and blogs. And did they think it was accurate? No.

     At a panel on immigration, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce said U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said that as bad as Obamacare is, it can be fixed or mostly fixed; but if “amnesty” is passed into law for 20 million or 30 million illegal aliens, it never can be fixed.

     Arizona Republican state Rep. Steve Smith told of a rewarding experience he had with a legal Latino resident, who wasn’t a U.S. citizen, as the Latino graciously helped him fix his vehicle.

     Although the Latino originally said he favored “amnesty” when Smith asked his views on the matter, he changed his mind as Smith pointed out the negatives of unrestricted immigration upon people living in the U.S. Smith said the Latino, Hugo, never thought about these facts before, but ended up telling Smith, “Build a fence and keep them out.”

     Another panelist, Steve Bucci, of the Heritage Foundation think tank, said, “Please, please, please reject the false choice the federal government is trying to sell you right now” that the only alternative to the Senate’s complex Obamacare-style immigration bill is to do nothing.

     The U.S. is pro-immigration, but the answer doesn’t start with “amnesty,” Bucci said, going on to warn that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are being disciplined if they enforce border laws.

     The U.S. needs both high-tech workers and seasonal agricultural workers, he said, but the agricultural workers have to go back home when their job is done.

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