{"id":1639099,"date":"2022-09-12T11:32:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T15:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1639099"},"modified":"2022-09-12T11:33:25","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T15:33:25","slug":"the-fierce-urgency-of-how-a-natcon-agenda-for-2022-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-fierce-urgency-of-how-a-natcon-agenda-for-2022-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fierce Urgency Of\u00a0How: A NatCon Agenda For 2022 And Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-fierce-urgency-of-how-a-natcon-agenda-for-2022-and-beyond%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1639099&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><em>The following remarks were given at the National Conservative Conference on Sept. 12, 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is the first real public speaking I\u2019ve done since my husband and I welcomed our first child, our son Gabriel, in June.<\/p>\n<p>I can happily report Gabriel is a born national conservative: Sincere if a little unpolished; unabashedly pro-natalist; hostile to the agenda of ruling elites, even if I\u2019m just trying to make a cup of coffee; does most of his damage when he looks deep in thought; and no matter how hard he tries or how loud he speaks, nobody in Washington understands what he\u2019s trying to say.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe that\u2019s all babies. But like all babies, National Conservatism today is winning the hearts and minds of everyone who gets to know it. That\u2019s one of the most important things this conference and this movement needs to grapple with: we\u2019re winning.<\/p>\n<p>It may not feel like it. It may not look like it. And, given the temperament of many NatCons I know, winning may even be suspected a \u201cnear occasion to sin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But like it or not, the National Conservative critique of both right and left, of foreign and national affairs, of social and economic policy, of elitism and populism are quickly becoming the\u00a0<em>lingua franca\u00a0<\/em>of American politics. The elite, decadent, uniparty consensus of Clinton-Bush-Obamaism has vanished from the debate.<\/p>\n<p>Amnesty. Free trade. Engagement with China. Market self-regulation of Big Tech and Big Banks. Foreign adventurism.<\/p>\n<p>Few elected officials or candidates\u00a0<em>in either party\u00a0<\/em>publicly<em>\u00a0<\/em>advocate any of these things anymore. They may still\u00a0<em>believe\u00a0<\/em>in them and privately scheme on their behalf with lobbyists, corporate-funded think tanks, and donors. But the ideas themselves lack any real purchase outside of elite echo chambers.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s just it. National Conservatism does not have<em>\u00a0to persuade<\/em>\u00a0the uniparty elite in Washington. We just have to beat them. And any reading of American politics since 2015 says,\u00a0<em>we are<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re winning the argument. The next step is winning the fight. That\u2019s not the same thing as winning elections. NatCons have already won elections.<\/p>\n<p>But winning\u00a0the fight<em>\u00a0<\/em>isn\u2019t just about November. It\u2019s about winning the other eleven months, too. It\u2019s about creating a virtuous cycle of political strategy and policy reform powerful enough to realign our politics\u2026 and rescue our nation from the dangers now at her throat.<\/p>\n<p>Ready or not, National Conservatism is becoming America\u2019s political majority. Whether it becomes America\u2019s next\u00a0<em>governing coalition\u00a0<\/em>is a separate question. And one almost entirely dependent on the\u00a0substantive policy agenda and strategy<em>\u00a0<\/em>national conservative thinkers, candidates, and elected officials offer the country.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>II. Beginning of the Story: Winning, Losing, and the Power of Ideas<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Over the last several years, National Conservatism has risen to prominence as the brittle, self-serving policies of Washington\u2019s permanent class have begun to collapse under their own weight.<\/p>\n<p>On the right, DC\u2019s institutional conservative movement has grown fat and lazy, replacing the pragmatic wisdom of old truths with dogmatic sloganeering and poll-tested pablum \u2013 increasingly divorced from day-to-day realities.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the world has changed. New problems demand a new vision. As I said last year at this conference, Ronald Reagan\u2019s agenda was successful because it fit the specific needs of\u00a0his\u00a0time.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t need to \u2013 and we shouldn\u2019t \u2013 throw out all our old ideas. But we do need to\u00a0reprioritize\u00a0them now \u2014- when our most basic government and economic institutions are ideologically weaponized against the public.<\/p>\n<p>The priorities of Federal Reserve economists, Wall Street hedge fund managers, board members of Raytheon, and globalists at the World Trade Organization have been discredited and should be discounted.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the day-to-day needs of the family must be the beating heart of this movement. That will involve economic policy. It will involve choices about national defense, technology, higher education, and health care. Because the revelation of our movement is that\u00a0every policy choice is a family policy choice.<\/p>\n<p>What separates our vision from that of Washington\u2019s permanent class is that the family sits on top of our policy hierarchy. And every policy choice we make is subservient to the family. Not the other way around.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not enough to say it. We have to do it. And to succeed, we must have a plan. Donald Trump\u2019s first year in office perfectly illustrates the point. The president, you\u2019ll remember, wanted a border wall. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell wanted a corporate tax cut. One had a mandate; the others had a plan.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, the part of the Trump agenda that was mapped out, publicly,\u00a0by the president,\u00a0in specific detail before his inauguration were his nominations to the Supreme Court. And as a result, those commitments now have names: Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett.<\/p>\n<p>The historical record is very clear that substantive political success in the United States depends on leaders\u00a0executing\u00a0an agenda rather than\u00a0improvising\u00a0one. And that presupposes a massive investment of time, coordination, and prioritization\u00a0before\u00a0any ballots are ever cast.<\/p>\n<p>This is, by the way, why the ongoing feud between Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rick Scott is so illuminating. What did Rick Scott do to upset McConnell? He put out a plan. He did the thing we as a movement have been begging our leaders to do forever: He saw some real-life problems, and he put forward his ideas to fix them.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t have to agree with everything Sen. Scott put forward to see the importance of what he did. McConnell and other GOP leaders would rather run on how bad the other guys are, full stop. They never tell you what they\u2019ll actually do with the power you give them, because they don\u2019t want to be accountable for it.<\/p>\n<p>Even more to the point, they don\u2019t want to put out an agenda because they actually loathe what most of their own voters prioritize. They think you and your choices are stupid. And they think an election means they get to substitute their own judgment for yours.<\/p>\n<p>So, yes, plans matter. Details matter. Aspirations without details are just tweets. Winning on Twitter is fun, but it\u2019s not winning.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t matter if we \u201cown the left\u201d if the left still \u201cowns\u201d Wall Street, K Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Silicon Valley, the Pentagon, the media, the academy, public health and hospitals, law enforcement agencies, and executive branch bureaucracies from the State Department to public libraries.<\/p>\n<p>Politics is about creating opportunities; policy is about seizing them.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>III. Pivot to the Future: The Moment<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>And let\u2019s be very clear: our next opportunity may be the last one America gets. There is a lot of debate about what the term National Conservatism even means. To me, National Conservatism has to be the recognition that in this moment, the thing conservatives must fight to conserve\u00a0<em>is the nation itself.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The woke ideology, the universities that teach it, and the cultural and corporate elites who enforce it are fundamentally anti-American, totalitarian, and absolutely convicted about the justice of punishing dissent and destroying any check on their power.<\/p>\n<p>The Left\u2019s long \u201cmarch through the institutions\u201d was a world-changing success. Every institution \u2013 public or private \u2013 that woke elites run is being wielded, right now, as a weapon against every man, woman, child, and family in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Against the Constitution. Against religion. Against freedom. Against sex, comedy, art, and culture. Against innocence and reason, against truth itself.<\/p>\n<p>Generation Woke does not want America to ever be Great Again because they don\u2019t want America to ever be\u00a0<em>America<\/em>\u00a0again.<\/p>\n<p>Washington Republicans and too many old-guard conservatives still don\u2019t appreciate the full scope of the Left\u2019s ambitions. As my friend Josh Hammer says, Woke America is a two-tiered America. In Woke America, public schools feature pornography but ban the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI ignores serial sexual predators like Larry Nassar but opens domestic terrorism investigations on a father who protests the school board that covered up his daughter\u2019s rape.<\/p>\n<p>FBI employees pledge to \u201cstop\u201d the election of a president and are heralded as heroes. The Department of Justice raids the home of the president\u2019s chief political opponent and expects to be congratulated for it.<\/p>\n<p>In Woke America, addition and subtraction are deemed white-supremacist. Doctors are taught to prioritize race essentialism and gender-bending over actual medical science. Engineering schools now require students to write essays about their biases instead of, you know,\u00a0<em>engineering<\/em>. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In Woke America, the federal government conspires with the world\u2019s biggest surveillance and communications platforms to surveil and silence speech, dissent, and \u201cunacceptable\u201d commerce.<\/p>\n<p>The examples above are not conjecture, but headlines. We are living in Woke America\u00a0<em>today<\/em>. And it\u2019s not going to stop. There is no limiting principle to totalitarianism \u2013 that\u2019s why they call it totalitarianism.<\/p>\n<p>Wokeism is not a fever that will pass, but a cancer that must be eradicated. The \u201cfree market\u201d won\u2019t do it. The corporate economy has been captured and is working for the other side: de-platforming, de-banking, censoring, purging.<\/p>\n<p>The Republican Party won\u2019t do it because it can\u2019t be bothered. Its leaders shy away from this moment because it is an indictment that\u00a0<em>they<\/em>\u00a0have been part of the problem all along.<\/p>\n<p>In this new reality, the only institution with the power to contend with and conquer the Woke Industrial Complex is the government of the United States.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>IV. Policy: The Fierce Urgency of How<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>This is what I mean about The Moment. The institutional Left does not intend to leave anything of the old republic behind for us to salvage.<\/p>\n<p>Constitutionalism, scientific inquiry, individual liberty, civil society voluntarism, patriotism, parental authority, free expression and free enterprise, religious pluralism, cultural diversity.<\/p>\n<p>They are coming for\u00a0<em>everything<\/em>. So National Conservatism must come for\u00a0<em>them.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We must forge a comprehensive policy agenda \u2013 for Congress, the presidency, and the states \u2013 to break apart the Left\u2019s every source of funding and center of power. Not as an act of partisan retaliation, but of national survival.<\/p>\n<p>To anyone still skeptical about the value of pointy-headed wonkery: how\u2019s the GOP doing on abortion these days?<\/p>\n<p>Just a few months after the greatest conservative policy victory in a generation, party leaders are afraid to talk about the Right to Life. They have no plan, no goals, not even intelligible talking points.<\/p>\n<p>This\u00a0is what elite political improvisation looks like. Without a commitment to grinding, empirical,\u00a0collaborative\u00a0policy work\u00a0<em>right now<\/em>, National Conservatism\u2019s most plausible vision of the future\u00a0is an image of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce\u2019s boot, stamping on an unborn baby\u2019s face. Forever.<\/p>\n<p>National Conservatives who actually want to win the fight against the Woke Industrial Complex have no choice but to embrace the fierce urgency of\u00a0<em>how<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>On Life, we have plenty of law review articles. What we need are specific proposals to eliminate the federal funding of the abortion industrial complex \u2013 in Medicare and in Medicaid, in the Obamacare exchanges, and in federal grants. Including, by the way, the federal student loan bailout which will now be going to federal grantee Planned Parenthood. If California and New York want to become abortion sanctuary states, they\u2019ll have to do it without federal dollars. And we don\u2019t just need leaders in Congress to propose legislation. We need leaders who will\u00a0force this debate and these votes\u00a0on must-pass spending bills.<\/p>\n<p>On Big Tech, trillion-dollar corporations like Google and Amazon control access to the market and the flow of information around the world. Facebook and Twitter work with Democrats to control public discourse. Meanwhile, their algorithms target and addict our kids at home and in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>This current structure is inconsistent with a self-governing society.\u00a0Big Tech doesn\u2019t rule us; we rule it.\u00a0Big Tech firms must be broken up, made common carriers, and their business model transitioned away from commoditizing kids for profit.<\/p>\n<p>The federal law enforcement, intelligence, and national security apparatus have all demonstrated their contempt for democratic accountability. These agencies must be brought to heel. Investigate them. Dismantle, rebuild, and reform them. And for crying out loud, the next time an FBI lawyer flagrantly breaks the law to spy on a presidential campaign, PUT HIM IN JAIL.<\/p>\n<p>The supposedly nonpartisan civil service is nothing of the sort. It is 2 million woke jihadists with a Biden-directed mission to target, harass, and discriminate against un-woke heretics. Congress must defund the ideological initiatives and re-orient these agencies toward service, not domination.<\/p>\n<p>Break up the university price-fixing cartel. Tax the endowments. Get serious about challenging the concentrated corporate power that distorts key facets of the economy: from banking, to book publishing, to baby formula.<\/p>\n<p>The family is the building block of everything that matters. Expand and streamline the child tax credit for working-class families. Create a tax code that rewards marriage, instead of punishing it.<\/p>\n<p>Rout the social and economic influence of China. Treat their companies, their US purchases, and their donations to nonprofits like what they are \u2013 state-owned actors, and arms of the Chinese Communist party.<\/p>\n<p>Promote bilateral trade that puts American workers at the center, instead of favoring economic models or the balance sheets of giant multinationals. The border wall and long overdue legal immigration reform must be made law of the land, not just passed through the House to die in the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>National Conservatives must go to school on Senate procedure, to know as much about the rules as the leaders who routinely lie to you about what is possible. Change precedent. Reinstate the filibuster for Biden judges. And if Democrats want to filibuster legislation, force them to do it for hours on the Senate floor, not from a phone call in their offices.<\/p>\n<p>But to do any of this requires breaking up the Uniparty.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>V. Conclusion: Changing the Game(plan)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The uniparty pretends that the only way to stop public schools grooming kids and segregating lunch rooms is to support hedge fund tax loopholes and war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the brilliant strategy of master legislative tacticians. It\u2019s hostage taking. It\u2019s substituting the needs of the nation\u2019s natural majority of workers, families, patriots, and parents for the whims of bond traders and women\u2019s studies professors. It\u2019s the stinking rot of corrupt elitism.<\/p>\n<p>But defeating it will take more than one \u201cred wave\u201d election. It will require a fundamental remaking of the Republican party itself.<\/p>\n<p>The great right-left divide has been replaced by an up-down divide separating elites and the country they look down on. The opportunity of\u00a0<em>this\u00a0<\/em>moment and for\u00a0<em>this<\/em>\u00a0movement is to reshape our politics to give America back to whom it belongs.<\/p>\n<p>To the families who don\u2019t want the price of public education and the internet to be the innocence of their kids.<\/p>\n<p>To the small towns ravaged by an opioid crisis that everyone forgot.<\/p>\n<p>To the middle-aged IT worker laid off from his job, but told to train his foreign replacement before he leaves.<\/p>\n<p>To the young mom and dad struggling to birth and raise children in an economy that works for everyone but them.<\/p>\n<p>We cannot simply say \u201ctrust us.\u201d Americans \u2013 especially the middle class \u2013 will doubt us, and should not be blamed for it. We have been letting them down for years. To prove ourselves, we have to do more than simply win the argument. We have to have a plan. And then we have to do it. This takes brains and preparation. But it also takes guts.<\/p>\n<p>Our task is to wrest our country, our government, our economy, and our institutions from what Chesterton called \u201cthe small and arrogant oligarchies\u201d who would savage and plunder the country for ideology, prestige, and profit. This task has never been more urgent.<\/p>\n<p>Our rich traditions \u2013 the virtues and freedoms that are the birth right of every American \u2013 are too precious to be negotiated away for yet another generation of globalization and financialization; or a uniparty majority parachuted in from a 1980s country club.<\/p>\n<p>Our duty to the ancient truths that bind the living, the dead, and the yet unborn is what compels us. A fierce dedication to the country we love is what unites us.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s get to work.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Rachel Bovard is The Federalist&#8217;s senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute.  She has more than a decade of policy experience in Washington and has served in both the House and Senate in various roles, including as a legislative director and policy director for the Senate Steering Committee under the successive chairmanships of Sen. Pat Toomey and Sen. Mike Lee. She also served as director of policy services for The Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following remarks were given at the National Conservative Conference on Sept. 12, 2022. This is the first real public speaking I\u2019ve done since my husband and I welcomed our<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":573,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1639099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/573"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1639099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1639099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1639099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1639099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}