The clips below are from Friday, June 17th, 2011.
Part 1 of 3:
Part 2 of 3:
Part 3 of 3:
You can read about Michele Bachmann’s June 18th, 2011 speech at the Right Online Conference here. (H/T Neil Simpson)
Reactions from her recent debate performance:
Profiles of Michele Bachmann:
You can contribute to her campaign right here. You can be her friend on Facebook here and also here.
Human events reported on Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s first speech on the floor of the US Senate today, and it was AWESOME. (H/T Kathleen McKinley)
Full story:
Freshman Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio delivered his maiden speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday and it was a speech all GOP presidential contenders should watch.
It was the best speech of the 2012 presidential cycle, except the person who delivered it has all but ruled himself off of the 2012 ticket on numerous occasions.
The GOP presidential field has been criticized for not having passion or conviction, and Rubio’s speech lit up the normally staid Senate chamber to the extent that this is possible. It had a clear argument, an emotional arc, personal tie-ins, and was delivered with conviction. Too often, even in the GOP, politicians talk about American exceptionalism as if it is an academic exercise.
Not Rubio.
Rubio owned it, his words personified it, and his speech was delivered in a way that led one who was watching to to think Rubio was humbled and still awed at America’s exceptional past and promise.
As Republicans learned in 2008, words and stories matter. It draws a public who does not get caught up in the drudgery of modern American politics in to care about the democratic process.
Add in the fact that Rubio is young and a minority, which are the two groups Republicans do most poorly with, and the speech and the messenger become even more dynamic, compelling, symbolic and important.Rubio said he came “from a hard working and humble family” that “was neither wealthy nor connected,” but that he “grew up blessed in two important ways:” He had a strong and stable family and was born in America.
He realized that “America is not perfect” and “ti took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved … and it would take another hundred years after that before they found true equality under the law.”
Rubio then movingly talked about how people who came to give their children a better life contributed to an “American miracle.”
He spoke of how a “16-year-old boy from Sweden, who spoke no English and had only five dollars in his pocket, was able to save and open a shoe store,” and “today, that store, Nordstrom is a multi-billion dollar global retail giant.”
He spoke of a “a young couple with no money and no business experience decided to start a toy business out of the garage of their home, and, “today, that company, Mattel, is one of the world’s largest toy manufacturers”
He spoke of the “French-born son of Iranian parents created a website called AuctionWeb in the living room of his home,” and, “today, that website now called eBay stands as a testament to the familiar phrase, ‘Only in America.'”
Rubio then talked movingly of the American dream and personified it by putting faces on the dream.
He said it was “story of the people who cleaned our office last night” who work hard so they can send their kids to college.”
He said it was “the story of the people who served your lunch today” who “work hard so that one day their children will have the chance to own a business.”
He said, in a reference to his father, the American Dream was also the “story of a bartender and a maid in Florida, whose son now serves here in this Senate, and who proudly gives his testimony as a firsthand witness of the greatness of this land.”
He then pivoted and said while “most great powers have used their strength to conquer other nations” America “is different” for America, “power also came with a sense that to those that much is given, much is expected.”
Rubio said that America’s greatness can be found anywhere in the world, “when someone uses a mobile phone, email, the Internet, or GPS” or “when a bone marrow, lung or heart transplant saves a life.”
Rubio then talked about how he “grew up in the 1980s, a time when it was morning in America” and that the 1980s, like the American century, faced challenges and triumphs but it was a “century where American political, economic and cultural exceptionalism made the world a more prosperous and peaceful place.”
He spoke of how the country is headed toward the wrong direct and that “we do stand now at a turning point in our history, one where there are only two ways forward for us. We will either bring on another American century, or we are doomed to witness America’s decline.”
Rubio said that since “every single one of us is the descendant of a go-getter,” “of dreamers and believers,” and “of men and women who took risk and made sacrifices because they wanted to leave their children better off than themselves” that “we are all the descendants of the men and women who built the nation that changed the world” whether “hey came here on the Mayflower, a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana.”
Rubio then quoted John F. Kennedy about how America is the “watchmen on the walls of world freedom” and asked if America declined, “who will serve as living proof that liberty, security, and prosperity are all possible together,” or “lead the fight to confront and defeat radical Islam that “abuses and oppresses women, has no tolerance for other faiths and seeks to impose its views on the whole world,” or stand up for children who “are used as soldiers and trafficked as slaves?”
Rubio asked, if America declines, “who will create the innovations of the 21st century?”
He answered that nobody will because “there is still no nation or institution in the world willing or able to do what we have done.”
“Now, some say that we can no longer afford the price we must pay to keep America’s light shining,” Rubio said. “Others say that there are new shining cities that will soon replace us.”
“I say they are both wrong,” Rubio emphatically said because the world “still needs America,” “still needs our light,” and “still needs another American century” and “with God’s help, that will be our legacy to our children and to the world.”
You can watch the video here. The full transcript is here. READ THE WHOLE THING if you can’t watch the video.
You’ll recall that this blog has been a strong supporter of Marco Rubio since the day he announced his candidacy. He, along with Michele Bachmann, Paul Ryan, Allen West and Jim Demint, are my favorite Republicans. I’m probably forgetting some, but those are the ones that come to mind. I think if I had to choose someone who best matched my views across the board, that would be Michele Bachmann. But Marco Rubio best matches my personal story, and my opinion of the United States of America.
Here’s my post on the day he won the seat: Marco Rubio wins Florida Senate race – first tea party senator!
And here’s my post on the day he announced he was running: Conservative Marco Rubio announces for Florida Senate seat.
He will be a great Senator. And some day, maybe he’ll be even more. IFYKWIMAITYD.
Michele Bachmann still hasn’t announced that she is willing to run for President!
I have therefore decided to protest her tarrying by posting two interviews that she did this past week, so that you can all tell me if you think that she would make a good President, or not. Maybe she will stop by and read our comments and realize how badly she is needed, and how well she would do as President.
First, Bret Baier spends some time with Michele going over her pluses and minuses: (MP3 version here – 3 Mb)
If you have Fox News, Bret Baier’s show is the best thing on that entire network.
Second, here is an interview with popular social conservative Mike Huckabee: (MP3 version here – 3 Mb)
And for those who do not want to watch videos or listen to MP3s, I found this brand new profile of Michele Bachmann.
Excerpt:
Michele Bachmann was a self-styled “education researcher” making a run for a Minnesota school board seat in 1999 when the question came up at a candidate forum: If elected, would she serve all four years?
Maybe not, she said.
Bachmann, now a three-term congresswoman and tea party favorite who may run for president in 2012, opened up about a confrontation she’d had with a state senator over Minnesota’s new school standards.
“I told him that if he’s not willing to be more responsive to the citizens, that I may have to run for his seat or find someone else who would do so,” she said, according to a newspaper account of the meeting.
Bachmann lost the school board race, but then knocked off the senator, a fellow Republican, just months later using the standards as her primary issue.
It was an early indicator of a recurring theme: Bachmann often wins by losing.
[…]The race would test her resilience because she would start far back. But as a little-known House member only a few years ago, Bachmann became hero of the conservative tea party movement in part by fighting losing battles with the GOP establishment. Her path to Congress was paved by failed efforts to pass a ban on gay marriage in the Minnesota Legislature.
“She is very good at turning lemons into lemonade all the time,” said Sal Russo, a California political consultant who came to know Bachmann through the tea party.
[…]From her first involvement in politics, the 55-year-old Bachmann has shown a determination to keep pressing forward and find opportunities, even when the way seemed blocked.
In the late 1990s, Bachmann was a stay-at-home mother of five in Stillwater, a scenic St. Croix River town east of St. Paul. Then she was drawn into a revolt over education standards.
[…]”People had been predicting her demise since Day One: ‘Oh, she’s a radical, she’s too far right, she’s too outspoken, she’s too inflammatory,'” Pulkrabek said. “The fact of the matter is, with the exception of the first race, she wins.”
Parlaying her school board defeat into a victorious legislative campaign, she moved to the state Senate and seized on a new issue.
Around Thanksgiving 2003, justices in Massachusetts ruled the commonwealth couldn’t prevent same-sex marriage. Bachmann hit the phones, reaching out to fellow conservatives about making sure gay marriage would stay illegal in Minnesota.
[…]Jeff Davis heard her public appeal through his car radio. Not politically involved at the time, Davis came to the Capitol and pledged to help Bachmann.
[…]”She’s an energizer. She influences people around her,” Davis said. The drive instantly elevated Bachmann’s political profile, he said. “It was a launch point.”
[…]Bachmann’s victory in that race brought her to the national stage and prompted a new focus on fiscal issues. She harnessed the outrage of the tea party, a fledgling political force inflamed by debates over government bailouts and a far-reaching health law pursued by President Barack Obama.
Her outspoken opposition did not stop the health law, but it got her much more television exposure and helped make her a face of the new resistance. In one Fox News interview, Bachmann urged viewers to flood Washington and “go up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, ‘Don’t take away my health care.'”
Amy Kremer remembers seeing Bachmann’s television plea while on a Tea Party Express bus heading between rallies in Washington state. The next week, Kremer joined Bachmann in the nation’s capital for a big tea party protest.
“You can tell the ones who have the passion, the fire in the belly and are truly speaking from the heart. She’s one of those,” Kremer said. “That comes through.”
The article goes on to explain how Michele got to be a three-term Congresswoman in one of the most liberal states in the entire country.
Congresswoman Bachmann is a leading advocate for tax reform, a staunch opponent of wasteful government spending, and a strong proponent of adherence to the Constitution, as intended by the Founding Fathers. She believes government has grown exponentially, with ObamaCare being the most recent example of its uninhibited growth. Congresswoman Bachmann wants government to make the kind of serious spending decisions that many families and small businesses have been forced to make. She is a champion of free markets and she believes in the vitality of the family as the first unit of government. She is also a defender of the unborn and staunchly stands for religious liberties.
Prior to serving in the U.S. Congress, Bachmann served in the Minnesota State Senate. She was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000 where she championed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Before that, she spent five years as a federal tax litigation attorney, working on hundreds of civil and criminal cases. That experience solidified her strong support for efforts to simplify the Tax Code and reduce tax burdens on family and small business budgets. Congresswoman Bachmann also led the charge on education issues in Minnesota calling for the abolishment of Goals 2000 and the Profiles of Learning in its school. She recognized the need for quality schools and subsequently started a charter school for at-risk kids in Minnesota.
Congresswoman Bachmann sits on the Financial Services Committee (FSC) and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The FSC is tasked with oversight of numerous financial sectors including housing, real estate and banking. This gave the Congresswoman keen insight into the housing crisis and credit crunch, leading her to be a staunch opponent of the taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street and the Dodd-Frank legislation. Serving on the Intelligence Committee was a welcomed opportunity for Congresswoman Bachmann as she has consistently advocated peace through strength to ensure America’s national security. As a mother of five children and 23 foster children, she has a deep appreciation for that portion of the Oath of Office in which members of Congress vow to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
In July 2010 Congresswoman Bachmann hosted the first Tea Party Caucus meeting because she saw the need for Tea Partiers to have a listening ear in Congress. She is seen as a champion of Tea Party values including the call for lower taxes, renewed focus on the Constitution and the need to shrink the size of government.
You can learn even more in the links below, particularly this one that contains the best speech I have ever heard from her. That speech covers her Christian faith in some detail, and mentions her interest in Francis Schaeffer’s apologetics, which also formed the views of famous worldview scholar Nancey Pearcey. Did you know that Michele once introduced famous Indian apologist Ravi Zacharias when he was giving a MacLaurin lecture? She is a big fan of Christian apologetics – she asked to go see Ravi Zacharias for her birthday present. A woman after my own heart. She doesn’t want clothes and jewelry – she wants to be able to defend her faith! You can listen to the lecture right here (14 Mb), and hear her gushing about apologetics and Ravi Zacharias. The topic is “Christian Apologetics in the 21st century”. The lecture was delivered in March 2002 in Minnesota, when Michele was a state senator.
You can contribute to her campaign right here. You can be her friend on Facebook here and also here.
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