And be so kind to identify yourself to our guest speaker. I do see that you subscribe to the extent evans school. He always argued the 1964 california primary and the 76 North Carolina primaries were the two most important primaries. Absolutely, very much so. Gives me an opportunity to Say Something i dont often have the chance to say, and it is that we have some heroes in the conservative movement. We have the Barry Goldwaters, Ronald Reagans, jim demint and others. But we also Unsung Heroes. One of them, my friend morton blackwell, most americans have not heard of him but he is a person we all stand on the shoulders but we are deeply in his debt. On a short list beside beside mf Unsung Heroes is inane named tom ellis who was a. Of former senator jesse helms in North Carolina. In my opinion, ellis almost and randomly elected three of the best senators of the 20th century. Jesse helms first election 1972, john east in 1980 and faircloth. Tom is still active, a lawyer in North Carolina. And tom ellis and jesse helms literally told Ronald Reagan and his team in 1976, by the way, reagan before he got to North Carolina had lost four or five primaries. They lost the florida primary, New Hampshire primary, and things were looking really, really dark. And so he wants to come to North Carolina, and tom ellis and jesse helms said the coming. We dont want you here. We will handle the campaign. Well take care of it. Dont coming. However, if you insist on coming and you have to do four things. And jesse helms and tom ellis told reagan these four things. The four things work you must attack forward, attack kissinger, tag to give what of the panama canal and you must attack detente. Reagan said im okay with that. He did that and it leaves North Carolina and that afternoon of the election, ma flying to wisconsin to a friend of mine on the plane who shall remain nameless, great conservative today even, said that they were riding reagans withdrawal speech, that is going to choose to consider withdrawing when he got to wisconsin. When he got to wisconsin they learned they scored an upset victory and one by 5247 in North Carolina. The next primary is not for five weeks in texas. Reagan probably couldnt have held his Campaign Together that long, and so it was huge. The texas primary came along in early may. Texas has 100 counties, reagan carried 100 counties. Thats how he became president. The other ironic aspect is, goldwater in 64 and reagan in 76 both lost and then they also one. Its not original with me. Maybe george will said it, but goldwater was the most, senator goldwater running for president in 1964 was the most consequential loser in american political history. And george also said Barry Goldwater won the 1964 election. It just took 16 years to count the ballots. Before hanging chad. Any other questions from the audience . Morton . Im supposed to wait until i have the microphone. If you dont raise your hand, you wont get it. And knowing you will have a statement anyway. No. Im going to ask the question but im going to lay the groundwork. In 1980 when reagan showed up the nomination, George Herbert walker bush was the last surviving serious opponent to him and reagan so did a. If you defined everybody who supported reagan at the time that he sewed it up, and you call them reaganites, and those who are not supporting reagan at that point, dont qualify as reaganites even though many of them did support him when he became the nominee. Since reagan, the Republican Party has nominated a number of other candidates for president of the United States. It happens that none of those nominees met the definition of reaganites which i just gave y you. And heres the statement. I think its high time for us to nominate another reaganite. The question is who should that be . Thank you, martin. Well said. In this very building, some years ago, dr. Lee edwards had a Panel Discussion on one of his 20 plus books that he is written, and i remember frank shakespeare, great conservative, ambassador frank shakespeares in the audience, and frank asked a version of the question, morton. He said in all of the years weve had the conservative Movement Since the early 50s through now, weve only thrown up from the grass roots one principled conservative, Ronald Reagan. Why havent the conservatives done a more successful, better job . No one had the answer. I certainly didnt at that time. I am very, very encouraged, morton, going forward. Since 1984 we have seldom had a major top tier conservative running for republican nomination. Weve had some good conservative but quite frankly many of them if not most of them werent top to. In 2016, i think well have a traffic jam of limited government, constitutional conservatives running for president. Now, without giving away who my favorite candidate is, and i would be happy with any number of them right now, what i do is market and thats what ive done for 50 years is market. When youve got a product, a cause, you have to position, if you want to be successful, your product opposite the competition. If we assume our competitor in 2016 is going to be a washington insider, i. E. Hillary clinton, i dont think you want another washington person to run against. I think the strongest candidate would be somebody in the states. So we have many, many good governors, mike pence, scott walker, bobby jindal, rick perry, rick scott in florida. We have many, many to choose from. And i think that would make the strongest ticket in 2016. Now, probably shouldnt say this but i think its important for us as conservatives to chart the future to understand it. Back in the 60s, there was an element in public policy, politics that was going to take over the conservative movement, the Republican Party and under the leadership of bill buckley who successfully fended off these people and their identify, known today as libertarians. The libertarians are back stronger than ever, and in many ways thats a good thing. We dont agree on all the issues but there are many things we do agree on. I think that is important for conservatives to find Common Ground with the libertarians. And i think if we dont do that its going to be difficult for us to win president ial elections as well as many governors and the senate elections. In my lifetime i have not seen a finer principled conservative for a major office than Ken Cuccinelli run for governor in virginia this past november. A libertarian candidate rant against them, got 7 of the vote. Thats an outrage in my opinion. So in order to have a strong united voting base as we can, i think conservatives would be well advised to look to maybe come back to washington for Vice President ial nomination, take a good look at rand paul. Rand paul has a large following. Not only libertarians, young people out there. You bring a ticket together like that i think it could be just unbeatable. Mostly i was on the right side. Your question, you refer to traffic jam. Isnt that part of the problem . In effect the last three or four election cycles weve had three or four strong conservative candidates who split the vote on the right, republican primaries, online casino, moderate established figure to basically prevail with 40 of the vote. Remember it is the primary. Exactly. You are exactly right. Im not sure that a lot of the conservatives who have recently run were top tier, but we had some good candidates there. And that is a serious problem. The primaries, and morton knows 1000 more about this than i do, but the early primaries, many of them are in the northeast and it is winnertakeall. So with 30 you get all of the delegates. When you go down south is proportionate for the most part. So if youre a conservative and you get 30 of the vote, its divided otherwise, everybody else splits the vote so the moderate, a jeb bush, a Chris Christie type could get a good number of votes and 100 of the votes in the east. It is a problem and hopefully the conservatives will unite behind one candidate and avoid this problem we have had in the past. Let me mention one thing here along that line. Periodically, people asked me, richard, why do you think that john mccain is not a conservative, or what you think mitt romney is not a conservative . Ive developed something i called a foolproof test whether youre a conservative. Foolproof guarantee. I never saw Ronald Reagan in the late 60s and throughout the 1970s, and i slam a fair amount, but i never saw him except i saw the friends of the conservative movement around him. When you so reagan, theres and niece and theres Morton Anderson and his dick allen and this judge clark and paul axel. So as not to when reagan became president january 20th, 1981, conservatives moved into the white house within. Not enough, but some of us are meeting with a president ial candidate, i guess i should not identify him here, in the past, and he goes around the table and he says, 20, 25 of us, and this is morton, what is your issue . What is your issue . Tony, what is yours . Gary, what is yours . Im towards the last of the table and he says richard, what is yours . I said with all due respect to my friends, governor, they are all wrong. No one has talked about the most important issue. The most important issue is personal. We all have learned from many years ago, personnel is politics. I explained that to the candidate and i said if youre fortunate enough to move into pennsylvania avenue, if youre elected president and all that moves in with you, fortune 500 ceo types, wall street types. Our issues are over with. We have lost. Personnel is policy. When somebody tells you theyre conservative, look at them. Who is around and . Who do they walk with . Some of these governors that i talk to, certainly mike lee, rand paul, ted cruz, they walk with us. Some of the governors to do the same. If you havent walk with conservatives for the last 15, 20 years, if you move into the white house you are not likely to all of a sudden surround yourself with conservatives. I have, our company of 77 employees, our president , mark comes into my office with four or five other executives and said richard can we study this from and we think it should go over your. Im not likely to say no, youre all wrong. I trust these people. Ive congress and the judgment. They suggest i do x. , i am highly likely to do x. Same for the president of the United States. So personnel is policy. Speaking of mark fitzgibbons. Richard, the tea party emphasizes the constitution, you talk about rand paul, ted cruz, mike lee. The three of them have in common their emphasis on the constitution. In distinguishing between the conservative movement and established republicans, what role do you see the Constitution Place in the debate for 2014, 2016, and how we can move America Forward to essentially reclaim the constitution . Well, im really hesitant to have any conversation about the constitution with my friend mark, who is a worldclass constitutional scholar. But maybe theres no more important issue out there than the constitution. I dont think i said this line into in my prepared remarks, that the Democratic Party entirely has come unhinged from the constitution. Most of our Republican Leaders are unhinged. Can you just imagine that republican, Democratic Leaders of congress analyzing something with this foreign bill. Is this constitutional . Is this legislation pass constitutional muster . Its highly unlikely that the thought ever cross their mind. We all remember Nancy Pelosis famous comment when asked where in the constitution is obamacare allowed, permitted, and she said, are you kidding me . She had no interest in that. But, mark, that is one of the things that has launched the tea party, their faithfulness to the constitution. I think too many people in politics have forgotten about it. We have probably seen, heard more about the constitution and the last five years or so and maybe in the previous 50 years. So its very healthy. So i encourage all of you out there, emphasized the constitution, make sure that the candidates that you support, but you get involved with, that they understand the constitution and that theyre going to be faithful to the constitution and our founding documents. Marcus taught me a lot and one of the things he likes to stress is madison in federalist paper 44 were madison talks about there is a remedy available to the people and that is called elections. So madison said if we are heading have politicians who are not faithful the constitution, there is a remedy in the constitution and we can vote them out of office. Let me make one additional comment, john, about what morton said earlier about bush 41. It reminded me that there were those reaganites, like morton and 76 and all through the late 70s, 1980, and in my opinion president reagan, he wasnt saint reagan. He did make some mistakes in his first decision after he got the republican nomination was probably his worst decision, and that is when he selected george bush to be his Vice President. George bush campaigns, george h. W. Bush campaigns throughout the 80s and says trust me, i am a conservative. If im nominated, elected i will govern as a conservative. 1984 Republican Convention in dallas, texas, im there with Howard Phillips, the president , chairman of the conservative caucus, and dan rather introduces one night on television. So he asked us about the Vice President we explain hes not in our opinion a conservative for this reason, this reason and this reason. The next night dan rather has the Vice President on and he says, mr. Vice president , last night i had Howard Phillips and Richard Viguerie on and they say you are not a for these of various reasons. What do you say, mr. Vice president . Are you a conservative . Yes, dan, im a conservative but im not a nut about it. And he certainly wasnt. He is sworn in at noon january 20, 1989. By sundown that very day every reaganite in the Reagan Administration that could be identified was fired. Not in the coming days or weeks. That day in the first five hours by sundown they had politically executed every reaganite. If you supported reagan in 1980 primary fight, you were fired. So remember, conservatives, who you walk with. Personnel is policy. Question in the back. What are your thoughts on how conservatives should address the changing demographics of the United States . This isnt the same country it was when goldwater and reagan ran in 84. If you look at the results of the toward the president ial election and a line for the fact that mitt romney was no conservative given by any stretch of imagination, 59 of the white vote, but was wiped out by substantially other ethnic and racial groups. You mentioned of course you in marketing. How would you market conservatism to the new demographics in the United States . Thank you. Thats an excellent question. I got asked that question last night on the lou dobbs show. In terms of the minority, hispanics, asians, there are many things we need to do. In my opinion, number one above everything else, lets say how to get the hispanic vote . Very simple. Ron hispanics. Go out there and look for the marco rubios, that ted cruz and susanne martinez. We have many, many ethnic conservatives out there any think we ought to showcase and put them forward and that will go a long way towards communicating through these various minorities that we are in sync with them. I am a big believer that weve got to change this, the rhetoric of course, is how we talk about people here who are here illegally, illegal aliens. By think that these people for the most part with her exception dont want to come here but theyve got their economy and their own home country that is disaster, governed by a socialist or a marxist, and whatever we can do within the constitution to help these people get a free market rule of law established in their own country, their economy is going to improve. We are seeing fewer mexicans can over because their economy is improving and they are instituting some free market reforms in mexico. And so weve got to make i dont care how high you build a fence. People will figure ways to get over, around, under. I think where to go to the root cause of why these people are coming here. They dont want to come except the economy is so terrible. But another problem is that for the most part, the people who americans are seeing as republicans, they dont talk to people who are part of the country class, versus the ruling class. Ruling class does not to talk to average americans. We put the ted cruz and the rand paul and the mike lee, out there, and mike pence and scott walker, they will communicate quite nicely our views and our values to unmarried women, the hispanics, asians. So as long as our message is going through the John Boehners and the Mitch Mcconnells and eric cantors of the world we will have a problem. We need to change the messengers that people dont have a problem with our message. They have a problem with the messengers. Thank you, john. [applause] im always pleased to learn something at heritage and one of our somewhere in between the lines of the 44th federalist paper is, its the primaries, stupid. Ive learned t