NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will address Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) attendees on Friday afternoon at a Breitbart News-hosted event.
The event, at which Sessions will speak and also meet with CPAC attendees, is sponsored by Breitbart News and several grassroots organizations. Co-sponsors include Tea Party Patriots, American Family Association, Numbers USA, and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum.
The event will take place in the Chesapeake F room of the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel and Conference Center at 2:30 p.m. ET, almost immediately after former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks via an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on the main stage at CPAC.
“Mitt Romney lost the election because he trailed voters earning between $30,000 and $50,000 by 15 points and voters earning under $30,000 by 28 points,” Sessions said in a statement.
No party can win without working and middle class voters. The path forward for the GOP is to become the party of the American worker. The party of higher wages. The party of full employment.
The Democratic Party has already cast its lot: its members have endlessly enabled the President’s anti-worker policies, including his wage-cutting agenda of uncontrolled immigration and the bleeding of American manufacturing wealth overseas.
The American people are crying out for an alternative. They are ready and waiting for leadership that will dutifully serve their interests, and be willing to say ‘NO’ to the big donors and the special interests when they work to undermine the people’s will.
It’s time for a humble and honest populism that puts the national interest – the people’s interest – first.
“Sen. Sessions is the leading warrior for the grassroots in the fight for American sovereignty,” Stephen K. Bannon, Breitbart News’ Executive Chairman, said. “Breitbart News is proud to host the Senator to allow everyone at CPAC to meet him.”
Bush, who will speak right before Sessions, is likely to be asked about his positions on immigration and Common Core—both of which are out of step with the GOP electorate nationwide. Sessions’ remarks to CPAC can be viewed as a rebuttal to the potential 2016 candidate who’s been soaking up Wall Street donor money early on.
Bush has had several missteps with staffing as of late, and he is having serious issues with Republican base voters due to his outside-the-mainstream positions on issues like immigration. CPAC has largely been viewed as an opportunity for Bush to attempt to win over conservatives who he has been unsuccessful in wooing to his team, but Bush thus far—before his speech—has seen animosity from almost everyone in the GOP arena.
On Thursday at CPAC, while being interviewed by radio’s Laura Ingraham, even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie—who supports amnesty for illegal aliens—slammed Bush’s immigration stance.
Here’s a partial transcript of the exchange between Ingraham and Christie over Bush’s immigration position, as provided by Ingraham’s executive producer:
Ingraham: “According to the last Gallup poll, only 7% of Americans think that we should have increased levels of immigration– 7%– and following on that, Jeb Bush has recently said that immigrants are more entrepreneurial, harder working and more fertile than [Americans].
He even suggested that Detroit should be repopulated with foreign workers, immigrant workers, to spur the economy in Detroit. At a time when we have so many Americans unemployed, tens of millions of Americans out of the workforce, what is Governor Christie, in a national setting– let’s say you decide to run for President– going to do on these issues. there seems to be a disconnect between the people and the pols on immigration– a big one.”
Christie: “First off, I think that statement is misdirecting the priorities because what I would be concerned about would be the people that are in Detroit right now. The hardworking people who stuck with Detroit and who have stayed there.
We want to create economic opportunities for them, we want to create a better educational system for them so that they can have a better future, so that’s misdirecting the goal here first of all.”
Ingraham: “But Jeb Bush says they’re more entrepreneurial, harder working, and more fertile than Americans”
Christie: “Well, first of all, I’m not mentioning the fertility thing. The fertility thing is not where we should be headed with this.
But the fact of the matter is that the the most entrepreneurial people in the world are the people of the United States and that’s why folks want to come here because that’s the system we’ve set up and what we’ve created.
And, Laura, what we need to get back to in this country is creating a economic atmosphere where people want to come here legally and create a great life, because the people who are already here are doing that for themselves and their families, and so my focus on Detroit would be to say how do we make that city, for the people who are there, how do we make it better for them from economic perspective, from an educational perspective so that people will want to come to Detroit because there’s great opportunity and not for other reasons.”
Ingraham: “Well, what’s happened now is you have 58 million [native born] Americans of working age who are operating outside of the workforce. It’s a stunning number of people. 62 percent labor force participation rate. Abysmal. It’s embarrassing for our country.
And yet there is an unending hunger for foreign workers coming into this table mostly pushed by big business. And again, the disconnect between what American people need and what politicians (in both parties, this is a bipartisan deal here) want. And how do you get the middle class hard working American in– I don’t know– Columbus to look at Democrats and Republicans and say, ‘They represent me.'”
Christie: “Well, what they need to look at– more than Democrat or Republican– is look at what the person is saying and what they’ve done in their career. And in my career I have always tried to put the hardworking people of my state first… The focus unfortunately with a lot of people in politics right now is what they say in the editorial page of the New York Times or the Washington Post, when what we should be concerned about is– what I heard when I went to 37 states last year– they want opportunities for great careers for themselves and for their children and we’re not talking about that and we better start talking about that because these folks– the hardworking middle class in this country– are the backbone of our society and that’s what we have to be focused on.”
The Drudge Report on Thursday piled on Bush, highlighting a piece from the Washington Post’s Bob Costa about how Bush once called the Republican Party “anti-woman,” “anti-science,” and “anti-gay.” The paper wasn’t alone, as many political figures at CPAC tore into the idea of having another Bush as the public face of the GOP, even if they didn’t directly name him.
“As we look to recent elections, and we compare 2004—the last race Republicans won—to 2008 and 2012, by far the biggest difference is the millions of conservatives who showed in ’04 who stayed home in ‘08 and ’12,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, hinting at why another Bush wouldn’t succeed in beating the Democrats.
They fall primarily into two groups. Number one, evangelical Christians showed up in massive numbers in ’04 but stayed home in ’08 and even more stayed home in ’12. And number two, Reagan Democrats—largely ethnic Catholics up and down the rust belt, they tend to be blue collar union members, gun owners, pro-life, strong national defense. Ohio steel workers.
The central question, if we’re going to win in 2016, is how do you bring back the millions of conservatives who have stayed home the last two elections and that’s one of the reasons I’m looking so seriously at this race is because if you look at all the candidates—we have to nominate a candidate who can energize and mobilize those conservatives and bring them back to the polls.
“If we are to rejuvenate the economy and get the government out of the way, I think we could have growth like we had during the Reagan years but we can’t have milquetoast middle-of-the-road Republicans because they end up not being much different than the Democrats,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said in his own exclusive interview with Breitbart News. “What we really need are Republicans who will boldly be what they’re for and that is limited government and lower taxes, not revenue-neutral tax reform whatever that is. We ought to be for lowering taxes and with that, millions of jobs will be created.”
Even Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) seemed to recognize the need for Republicans in the U.S. to avoid nominating another establishment Republican such as Bush.
“I’m often asked what are the comparisons and what are the differences between U.S. politics and British politics—well there are a lot of differences but there are I think a lot that draws us together,” Farage said in remarks at his own Breitbart News-hosted meet-and-greet at CPAC on Thursday. “The English-speaking world, common law and the shared history and things that we’ve stood together and fought for over the centuries that have really mattered. I’m a big fan of America: I spent 12 years working for American companies. Did you hear that? I said working. I’m a politician who had a job before I did this. How about that? How unusual?”
What’s happening in the U.K. with UKIP rising to fight the Conservative Party establishment could very well happen in the U.S. if the GOP establishment continues to control the party infrastructure.
“In my country, we have a two-party system—the first part’s a post-electoral system, but despite all of that a third party, an insurgent party, has come through and is poised perhaps in 69 days to do very well and possibly even hold the balance of power,” Farage said.
We’ve done it by getting votes from across the spectrum but we’ve done it in particular by winning votes from people who run their own businesses, who get up every day in the morning and who work hard—and find themselves in our modern corporatist economy and I say that as opposed to capitalist economy.
They find themselves struggling, and they are looking for some champions to stand up for them and to help them. I have a feeling that the Republican Party—and I know you guys want to do well, and it may come around—but if the Republican Party is going to win now it has got to get those kinds of men and women back voting Republican. To do that, you’ve got to find the right candidate to run for you as president.