Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council discussed the state of conservatism, the importance of pushing back hard against the left, and the resignation of HHS Secretary Tom Price with SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Breitbart News Saturday.
“This is an opportunity for us,” Perkins said of Judge Roy Moore’s victory in the Alabama Senate GOP Primary. “The November election was a turning point, but we haven’t made the turn yet. The battle with the Establishment, the battle with the Democrats, the liberals, continues. We cannot back up. In fact, we’ve got to shift into high gear, and we’ve got to do even more.”
He said the 12th annual Values Voter Summit on October 13-15 in Washington, D.C. would be a great time for conservatives to come together and plan for the future, describing an impressive lineup of guests that includes Judge Moore himself.
“As we come together and lock arms, conservatives in this country who are concerned about the Constitution, traditional values – we may see some things differently, but if we can lock arms about the core values of this country that made it great, I believe we can take this country back. I think we’ve got a great opportunity. But we’ve got to act now,” he urged.
Perkins offered his perspective on one of the weekend’s big political stories, the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
“This is a part of the left trying to take out some of the most conservative members of the president’s administration,” he said.
“I talked to Tom this week. I’ve known Tom for years. I was in Washington before he got there, worked with him, supported him when he took on this role. Look, what he did, the optics of it, not good. But it was all cleared. It was all pre-cleared. He didn’t do anything different than previous secretaries. And it was done for security reasons because this administration is under constant threat,” he asserted.
“I understand that,” Perkins added. “We live that way. We get these threats. You’ve got groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center out there putting targets on people like Steve Scalise. When they respond to that by protecting themselves and having to take extra precautions, then they come after them, they attack them.”
“Here’s why they’re going after Tom Price: it’s because he really is the tip of the spear of what a large portion of the left cares about. It’s driven primarily by Planned Parenthood. Within the realm of authority that he had, he was making changes in Title X, moving this slush fund money away from the left. So they came after him,” he charged.
“I do not think he should have come out and said, ‘Well, look, I’ll pay for these flights,’” Perkins added. “Because when he did that, it suggested that he had done something wrong, and the left saw blood in the water, and they were all over it. We live in a glass house, and when you step into this realm, you’ve got to realize that. So sometimes when you’re in these positions, you’ve got to do things that are inconvenient.”
“I think hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have done this. He should have either declined the events that he had to go to, or publicly stated why he couldn’t travel to these things,” he suggested.
“The public doesn’t realize how vicious the left is,” he noted. “We had a gunman come in our building based upon the SPLC’s hate map and shoot one of our people. So we have to take precautions now.”
“We have to fight,” Perkins urged. “We cannot back down to the left because their future depends on their ability to use government to impose their view and values on America.”