President Reagan's Remarks at the Annual CPAC Dinner on February 11, 1988

Ladies and gentlemen the .

President of the United States and mrs. Reagan.

Yeah.

Ok.

May we have the presentation of the colors.

Please remain standing thank you.

Thank you all thank you very much David.

Thank you thank you very much great to be here thank you please.

He is great to be here tonight and I'm delighted and see so many old friends and now let's get right to it.

First there's the INF treaty how do you think I felt when Gorbachev called a week and a half ago and asked me of our first group of on-site inspectors could be the denver broncos pass defense and then then along came the House vote on contra aid.

I felt so terrible and nearly called dan Reeves and john elway to tell them what a rough week I'd had.

But seriously why the denver broncos are all terrific athletes and people each one of us has to congratulate the Washington Redskins.

Believe me the house action on the contrary board was a missed chance at a victory for peace in Central America.

It's great to know there are some people in Washington who played a whim and believe me I'll be getting back to that topic in a few minutes by the way is something odd happened just before I got here tonight that I think you should know about.

I got a message from dave keen reminding me that this was the eve of lincoln's birthday and suggesting I go upstairs and check on the ghost in Lincoln's bedroom.

I did what do you know they would Stan Evans dressed as Abe Lincoln and he kept saying listen to jesse helms actually I do want to thank you for that warm welcome but I hope tonight is going to be like what happened to that thought I knew back in Hollywood and those movie days.

You know how I hope I haven't told you this one before we had an actor that was in Hollywood he was only there long enough to get enough money to go to Italy because he aspired to an operatic career and then after some time there at milan italy where he was studying he was invited to sing at La Scala the very spiritual fountainhead of opera they were doing piaci and he's saying the beautiful area vesti la giubba and he received such thunderous and sustained applause from the balconies in the orchestra seats that he had to repeat the aria as an on-court and again the same sustained thunderous applause and again he saying vesti la giubba this went on until finally he motioned for quiet and he tried to tell them how foolish heart was at that reception his first time out but he said I have sun vesti la giubba nine times now my voice is gone.

I cannot do it again and a voice from the balcony said you will do it to you get it right well let's get it right tonight and let's start where we should start a couple of weeks ago I talked about the state of our union and tonight I'd like to talk about something that i think in many ways as synonymous the state of our movement during the past year plenty of questions have been asked about the conservative movement by some people who were surprised to find out back in nineteen eighty there was such a thing I mean a powerful new political movement capable of running a victorious national campaign based on an unabashed appeal to the American people for conservative ideas and principles we conservatives have been in Washington now for a while and we occasionally need to remind ourselves what brought us here in the first place our unshakeable wrote deep all-encompassing skepticism about the capital cities answer to the UFO that by their ever tottering but ever flickering saucer in the sky called the prevailing Washington wisdom and right now.

Some of the Potomac sears are saying we conservatives are tired.

Where they're saying we don't have a candidate that we don't know what to do with ourselves this year.

I even hear some of those candidates in the other party saying how easy it is going to be to win the presidency for their liberal agenda because they can run on of all things this administration's economic record time and I Got News for them.

They're seen flying saucers again.

I've even got a quote for them it's from Napoleon the morning of waterloo had breakfast with his generals.

This is true he said I tell you what Wellington is a bad general the English your bad trips will settle the matter by lunchtime on my fellow conservatives I think that's exactly what this year is about settling the matter by lunchtime letting the Liberals in Washington discover once again the lesson they refuse to learn letting them know just how big our election year will be because of booming economic growth and individual opportunity and how big an election year ball and chain they've given themselves with a seven-year record of opposition to the real record but most of all letting them know that the real friends of the conservative movement.

Aren't those entrenched in the capital city for 50 years the movement are an entity that gets heard from in a big way every four years and who I promise you are going to be heard from this year i'm talking about those who if the case is aggressively put before them will vote for limited government family values and a tough strong foreign policy every single time I mean I'm talking about those believers in common sense and sound values your friends and mine.

The American people you see those who underestimate the conservative movement of the same people who always underestimate the American people take the latest instant as i mentioned in recent months some people and I'm not mentioning any names because i don't want to build up any candidacies before New Hampshire but you know who they are have actually taken on themselves of proving to the American people that they've been worse off under this administration than they were back in the Carter years of the seventies.

Now i agree with you this takes some doing.

How do they manage it well you see any statistical comparison of the two recent.

Administration's would start with 1977 - 1981 is the budget years of the last administration and 1981 to 1987 as the pertinent years for this one that sounds reasonable enough but our opponents have a new approach one that would have embarrassed even the Emperor's Taylor's they take the years 1977 go up to nineteen eighty-three and then he stopped so you see not only - 1984 1985 not get counted in their database but they include in record four years of the last democratic administration as common as Warren Brooks pointed out in an article published in The Washington Times this week all of the foreshortened Reagan gains are nullified by the Carter losses so they look like no games at all or worse losses are successes in short are statistically buried under the last administration's failures but the truth is otherwise because under the last administration real per capita disposable income rose at only one percent annual rate only half the two percent rate of increase under this.

Administration a game that is total 12.4 percent in six years under the last administration median family income declined six point eight percent while under this administration it went up 9.1 percent or take real after-tax labor income per hour.

If you use the approach adopted by our liberal critics you see a four and a half percent decline but the truth is that that figure fell eight and a half percent under the last administration and we turn this around and accounted for an eight point nine percent increase under the last administration the average weekly wage went down an incredible ten percent in real terms which accounted for the worst drop in post-war history here again we've stopped the decline and that's not to mention what all this is meant in terms of opportunity for women for blacks and minorities the very groups are opponents say they most want to help well since the recovery began seventy percent of the new jobs have been translated into opportunities for women and black and other minority employment has risen twice as fast as all other groups minority family income is also increased at a rate over forty percent faster than other groups in addition since 1983 too . mind 9 million people have climbed out of poverty and the poverty rate has declined at the fastest rate in more than 10 years.

So think for a moment on what these statistics mean and the kind of political nerve and desperation it takes to try to sell the American people on the idea that in the nineteen eighties.

They never had it so bad the truth is we're in the 63rd month of this non-stop expansion real gross national product growth for 1987 was three-point-eight percent defying the pessimist and even exceeding our own forecast which was criticized as being too rosy at the time by more than one-half percent inflation is down from 13 and a half percent in 1982 only around four percent or less this year and there's over 15 million new jobs.

So believe me I welcome this approach by the opposition and I promise you every time they use it.

I'll just tell the story of a friend of mine who was asked to a costume ball to short time ago he slapped some egg on his face and when is a liberal economist the reason i spell out these statistics and stress this economic issue should be very clear.

You know some cynics like to say that the people vote their pocketbook but that's not quite the . economic issues are important to the people not simply for reasons of self-interest.

They know the whole body politic depends on economic stability the great crises have come for democracy's when taxes and inflation ran out of control and undermined social relations and basic institutions the American people know what limited government tax cuts deregulation and the move toward.

Privatization have meant it's meant the largest peacetime expansion in our history and I can guarantee you they want to throw that away for a return to budgets beholden to the liberal special interests.

No I think the economic record of conservatives in power is going to speak for itself but now let's turn to another area for two decades we've been talking about getting justices on the Supreme Court who cared less about criminals and more about the victims of crime justices who knew that the words original intent referred to something more than New Year's resolutions and fed diets and then seven months ago a seat opened on the Supreme Court and even before our first nominee was announced a campaign was planned unlike any that has ever been waged for or against a judicial nominee in the history of our country and let me acknowledge once again my admiration for one of the courageous defenders not only in our time.

But in all time of the principles of our Constitution yes of its original intent judge robert book.

One one of America's most cherished principles the independence and integrity of our judiciary was under siege and the American people have always been the ultimate guarantor of the Constitution began to say with clarity and finality.

It must never happen again so when I nominated a judge who could as easily have been my first nominee.

There was hardly a peep of protest and judge kennedy is now going to be justice kennedy and since our opponents won't i'll let you in on a secret judge kennedy will be just the kind of Justice that you and I have been determined to put on the court.

Anyway any man who teaches law school in a tri-corner hat and a powdered wig is okay by me on original intent.

Let's look at how far and how successfully we've carried the battle into the lower courts just look at the statistics on criminal sentencing in few places can you see more clearly the collapse of the liberal stranglehold on our courts the most recent statistics show federal judges imposed prison sentences that averaged thirty two percent longer the nose and down during nineteen.

Seventy-nine robbery sentences were ten percent longer drug offenses thirty-eight percent longer and weapons or fences 41-percent longer the great legal debates of the past two decades over criminal justice have at their route been debates over a strict vs expensive construction of the Constitution the Constitution as originally intended by the framers is itself tough on crime and protective of the victims of crime for so long the liberal message to our national culture was tune in turn on let it all hang out and now they see conservatives taking the lead as our nation says no to drugs and yes the family and absolutely to schools that teach basic skills basic values and basic discipline and it's no wonder that our nation at meyers a man who believes in teaching values in education and talk Turkey to teachers parents and educators such as our secretary of education bill bennett so I say to you tonight that the vision and record that we will take aggressively to the American people this November is a vision that all Americans except a few on the left share a vision of a nation that believes in the heroism of ordinary people living ordinary lives of tough courts and safe streets of a drug-free America where schools teach honesty respect love of learning and yes love of country a vision of a land where families can grow in love and safety and where dreams are made with opportunity this is the vision this is the record this is the agenda for victory this year.

Well that's the record then on the economy and the social issues.

Now let's turn to foreign policy I want to be clear tonight about the vote on conf raid it was a setback to the national security interest of the United States and a sad moment for the cause of peace and freedom in central america until now the carrot and stick approach has worked in forcing a communist regime to relax some of its repression but now the action with the House of.

Representatives removes one part of that formula and goes only with the carrot the effect of this vote then was to trust the promises of democracy of the sandanista communists the kind of promises that no communist regime in history has ever carried out and that this regime was likely to carry out only under continued pressure the effect of this vote was to rest the hopes for peace and democracy in Central America purely and simply on the word of the communist regime in Managua this course is and i repeat a risk to America's national security but you know I read something the other day and it's worth a note here.

One of those opposing aid to the Freedom Fighters said it was important to get a 20 vote margin.

Well as you know it was nothing like that if we could have turned around four or five votes we would have won last week's vote.

Is not the final word only a pause.

Last week the bad news was the lost vote in the house but the good news was our support in the Senate and the overwhelming number of house republicans who voted with us and those 47 Democrats who braved the threats of reprisals to vote for contra aid.

So let me make this pledge to you tonight we're not giving up on those who are fighting for their freedom and they aren't giving up either.

I'll have more to say on this in a few weeks for now i'll leave it at this.

Get ready the curtain hasn't fallen.

The drama continues.

How while we're on foreign policy let me turn for just a moment to what i said in that December interview while mr. Gorbachev was here.

You know Ben Wattenberg was one of the journalists there and he brought up a speech that i made back in nineteen eighty-two to the British Parliament and he asked me if what i really was saying was what i said in England that if the West remained resolute the Soviets would have to at some point deal with its own internal problems and crises that the tides of history are shifting in favor of the cause of freedom.

Well I believed then and I believe now that we must consider what we're seeing seeing or that steps in that direction.

The hardly mean that hardly means accepting the Soviets at face value.

Few of us can forget what that has led to in the past FDR was quoted as saying during his dealings with Stalin the Soviets in 44 Stalin doesn't want anything but security for his country and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return.

Noblesse oblige he won't try to NX anything and we'll work with me for a world democracy and peace.

Well no there is no room for illusion our guard is up our watches careful.

We shall not be led by or misled by atmospherics we came to Washington with a common sense message that the world is a dangerous place where the only sure route to peace in the protection of freedom is through American strength in no place has this pieces of this thesis of peace through strength been tested more than on the matter of intermediate-range nuclear forces INF in deploying over 400 SS twenties with over 1,200 warheads against our friends and allies in Europe and Asia over the past decade the Soviets were playing a high-stakes game of geopolitical blackjack the prize was Europe.

The strategy discredit America's deterrence and undermine the NATO alliance but we and our allies turned over a winning hand.

Deploying in Europe pushing to and ground-launched cruise missiles that provided an effective counter to the new Soviet missiles and Moscow finally stop topping mistakes what I would like to c is for some of those who have been praising our INF treaty to show they've learned it's true lesson and vote to maintain an adequate defense budget our work on a strategic defence against ballistic missiles and yes aid to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua.

And while we're on the subject of our nation's defense you know there's a man i want to talk about tonight who said once that the definition of happiness was service to a noble cause no one has done that better and tonight i salute cap Weinberger for all he's done for me.

But at the same time we must not look at any single step alone we must not see not just the INF treaty but also the advance of SDI and most important the growing democratic revolution around the globe against totalitarian regimes we should engage the Soviets in negotiations to deter war and keep the peace.

But at the same time we must make clear our own position as i have throughout these negotiations and setting down to these negotiations we accept no moral equivalency between the cause of freedom and the rule of totalitarianism and we understand that the most important change of all is this that containment is no longer enough that we no longer can be satisfied with an endless stalemate between Liberty and repression that arms reduction negotiations development and testing of SDI and our help for freedom fighters around the globe must express the clear goal of American foreign policy to deter war.

Yes to further world peace yes but most of all to advance and protect the cause of World freedom so that someday every man woman and child on this earth has a birthright the full blessings of liberty.

We've seen dramatic change in these seven years.

Who would have guessed seven years ago that we would see tax rates dropped from seventy percent to twenty-eight percent the longest peacetime economic boom in our history or a massive shift in world opinion toward the ideas of free enterprise and political freedom.

I know some of you were impatient with the pace of this change if I might repeat a story I told when I addressed you for the first time as president I had the pleasure in appearing before a Senate committee once while i was still governor and i was challenged there because there was a republican president in the White House at the time had been there for some time and hadn't we corrected everything that had gone wrong and the only way I could think to answer him is I told him about a ranch many years ago that Nancy and I acquired it had a barn with eight stalls in in it which they kept cattle cows.

We want to keep horses well of the accumulation within the stalls had built up the floor to the place that it wasn't even tall enough for horses in there and so I was day after day with a pick and shovel lowering the level of those stalls which had accumulated over the years and I told this senator who would ask that question that I discovered that you didn't undo in a relatively short time what it had taken some 15 years to accumulate.

We have been not only undoing the damage of the past we put this nation on the upward road again and in the process the differences between the liberals and conservatives have become clear to the American people we want to keep taxes low they want to raise them we send in budgets with spending cuts and they want to ignore them.

We want the balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto and they oppose them.

We want tough judges in tough and he crime legislation they hold them both up in the Congress.

You'd be surprised how many judges are waiting out there before they so that they have to pass on them before they can take the their office and they've been waiting for months we want a prayer amendment they want to come to a vote in the house.

We stress firmness with the Soviets they try to pass legislation that would tie our hands and arms negotiations and endanger our defenses but I say we have a program and a plan for the American people.

A program to protect American jobs by fighting the Menace of protectionism to move forward at flank speed with SD I to call American a conscience on the issue of abortion on demand dimension as I did in my state of the union address the overwhelming importance of family life and family values that's a case to take to the American people.

That's a fighting agenda I intend a campaign vigorously for whoever our nominee is and tonight I ask each of you to join me in this important crusade.

What four more years of economic progress and the march of world freedom.

They must help us this year help us settle the matter before lunchtime help make 1988 the year of the water too liberal I just have to add here when you look at the figures over all that they have the nerve even to still be out there in campaign we mustn't just think that selecting the president is enough.

We've been doing that for more than half a century we have in the 50 years between 1931 in nineteen eighty only four years in that period where there are Republican majority in both houses of the Congress two years in Eisenhower's regime two years in Truman's but for 46 of those 50 years they controlled the Congress every Democrat president except for those two years had a Democratic Congress every Republican President had a Democratic Congress except for those two years in Eisenhower's regime and now in the last seven years added that.

Yes for six of those years we had one house but except for the four years for 58 years it will be our opponents holding the House of Representatives where so much legislation and authorization for spending and so forth.

Comes in and in all those 58 years there have only been eight single years in which there was a balanced budget.

So who's at fault for the deficit today.

Back when the Great Society when the war on poverty began which poverty one.

From nineteen sixty-five nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty in those 15 years the federal budget increased to five times what it had been in 65 and the deficit increased to 38 times what it had been just 15 years before its built-in its structural and you and I need to get representative is not only in the executive branch but out there in the legislature so that we can change that structure that is so billion and the trends of with so much harm well I've gone on too long throw all of you here but I just want to.

I couldn't resist because you're the troops.

You're out there on the on the frontier of freedom.

One young soldier over there in Korea one of our men saluted me when I visited there and very proudly said mr. president we're on the frontier of freedom well so are you thank you God bless you all.