Sen. Jim DeMint's speech at CPAC is pretty much the entire conference in a nutshell. After spending the majority of his address bad-mouthing the other Republicans in the Senate for not being a true conservative like he is, DeMint turned to the 2012 election, noting that the next president has to be more than just a good speaker, saying that "just because you're good on TV doesn't mean you can sell socialism to freedom-loving Americans."
The next president, DeMint asserted, had to be willing to tell Americans the hard truths, meaning that the federal government was going to do less and refuse any more bailouts while protecting the "faith of our Founding Fathers" and refusing to "give away our precious constitutional rights to foreign terrorists who want to destroy us":
It is worth noting that David Keen, president of the American Conservative Union which is the host of CPAC, noted in opening the conference that DeMint was the only Senator to receive a 100% on its last congressional scorecard.
UPDATE: Here is the text of DeMint's entire speech:
Now let’s talk a minute about the Presidential race in 2012. I hope Americans will expect more from their next president than a great speech.
You can't govern from a teleprompter.
Just because you are good on TV doesn't mean you can sell socialism to freedom-loving Americans.
We need a leader who will remind Americans how we became the greatest nation in history and what we need to do to make sure we’re still the greatest nation in the future.
This will require telling Americans the cold, hard truth … which is … if America is going to survive and thrive in the future, the federal government must do less, not more.
No more false hope and empty promises based on more failed government solutions.
We need to get back to the basics.
That means no more bailouts.
That means we will not spend money we don’t have.
It means we won’t throw out the faith of our Founding Fathers.
And it definitely means we won’t give away our precious Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists who want to destroy us!
