1st Amendment

Herman Cain: I Regret Saying Michele Bachmann Pandered To Evangelicals At Faith And Freedom

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 13, 2011, 6:53PM

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain

If he had to to it all over again, Herman Cain says he probably wouldn't have told TPM that Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) political-themed prayer at a social conservative and evangelical gathering in Washington June 3 sounded like the "the ultimate pander."

Cain told the Weekly Standard's John McCormack that that description was a mistake.

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Newt Gingrich

In Absentia, Newt Gingrich Tries To Woo Social Conservative Crowd

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 4, 2011, 9:07PM

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)

Newt Gingrich isn't appearing at the Faith and Freedom Conference in DC this weekend. He's pretty much the only Republican candidate for President who isn't. But as the event drew to a close Saturday night, he tried to make his case to the social conservative voters gathered here anyway.

Via a prerecorded video address, Gingrich stressed his connection with social conservatives, and promised that he understood the fight they face ahead.

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Herman Cain

Herman Cain: Bachmann's FFC Prayer 'The Ultimate Pander'

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 4, 2011, 7:40PM

Herman Cain

Don't expect Herman Cain to include a prayer in his keynote speech before the Faith And Family Conference in Washington tonight. After an interview with TPM Saturday, the ascendant Republican presidential candidate said the public prayer Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) included in her speech was "the ultimate pander."

After our interview, Cain asked me about the other candidate speeches I've seen covering FFC this year. There was no indication that Cain had seen them. I mentioned that Bachmann had highlighted her remarks with a prayer -- she led the crowd in a long, politically-tinged prayer ending in "Amen" at the end of her remarks Friday.

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Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum: Obama's Support For Entitlements Shows He Doesn't Believe America Is Exceptional

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 4, 2011, 11:57AM

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

Rick Santorum has a message for President Obama: Despite what you may think, America was pretty awesome before the mid-60s.

Santorum is one of two presidential candidates speaking during the Saturday sessions at the Faith and Freedom Conference in downtown DC. At home before the social conservative crowd today, he offered up a ripping speech that touched on his long history as a national culture warrior.

As is so often the case in a Santorum address -- or a speech by virtually all of the Republicans in contention for the presidential nomination these days -- the subject of American exceptionalism came up. Sanoturm has woven this into his foreign policy speeches before, but today he raised the idea in the context of the entitlement fight.

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Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney: President Obama, The Jobless Are Not A 'Bump In The Road'

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 3, 2011, 9:42PM

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney, the presumptive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year, made his speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference Friday night all about jobs.

Romney was one of the few speakers to mention Friday's jobs report, and he wielded it like a cleaver to attack President Obama before a rapt audience in downtown DC.

"Hear what he said today?" Romney asked the crowd. He criticized Obama for calling the unexpectedly high jobless numbers "bumps on the road to recovery" in an Ohio speech earlier in the day.

"No, Mr. President, that's not a bump," Romney said. "That's Americans."

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Donald Trump

Donald Trump Takes On Eric Cantor Over Joplin Relief

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 3, 2011, 8:12PM

Donald Trump stopped by the Faith and Family Conference Friday evening to drop more hints about an independent run for the White House, while questioning the veracity of President Obama's longform birth certificate and taking on GOP leadership over its approach to disaster relief funds.

"Representative [Eric] Cantor, who I like, said we don't want to give money to the tornado victims," Trump said. "And yet in Afghanistan we're spending $10 billion a month. But we don't want to help the people that got devastated by tornadoes. Wiped out, killed, maimed, injured -- we don't have money for them but we're spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan."

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Faith & Freedom Conference

Donald Trump: I Could Win The Presidency As An Independent

Benjy Sarlin | June 3, 2011, 7:36PM

So much for dropping out -- Donald Trump tells TPM he believes he can win the White House as an independent candidate, keeping his name in the presidential game despite declaring last month he would not run for the GOP nomination.

TPM caught up with Trump at the Faith & Freedom Conventionm after he left a closed door meeting with event organizer Ralph Reed and other social conservatives and asked how he figured he'd do as an independent.

"I think I'd do great," he said, telling TPM he believed he could win the White House. As for whether he'll run, he said it depended on the GOP nominee.

"Let's see what happens with the Republicans, who they put up," he said.

Asked if he was consulting with pollsters on a run, he said "I was leading in the polls when I decided to sign a very big contract -- I was actually leading."

Polls actually showed his support among Republicans imploding right before he announced he was dropping out, but Trump's reopened the door to a presidential conversation recently anyway. As with his flirtation with the GOP primary, he'd have to give up his show to enter the race.

Trump received a warm reaction from the crowd for his speech, in which he slammed Minority Leader Eric Cantor for demanding spending offsets for disaster relief in Joplin, MO and suggested Obama's birth certificate was forged.

George Allen

George Allen Offers Emotional Apology For Macaca Incident

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 3, 2011, 1:34PM

Former Sen. George Allen (R-VA)

George Allen is really sorry about that macaca thing. Five years after he threw the slur at a Democratic tracker during the 2006 Senate campaign, Allen offered a long and emotional apology to a small crowd at the Faith and Family Conference.

"During our last campaign, I never should have singled out that young man working for my opponent calling him a name," said Allen, who's running again for the seat he lost in 2006. "He was just doing his job."

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Faith & Freedom Conference

Haley Barbour Rejects House GOP's Disaster Relief Position

Benjy Sarlin | June 3, 2011, 12:16PM

In a rebuke to House GOP leaders, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told reporters on Friday that Congress should authorize disaster relief funds even if they are not offset with spending cuts. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has said that the emergency funds to help Missouri residents affected by deadly tornadoes should be paid for with cuts elsewhere, a break from recent precedent.

"No," Barbour said when asked if he agreed with Cantor. "I think disaster relief is not predictable. Emergencies caused by tornadoes, hurricanes are not predictable. Even if Congress, which as far as I know they never have, set aside a pot of money, as some have proposed, and said, 'Okay, here's this money we're going to use to pay for disaster relief' -- if they were to do that and we had a gigantic disaster that cost much more than that, surely Congress would go back and appropriate the extra money. And if they didn't have a place to offset it, they should still go in and do it."

Mississippi has been hit hard in recent years by hurricanes and floods, most notably Hurricane Katrina, and was also affected by the BP oil spill off the Gulf Coast. Barbour told reporters on Friday, however, that he believed President Obama's moratorium on drilling permits was more damaging to his state than the spill.

A spokesman for Cantor noted to TPM that there were instances under the Republican Congresses of the 1990s in which disaster relief was offset elsewhere, including supplemental assistance to Oklahoma City in the wake of a terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh.

This story has been updated.

Jon Huntsman

Huntsman To Social Conservatives: I Am One Of You

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 3, 2011, 11:59AM

Jon Huntsman

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman just finished speaking at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, and his message to the social conservatives in the crowd was clear: I am one of you.

This is something of a tough sell for Huntsman, who is best known on the national scene as a moderate and stands out from the Republican presidential pack for his support of gay civil unions. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and other speakers this morning got big applause by talking about "traditional marriage," but Huntsman understandably stayed away from the topic.

Instead, he tried to sell himself as one of the nation's leading opponents of abortion. That's another favorite topic here, and the kind of thing Huntsman needs to be known for if he wants to win over wary conservative primary voters.

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Faith & Freedom Conference

Haley Barbour: Don't Hold GOP 2012 Candidates To Purity Test -- Even On Taxes

Benjy Sarlin | June 3, 2011, 11:23AM

Speaking at the Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour warned Republican voters on Friday that they could not afford to apply strict purity tests to their presidential candidates, many of whom have raised hackles in conservative circles for various departures from the party line. Wading into very dangerous waters, he told reporters that even increasing taxes -- the ultimate Republican heresy -- should not be a dealbreaker.

Speaking at the Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington, Barbour told the audience of social conservatives that they "can't expert [the nominee] to be pure."

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Faith & Freedom Conference

Paul Ryan, Who Supported Auto Bailout And TARP, Says Government Shouldn't Pick Winners

Benjy Sarlin | June 3, 2011, 10:37AM

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) warned at Friday's Faith and Freedom Conference that the government needed to remove itself from the free market.

In a well-received speech, he offered his prescription for recovery: "Pay off the debt, keep our tax rates low and stable and predictable, stop picking winners and losers in Washington through the regulatory system, and get the system under control so we can flourish."

The line about picking winners and losers is a bit bold coming from one of the few Republicans who voted for the two most critical recent government interventions in the free market: TARP and the auto bailout.

Ryan recently defended TARP as a necessary measure to prevent an economic collapse in a major speech on his budget. His vote on the auto bailout comes up less often, but he told The Daily Beast in 2010 that he believed President Obama would have used TARP funds with less Congressional oversight to rescue the industry if the bill had not passed.

Faith & Freedom Conference

Paul Ryan Confronted By Bible-Wielding Protester Decrying Ayn Rand

Benjy Sarlin | June 3, 2011, 9:58AM

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Paul Ryan was chased by a protester waving a giant Bible and decrying libertarian author Ayn Rand on his way out of the Faith and Freedom Conference, a social conservative gathering in DC where he delivered a speech on his budget.

"Why did you choose to model your budget on the extreme ideology of Ayn Rand rather than the faith of economic justice in the Bible?" the blond, 20-something male asked. He said he wanted to "present" Ryan with a Bible to teach him how to help the "most vulnerable."

Ryan talked to reporters briefly and signed autographs for fans, largely ignoring the protester.

The Congressman never mentioned Rand in his speech, who he has cited as a hero in the past, but did discuss his faith and its connection to American government.

"Our rights our not given to us from government, our rights are given to us naturally, given by God," he said, adding that "applying these principles" is what keeps America from entering decline each generation.

Faith & Freedom Conference

Ralph Reed: 'Prayerfully,' Faithful Are Going To Win 2012

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 3, 2011, 9:40AM

Ralph Reed

Ralph Reed just kicked off the Faith and Freedom Conference in DC with a rousing speech that didn't mention this morning's job numbers or much about the economy at all.

Such is the stuff of FFC, where the focus is on faith and social conservatism. Reed called the event an "NFL mini-camp" for conservatives, where the focus will be on boosting turnout among the social right. Reed pushed breakout sessions focused on reaching out to "non-traditional conservatives" in the Latino, Asian American, African American and Indian American communities.

It will be the faith community, Reed said, that will seal the fate of President Obama and the Democrats next fall.

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Faith & Freedom Conference

Presidential Contenders, Top GOPers Roll Into DC To Kiss Ralph Reed's Ring

Evan McMorris-Santoro | June 3, 2011, 8:32AM

Ralph Reed

With all the talk of fiscal austerity and entitlement reform dominating these early months of the 2012 presidential cycle, it can be easy to forget that the Republican party is still the home to America's social conservatives. Though it may be on the backburner of the presidential race for the moment, the culture war is alive and well in many Republican circles.

This weekend it gets its due. Nearly all the men and women running for the Republican presidential nomination and a good portion of the party's top leadership will be on hand for the Faith And Freedom Conference, a social conservative confab organized by former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed.

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