CONCLUSION

Unintimidated

If you picked up this book, I suspect you are frustrated about the prospects for positive change in our country. Now that you’ve come to the end, I hope you see why I am so optimistic about the future.

Yes, things do look bleak in Washington today. But if you look beyond our nation’s capital, you will see positive change is taking place all around us. Across America, citizens are casting their ballots for fiscal responsibility. Courageous political leaders are taking on the entrenched interests, delivering reforms relevant to the lives of their citizens, and showing that they will not be intimidated by threats and scare tactics.

And voters are rewarding men and women who stand for principle with second terms—or, in my case, the chance to continue my initial term.

I know some are saying that conservatives need to change our principles and moderate our approach if we want to win elections. We’ve heard that tune before. In the 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher recounted how, when she first became Conservative Party leader in 1975 at the height of the Labour Party’s power, “People said we should never be able to govern again.

“Remember how we had all been lectured about political impossibility?” Thatcher asked. “You couldn’t be a Conservative, and sound like a Conservative, and win an election—they said. And you certainly couldn’t win an election and then act like a Conservative and win another election. And—this was absolutely beyond dispute—you couldn’t win two elections and go on behaving like a Conservative, and yet win a third election.

“Don’t you harbour just the faintest suspicion that somewhere along the line something went wrong with that theory?” she said.1

Today, we can sound like conservatives and act like conservatives—and still win elections. Those who say we can’t don’t see what I see in Wisconsin and what my fellow governors in states all across America see. We don’t need to change our principles. What we need is more courage.

We need to do more than simply say no to President Obama and the Democrats’ big-government agenda. Republicans must offer Americans big, bold, positive solutions for our nation’s challenges—innovative policies to reform entitlements, get our debt under control, reduce the size of government, improve education, reduce dependency, and create hope, opportunity, and upward mobility for all of our citizens.

We need to make not just the economic case for our reforms but the moral case as well—showing how conservative policies and ideas will make America not only a more prosperous but also a more just and fair society.

Above all, we must show Americans that we are more concerned with the next generation than just the next election.

If we do all these things, Americans will stand with us.

I know because they stood with me.

Just as the union bosses tried to intimidate us in Wisconsin, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are now trying to intimidate conservatives into backing off the cause of reform. Just like the protesters who occupied the capitol in Madison, they believe that we will cave under pressure and give in to their demands for higher taxes to fuel continued fiscal profligacy.

We need not fear their threats. From my experience in Wisconsin these past three years, I can say one thing with confidence: Americans will back politicians who have the courage to make tough, but prudent, decisions.

Whenever I get down on what is happening in America today, I think back to our founders. As a kid, I loved learning about the history of our country. Maybe I was a bit of a geek, but I thought of our founders almost like superheroes—bigger than life.

It would have been wonderful to visit our nation’s capital and other historic sites on the East Coast, but growing up as the son of a pastor in a small town, I didn’t have a whole lot of money. For us, a family vacation entailed driving as far as our used Chevy Impala station wagon would take us, and back.

So in the fall of 2011, I had the opportunity to visit Philadelphia for the first time and I got up early and visited Independence Hall.

When I set off for what had once been the Pennsylvania state house, I half expected to see the colonial equivalent of the Hall of Justice. Instead, what I saw was a small, simple room full of desks and chairs much like the ones we sit in today.

You see, the founders weren’t superheroes. They were ordinary people just like us who had the courage to do something extraordinary. They didn’t just risk their political careers. They didn’t just risk their businesses. They literally risked their lives for the freedom we hold so dear today.

What has made America exceptional is that throughout our history, in times of crisis—be it economic or fiscal, military or spiritual—there have been men and women of courage who have stood up and decided it was more important to look out for the future of their children and their grandchildren than their own futures.

To win the fight for America’s future, we must summon that courage anew. We must offer a better vision for America: a country that lives within its means, empowers its citizens to build better lives, and leaves its children better off than we were. A country where courageous leaders make the hard choices necessary to balance budgets, improve education, and make government smaller, more efficient, and more effective.

That America may seem distant today, but I assure you it is within reach. And the path to this America does not begin in Washington, D.C. It starts in the states.

We can reach our destination so long as we remain unintimidated.