INTERVIEW
SPRING 2014
expanding tax-free savings so people
can save for their health costs. And really, our policies would lead to lower
premiums and fewer costs for people.
VPR: Sticking with the topic of CPAC,
Democrats are saying that the rhetoric
emanating from it — including opposition to healthcare, immigration,
and gay marriage — is just too narrow
to appeal to a changing and diverse
country, which would make it hard
for any GOP candidate to amass the
270 electoral votes needed to win the
Presidency. What do you think that
the Republican Party can do to make
itself more electable, and do you think
that it can maintain its ideological
purity while maintaining widespread
electability? How do you reconcile
electability vs. ideology?
I think that there are certain parts of our
message that should be presented boldly
and we should be consistent with and those
are that we are the party that believes in
rule of law, limited government, balanced
budgets, low taxes, and less regulation. But
then, when you get beyond that core of issues, there are some other issues that will
have some disagreement even within the
party, and I think that if the party can accept
people and sort of agree to disagree on some
of these other issues beyond the core fiscal
ones, the party can grow more. If there’s
a purity test on every issue, you obviously
don’t grow. And it’s also acknowledging
that not every Republican’s the same. My
wife and I are Republicans, but we don’t
agree on every issue. So I mean it’s somewhat an acceptance or tolerance of people
who aren’t like you, who don’t have exactly
the same issues, but you’re drawn together
in a party because of certain basic beliefs.
And if you stick to those, I think your
party can get bigger. But also, you need
to branch out and find people who haven’t
been listening to you. Republicans have always been great on the Second Amendment
– you see somebody holding a gun aloft at
every kind of convention. However, they
haven’t always been as strong on the Fourth
Photo Credit: Sameer Fraser
Amendment. And while there’s not complete agreement in the Republican Party,
they are at least acknowledging that by me
being passionate about the Fourth Amendment, it’s attracting new people to the party. So I think that