[note: I gave the following speech in Bryan and San Antonio, Texas during an Americans For Prosperity "November Is Coming" event. I had no idea that people would ask for copies of the speech and for me to publish it online. Below is the video from San Antonio followed by the exact notes I read from.]
My name is Paul Croteau. I am a co-founder of FTR Radio.com, the largest online radio station solely dedicated to conservative content. I am a husband and father; I am a hard working computer guy by day and a red, white and blue bleeding patriot by night. I also happened to get my MBA from the Mays Business School in 1996.
But who am I really? Where did I come from? And why are you listening to me today?
My 12th Great Grandfather is Mayflower passenger John Howland, and fellow passenger Edward Winslow and eventual governor of Plymouth Colony is a distant uncle. I’m also a distant cousin of John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart (so don’t get me too riled up.) If I make you laugh it might be thanks in part to my relationship to Freddie Prinze or circus performer Tom Thumb. If I paint a picture of understanding or speak words that touch you, it might be my genetic links to Norman Rockwell, William Wordsworth or Edgar Allen Poe. But the lineage I am most proud of is my relationship to my 4th cousin Samuel Adams, organizer of the ORIGINAL Tea Party and father of the American Revolution.
I’m telling you this because I think it is vital that we all understand who we are and where we came from. My friends, when you look across this great land of ours, what do you see, and how did it get that way? Where did we come FROM? We came from the RIGHT… right? Look at a map of the world. America is here; Europe is there. We came here from the right. And when we expanded the size of America it originated from the right. All good things come from the right. After all, “He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the RIGHT hand of the father.”
So let me expand on this idea a little further. “Let me be clear.” When you look at the great moments in our country’s history, from where did they originate?
- Where did the Boston Tea Party come from? The political RIGHT.
- Who enacted the nation’s first-ever Civil Rights Act? The RIGHT.
- Where did the vast majority of suffragists fall on the political spectrum (including Susan B. Anthony)? The RIGHT
- What about the two black female co-founders of the NAACP? (Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, Republicans.)
- What party in 1916 elected the first woman to the U.S. House? (Republican Jeannette Rankin.)
- The first woman mayor in the US? (1926, the Honorable Bertha Landes of Seattle)
- Where did every single African-American in Congress until 1935 sit? The RIGHT.
- What about the first black member of the House of Representatives (South Carolina’s Joseph Rainey, 1870)
- First black U. S. Senator? (Republican Hiram Revels of Mississippi)
- The nation’s first black Governor (Pinckney Pinchback, Louisiana)
- The First Hispanic Governor was a Republican (Romualdo Pacheco, CA, 1875)
- The first Asian-American U.S. Senator (R – Hiram Fong from Hawaii)
- The first woman on the Supreme Court was a Republican (Sandra Day O’Connor)
Are you seeing a trend here? These wonderful accomplishments came from THE RIGHT!
What else did the Right accomplish? Republicans:
- Established the Transcontinental Railroad
- Passed the Land-Grant College Act
- Passed the 14th Amendment (to protect slaves)
- Republicans passed the 15th Amendment, extending to African-Americans the right to vote.
- Wrote and passed (40 years apart) the 19th Amendment
- Appointed the First Jewish Cabinet Secretary
- Established the Federal Highway System
- Passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act
I could go on and on. But there are those on the LEFT that like to call Republicans and the RIGHT in general the “party of NO.”
And in some cases they are correct. For example, the Right said NO to
- Slavery and the Ku Klux Klan
- Plessy v. Ferguson (which declared “separate but equal” to be constitutional)
- Military and educational segregation
- Ronald Reagan said NO to bigger government and NO to Communism, and his NO to higher taxes launched an economic boom, ending the stagnation and “malaise” of the Carter era.
My friends, as my lengthy but PARTIAL list shows, so many of the good things about America came from the RIGHT.
But times have changed.
Both parties have changed.
Our government has changed.
And the focus of millions of Americans has changed.
America is in trouble. Ours is an amazing and beautiful country that has done more good for the world than any other country in human history. Whether you look at things from a human perspective, or a financial perspective or a charity, creativity or productivity perspective, AMERICA is unmatched! Contrary to what our president and his kool-aid drinking followers think, it is my firm belief that the world should be THANKING America for all it has done, not condemning America for what it has failed to do.
Earlier this week, in Wisconsin, President Obama said: “The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place.” In other words the man is still blaming Bush.
I have to ask you Mr. President. what policies are you referring to?
- Are you referring to massive government spending? You’ve taken spending to levels never before seen in our country’s history. You’ve made trillion the new billion.
- Are you referring to isolationist partisan closed-door politicking and back room dealing?
- Are you referring to passing reams of legislation without ever reading it?
- Are you talking about telling the American people that we have to PASS a bill so we can find out what’s in it?
Mr. President, America has had enough. Enough of your campaigning, enough of your failure to lead, and enough of your far left ideology. You said in that same speech week “In November, [we are] going to have [a] choice.”
Yes, November IS coming. And WE are coming at you – from the RIGHT.
America is suffering now and our children may suffer tomorrow because two years ago 65 million people made the mistake of voting for a charismatic yet woefully inexperienced far left ideologue hell bent on molding this great nation of ours into some theoretical academia-created reality-defying government controlled monstrosity.
Not on my watch. Not on OUR watch.
And Mr. President, please don’t think that I’m a racist for disagreeing with you. I disagree with you because you are 100% liberal, not because you are 50% black. I – like the other 1.2 million members of Americans For Prosperity – are motivated by your ACTIONS and POLICIES, not your appearance. (Why is that so hard for some people to understand?)
And for those of you on the Republican side of the aisle: Do NOT make the mistake of thinking that you are safe from my wrath, or from our wrath. There are FAR too many Republicans that are no different than their power-hungry, tax dollar spending, arrogant and condescending counterparts on the left. And that’s what this bus tour is all about.
Policies from the LEFT continue to drive the Obama agenda toward bigger government. We want politicians to oppose big government programs or any other freedom-killing policies – or we will REMEMBER in NOVEMBER.
- We want to see you supporting efforts to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with real reform that puts patients first
- We want you to Oppose Cap-and-Trade Energy Taxes and any related EPA regulation
- We want you to Oppose any more Bailouts
- We want you to Oppose any attempts to regulate the Internet
WHY do we ask this? Because WE THE PEOPLE know our history. We know where we came from. We know where so much of the greatness of our country originated. It came From The Right. And we know that in order to save our country from further damage, those of us on The Right have to act now, with conviction, faith and steadfast determination.
I would like to finish with a quote from my aforementioned cousin Sam Adams:
“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
Are you an experienced patriot? Are you willing to stand up to the left? I am, and I will. Together, from the right, we can regain control of our government and our future. Thank you all for being here, and God bless our great nation
Americans For Prosperity is making a difference. In fact, this grassroots collection of more than one million Americans has somehow captured the attention of Captain Transparency and the Hope and Change Express. Here is an excerpt from his speech in Austin, TX last week:
Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s a insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people.
A Supreme Court decision allowed this to happen. And we tried to fix it, just by saying disclose what’s going on, and making sure that foreign companies can’t influence our elections. Seemed pretty straightforward. The other side said no.
They don’t want you to know who the Americans for Prosperity are, because they’re thinking about the next election. But we’ve got to think about future generations. We’ve got to make sure that we’re fighting for reform. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t have a corporate takeover of our democracy.
Ok, have you stopped laughing yet? Captain Transparency, the same president that eliminated the transparency czar position, has the audacity to ask for others to “disclose what’s going on?” The fact of the matter is that there are no secrets here. AFP is a grassroots organization running in 30 of our 57 states. It is not funded by big oil, big pharma or George Soros. If it is, could someone please get to work on finding my check and sending it to me?
In an effort to let politicians know that we are holding them accountable and will vote them out of office if they act stupidly, AFP has launched the ”November Is Coming” bus tour. Texas is next in line, the tour will stop in Waco for an 8am Thursday morning meeting, move over to Bryan for a 6pm event, and then head to San Antonio for a Friday evening event from 6-8pm. I have been asked to speak at all three events, my schedule prevents me from making it to Waco in time, but I will be at the podium in both Bryan and San Antonio.
I’ve been working with AFP for a few months now and am quite impressed by the quality , energy and focus of their people, especially the awesome Texas chapter led by Peggy Venable. I strongly encourage all of my Texas readers to try and attend an event this week. If you are out of state, check out the AFP web site and see if your state has a chapter. If we want to win back control of our government we need to be organized and be active. Americans For Prosperity can help you help America.
A post by 
Kerrie Heretic at Right Wing News has caused another predictable wave of lefty hissy fits. Their responses show once again how radical liberals are like playground bullies. They use their power, groupthink and imagery to get their way. But when someone actually stands up to them and punches them in the nose, the wall comes down and the liberal bully becomes a crying, whiny baby that runs home to mommy screaming “not fair!” (see Scut Farkus and Grover Dill from “A Christmas Story” for a fine example.)
The thread includes the inevitable “Faux” News reference. Liberals can’t stand the fact that there is one single news channel willing to call bull**** on the left when it lies and distorts. The left has groups like Media Matters that exist solely to find any statement possible on Fox or from the Right that could be twisted into something worthy of screaming about. But the left is the master of actual distortion.
- Before the 2008 election did Fox News bury the video of Obama praising the blatantly anti-Semitic terrorist supporter Rashid Khalidi (former Arafat mouthpiece)? Nope. That was the L.A. Times. In its defense they say that simply reporting on the video is enough. Publicly stating that Obama is on the tape saying “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” and there has been “genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis” might cause voters to think twice about voting for Obama. Forget about reporting the news, the L.A. Times was given a tape and specifically withheld it to keep the facts out of the public eye.
- Before the election did Fox News bury the Anita Moncrief ACORN whistle blower / Obama donor list story to avoid giving the public factual and pertinent information prior to the election? Nope. That was the NY Times. (visit Anita’s new project “Emerging Corruption” and take a look at the donor list for yourself.)
I ask my liberal readers to consider how would you feel if a video of George W. Bush praising Timothy McVeigh at a fund raising event was commented on but not released by the Wall Street Journal? What if evidence of GWB twisting campaign law to enable millions of dollars of untraceable donations to flow into coffers his was suppressed or summarily ignored?
Let’s take a look at a few more examples and then ask the question “how can anyone sincerely complain about Fox news as a distorting news organization?”
- Did Fox falsify military service documents in a highly public attempt to smear the president the month leading up to the presidential election? Nope. That was CBS.
- Did Fox remove weapons from a photograph of the supposedly peaceful Gaza floatilla and present it as evidence of non-violence? Nope. That was Reuters.
- Did Fox crop video of a man legally carrying a rifle at an Obama rally, then use the cropped video to support its bias that conservatives are potentially violent racists? Nope. That was MSNBC.
- Did Fox repeatedly refer to Tea Party members with the childish term “tea-bagger” and make repeated jokes to belittle possibly the largest populist movement in recent American history? Nope. That was CNN, MSNBC and pretty much every other liberal news channel or blog.
- Did Fox suppress the ACORN scandal, one that may have swayed many important 2008 elections? Nope. That was every other news channel.
- Did Fox show bias by claiming that conservatives are evil for having references to Obama as Hitler, but at a different time have no comment whatsoever when the Hitler reference was associated with GWB? Nope. That was CNN.
- Did Fox downplay (or fail to report at all) the global warming scientist email collusion and distortion scandal that shows how the most costly and impactful legislative events in our lifetime are based on politics, money and the desire for power? Nope. That was everyone else.
I could provide many more examples of true leftward media bias and the legitimate and proven attempts to alter election outcomes. But it would only fall onto deaf ears. No matter what I write and whether or not I back it up with facts the left will call me a racist and deny reality. Fox News is not perfect, but it is willing to provide coverage and opinions that the other kool-aid drinking networks can’t or won’t deliver. You might say they are the faux news channels out there. Oh the irony.
