UPDATE: Audio of speech
It was truly an honor to stand alongside so many amazing people today and watch what is possible when we work together for conservative principles that unite the grassroots. Congratulations to Fred Gruber for his upset victory today!
I know that Gruber will agree with me that none of this would have been possible without the help and support of a very large and critical volunteer team. Many long days and endless hours were sacrificed by so many to make today’s victory possible.
The Gruber team was absolutely amazing and did far more than anything I did towards victory. You know who you are and I personally thank you for all your efforts! I’m so proud to call each of you a friend.
I will write more about the “inside baseball” significance and happenings of today’s events in future blog posts, so be sure to check back. In the meantime, many have requested that I post the nomination speech I gave for Gruber today. Here it is:
I’m Jamie Radtke and I’m honored to be here with you this morning.
Fred Gruber believes that, as a party, we must remain steadfast and united in our conservative principles.
At first blush, the prospects for the conservative movement would seem bleak. Obama took Virginia twice, we have lost both U.S. Senate Seats, our majority in the State Senate, and the three statewide seats last year. The downward trend in the 7th district and in Henrico is even more discouraging, with Cantor losing 13,000 Republican votes at the polls since 2004.
The recent slating maneuvers that brazenly kicked to the curb almost 2,000 conservatives who wanted to participate in the Republican Party is not the right direction for our party either and certainly does not help us win elections. These tactics have been engineered and supported by Cantor, Linwood Cobb and others in leadership even though Republican Chairman, Pat Mullins, has repeatedly condemned this behavior in our Party!
When you look at policy it doesn’t get any better with Republicans last year passing the largest tax increase in the history of VA and the state Budget continuing to expand at extraordinary rates.
The Republican leadership in Congress has brought us big government spending, enormous debt, amnesty proposals, insider trading cover-ups, and Obamacare expansion.
The time is long overdue on a national and state level to reclaim the party conservatives founded. We can no longer allow it to be co-opted by rudderless Republicans.
The time has come to: stop the erosion of our liberties, stop defending bad policy, stop dividing the Party and rejecting conservatives, and speak the truth.
We must be united and willing to stand by each other – the pro-lifers, defense hawks, libertarians, tea partiers, gun owners, and the homeschoolers. We ill can afford to be kicking these people out of our Party. We must embrace them whole-heartedly!
It is not enough to be willing to defend the cause that is most important to you. We must be willing to fight for the cause that is most important to our fellow conservatives if we want to build a conservative majority in Virginia once again.
Fred Gruber will unite the 7th district behind our conservative principles, rebuild our coalitions, broaden our volunteer base and positively grow our votes at the polls.
