Pence: GOP needs to unite over limited government

Media Credit: DAVE STONE / THE EAGLE TALKING POINTS - Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., talks with Michael Monrroy (left) and Ajay Bruno (right) before speaking at an event sponsored by the AU College Republicans Tuesday night in Mary Graydon Center. During his speech, Pence said the Republican Party lost control of Congress because it lost sight of its principles.

The Republican Party lost control of Congress in 2006 because the party had lost its way, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said Tuesday evening at an event in Mary Graydon Center.

"I still don't believe the American people hired Nancy Pelosi," Pence said to a crowd of about 30 students at the College Republicans-sponsored event. "I think they fired us. We lost sight of what it was that we had come to this city to do."

Pence decried Republican-sponsored legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act as betrayals of limited government ideology.

"When government expands, freedom contracts," he said.

The Republican Party must return to values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, according to Pence. He defined these values as pro-life, limited government and free-market principles.

"Democracy is almost meaningless if life is not sacred," Pence said. "The pursuit of happiness ... is an endorsement of the principles of freedom in the marketplace, of private property and private enterprise."

AU College Republicans President Will Haun said he agrees with almost all of Pence's ideas and said the Republicans need to adopt a message that will unite the party. The problem with the Republican Party is not the presidential candidates' conservatism, he said.

"This party is fractured - [the candidates] need to know what unites people," he said.

President Bush's administration has reached out to only certain areas of the Republican Party, specifically evangelical Christians, Haun said.

"What we have done is we have set [an abortion] litmus test for our nominee based on a division within the party," he said. "[Republicans] all have the same ideology of individual empowerment, or empowering institutions that empower individuals, like the family and the community."

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