Sen. Rick Scott slams Democrats for saying 'you can protest, but you can't go to church'
Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida delivered an impassioned speech at the Conservative Political Conference, where he slammed Democratic leaders for supporting protests during the coronavirus pandemic while banning people from going to church.
Scott, who served as governor of the nation’s third-largest state from 2011 to 2019, appeared at CPAC Friday, which took place in Orlando. His speech served as a pep talk for conservatives gathered in the audience, warning about the dangers he said Democrats pose to the United States while defending the principles that made America “the greatest country in the world.”
After describing Democrats as an “absolute mortal threat to our freedom, to our prosperity, to our way of life, to our families and the future of the United States of America,” he told the audience that “they want to take away your freedom of speech (and) they want to take away your religious liberty.”
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He warned that if Democrats established a permanent stranglehold on the levers of power in the United States, the Armed Forces would be forced to use “the politically correct pronouns that Pelosi asks them to use” while cowering “in the shadow of Communist China.”
Scott predicted that Democrats would turn the U.S. into “another decaying example of socialism” and painted a bleak picture of a future in a socialist country: “Don’t suppose you have freedom to worship or that the churches they closed down during the coronavirus are essential. Don’t complain about men winning women’s sports.”
“If any of this sounds impossible to you, you’ve got to wake up. This stuff’s already happening,” he said. Scott spent the latter portion of his speech defending conservative principles and the founding principles on which the U.S. is based.
“We need to stand up and say our fundamental principles are not only right and true, they are the only ideas that work,” Scott asserted. “The American family is an idea that works. We believe families should be the center of our lives and it is crucial to civilization. Religious liberty is an idea that works, but Democrat mayors and governors say you can protest, but you can’t go to church.”
“Individual responsibility works,” he continued. “We believe our children have the right to be born and go to the school of their choice.”
“These are our principles and we will never compromise or moderate them to appease anyone. We care too much about each of our families and our country to compromise or appease. These principles can and will lead us to a majority coalition in America,” Scott vowed.
“The conservative principles that beat in our hearts are the only ones that actually lift people to better lives and build a great and compassionate nation,” he remarked. “The left’s so-called progressive ideology, that old broken-down idea called socialism, has not only never worked, it has destroyed more countries, families, and lives than we count.”
“It’s up to each of us to explain why the Democrats’ old socialist plans are a coming disaster,” Scott added. “We’ve got to explain why … globalist socialism is destined to fail even more spectacularly in today’s fast-moving world than it has in the past.”
“Our battle to win the future starts today,” he concluded. “It’s time to get to work making this great country better than it has ever been.”
CPAC, an annual gathering of conservative grassroots activists, kicked off Thursday and is scheduled to run through Sunday when former President Donald Trump is slated to speak. Besides Scott, other speakers on the first full day of CPAC included Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Jeff Brain, the CEO and founder of the alternative social media platform CloutHub.
