David A. Keene

Conservative Political Action Conference

Washington, DC
February 10, 2006

Some years ago Bob Kreible helped us initiate an award to be named for Ronald Reagan, which we set up to recognize the extraordinary efforts of conservatives who have made a difference.

We decided from the beginning that our annual Ronald Reagan Award should not go to the generals of the movement, but to the men and women working in the trenches who sacrificed, and in so doing set an example for others. In past years, the award—which is our highest—has gone to grassroots organizers, taxpayer advocates, and those whose names may not be household names, but whose work has affected us all.

Each year, co-sponsoring organizations and conservatives around the country nominate dozens of men and women for this award, and at the ACU/CPAC board meeting, our director sifts through the nominees to select one winner for the recognition that many of them deserve.

Tonight for the first time I have to report to you that we were unable to select one winner, and have therefore, decided to present the award to two individuals, both of whom have fought for their beliefs, made a difference, and paid a price for standing for principal.

I think it would be safe to say that the last year or so has not been a period in which we’ve had as many victories as we might have hoped for. Neither the Republicans in Congress nor the administration seems willing or capable of coming to grips with out-of-control spending. Many of those we’ve supported over the years appear to have forgotten why we’ve supported them and the small government conservatism that has motivated us and around which our movement has been built has been derided by pundits and some within our ranks as hopelessly naïve.

But the President and Republicans in the Senate have stood firm on one thing: their commitment to reforming out-of-control federal judiciary. While they’ve faltered, but in the end, and largely because of two people we honor tonight they’ve realized that reform is a necessity and continues to be so, and that none of us will tolerate political weakness in seeking it.

Our first winner began as a victim of an out-of-control judicial system staffed by judges who think the framers were kidding when they wrote a constitution to limit government power rather than a blank check giving government the power to do just about anything it wants regardless of the rights of the individual. [She] ultimately became a symbol whose treatment at the hands of such a judiciary convinced many that judicial reform is a goal that we cannot afford to abandon.

Our second was a key to making that reform a real possibility. Without him, I think it’s safe to say that Judge Alito would not be on the court today, for reasons that I’ll go into. But let me tell their story.

Back in 1997, a woman purchased a house on the Thames River in Connecticut. It wasn’t a mansion, the yard was overrun with brush and weed, but it was her dream house. She went to work; she made it her home, and thought that she had a place where she could live the rest of her life.

Less than a year later, however, she was threatened with eviction by eminent domain as the local government decided that it could get more tax revenue by taking her property and the property of her neighbors and turning it over to developers who would upgrade it and generate more tax revenue.

Some of her neighbors moved. She did not. Some of her neighbors caved in. She did not. She went to court to protect her property after the local government condemned it. She won at trial. The government appealed. And ultimately she lost by one vote in the Supreme Court of her state.

She didn’t stop but went to the United States Supreme Court. Last year, in a disappointing decision, the United States Supreme Court reached an outrageous decision, deciding in effect, that her home, and others like it, could be taken by the government for private use, so long as by doing so could generate more tax revenues for itself.

Just as Sandra Day O’Connor was outraged by the decision and wrote that “the specter of condemnation now hangs over all property, nothing is to prevent the state from replacing a Motel 6 with a Ritz Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.” The result was a public backlash.

The court did say that states could prevent this sort of thing by taking action and as of today as a result of this decision and this woman’s refusal to buckle under, some 40 states are considering, passed or are about to have introduced legislation which would essentially nullify the decision as it affects property in those states.

At the same time, thousands of homes are currently under immediate threat by governments that wish to enhance their tax revenues. But her activities, and the case that resulted from it, have woken up many. Last week, the Washington Post reported that one major bank, BB&T, based in North Carolina, has made a policy decision that it will finance no development on land seized by eminent domain.

Anyone, around the country, who doubted the need for reform had those doubts removed by the decision in the case forced to the Supreme Court by one of our winners tonight: Susette Kelo of New London, Connecticut. We will hear from her in a moment.

She will share this year’s Reagan Award, which as you know, includes a stipend of some $10,000, with another individual who enters the story as a staffer, first to the Senate Judiciary Committee, then to majority leader Bill Frist.

Charged with mobilizing support within the Senate and among outside groups and support of conservative federal judiciary nominees. In the course of his work, he discovered that several Democratic senators and members of their staff were working in collusion with the parties to a vitally important federal lawsuit to affect the outcome of that lawsuit. They were in affect conspiring to delay the confirmation of an appeals court judge who might have seated before the suit was decided, be the swing vote to alter the outcome. What they were doing was clearly unethical and probably illegal.

In a normal world, making it public would be political dynamite leading into an investigation to disbarment and possible prosecution. It was sure to be a whopper of a scandal.

Manny Miranda made it public. And the Democrats in the Senate went wild. They said he was releasing confidential information, which he had no right to even if he hadn’t stolen it and merely come upon it, something that reporters and Democrats do all the time.

Since this was Washington, they managed to make the scandal about him rather than about them—about who leaked the information, rather than about who was fixing the case. In the process they managed to avoid an investigation, and convinced Senate Republicans, a strong-willed lot to begin with—more interested in getting along with fellow members of the Senate club than truth, justice, or even partisan advantage—that Manny ought to be sacrificed, fired, and publicly humiliated.

This has been part of a pattern in Washington recently, the attempt to discredit one’s opponents by criminalizing their activity and by attempting to drive them from public life as a result of these kinds of charges.

They no doubt thought that it would all end with that, that Manny Miranda would slink off into the darkness and never be heard from again, as so many have in the past. But it turns out that he’s more than just a principled conservative: He’s a man who doesn’t know the meaning of surrender.

He discovered that he was having trouble finding another job in the private sector because these very same Democrats had driven him off the Hill were following him around warning prospective employers that there clients might suffer if they hired him. He went to war, or to be more precise, went back to work.

He scraped together enough funding to form an ad-hoc coalition to which first convince the Senate Republicans that what became known ultimately as the nuclear option could be used to thwart Democratic filibusters. He then organized hundreds of outside activists into a Third Branch Conference that became the single-most-important mobilizer in support ultimately of Judge Alito’s nomination when he was named.

Along the way, however, he also served notice on a Republican President that we conservatives haven’t worked as hard and as long as we have so that he can put his friends and cronies on the court regardless of their qualifications.

When the President announced his intention to nominate Harriet Miers to the court, Miranda sent out an email before the announcement press conference ended, describing her as “the worst example of cronyism since Lyndon B. Johnson put his buddy Abe Fortas on the court 40 years ago.”

In short order, George Will and hundreds of other conservatives around the country joined an effort that resulted in the President pulling back and naming Sam Alito to the court. That nomination would not have been made but for Manny Miranda. And because of the coalition that he put together, that nomination would still be being debated, were in not for Manny Miranda.

So if our first nominee alerted us all to what’s wrong with the courts, our second helped put us on the path to righting that wrong. Our second award winner this evening is Manny Miranda, who I believe is here as well.

We’re going to hear from both of our award winners in a few moments, but first I have to ask their forgiveness because when we met today I didn’t know that we weren’t going to be able to choose one winner so we have just one plaque. We will however produce another one and we’ve torn up one check and are writing two. So let me begin by turning the microphone over to you.

Mr. Keene is the chairman of the American Conservative Union.