OXON HILL, Md.—The 2024 presidential election may be conservatives’ last chance to save America, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said on Thursday.

Roberts opened The Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary Leadership Summit. He discussed the Left’s attack against America’s founding principles and how the Right can fight back and win the culture war. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news outlet of The Heritage Foundation).

The Left has abandoned the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the consent of the governed, free and fair elections, the separation of powers, the First and Second Amendments, and more, Roberts said. 

“This fight is a battle of foundational ideas,” Roberts said. “But the ideals of the Left today permit no room for self-government, for constitutionalism, and definitely not for federalism.”

From the Department of Justice targeting parents and Christians to the activist FBI to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuting former President Donald Trump without cause, the Left has abandoned the rule of law, according to Roberts. 

“They reject the very idea of national sovereignty, insisting the United States belongs to the globalist elites instead of to us, the everyday hardworking American citizens,” Roberts said. 

The Democratic Party has become characterized by wealthy elites, while the Republican Party now belongs to the religious working class, Roberts said. 

“It’s no wonder that post COVID, nine out of 10 of the wealthiest congressional districts are now represented by Democrats, while Republicans represent 64% of congressional districts with median income,” Roberts, a Texan, continued. 

Roberts said Heritage is not fighting for partisan gain. He quoted President Ronald Reagan who said, “There is no such thing as a Left or Right.”

However, Roberts said Americans must never forget the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“For the first time, the COVID crisis finally gave government elites the power to direct our lives in the way they always wanted to,” he said. “What did they do? They censored us. They shut down small businesses and schools. They separated us from our dying parents and grandparents. They conspired with Big Tech.”

Meanwhile, legacy media cheered the Left on and establishment Republicans did nothing, Roberts explained. 

“We want to change that,” he declared. “We can no longer hold almost any illusions about what the woke Marxist Left is about. The consequences of losing are the odds stacked against us.”

Yet, Roberts remains upbeat.

“The conservative movement is answering this challenge and rising to this moment with courage and vigor,” the former Wyoming Catholic College president said. 

On Friday, Heritage will release a 900-page edition of “Mandate for Leadership,” which guides a potential conservative president in leading the charge against the left-wing agenda embedded in the administrative state.

“This is our fight,” Roberts said, “and we’re going to win.”

The woke Left’s vision is to destroy America, he warned. 

“This new iteration of the Left, tyrannical, elitist, anti-American, anti-Constitution, cannot be bargained with,” he continued. “It cannot be placated. It simply must be defeated.”

Roberts said Republican governors, state legislators, newly-elected school board members, and county commissioners are fighting for school choice, the right to life, law and order, border security, the protection of girls, women, and families, ending pornography, good paying jobs and growing businesses. 

“You see the Left started this culture war, and we’re going to finish it and we’re going to win it,” Roberts said. 

“We will never give up. We will never give in,” he continued. “We will never concede an edge. We will never rest until together we have reclaimed this.”

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