Area Republicans take on Democrats during annual Reagan Day Dinner

About 200 Republicans -- from elected officials representing almost every level of government to everyday GOP faithful -- spent Saturday night celebrating their party and one of its most revered members at the annual Reagan Day Dinner at the Statesville Civic Center.

And the message offered by the speakers and exchanged at table conversations was the same: hunker down, work hard and beat the Democrats this year.

Former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory, the event's keynote speaker, joked briefly about his failed run for the North Carolina governor's office in 2008.

"My goal was to be driving back home to Raleigh, not Charlotte," McCrory said. "I was hoping to be living in public housing right now."

McCrory said his loss was in no way attributed to the effort of his campaign workers and other voters in Iredell County.

"I know you all worked as hard as you could," he said. "And I worked as hard as I could."

In an interview with the R&L before his speech, McCrory said he lost the election because of a concentrated effort by President Barack Obama's campaign to win the Tar Heel State.

"I thought I was running against Bev Perdue. We were winning against Bev Perdue," McCrory said. "But in that last six weeks, the Obama people put so much money into winning the state, that he won it for her."

McCrory, who sits on the board of directors of Statesville-based Kewaunee Scientific Corp., said he is in the city often.

"It's a great company and I've really enjoyed my small involvement with it," McCrory said.
He added, though, that he is not through with politics and that he is "considering running for governor again."

But that is two years away.

"In the meantime," he said, "I'm doing everything I can for my fellow Republicans who are running for office in the state."

During his speech, McCrory said the two most influential GOP presidents in recent times were Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He said both men shared four characteristics:

+ They communicated a vision for the future;

+ They were able to create jobs, largely in the private sector;

+ They made a successful appeal to young people; and

+ They always set a possitive tone.

Conversely, he said, both Obama and Perdue are self-centered.

"I have never heard the word, 'I' so many times as when I hear these two speak," he said, and added that Obama was wrong when he said Republicans don't have solutions.

"We have solutions," he said.

Both of Iredell County's two U.S. Congress members, representatives Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry, also spoke at the dinner.

Foxx told the crowd that she intended to file for re-election on Monday, the first day of the filing period.
Foxx said since the Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress, "it's been excruciating."

She also said she was opposed to a decision House Republicans made to meet with Obama two weeks ago. But, she added, the meeting "(got) the message out that we do have solutions. And our solutions are better than their solutions."

But to get those solutions passed, the GOP will have to wrest back control of the Congress. To that end, Foxx said, the party is hoping to have "competitive" races in at least 100 House seats that are now occupied by Republicans.

Foxx said the consequence of not winning back the Congress -- and eventually the White House -- are dire.
After reading a quote by Reagan that read, in part, that "Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction," Foxx said the time frame is even shorter than that.

"We're talking about four years," Foxx said. "If we don't take this country back from the leftists who are running it now, we will lose our country."

McHenry pointed to Reagan's tenacity, in that he ran two failed campaigns for president before finally taking the White House in 1980.

McHenry then went after Obama.

"This president is giving us a wonderful gift," McHenry said. "That gift is his reading speeches off a teleprompter and his inability to act on what he says."

McHenry said the time is right for the Republican Party to "not offer just pale comparisons, but true alternatives."

He said voters can see that time for change is upon us because "something different is in the air."
And no better evidence of that can be found than the recent election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate.
"When you see Massachusetts voters replace Ted Kennedy with a guy who favors waterboarding, you know something different is in the air."

McHenry noted that Saturday would have been Ronald Reagan's 99th birthday and said that he would offer a bill later this week that aims to replace the likeness of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill with that of Reagan.

McHenry said there had been some debate about whether to put Reagan on the $50 or $10 bill.

"But the way Democrats are spending," he added. "The $50 is going to be like the $10 soon anyway."