Delivered by President Gavin M. Wax, December 10, 2022.
Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests and dignitaries. It is my pleasure to welcome you all, once again, to the 110th Annual Gala of the New York Young Republican Club.
As the 76th President of this storied institution, I am happy to report, if it wasn’t already evident from this packed room, that the State of this 1,200-member-strong Club is robust.
Our astroturfed detractors seethe at our massive successes, growth, scale, and publicity. Their many trite hit pieces will not stop our continued exponential growth as a potent political force not only in deep-blue New York but nationwide. We do with volunteers what they can’t do with paid staff and massive donors. Our members, who have been leading the fight against the forces of radical leftism in this city, are true political dissidents who risk being canceled, doxed, and fired at a moment’s notice for their bold America First stances.
I know of no other Club that has had the honor of their endorsement being shared by President Donald J. Trump. I know of no other Club with such an international brand that it welcomes to its quarter-million dollar gala several foreign dignitaries, including Ambassadors, a Consul General, and multiple Members of the European Parliament, some of whom we count among our membership.
Despite tonight’s celebration of many successes, it has been a tumultuous year for our Club, our party, our country, and most importantly, civilization as a whole.
It has never been more apparent than it is today that America First populists are fighting a two-front war.
On one hand, we continue to do battle relentlessly against the forces of globalism, insidious cultural Marxism, and the cult of the woke.
On the other hand, our most ferocious and consequential battles are being waged from within, against those who purport to be on our side.
Our party’s leadership has proven themselves to be, at a minimum, inept and, at worst, grossly corrupt and in bed with the enemy.
The “McLeadership” triumvirate of the GOP has perfected the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
This year should have been a pivotal one; we were on the cusp of generational political realignment.
We squandered this opportunity in an epic and frankly embarrassing fashion.
Now, instead of cleaning house, purging the ranks, and bringing new energetic talent to the forefront, we have simply promoted and retained the same rotten losers who should have been sent packing years ago.
The grassroots, the base–we donated our money, volunteered our time, door knocked, phonebanked, canvassed, and rallied for this party and its candidates.
But the sad truth is that our donations were wasted, our efforts were taken advantage of, and our energy was squandered.
Republican leadership isn’t interested in governing majorities. It is content to be a token and controlled opposition of the Left. It cares only for control of its own minority caucus and kowtowing to the out-of-touch donor class.
Feckless members of leadership relish in bamboozling and paying lip service to their voters and supporters for just another cheap buck.
All the while, greasy consultant grifters make out like kings, while we must endure the yolk of corrupt Democrat governance.
Our own party is always keen to waste millions to tilt the scales against America First populist candidates in the primaries and then abandon them in the general election.
Then they have the chutzpah to scapegoat and blame it all on the greatest President of the modern era: President Donald J. Trump.
All to cover up their own failures, their own mediocrity.
These snakes, these backstabbers–they put Brutus to shame.
Ultimately, every American Patriot must know that the uniparty always protects its own.
And the uniparty is content to see the managed decline of our once great Republic continue.
Uniparty elites will gladly sell out their country and our people at a moment’s notice if it means more power and wealth to themselves.
The tempestuous nature of our nation’s struggle is simply too much for them to bear.
American blood and treasure are squandered overseas while barbarism, criminality, deviancy, corruption, inflation, and destitution plague our own shores.
Our industry collapses under their watch, our borders are flooded, and, all the while, our children are indoctrinated to hate themselves, to hate their family, to hate their country, and to hate God at our own expense.
This is the ethos of the declining American empire.
And it is for these reasons and more that I express full sympathy with those at war with the present conditions in this nation.
Those who believe that our present institutions are, in fact, vulnerable to the same sapping and destructive influences which have undermined and destroyed many a great republic that has come before.
Those that believe we are in a civilizational fight. This transcends politics. This transcends even culture. This is fundamentally a spiritual war for the soul of this nation and Western Civilization as a whole.
I do not exaggerate, and I do not misstate or overstate when I declare to you tonight that we are the most lawless and deviant of any of the great civilized nations. There is no country of first importance where there is so little respect for the law as here in our own Republic.
The Democrats win because they have a ruthless political machine that brazenly flouts the law, stuffs the ballot box, and then dares law enforcement, judges, and other officials to do something about it.
Backed by institutional power and mob terror, this may be the most formidable and diabolical political machine the world has ever known. And the Republican establishment is not up to the task of fighting back against this menace.
Because of the failures of Republican leadership, in Democrat-ruled America, there is no place where life is so insecure against the bullet of a thug, where criminal laws are so ineffectually and unequally enforced, where corruption is so little condemned by public opinion, where defiance of the law in the highest walks of business or government so greatly prevalent.
But I, like the great many of you, have not succumbed to the persistent plague of nihilism; I still do believe our Republic is far too young to die, and we have every reason to keep fighting for her.
For there are millions upon millions of honest, hardworking, God-fearing Americans who would like to feel safe in their persons and secure in their places of worship, their homes, and their businesses.
There are millions upon millions of Americans who would like to feel that justice can be administered alike to the rich and to the poor, to the majority and to the minority, to the establishment and to the insurgents, and that we have not one oppressive Government for the honest trying to do right and another captured Government to serve the interests of the ruthless and corrupt who prey upon the rights of others and of the public at large.
A whole generation of young Americans who would like to grow up in the country that they were promised: a country where they can prosper, start a family, start a business, own a home, speak freely, and live as independently and happily as their parents and grandparents did without the threat of being canceled,
This generation, my generation, feels in their heart of hearts that the promise of America has been stolen from them, and they are not wrong.
It is for these reasons that I demand action. Bold, energetic, and immediate action.
Action like this Club took when we sued Governor Kathy Hochul and the establishment of both parties. We sued, and we won. We reversed and ended the illegal, unconstitutional, and gerrymandered State Assembly maps. A historic win against all the odds that was only made possible by great members of this Club, such as Thomas Corlett and Patrick Duval, and by our Attorney Aaron Foldenhaur.
We put the Democrats and the corrupt Republicans on notice. We are not to be trifled with, and we will watch your every move—no corrupt backroom Albany deals.
This Club further took further action when Chairman Mike Bartels led parishioners and our newly formed Catholic Caucus in defending St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Lower Manhattan from hundreds of pro-abortion terrorists when the city denied it protection from attack and ransack following the leaked reversal of the vile Roe v. Wade decision.
But we want more offenses; we want flanking maneuvers; we want to cross the Rubicon; we want total war.
We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media, in the courtroom, at the ballot box, and in the streets.
This is the only language the Left understands: the language of pure and unadulterated power.
Our decadent technocratic overlords expect to lull us into a deep sleep through technology, ubiquitous propaganda, and artificial prosperity created under a mountain of debt. Many have fallen under a spell, content to accept subjugation with a smile on their face buried under the three masks that they wear as a sign of mindless obsequiousness. They have become nothing more than serfs to the Elites.
So no more bringing a knife to a gunfight. When they ballot harvest, we ballot harvest. When they vote early, we vote early; when they mail in, we mail in. When they litigate, we litigate.
Use every weapon at our disposal. No more whining about the hypocrisy. No more complaining about double standards. No more kvetching about what is fair.
Fight. Win. Govern.
When we secure power once more, we must govern with ruthless efficiency. We must waste no time in passing legislation, in issuing executive orders, in breaking up corporate monopolies, in prosecuting the corrupt, in cleaning house of the federal bureaucracy, and in appointing an army of energetic, ambitious, patriotic, ideologically committed, and God-fearing young men and women to staff the administration of state.
We demand nothing short of a total and complete national renewal. Free of corporate special interests, free of foreign influence, and committed only to upholding traditional American values and our national sovereignty.
It is here where I believe our storied institution, the New York Young Republican Club, will lead this resurgence.
For it was in the Empire State of all places that Republicans saw gains and even victories for the first time in generations.
Deep behind enemy lines, outspent, outgunned, and outmanned, we saw a Republican renaissance in our state.
The House majority ran through Long Island to the Hudson Valley to the North Country, sweeping many members of this Club into Congress itself, including long-time member Congressman-elect George Santos.
The political realignment in this state and this city represents the emerging and inevitable rising tide of a populist majority.
A majority built upon a coalition not of the elites and the monied but of the salt of the earth. The working man and working woman. The families. The small business owners. The churchgoers.
A populist majority that will emerge and spread from the outer boroughs of New York, to the rust belt towns of the midwest, to the rural south, and to the wild southwest.
It was a proud moment for this Club that four out of the five statewide candidates in New York were members of this organization. A statewide ticket that almost flipped this state red. Two of the four candidates were even former officers of this very club.
We will not commiserate and wax poetic about the past, content to accept our doomed fate in the death throes of a once-great nation. Rather, we are optimistic in our outlook for what lies ahead. As our heroic forefathers whose memories our enemies want to demonize and erase once did, we stand at a precipice where we can either rise to the titanic mandate of history or slip quietly into the night and be remembered as the generation that allowed the greatest country on Earth to fall on their watch.
Rome did not fall in a single sacking, and America will not fall from a single stolen election.
But we must remain vigilant and steadfast as we stand up against the most repugnant, and vile of tyrants.
I am honored to be in this fight with many friends and allies. The victories before and the victories to come would not be possible without the great work and efforts of my Executive Committee, my Board of Governors, my Board of Advisors, and the many members and supporters of this organization.
With that, God Bless you all, God Bless America, and let’s have a wonderful evening!