CPAC 2015: Rick Perry warns of danger, uncertainty

A fired-up Rick Perry warned the crowd Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington that “at no time in the last 25 years has the future been more uncertain and the world more dangerous than it is today.”

Like many of the speakers at CPAC, the former Texas governor lamented the Obama administration’s response to the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

“They are a religious movement that seeks to take the world back to the 7th century,” he said. “Their aims are apocalyptic.

“The president declared in the State of the Union that the advance of ISIS has been stopped, and that is simply not true,” Mr. Perry said. “We didn’t start this war, nor did we choose it, but we will have the will to finish it.”

The potential 2016 GOP presidential contender also said Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.

“Our allies doubt us, and our adversaries are all too willing to test us,” he said. “No one should be surprised that dictators like Assad [would] cross the president’s red line because he knows the president won’t even defend the line that separates our nation from Mexico.”

Mr. Perry also said any discussion about comprehensive immigration reform has to start with border security, and brought up his confronting President Obama over the issue.

“And that’s exactly why last summer I told the president, looked him right in the eye and I said, ’If you will not secure the border between Texas and Mexico, Texas will,’” he said to applause.

Mr. Perry also talked up his own job creation efforts as governor of Texas and also charged that “the unemployment rate is a sham” in that it leaves millions of Americans out.

“And if the Republican party doesn’t take a stand for these … Americans, who will?” he said.

He did close, however, with an optimistic tone.

“We’ve survived worse,” he said. “We had a Civil War in this country; we had two World Wars. We had a Great Depression. We even survived Jimmy Carter. We will survive the Obama years, too.”