Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Seeking a statement of principles heading into the 2010 mid-term elections, a group of prominent conservative and pro-life leaders are gathering tomorrow to do just that. They will sign the Mount Vernon Statement near George Washington's Mount Vernon home on Wednesday afternoon.
The list of signers reads like a who's who of the pro-life and conservative political communities including former Attorney General Ed Meese, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, and Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America.
"The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant," the statement will say. "Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn't this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?"
"The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles," the statement says.
It mentions the right to life in saying, ""The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature's God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
The statement is seen as a modern-day equivalent and updating of the Sharon Statement, a 1960 statement headed by William F. Buckley of National Review and conservative members of Young Americans for Freedom.
Brent Bozell, the president of the Media Research Center and Buckley's nephew, is also heading up the "Constitutional Conservatism" document ad hopes it will bring in millions of signatures online.
Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, emailed LifeNews.com about the Mount Vernon Statement.
"This will be a significant moment as social, fiscal, and national security conservatives come together to declare the importance of working together to defend our nation's founding principles," he says.
"The three-legged conservative coalition must remain unified behind these core beliefs to prepare for the challenges ahead and successfully confront a hostile Congress and Obama Administration," Perkins adds.
American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery, another signer, told Politico that the statement is a response to some who say conservatives and the Republican Party needs to move towards the center and abandon its principles, such as the pro-life perspective.
"There has been some criticism in certain quarters of the conservative movement that the movement needs to become more mainstream, more centrist," he said.
Federalist Society co-founder David McIntosh, and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, among others, plan to sign the document. Also included are Coalition for a Conservative Majority Chairman Ken Blackwell; former Reagan Domestic Policy Adviser Ken Cribb; and Let Freedom Ring President Colin Hanna.
“In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics,” the Mt. Vernon Statement says. “The self-evident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant."
Related web sites:
Mount Vernon Statement - http://www.themountvernonstatement.com