Newt Gingrich

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Tuesday morning released an 11-point broad vision for Republicans if and when they retake control in Washington, complete with 128 specific policy promises to voters.

The plan from Scott represents possibly the clearest overarching view any Republican has offered ahead of the 2022 midterm elections on the party’s vision for the future and has clear endorsements upon its release from top party leaders. It also signals a clear shift in the GOP towards culture war issues that motivate voters and a serious effort to confront and address the litany of problems facing American society today. The plan, which Scott and his team previewed for Breitbart News ahead of its public release, is published here and is available for the public to see at the website RescueAmerica.com, which Scott launched to roll out the proposal.

Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), released the plan in his personal capacity from his own campaign — and told Breitbart News in a lengthy interview on Monday evening previewing its release that he views it as a clear-eyed attempt to steer the country back from the brink.

11-Point Plan to Rescue Ame… by Breitbart News

“Here’s why I’m doing it. I’m a business guy. In business, what I’ve always done is I figure out my business plan, and then I worked my plan — that’s what I’ve always done, and I’ve always had success,” Scott told Breitbart News. “I did the same thing when I ran in 2010 for governor. I wrote my plan. I worked my plan. Then I implemented it when I became governor, and we turned around the state of Florida. I am the same way — I have a plan at the NRSC. I have a plan for my job as a U.S. senator, and this is my plan for how we’re going to turn around the country. I think our country is in deep trouble. I think we’re not going to turn it around if we don’t have a plan to do it. It’s what I believe in, and I think it’s what Republicans if we talk about things that people would like Republicans to talk about it. We’ll see, and people will give me different ideas about what they believe in, but it’s got to be what people believe in. I believe we win elections by having plans.”

Several of the specific policy proposals in the plan take key culture war issues like immigration, election integrity, big tech, transgenderism, education, leftist racial insanity, and the rising crime wave sweeping the nation head-on in ways Republicans have not previously as a party. For instance, regarding efforts by many of the left to normalize transgenderism among children, the Scott plan specifically states that Republicans will deliver on this: “No doctor will be allowed to perform irreversible surgical or gender-altering procedures on any minor child. Once they become adults, they can do what they wish.”

Or regarding immigration, Scott’s plan explicitly rules out any mass amnesty proposal or bigger “comprehensive” immigration reform pitch until lawlessness on the border is halted completely: “We will oppose all ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform measures until we stop the lawlessness on our border, and our border is secured.” That view is very different than the GOP of just a few years ago, which as recently as 2013 — in the wake of now-former President Barack Obama’s reelection — widely embraced efforts for amnesty as the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill passed the U.S. Senate nine years ago with 14 Republican votes. It is worth noting only five of those Republicans are left, and at least two, probably three, of them would never vote for that bill again.

The plan also calls to finish former President Donald Trump’s border wall and even says that Republicans will seek to rename the wall after Trump. “He’s done more to focus on border security than any president I know of,” Scott said of why he wants to name the border wall after Trump.

He said he had not spoken to the former president about it yet, but “I’ve got a call into him.”

The plan is titled “An 11 Point Plan to Rescue America: What Americans Must Do to Save This Country,” and the entirety of it spans more than 60 pages. The second page of the document has a quote from Scott saying why he is doing this: “Americans deserve to know what we will do given the chance to govern.”

The document opens with a letter from Scott explaining the stakes and how the “militant left” controls Washington, the media, Hollywood, academia, and many companies while “redefining America and silencing their opponents.”

“Roaring inflation, the dangerous mismanagement of our border, the disastrous escalation of spending and debt, the shamefully inept withdrawal from Afghanistan, the use of public schools for left-wing indoctrination, and the incredible lawlessness on our streets… Americans are angry, and rightfully so,” Scott writes in the letter opening the document. “As a result, the American people are very likely to put Republicans in control of the Senate and House in 2022. But then, what? If Republicans return to Washington’s business as usual, if we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to America’s collapse, we don’t deserve to govern. We must resolve to aim higher than the Republican Congresses that came before us. Americans deserve to know what we will do.”

The next page shows the U.S. Constitution burning with the headline “The Hour is Late for America” before listing out several bullet points demonstrating what is wrong in the country under Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration and complete Democrat control in Congress. After that, the plan to “Rescue America” opens with several pages explaining the 11 broad overarching points — then the later pages go into granular detail on each point.

Scott’s decision to release such a plan does run counter to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s publicly stated view that Republicans should not, in his opinion, lay out broad promises to the public.

“That is a very good question,” McConnell recently told NBC News when asked what Republicans would do if they win back the majority. “And I’ll let you know when we take it back. … This midterm election will be a report card on the performance of this entire Democratic government: the president, the House and the Senate.”

McConnell has made similar points in other interviews and commentary, arguing that 2022 should be all about bashing Democrats and not what Republicans will do when they get there. But many top Republicans have disagreed with McConnell on this point. His counterpart on the House side, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, told Breitbart News in December in a broad video special interview published in early January that he does not agree with McConnell.

“I have a different view. I don’t think majorities are given, I think they are earned,” McCarthy said back then. “I think you also should be very truthful to the American public about what would you do with that majority. It’s not just being in the majority for the sake of being in the majority. You’re being in the majority to make America better.”

Scott, in rolling out this plan, told Breitbart News in his interview Monday afternoon that he does not see much daylight between himself and McConnell on this matter.

“I think Mitch McConnell is right about how this election will be mostly about Biden’s failures, and I talked to Mitch about how I’m doing this and he said he thinks it’s right that campaigns that have agendas to win, and I hope people will look at this and see if some of this will fit for some of their individual races,” Scott said.

Asked more about that matter and how McCarthy has laid out his plan in his Breitbart News interview, Scott said he does not see disagreement between him and McConnell on this point.

In this Nov. 10, 2020, file photo Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) joined by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks to reporters briefly following a closed-door meeting where the Republican Conference held leadership elections, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

“Kevin is going to put out a plan — I think McConnell is right in that a lot of this election will be about the failure of Biden,” Scott said. “That’s what this midterm is, a referendum on the president. But I do believe that it’s important to talk to people about what you’re doing and then do it. I think it’s important that Republicans do that, and I talked to McConnell. He doesn’t disagree that the campaigns that need to are going to have what they’re for. So I don’t think there’s disagreement.”

Scott’s plan also has some heavy GOP firepower on board from the outset too. Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement provided to Breitbart News that she wholeheartedly backs the plan.

“Joe Biden and Democrats have made life more expensive and less safe for families across America,” McDaniel said. “Republicans like Senator Rick Scott have real solutions to put us back on track. From lowering costs and creating jobs, to supporting police and securing the border, Republicans are offering a clear plan to protect and reinvigorate the America we know and love.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the architect of the 1994 House GOP takeover with the Contract with America, in a statement provided to Breitbart News also endorsed Scott’s vision for the GOP while comparing it to that historic plan he released decades ago.

“Rick Scott’s Rescue America Plan is a very important contribution toward a positive, problem-solving Republican Party,” Gingrich said. “Like the Contract with America, it will help win the election and also, even more importantly, serve as a blueprint for the new Republican majority to focus on solving problems and creating a dramatically better American future. It is a very important step toward getting America back on track toward a more prosperous, freer and safer future.”

Scott also told Breitbart News that “we’ll see” when asked if he expects many GOP senators and candidates to endorse his vision for the party and the country.

“These are things I’m going to talk about. I’m sure everybody is going to talk about different things, but my goal when we get the majority is let’s do something,” Scott said. “Let’s actually accomplish something, and I’m a business guy, so this is what I do. I write plans. I enact plans. This is how I actually get success. That’s what I want to get done for this country. This is a country where there’s no place for me to move. I’ve lived in eight states to try to find the best place. I think I live in the best place right now, which is Florida, but I want to fix this country.”

Scott added too that some might not like that he is laying it out there this clearly, but he is doing it anyway because he thinks the country needs it.

“Some people are going to hate that I’m pushing to have a conversation on these things, but it’s the right thing to do,” Scott said. “If you’re going to get anywhere, you got to have a plan to do it.”

The number-one point out of the 11 broad points in the plan is “Education,” a huge focus of the party after Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe in November 2021.

In it, Scott’s plan backs school choice wholeheartedly — but then also takes the GOP a step further in leaning into protecting parents and children from the clutches of the left.

“Kids in public schools will say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand for the National Anthem, and honor the American Flag. We must foster national unity,” Scott’s plan says.

It adds in a later point, “No child will be taught they are inherently racist because of the color of their skin, or that some Americans are oppressors and others are oppressed.”

Scott told Breitbart News that the reason he put education first in the document is that it is the single most important thing society can provide American youths to have an opportunity for success in life.

“The things that impact a family the most are three things: self-sufficiency, that could be a job or that could be inflation or how things cost too much or things like that,” Scott said in his interview. “So that first thing is financial. The next thing is their kids’ educations, whether you’re talking about critical race theory or you’re talking about school choice — all those things — what every family wants is their kid to have a shot at the dream because they know that’s the dream. Education is the way out of poverty. I lived it. I grew up in public housing with a single mom, and education is how I was able to figure it out. Then, the third thing is going to be, do you feel safe? That could be the police, that could be a strong military, that could be fighting drugs, that could be securing the border, but I think it all sort of comes down to those things. When I grew up, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every day. We saluted the flag. We didn’t trash our forefathers. We didn’t have enough school choice, but I think parents — rich parents get to choose their kids’ schools — all parents ought to get to choose their kids’ schools.”

Point two in the 11-point document pushes for “Color Blind Equality” and has specific policy recommendations like banning checkboxes on federal government forms for people to identify their race. A different form of the “Ban the Box” campaign — something that ex-cons have used to try to remove such boxes identifying criminal history reporting requirements from job applications — Scott’s plan aims to remove racial reporting requirements from federal forms.

“Government will not ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government form,” Scott’s plan says, adding that “no government policy can be based on race or ethnicity.”

“Our military will engage in ZERO diversity training, teachings on critical race theory, or any woke ideological indoctrination that divides our troops. Our fighting force must be completely united and completely colorblind,” Scott’s plan continues, adding that anyone in military leadership who does prioritize race over national security will be relieved of their command.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference being held in the Hyatt Regency on February 26, 2021, in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The plan would also bar colleges and universities from using race and ethnicity as a factor in determining admissions, and any that do not comply would lose federal funding and their tax-exempt statuses.

Point three in the Scott plan focuses on “Safety/Crime” and calls for stopping Democrat efforts to defund police. Among other specific policy recommendations in this part, the plan says Republicans will “support mandatory strict minimum sentences for all assaults involving serious injury to law enforcement officers.”

“We will demand a nationwide crackdown on theft and violent crime by imposing stiffer penalties so we can restore law and order to our city streets,” a later point adds.

Scott told Breitbart News that it is very simple how to end the crime wave: “Enforce the law.”

“First off, the police are the good guys and the criminals are the bad guys,” Scott said. “You need to teach our kids how to respect the police. We’ve got to fund law enforcement and then we need to prosecute people for their crimes and if you have a prosecutor who’s unwilling to prosecute or enforce the law, you fire them. I did this when I was governor. I had state attorneys that got elected with a plan to not enforce the law and so I took away their cases. That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to start standing up for what we believe in.”

Point four in the plan is immigration. Here, there are many interesting points that Republicans are now openly embracing as a party in addition to the aforementioned pledge of explicitly opposing comprehensive immigration legislation until the border is secured. In addition to explicitly stating that the border must be secured and that Americans are reasonable to expect border controls to stop illegal immigration, the plan explicitly states that nobody has a “right” to come to America. This means Republicans are beginning to think through who should be allowed into America legally and why they should be allowed in.

“Many potential immigrants love America,” the plan states. “Those who don’t will not be allowed to come here. This is our country, and no one has a ‘right’ to come to America.”

The plan also targets immigrants using welfare upon entering the country, banning it for at least seven years upon entrance. “Immigrants will not be eligible to collect unemployment benefits or welfare for the first 7 years after arriving in the US,” the plan states, also adding: “We will stop incentivizing people to come to America to receive government benefits. We have plenty of welfare recipients – we need productive citizens instead.”

“I think we need to stop the problem first,” Scott said of the hard-core vision he is laying out for the party on immigration. “I’m from an immigration state. We like immigration — legal immigration. But right now, who’s getting hurt? Who’s getting hurt when people come here illegally? It’s people who are in the system trying to figure out how to become legal citizens. The easy thing now is to just come across our southern border — take a flight to Mexico City, or take a flight somewhere close to the southern border, take an Uber and then walk across the border. That’s not the way you fix immigration. You exacerbate the problem. I think we’ve got to finish the wall, we’ve got to have border security, and then we start tackling immigration. It will not be easy to fix immigration, but the first thing we ought to say to ourselves is we want people to come to our country who believe in our country and believe in capitalism and that are exceptional and want to be independent.”

The fifth point of Scott’s plan focuses on “Economy/Growth,” and also has some bold provisions for Republicans.

“Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant which aims to destroy our prosperity and freedom,” reads the first proposal under this point, that also calls for, among other things, eliminating non-essential government employees, implementing a line-item veto at the federal level, and banning pay for members of Congress if they fail to pass a budget.

Point six in Scott’s plan focuses on “Government Reform/Debt” and, like the others, has some big proposals for the GOP including a call to ban any former elected officials from serving as lobbyists altogether, enacting 12-year term limits for Congress, moving most federal agencies out of Washington, DC, and sunsetting all federal legislation every five years forcing Congress to pass everything again if it is worth keeping. The sixth point also includes several provisions to begin tackling America’s runaway national debt, including forcing the government to make payments now, including by selling off excess government buildings, land, and assets to do so.

“If you think about it, when I grew up, we didn’t have $30 trillion worth of debt,” Scott told Breitbart News. “In my schools, they didn’t teach that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were evil racists. We didn’t trash our country. We were taught that you had to listen to our elders and you had to listen to law enforcement and you didn’t want to ever violate the law and it wasn’t — the law probably wasn’t as bad as my mom was. My mom would have been just livid if I ever did something wrong. The country is in trouble — $30 trillion worth of debt. I don’t know if you followed, but I blocked the postal reform bill. Do you know what the postal reform bill did? It did nothing to increase revenues, nothing to reduce costs, it did nothing to create efficiencies, but it took liabilities off the balance sheet of the postal service and put them onto the balance sheet of Medicare, and people act like we did something.”

In Washington, Scott said, politicians regularly act like they are actually doing something when whatever proposal they are considering does not do what they say it does. He pointed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “anti-China bill” that passed the Senate last year as an example as it does nothing to combat China — and just spends hundreds of billions more dollars on wasteful projects.

“That’s what they do — I’ve been up there three years,” Scott said. “They had a ‘China bill.’ They put a nice title on it. But it doesn’t do anything to counteract China — it wastes $250 billion.”

Point seven of Scott’s plan zones in on election integrity, and in it, he calls for a national voter ID plan and for banning ballot harvesting everywhere. It also calls for banning unmanned or unmonitored ballot drop boxes in public areas, and for barring public financing of campaigns — as well as making it illegal to count ballots that arrive after election day.

“Ballots can only be submitted to a polling location by a voter or the post office. No ballots that show up after election day will be counted, ever,” the plan continues.

The eighth point in Scott’s plan encourages “Family” policies, and in it, Scott calls for a system that encourages marriage and discourages abortion. In this section, Scott calls for strict penalties for “deadbeat dads” who avoid child support payments: “We will make it impossible for deadbeat dads to avoid paying child support – beginning with paternity. They will either pay up or go to jail, with no other options.”

The next point, the ninth in Scott’s plan, is titled “Gender, Life, Science,” and further fleshes out anti-abortion views and combats transgenderism’s harmful effects on society.

“Abortion kills human children. To deny that is to deny science,” the plan states, adding, “Whether you believe in God or not, as a civilized people who accept science, we must protect babies, born and unborn, from all acts of violence.”

It also says, “All government policies will favor having more babies adopted, not aborted.” When it comes to transgenderism, Scott’s plan also states clearly that, scientifically, there are only two genders.

“Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science,” Scott’s plan states, adding that his plan will ban government forms from having any questions of Americans about “gender identity” or “sexual preference.”

Also, in addition to the aforementioned ban on medical procedures on children that would alter a child’s gender, Scott’s plan includes a clear vision on protecting women’s sports from biological men. “We will protect women’s sports by banning biological males from competing. It is hugely unfair and would erase many of the gains women have made in athletics over the last 50 years,” Scott’s plan states.

“You’ve got to treat kids as kids,” Scott told Breitbart News when asked about these provisions. “Men shouldn’t be taking over women’s sports. I think it’s wrong what’s going on in this country right now — we’re going to kill women’s sports. They’re going to stop winning, just look at the NCAA championship swimming. I do believe we ought to be careful about these gender-altering procedures on a child. I think we’ve got to do everything we can to take care of unborn babies. I’m pro-life. This is science. Democrats all want to use science when it’s to their benefit. We know that abortion takes a human life, so I think we got to do everything we can to protect babies.”

Section 10 of Scott’s plan focuses on “Religious Liberty/Big Tech,” and also has some clearer-than-before-seen views for Republicans on these issues. His plan for instance states that platforms that act like publishers — like Facebook or Twitter — will be treated like publishers under the law.

“They should not be using our personal information without our consent — not some 15-page document, but we need a way where they can’t use our personal information. That was never the intent,” Scott told Breitbart News. “They are to be treated like a publisher, which they are. If they’re going to act like a publisher, they’re going to be treated like a publisher. If they want to censor free speech, which is what they’re doing, they ought to be subject to legal action. They’re book burners, that’s what they are. There’s no difference between censoring people and their content than burning books. That’s exactly what they’re doing — they’re burning books.”

The 11th and final point in the document is titled “America First” and states, “We are Americans, not globalists” — perhaps one of the strongest party statements against the failures of the past to explicitly reject “globalists.”

(Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images)

Here, Scott has some of his most aggressive policy proposals, including banning foreign aid to any countries that regularly oppose the United States at the United Nations, cutting U.S. dues payments to the U.N. “or any international organization that undermines the national interests of the USA,” and a push to formally end all imports from Communist China “until a new regime honors basic human rights and freedoms.”

It also makes several policy proclamations about the use of America’s military. “Our military will not be used as a peace-keeping force, it exists to protect us by intimidating or killing our enemies,” Scott’s plan states, adding, “Nation-building does not work, we will not waste our treasure or troops doing it.”

Asked about these points, Scott told Breitbart News that while they appear last in the document, they are certainly not least — and perhaps are the most important.

“I don’t think we think we can do anything for anyone else — like you can’t take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself first,” Scott said. “So the first thing we have to say to ourselves is if we’re not physically strong, if we’re not militarily strong, if we’re not culturally strong, we’re going to have a very difficult time helping anyone else. We don’t do anything that’s not good for this country. We don’t do things that are bad for jobs in this country — and we don’t waste our resources. China is a despicable government. They steal everything. They lie every day. They will say whatever it takes to do anything, then they don’t comply with anything. They have not complied with the latest trade agreement — the WTO — and you shouldn’t be doing business with a country that has slave labor and puts people in prison just because of their religion. We shouldn’t do it. We shouldn’t have the Olympics there, and we need to start calling this out. We need to stop buying their stuff. We’ve got to decouple ourselves from them. It’s pretty simple. We don’t go buy a bunch of stuff from Iran or North Korea — we shouldn’t be buying it from them. All we’re doing is helping them from it.”

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