Rick Perry's Message to CPAC: 'We Will Survive the Obama Years'

The president is bowing to "political correctness" in denial of the threats the nation is facing, and making "grave miscalculations" that are making the world less safe, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) audience Friday morning.

"This administration's incompetence in Iraq and Syria have allowed the emergence of ISIS," said Perry, one of a large group of potential GOP presidential candidates addressing conservative activists this week at the annual conference.

ISIS fighters, Perry pointed out, are part of a religious movement that "seeks to take the world back to the 7th century. Their aims are apocalyptic ... they mean to cleanse the world."

To do that, "they're using American tanks, they're using American weapons, and ISIS began taking cities that just a few years ago that were secured by American blood," Perry said.

But President Barack Obama has declared in the State of the Union address that the ISIS advance has been stopped, Perry said, and the president is denying the fundamental religious nature of the ISIS fight.

"It is naive, it is dangerous, and it is misguided," he said. "ISIS represents the worst threat to freedom since Communism. If Egypt and Jordan recognize that they are at war with radical Islam, isn't it about time our president proclaimed the same?"

Further, said Perry, it is not in the interest of peace to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons as being indicated in reports about the bilateral negotiations going on with the Middle Eastern country.

The discussions should have two principles, that Iran not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, said Perry. 

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is watching the developments unfold, Perry said, and the "red line" Obama drew and then allowed to be crossed in Syria led to a "backdrop of weakness and empty words" that allowed Putin to enter Ukraine and to negotiate a one-sided ceasefire in Minsk.

"Here's the simple truth about our foreign policy: Our allies doubt us and our adversaries are all too willing to test us," Perry said, and nobody should be surprised that dictators aren't afraid "because the president won't even defend the line that separates our nation from Mexico."

Perry also made a call for border security, pointing out that when the Obama administration would not secure the border last summer as Texas was being flooded with immigrants, he ordered in the National Guard to do the job.

The Texas governor, saying there is nothing wrong with the nation that better leaders won't solve, also called for fiscal responsibility in the government.

"For the first time in American history, a generation of leaders is on the verge of breaking the social compact with the next generation, and that is to leave a better country and with greater opportunity than the way we found it," Perry said, later pointing out his record of success with the Texas economy. "Our nation is involved with generational theft. There are fewer of us that believe in the American dream than any time in the last 20 years."

"We had a civil war in this country. We had two World Wars. We had a Great Depression. We even survived Jimmy Carter," he said. "We will survive the Obama years, too."