Norquist to Bush, Walker: Tell CPAC crowd what you’ve done

by Cameron Joseph - 02/26/15 4:46 PM ET

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist had a message for the GOP’s two early presidential front-runners at the Conservative Political Action Conference: No one knows you well, so you better introduce yourselves.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) are set to address the conservative convention, and Norquist said both needed to realize that the young-skewing crowd may not be as familiar with their work as they might assume.

{mosads}”It is younger, which means Jeb Bush, they don’t know. He’s either some guy they don’t know anything about or he’s ‘brother and son of,’ so he really needs to reintroduce himself,” he said. “Bush needs to remember these people don’t know you… Talk about your successes as governor.”

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Norquist, who sits on the board of the group that runs CPAC, had similar advice for the Wisconsin governor, whom he recently met.

“Walker should also do a start-to-finish, ‘Here’s what we did in Wisconsin,'” he said. “What set off the Walker excitement was when he gave the speech in Iowa that he’d given 100 times: ‘Here’s what we’ve accomplished, here’s what we’re trying to do, here’s the goal,’ and the people of Iowa went ‘Wow.’

“You really want to get to fundamentals, I think. To try to introduce something new and different here drowns out the message for both Bush and Walker. [It] should be, ‘Here’s my core competency, here’s why you trust me,'” he said.

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