Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, already a Tea Party hero in Virginia, stepped into the national spotlight Thursday with an emotional pitch for Republicans to fight President Obama at every opportunity.
The National Rifle Association presented Cuccinelli with its Defender of the Constitution Award during the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference — a moment of vindication for a man Democrats characterize as a right-wing activist using his office to wage political battles. And it comes at a critical juncture in Cuccinelli’s career as he seeks the Republican nomination to replace Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, himself a budding national presence, in 2013.
Cuccinelli used the opportunity to tear into the current administration for what he descried as “an across-the-board assault” on American liberties. A well-established skeptic of global warming research, Cuccinelli highlighted his legal battles over Environmental Protection Agency regulations and President Obama’s health care reforms, which he characterized as egregious government overreach.
“We have gradually created a government that is no longer very limited,” Cuccinelli said. “We have, in fact, a central government that tries to plan and control every aspect of our lives.”
Cuccinelli choked up near the end of his remarks when he described a future where grandparents tell their kids “what it was once like in American when men were free” and walked off to a standing ovation from the crowd.
CPAC was Cuccinelli’s second stop in the national spotlight. He began Thursday at the National Press Club, where he assailed federal health care reforms during a forum with Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley ahead of next month’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on the reforms. Under Cuccinelli, Virginia was the first state to take legal action against the Obama administration over health care.
Coakley, a Democrat, accused Cuccinelli of injecting ideological disagreements into a legal debate before concluding that the high court would ultimately uphold the law. That’s a frequent criticism of Cuccinelli from the left.
But at CPAC, Cuccinelli’s aggressive approach as Virginia’s top lawyer won praise from conservative activists.
“He is a man who has never turned his back on his values,” said NRA President David Keene, “has never turned his back on his beliefs, and has never refused to stand up when principle demanded him to do so.”
