Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, argued today that conservatives need to support an affirmative agenda to help poor and middle-class Americans — a compassionate platform that recognizes “we’re all in this together” — but he did so while criticizing the “statism” of George W. Bush and President Obama.

“Conservatives cannot surrender the idea of community to the Left, when it is the vitality of our communities upon which our entire philosophy depends,” Lee said today at the Heritage Foundation. “Nor can we allow one politician’s occasional conflation of ‘compassion’ and ‘bigger government’ to discourage us from emphasizing the moral core of our worldview.”