Pompeo, possible '24 GOP candidate, former secretary of state, makes conservative appeal at CPAC

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a possible 2024 GOP presidential candidate, on Friday urged the crowd at the annual CPAC gathering to live out their conservative values and not fall into hypocritical behavior.

"I've heard some who claim to be conservative excuse hypocrisy by saying something like, 'We're electing a president, not a Sunday school teacher,' " Pompeo told those at the four-day event outside of Washington, D.C. "That's true. But having taught Sunday school, maybe we could get both. ... It's time for us to make sure we're living out these very things we're asking others to do."

Pompeo, also a former CIA director in the Trump administration and a former Kansas congressman, tried to hammer home his point by saying Republicans – perhaps most specifically Washington Republicans – must continue to make the GOP the political party of small government and not vote or sign into law measures that continue to increase the national debt. 

"Every administration – Republican and Democrat alike – added trillions of dollars to our debt," he said. "That is deeply un-conservative. The Trump administration, the administration in which I served, added $8 trillion in new debt. That is indecent and cannot continue."

He also suggested the GOP underperformed in the 2024 midterms, amid spending bills worth trillions being passed in the Democrat-led Congress, because voters were as wary of big-spending Republicans as they were Democrats.

"We lost race-after-winnable race because voters didn't trust us to do any better than the tax-spending liberals," he said. "We knew the story. But we hadn't demonstrated through deed that we were actually prepared to do the things we were saying we could do."

Pompeo concluded his roughly 10-minute, main stage speech by saying conservatives living by their commitments and deeds will distinguish them from liberals. 

"It is not enough to say we're different," he said. "We need to be different. We need to act differently."