Mark Barrett

Asheville

ASHEVILLE – Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called President Obama a Marxist at a large GOP gathering here Friday night and said the country must return religion to government.

DeLay said at former U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor's 22nd annual holiday dinner that the nation must respect the Constitution's guarantees of individual rights -- he called the document "God creating this wonderful country" -- and that conservative victories in 2016 would aid a spiritual revival that has already begun in the nation.

Obama's presidency has shown the country problems that arise when progressives are in control, he said.

"He's done more for the Republican Party ... than any one person could ever do," DeLay said. "He doesn't lie about being a Marxist. He's proud of it. In fact, I think he's a Muslim, but he definitely is a Marxist."

Gov. Pat McCrory and House Speaker Thom Tillis, elected to the U.S. Senate last month, also spoke to the more than 525 people attending the event at the Crowne Plaza Resort.

DeLay represented a Texas district in the U.S. House from 1985-2006. He was known for his ability to get votes for Republican legislation, conservative views and a series of ethical controversies.

He was indicted on money laundering charges in 2005 and convicted in 2010 in relation to funneling corporate donations to state candidates in Texas. Appellate courts later ruled DeLay's conduct did not violate state law.

DeLay's time in office overlapped with Taylor's and he said he periodically spends time at Lake Toxaway in his RV.

About a third of his remarks were a Christian testimonial, interspersed with a couple of jabs at Democrats, in which DeLay said God helped him during his legal troubles.

"I learned not to worry about tomorrow, just to walk with Him today," he said.

He also said, "Not even Nancy Pelosi can separate me from the love of Christ."

DeLay said today's progressives are the intellectual heirs of Americans who went to Europe starting in the 1880s "to be taught by Karl Marx and Hegel and all those people that were pushing the Marxist-socialist agenda," then returned to teach in universities.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher whose work influenced Marx. He died in 1831, Marx in 1883.

Ignoring the Constitution has polluted the culture and allowed over-regulation that drags down the economy, DeLay said.

"Look what happened in Ferguson, (Missouri,)" he said. "It had nothing to do with a cop shooting a teenager. It had everything to do with the culture of Ferguson that would raise a teenager that would attack a cop and try to kill him."

He repeatedly said Americans must "invoke the Constitution," saying the federal Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished because each "ain't in the Constitution."

"God needs to come back to the public square," he said, decrying an atheistic prayer offered at a government meeting in Florida.

"Religious freedom doesn't mean ... you have to allow an atheist to open up the council meeting," he said.

McCrory told the crowd that state government is starting to work again after years of neglect from Democrats.

He said that when he was inaugurated in January 2013, he noticed two fountains in Raleigh's state government complex that weren't running and had trash in them.

A couple of weeks later, the fountains were in the same condition so McCrory said he asked about them. He was told they had been broken for five-and-a-half years.

"That's the culture that we walked into after 23 years of … the other party controlling the governor's office. When things were broken they just went, 'Don't worry about it, someone will fix it later," McCrory said.

Now, he said, "The fountains are working and state government is starting to work for the first time in" two decades.

McCrory said "the first and biggest decision we made" was to not extend the period jobless workers could receive unemployment benefits and instead work on paying off a $2.6 billion debt to the federal government the state's jobless program had incurred.

"We decided to tear up the credit card to the federal government" and the state is now six months away from retiring the debt, he said.

The state's unemployment rate has dropped significantly and the state's Medicaid program has moved from having an unexpected shortfall of $535 million to running a surplus over budget, McCrory said.

Tillis, who first became speaker in 2011, said he even managed to have a little fun with a state Trooper during his time in Raleigh.

He said as he arrived at the Executive Mansion for his weekly breakfast with McCrory, he noticed that the communications equipment where visitors announce themselves to the mansion's security detail strongly resembled the devices customers use to order in the drive-through line at fast food restaurants.

"I said, 'Yeah, I'd like a spicy chicken biscuit and a cup of coffee,' " Tillis said. "The state Trooper deadpanned ... 'Roger that. That'll be $2.19.' "

Tillis said he is pleased "to have the opportunity to go to Washington and do exactly what we said we'd do, (including) putting the president on notice that he has taken this country in the wrong direction," he said.

"We have to get government out of the way. That's what's wrong with this nation today," Tillis said.

He told the crowd, "I'm going to come back here next year and I'm not going to talk about the reasons we didn't get things done, I'm going to talk about what we got done."