Schlafly slams 'worst bill Congress has ever passed'

House Sepaker John Boehner and President Obama

Legendary conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly is in her 10th decade of life, so she's seen a little bit of what Washington can do, or has done.

But Tuesday's action takes the cake, she said.

The trade plan advanced by the Republican Party is "the worst bill Congress has ever passed," she said.

The fast-track trade agreement that gives President Obama more power cleared the last real obstacle to its final approval.

Schlafly was scathing in her analysis of the GOP’s actions.

She charged, "It's just money. The big donors are demanding the cheap labor. And it's a matter of jobs and what this whole free trade policy has done is kill the middle class."

The author of "Who Killed the American Family?" and the founder of the Eagle Forum blamed free trade for undermining the American economy and even hurting the nuclear family.

"I originally built my organization on full-time homemakers. And there are no more full-time homemakers because the husbands who could make $50,000 a year and support their families are not there anymore, so the wives have to go out and work for minimum wage at Starbucks," she said.

"When the last trade bill with South Korea went through, they promised it would create 40,000 jobs. Well, it did create 40,000 jobs but they were all in South Korea. Free-trade advocates are just liars. It’s destroying American jobs and making jobs overseas."

Schlafly blasted a "Republican Establishment" which she says has betrayed its supporters.

"The American people voted for a change and they voted for a repudiation of Obama's polices, but we didn't get it. We were disappointed. Of course, Speaker John Boehner hasn't led the kind of revolt we expected him to do. Instead, he just cries when he doesn’t get his way.

"Boehner is getting his orders from the big donors who don't really care about party, who are essentially globalists at heart. And we don't want globalist busybodies running our country," she said.

Richard Viguerie, a leading conservative strategist and the author of "Takeover: The 100 Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It," also slammed Boehner for not just supporting the trade bill, but punishing three Republican congressmen that opposed it by removing them from the party leadership.

Yet Viguerie also saw a silver lining, because in his view, the Republican leadership's actions show grassroots conservatives the party leadership's true priorities.

"In some ways, this is a positive in that it shows once again the true colors of the Republican leaders," he told WND. "They will punish conservatives when they disobey the Republican leadership, but big-government Republicans are free to vote to expand, grow government without any fear of retribution, so this could be a blessing in disguise certainly for these principled conservatives that ticked off the committee.

"It's really hard to be a principled conservative and be in the leadership, because the leadership is committed to growing government, so this will free up these three principled conservatives to be even more effective conservatives. I've said in my book, 'Takeover,' as well as many other times that conservatives are like the biblical Jews who had to wander through the desert for 40 years until that generation of failed, flawed leaders had passed from the scene. Conservatives are not going to get to the political Promised Land until we get new leaders.

"It's important for grassroots conservatives to know that their principal opponent is not Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, but it is the Republican leaders in Congress, including John Boehner and Mitch McConnell."

Viguerie stated the current Republican leaders are actually ideologically closer to the Democrats than the conservative grassroots.

"They share more in common with the Democrats than they do with limited government, constitutional conservatives, because the big-government Republicans believe in growing government. They just don't believe in growing it as fast as the Democrats do, but they still believe in growing government, whereas limited government, constitutional conservatives want to go in a significantly different direction. They want to reduce the power of government, so Republican leaders are closer ideologically to Democrats than they are to conservative principles."

As a result, says Viguerie, there is a growing divide between the Republican base and the Republican leadership. And he believes that means trouble for both the Republican Party and the nation.

"Certainly the grassroots do not trust the political leaders, and even people in politics are not confident in their own leaders. There's a lack of trust between politicians and certainly a lack of trust between the American people and their leaders. This is a growing phenomenon that is going to cause our country a lot of problems. We need a lot of things in this country, but number one, perhaps above everything else, is we need leadership that we have trust in, that we can respect, and that's sorely lacking these days."

Schlafly also drew a distinction between the conservative grassroots and the Republican leadership.

"The grassroots are still OK. That was the case I made in 'A Choice, Not An Echo,' which helped create the conservative movement in 1964, and now I have new edition that's been brought up to date with all the shenanigans they've been through in succeeding years the elite has tried to maintain the control.

"They are globalists and they are 'bipartisan,' another code word to get us to give up our country to global busybodies. The giving up of U.S. sovereignty in this trade deal as detailed by Sen. Jeff Sessions is really shocking."

Besides the economic damage Schlafly sees resulting from the trade deal, she is also sounding the alarm over the trade deal's possible implications on immigration policy.

"The trade deal just shows how determined the money people are. There are people out there who want to destroy our country. And the best way to do it is to bring in a lot of people who don't believe in America.

"We don't need any immigration right now. And I don't think we ought to allow any immigrants except people who want to be Americans. And these people coming now don't want to be American. They want to just come and cash in on our welfare system."

However, Schlafly does not believe the battle is over. Drawing on her own experience as a conservative activist, she says the existence of the conservative grassroots shows there is still hope.

"I did show the grassroots in my own life it's possible to win against overwhelming odds. The battles that we won were really tremendous. Defeating the Equal Rights Amendment, which everybody was for, all the presidents and most of Congress and so forth, and of course the election of Ronald Reagan.

"We've had a lot of victories. We can do that again. If the grassroots will just realize our whole country is at stake. We are not going to let them make our country a Third World country on the theory of diversity.

"We need to organize and use all the political means we have to fight. I believe in being involved in politics. And I just think there are so many of our people who think they're going to pray their way out of this mess and I tell them it's not God's job to do it, it's our job. God's got other big jobs to do."