CHAMPAIGN – If President Barack Obama's health care bill is approved, Republicans should turn the 2012 election into a referendum on it, former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove said Saturday at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner of the Champaign County Republican Party.

Rove spoke for 40 minutes and spent nearly all of his time talking about the Obama administration's taxing and spending policies and the increase in the federal budget deficit. He barely mentioned the former president and never touched on his own controversial role in the war in Iraq.

In his speech Rove did not promote his new book, "Courage and Consequences – My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," although copies of it were sold at the noontime dinner at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign. About 400 people attended the sold-out event.

"If they manage to browbeat or bribe or cajole or threaten their way to a narrow victory tomorrow," Rove said of the health care vote expected in the House today, "then every Republican candidate for Congress and every Republican candidate for Senate should stand up and say, 'Whatever methods you used to pass it, our first order of business will be to repeal it.'"

The 2012 election, he said, should become "a referendum on whether we want to turn one-sixth of the American economy over to the control of really smart bureaucrats in Washington, instead of our doctors and hospitals and nurses."

Speaking without notes, Rove said the health care proposal "is a flood, a torrent, a disaster of unbelievable proportions coming our way which will bankrupt this country. Think about this: For 40 or 50 years, since World War II, almost 60 years, we've had a consensus that the federal government will take 18 to 20 percent of the GDP.

"If this bill passes, the size of the federal government will be 25 percent of the GDP."

He said the U.S. "will be on our way to looking like some dinky little country in the north of Europe, some European, Scandinavian, social democracy – and look, I'm Norwegian-American, we came here because we wanted to get away from that stuff. We will not be the United States of America. We will be something different."

While the crowd inside the banquet room cheered Rove and gave him several standing ovations, a group of demonstrators outside protested his presence, the wars in the Middle East and Republican opposition to the health care overhaul.

Although Rove had been scheduled to appear at a press conference before the speech, that event was canceled. No explanation was given.

Rove said public reaction to the health care proposal has been "extraordinary." He noted that a year ago polls showed 2-to-1 support for the plan, but that today 60 percent oppose it.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life. You have to go back to the Vietnam War to find anywhere near the level where people are energized about this," he said. "And in this issue it's a lot of people who have been spectators who are concerned about the flood of debt, the expansion of government that is represented in this bill and everything else this president's been doing this year."

In one of his few references to the former president he served as a campaign manager and a top White House aide, Rove hammered Obama for deficit expansion. He also managed to miscalculate Obama's tenure as president.

"In fact, after decrying all those monies piled up while we were fighting a war, protecting the homeland and getting the economy going under Bush, Barack Obama turns around and piles up more debt in the first 20 months and 11 days of his time in office than Bush did in eight years. He has the (temerity) to lecture us about deficits."

Rove said Obama's spending thus far has added $1.4 trillion to the national debt.

Also present at the Lincoln Day dinner were statewide Republican candidates Bill Brady (for governor), Steve Kim (for attorney general) and Dan Rutherford (for state treasurer).

In a meeting with reporters, Brady contrasted himself with Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn. He promised to cut taxes, not raise them.

"I think even the Democrats in Springfield realize the American public and the people of Illinois are not willing to support tax increases. They want a reduction. I will not increase the tax burden on families and businesses. That will push more jobs to Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas. The governor is wrong," Brady said. "It's time that he stopped living in fantasyland. It's time that he realized what the real picture is. We're not going to raise taxes."