Tuesday & Wednesday . . .
Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey:
. . . the American people want to hear the truth about the extent of our fiscal difficulties. They believe the American people need to be coddled by big government. They believe the American people are content to live the lie with them. They are wrong. We believe in telling our seniors the truth about our overburdened entitlements. We know seniors not only want these programs to survive, but they just as badly want them secured
for their grandchildren. Our seniors are not children.
Here’s what they (Democrats) believe. They believe seniors will always put themselves ahead of their grandchildren. And here’s what they do. They prey on their vulnerabilities and scare them with misinformation for the single cynical purpose of winning the next election. Here is their plan. Whistling happy tune while driving us off a fiscal cliff as long as they are behind the wheel of power when we fall. . . .
They (Democrats) believe in teachers’ unions . We believe in teachers. . . .
We believe — we believe that, if we tell the people the truth, that they will act bigger than the pettiness we see in Washington, D.C. . . .
Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world’s greatest care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor.
Former Senator Rick Santorum
. . . My grandfather, like millions of other immigrants, didn’t come here for some government guarantee of income equality or government benefits to take care of his family.
In 1923 there were no government benefits for immigrants except one: Freedom!
. . . I helped write welfare reform; we made the law crystal clear – no president can waive the work requirement. But as with his refusal to enforce our immigration laws, President Obama rules like he is above the law.
America take heed, when a president can simply give a speech or write a memo and change the law to do what the law says he can’t, we weaken our republic.
. . . I thank God that America still has one party that reaches out their hands in love to lift up all of God’s children – born and unborn – and says that each of us has dignity and all of us have the right to live the American Dream.
. . . We are stewards of a great inheritance. In November we have a chance to vote for life and liberty, not dependency. A vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will put our country back in the hands of leaders who understand what America can and, for the sake of our children, must be to keep the dream alive.
New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez
. . . But we’ve each shared in the promise of America, and we share a core belief that the promise of America must be kept for the next generation . . . success is not something to be ashamed of or to demonize.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
. . . Four years ago, Mitt Romney and I were opponents. We still are, but we’re not opposing each other.
We are mutual opponents of the miserably failed experiments that have put this country in a downward spiral. . . .
To those who question how once rivals can now be united, it’s simple – we have Barack Obama to thank.
He said, “You didn’t build it.”
Translation: “It doesn’t rightly belong to you!”
No small differences among us in our party approximate the vast differences between the liberty-limiting, radical left-wing, anti-business, reckless-spending, tax-hiking party of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, versus an energized America who knows that we can do better. . . .
I’m sure the press will tell you he (Mitt Romney)isn’t perfect.
But for the past four years, we’ve tried the one the press thought was perfect, and that hasn’t worked out so well for us. . . .
Let me clear the air about whether guys like me would only support an evangelical. Of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama, and he supports changing the definition of marriage, believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb or even beyond the womb, and tells people of faith that they must bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care . . .
The attack on my Catholic brothers and sisters is an attack on me. The Democrats have brought back the old dance the “Limbo” to see how low they can go in attempting to limit our ability to practice our faith.
This isn’t a battle about contraceptives and Catholics, but of conscience and the Creator.
I care far less as to where Mitt Romney takes his family to church than I do about where he takes this country. Joe Biden said, “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Well, in the Senate, Joe’s party hasn’t produced a budget in three years.
Speaking of budgets, Joe Biden’s budget shows that while he wants to be generous with your money through higher taxes and government spending, for years he gave less than two-tenths of 1 percent of his money to charity.
He just wants you to give the government more so he and the Democrats can feel better about themselves. Mitt Romney has given over 16% of his income to his church and charity, and I’d feel better about having a leader who gives more of his own money instead of mine. . . .
The Democrats say we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying. That sounds like the nonsense of giving every kid a trophy for showing up.
Friends, we’re talking about leading the country, not playing on a third-grade soccer team!
I realize this is the man who got a Nobel Peace Prize for what he would potentially do, but in the real world, you get the prize for producing something, not just promising it. . . .
If we don’t change the direction of our nation now, our bequest will be nothing but an extraordinary shame.
But we can do better.
President Obama is out of gas; Americans are out of patience, and our great Republic is almost out of time. It’s time we no longer lead from behind, but get off our behinds and leave something lasting for those who come after us instead of a mountain of debt and a pile of excuses. . . .
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
No country, no not even a rising China, can do more harm to us than we can do to ourselves’
Vice Presidential Candidate and Congressman Paul Ryan
. . . Maybe the greatest waste of all was time. Here we were, faced with a massive job crisis – so deep that if everyone out of work stood in single file, that unemployment line would stretch the length of the entire American continent. You would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation, and nothing else, his first order of economic business.
But this president didn’t do that. Instead, we got a long, divisive, all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.
Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country. . . .
And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly.
You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars,
We had help from Medicare, and it was there, just like it’s there for my mom today. Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it. A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare, for my mom’s generation, for my generation, and for my kids and yours.
So our opponents can consider themselves on notice. In this election, on this issue, the usual posturing on the left isn’t going to work. Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program, and raiding it.
isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility? . . .
. . . The present administration has made its choices. And Mitt Romney and I have made ours: Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation’s economic problems.
And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this.
After four years of government trying to divide up the wealth, we will get America creating wealth again.
After four years of government trying to divide up the wealth, we will get America creating wealth again. With tax fairness and regulatory reform, we’ll put government back on the side of the men and women who create jobs, and the men and women who need jobs. . . .
In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government. . . .
College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now.
None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers- a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.
. . . We believe that in every life there is goodness; for every person, there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of Life.
We have responsibilities, one to another- we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.
Each of these great moral ideas is essential to democratic government- to the rule of law, to life in a humane and decent society. They are the moral creed of our country, as powerful in our time, as on the day of America’s founding. They are self-evident and unchanging, and sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government.
We will not duck the tough issues, we will lead.
We will not spend four years blaming others, we will take responsibility.
We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles.
We can get this country working again. We can get this economy growing again. We can make the safety net safe again. We can do this.
