Thank you for this opportunity to talk about the future of our Party and our

country.

The voters obviously wanted to get our attention last week. While I would
have preferred a gentler reproach than the one they delivered, I’m not
discouraged nor should any of us be. Democrats had a good election night.
We did not. But no defeat is permanent. And parties, just like individuals,
show their character in adversity. Now, is the occasion to show ours.

The election was not an affirmation of the other party’s program. Try as hard
as I could, I couldn’t find much evidence that my Democratic friends were
offering anything that resembled a coherent platform or principled
leadership on the critical issues that confront us today.

Nor do I believe Americans rejected our values and governing philosophy.

On the contrary, I think they rejected us because they felt we had come to
value our incumbency over our principles, and partisanship, from both
parties, was no longer a contest of ideas, but an ever cruder and uncivil
brawl over the spoils of power.

I am convinced that a majority of Americans still consider themselves

conservatives or right of center. They still prefer common sense
conservatism to the alternative. They want their government to operate as
their families operate, on a realistic budget, with an eye on the future that
spurns self-indulgence in the short term for the sake of lasting prosperity,
that respects hard work and individual initiative, and that shows no
favoritism to one group of Americans over another. Americans had elected
us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed
government had changed us. We must spend the next two years
reacquainting the public and ourselves with the reason we came to office in
the first place: to serve a cause greater than our self-interest.

Common sense conservatives believe in a short list of self-evident truths:

love of country; respect for our unique influence on history; a strong defense

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and strong alliances based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility;
steadfast opposition to threats to our security and values that matches
resources to ends wisely; and confident, reliable, consistent leadership to
advance human rights, democracy, peace and security.

We believe every individual has something to contribute and deserves the

opportunity to reach his or her God-given potential. We believe in
increasing wealth and expanding opportunity; in low taxes; fiscal discipline,
free trade and open markets. We believe in competition, rewarding hard
work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.

We believe in work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility.

We believe in the integrity and values of families, neighborhoods and
communities. We believe in limited government in a federal system,
individual and property rights, and finding solutions to public problems
closest to the people.

We believe in the rule of law and equal justice under the law, victim’s rights
and taxpayers’ rights, and judges who interpret the Constitution and don’t
usurp, by legislating from the bench, the public’s right to elect
representatives to write our laws.

Common sense conservatives believe that the government that governs least
governs best; that government should do only those things individuals
cannot do for themselves, and do them efficiently. Much rides on that
principle: the integrity of the government, our prosperity; and every
American’s self-respect, which depends, as it always has, on one’s own
decisions and actions, and cannot be provided as another government
benefit.

Stand up for these values. Argue our principles for our country’s sake and
not just ours. We are the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan. Take on
the big problems. Don’t hide from hard challenges. Act on principle. Show

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Americans there are things that matter more to us than our incumbency. Do
the right thing, and the politics will take care of itself.

Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins. And the people
will punish it. We were elected to reduce the size of government and
enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. Then we lavished money, in
a time of war, on thousands of projects of dubious, if any, public value. We
responded to a problem facing some Americans by providing every retired
American with a prescription drug benefit, and adding another trillion
dollars to a bankrupt entitlement. We increased the size of government in
the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office. And
the people punished us. We lost our principles and our majority. And there
is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan vetoed a highway bill because it because it had 152
earmarks. Last year, a Republican Congress passed a highway bill with
6,371 special projects costing the taxpayers twenty-four billion dollars.
Those and other earmarks passed by a Republican Congress included fifty
million for an indoor rainforest, $500,000 for a teapot museum; $350,000 for
an Inner Harmony Foundation and Wellness Center; and 223 million for a
bridge to nowhere. I didn’t see those projects in the fine print of the
Contract with America, and neither did the voters.

A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt took on the special interests. Let the party
of Teddy Roosevelt take the lead in cleaning up Washington today. Let’s
start with pork barrel spending and corporate welfare; eliminate all
earmarks; pass the line item veto; employ honest budget accounting; and end
emergency spending bills for non emergencies as a way around budget
limits. Let’s ban all gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, and keep lobbyists
off the floors of the House and Senate.

We have more significant priorities ahead of us than finding new ways to

spend money unwisely. When Social Security was established, forty-one
workers supported a single retiree; today it’s three. Health care costs add

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more to the cost of a new car manufactured in the U.S. than steel. By 2045,
spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with interest on
the national debt, will consume 84 cents out of every federal dollar.

We can leave these difficult problems to our unlucky successors, after

they’ve grown worse, and harder to fix. Or we can bring all parties to the
table, and hammer out a principled solution that makes the difficult choices
necessary to support the needs of retirees, promote high quality health care
at lower costs, protect the future security of workers; and restores the bonds
of trust between the generations.

We can do the same on the issue of immigration. I understand the

magnitude of the problem. We can do all that is possible to defend our
borders from illegal immigration, and affirm the rule of law. When we have
made these improvements, we must still recognize that job opportunities
here and poverty elsewhere in the world will still attract immigrants
desperate to improve their lives, and who will use increasingly desperate
measures to do so. We can devise a rational and fair process, which protects
our security and affirms America’s promise as a land of opportunity.

My friends, change is coming at Americans faster today than ever before.

Fifty years ago, we produced and sold almost entirely for our domestic
market. Today, we compete in a global marketplace against 1.3 billion
Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians.

Over the last two decades, because we have expanded free trade and open
markets, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more
than 700 million in China and 200 million in India. As their economies
grow, developing nations offer not just competition – but vast new consumer
markets for American goods and services. And raising hundreds of millions
of people from poverty is the best shield against the attraction of extremism.

Thanks, in part, to Republican economic policies, America still has the most
productive, flexible and energetic free economy in the world.

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But for many Americans – behind the positive macro-economic statistics –
once reliable bedrocks like pensions, health care plans and even middle class
jobs no longer feel secure. And with science and technology the key to high
wage jobs, many parents fear their children won’t have the same
opportunities they had.

In the global economy what you learn is what you earn. But today, half of
Hispanics and half of African Americans entering high school will never
graduate. By the 12th grade, U.S. students in math and science score near the
bottom of all industrialized nations. As Bill Gates said” “This isn’t an
accident or flaw in the system. It is the system.”

We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower

parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and
reward superior teachers, and have a fair, but sure process to weed out
incompetents.

When Ronald Reagan took office, a blackberry was something you used to
make jam; today it is a vital link in a wireless communication network that
spans the globe. The broadband revolution is transforming every facet of
communications from the internet to entertainment to telephone service to
the delivery of health care services to supply chain management. Yet over
the last decade, America has dropped from 2nd in the world to 19th in
broadband development and connectivity. In the real world of global
competition if we don’t reverse those trends, we will risk our prosperity and
leave many Americans in rural areas far behind the rest of us.

“The dogmas of the quiet past,” Abraham Lincoln said, “are inadequate to
the stormy present. As our case is new, we must think anew. We must
disenthrall ourselves.” Across the generations, those words still ring true.

To keep our nation prosperous, strong and growing we have to rethink,

reform and reinvent: the way we educate our children; train our workers;

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deliver health care services; support retirees; fuel our transportation network;
stimulate research and development; and harness new technologies. Let that
challenge be the new Republican calling. Let’s invite a genuine contest of
ideas within our party and with the other party. For conservatism, as Ronald
Reagan told us “is not a narrow ideology.”

When I drive home at night, I pass people waiting at a bus stop, and imagine
their lives. A woman of Hispanic heritage, maybe thirty five, with three
kids, is waiting for a bus on a cold street in the middle of the night so she
can start her job. While you and I are home relaxing with our families over
dinner, she and thousands like her are working late into the night in the
offices we left, emptying waste baskets, cleaning up kitchens, scrubbing
bathroom floors. She – like first generation Americans before her – is
sacrificing so her children can climb the ladder of American opportunity.

When we debate simplifying the tax code – which we must do -- I want us to

remember that admirable woman, and ask ourselves have we done all we can
to remove obstacles for her and millions like her to climb the next rung on
the ladder.

I want us to remember the worker in Michigan, in his fifties, who served a

tour in Vietnam, married, four kids, two in college, who worked over thirty
years at an auto parts plant, and never took a day of sick leave. Last year his
plant downsized and his job was eliminated, and he felt as if a trap door had
opened beneath him and he and his family had fallen through it.

America is the greatest trading nation in the world. Competition keeps us

strong, and most Americans know that building a moat around America is a
formula for stagnation. I am proud of our party’s leadership on free trade
while the Democrats embrace the siren song of protectionism. But we are
not a nation of Social Darwinists, who believe only in the survival of the
fittest. Work in America is more than a paycheck; it a source of pride, self-
reliance and identity.

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I want our party to say to that worker in Michigan, and thousands like him:
when you work hard; play by the rules, serve your country and community;
and the burden of change arrives suddenly on your doorstep, you and your
family are not just forgotten or disposable.

Our most important obligation, of course, is to protect Americans from the

threat posed by violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity
itself. They are moral monsters, but they are also a disciplined, dedicated
movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates
martyrdom and murder, has access to science, technology and mass
communications, and is determined to acquire and use against us and our
allies weapons of mass destruction. The institutions that sustained us
throughout the Cold War and the doctrine of deterrence we relied on are no
longer adequate to protect us in a struggle where suicide bombers might
obtain the world’s most terrifying weapons.

The war against terrorism is part of a larger struggle around the globe
between the forces of integration and disintegration, between builders and
destroyers, between modernizers and those who would shackle humanity,
especially women, in a feudal theocracy. The question facing us is not
whether America will play a large and shaping role in that struggle, but
whether we will play it well or badly. We cannot afford to take a holiday
from history.

To defend ourselves we must do everything better and smarter than we did

before. We must rethink, renew and rebuild the structure and mission of our
military; the capabilities of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies;
the purposes of our alliances, the reach and scope of our diplomacy, and the
capacities of all branches of government to defend us against the peril we
now face. We need to marshal all elements of American power: our
military, economy, investment, trade and technology. We need to strengthen
our alliances, and build support in other nations, which must, whether they
believe it or not, confront the same threat to their way of life that we do.
And we must marshal the power of our ideals.

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Some on both the Left and Right argue that our advocacy of democratic
values in Iraq and elsewhere is reckless and vain; that freedom only works
for wealthy nations and Western cultures. But a world where our political
and economic values had a realistic chance at becoming a global creed was
the principal object of our foreign policy in the last century. We
conservatives were its most effective advocates, and it must remain our
principal object today. We understood that our security interests and the
global advance of our ideals are inextricably linked, and we surely didn’t
accept the notion that freedom was the product of our power and wealth.
Our wealth and power are the product of our freedom.

We must appreciate the security implications of every policy debate. When

we debate energy legislation, for instance, we must recognize that the oil
tankers stretching from the Persian Gulf to our ports also channel
petrodollars to oil dictatorships -- dollars used to buy centrifuges to enrich
uranium and build ballistic missiles; to finance Hamas, Hezbollah and al
Qaeda; and to fund the madrassas that train the next generation of terrorists.

We should lead our allies in an international effort to reduce our mutual

dependence on oil, employing the services of the brightest, most creative and
accomplished scientists, business leaders, military and government officials,
could do as much to defeat the terrorists as any other policy decision we
make, and would make American businesses and workers the leaders in
developing new technologies. And, obviously, increased and accelerated
development of nuclear energy is an important part of the solution.

We must also prepare, across all levels of government, far better than we
have done, to respond quickly and effectively to another terrorist attack or
natural calamity. I am not an advocate of big government, and the private
sector has an important role to play in homeland security. But when
Americans confront a catastrophe, either natural or man-made, their
government, across jurisdictions, should be organized and ready to deliver

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bottled drinking water to dehydrated babies and rescue the aged and infirm
trapped in a hospital with no electricity.

Now, I would like to speak briefly about the issue that is uppermost on the
minds of Americans. I’ll make another trip to Iraq in the coming weeks, and
will speak more extensively on the subject when I return. But, let me make
a few observations here.

Good and patriotic Americans disagree about the wisdom of the original
decision to remove Saddam Hussein. I supported it and still do. And clearly
the country is divided on the question of how we proceed from here. But I
believe all Americans agree on this: to treat this war as a partisan issue for
the advantage of either party would dishonor the sacrifices of the young men
and women who have fought in it so bravely.

We have made a great many mistakes in this war, and history will hold us to
account for them just as the voters did last week. The situation in Iraq is
dire. But I believe victory is still attainable. And I am certain that our
defeat there would be a catastrophe, and not only for the United States. But
we will not succeed if we no longer have the will to win.

Americans are tired of Iraq because they are not convinced we can still win
there without an intolerable loss of additional lives and resources. I
understand that. But in no other time are we more morally obliged to speak
the truth to our country, as we best see it, than in a time of war. So, let me
say this, without additional combat forces we will not win this war. We can,
perhaps, attempt to mitigate somewhat the terrible consequences of our
defeat, but even that is an uncertain prospect. We don’t have adequate
forces in Iraq to clear and hold insurgent strongholds; to provide security for
rebuilding local institutions and economies; to arrest sectarian violence in
Baghdad and disarm Sunni and Shia militias; to train the Iraqi Army, and to
embed American personnel in weak, and often corrupt Iraqi police units.
We need to do all these things if we are to succeed.

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They will not be easy to find. The day after 9/11/, we should have begun to
increase significantly the size of the Army and Marine Corps. But we did
not. So we must turn again to those Americans and their families who have
already sacrificed so much in this cause. That is a very hard thing to do.
But if we intend to win, then we must.

It is not fair or easy to look a soldier in the eye and tell him he must shoulder
a rifle again and risk his life in a third tour in Iraq. Many of them will not
want to. They feel have already suffered far more than the rest of us to win
this war. Their families will be even more upset. And they will be right. It
is a hard thing to ask of them. But ask it we must – if, and I emphasize if,
we have the will to win. As troubling as it is, I can ask a young Marine to go
back to Iraq. And he will go, not happily perhaps, but he will go because he
and his comrades are the first patriots among us, and he will fight his hardest
there for his country to prevail. Of that, I have no doubt. But I can only ask
him if I share his commitment to victory.

What I cannot do is ask him to return to Iraq, to risk life and limb, so that we
might delay our defeat for a few months or a year. That is more to ask than
patriotism requires. It would not be in the interest of the country, and it
surely would be an intolerable sacrifice for so poor an accomplishment. It
would be immoral, and I could not do it.

My friends, before I leave, let me again say that though we suffered a tough
defeat last week, we will recover if we learn our lesson well and once again
offer Americans enlightened, effective and principled leadership. In 1977,
after Republicans lost the presidency and Democrats held large majorities in
Congress, Ronald Reagan offered precisely that kind of leadership, and led
us to victory in just three years time. We can do it again if we lead and
inspire as he did.

That was not my first experience with President Reagan’s wisdom. When I
was their involuntary guest, the North Vietnamese went to great lengths to
restrict news from home to the statements and activities of prominent

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opponents of the war. They wanted us to believe that our country had
forgotten us. They never mentioned Ronald Reagan to us, or played his
speeches over the camp loudspeakers. No matter. We knew about him.
New additions to our ranks told us how Governor and Mrs. Reagan were
committed to our liberation and our cause. They were among the few
prominent Americans who did not subscribe to the then fashionable notion
that America and the West had entered our inevitable decline.

We came home to a country that had lost a war and the best sense of itself; a
country beset by serious social and economic problems. Assassinations,
riots, scandals, contempt for political, religious and educational institutions,
gave the appearance that we had become a dysfunctional society. Patriotism
was sneered at. The military scorned. And the world anticipated the
collapse of our global influence. The great, robust democracy that had given
its name to the century appeared exhausted.

Ronald Reagan believed differently. He possessed an unshakeable faith in

America’s spirit that proved more durable than the prevailing political
sentiments of the time, and he became President to prove it. His confidence
was a tonic to men who had come home eager to put the war behind us and
for our country to do likewise. His was a faith that shouted to tyrants, “tear
down this wall.” When walls were all I had for a world, his faith in our
country gave me hope in a desolate place.

It was the faith he shared with my friend, Mike Christian.

Fellow Americans, we can achieve whatever task we set for our country, and
whatever task we set for our party, as long as we remember why we came to
Washington in the first place. We came to honor Ronald Reagan’s and Mike
Christian’s faith in America, the greatest nation and greatest force for good
on earth. If we remember that then all will be well for our party and our
country.

Thank you and God bless you.

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