(Source: Newt.com)

Well, thank you all. Thank you very much. I am delighted to be here I want to thank Dave Bossie. Callista and I have a great working relationship with Dave and we have made a number of movies that we’re very proud of and the new Reagan book that we’re proud of and all that he did at Citizens United both in the lawsuit last year and in the hard work he’s done to help elect conservatives across the country is really, truly remarkable so I’m glad to be back with you. I also want to thank David Keane who, while he has retired from that job, held together both the ACU and CPAC since 1983 and he deserves a big round of applause.

Now, as all of you know who have been here when I have been at CPAC over the years I almost always start by going back to the very 2nd CPAC, 1975, at a time when the republican and conservative prospects seemed at their very bottom, when the country seemed to have lost its way and when Governor Ronald Reagan, recently out of office, came here and said that we have to have bold colors, not pale pastels. And he laid out a policy which, in a very short time, defeated the soviet empire, re-launched the American economy and rebuilt American civic pride and American exceptionalism. 20 years after that, I came to CPAC as the first republican speaker in 40 years and I outlined a series of very bold ideas: welfare reform so people would go to work and school instead of being dependent on the government, a balanced budget, tax cuts for the first time in 16 years to stimulate economic growth, strengthening our intelligence capacity against terrorism… now I’m back. Here we are 16 years later and what’s happened? Well, just two stories from yesterday: the Germans are buying the New York Stock Exchange, and in fact the German exchange is bigger than the New York Stock Exchange so they will have 60% control of the exchange. This marks a major decline of New York as a center of world finance; it is a fundamental blow to our capacity to lead the world and to create jobs and in fact what’s truly astonishing is that the German government, that Germany as a country, pays 50% more for manufacturing than we do. You earn more money in Germany and they have the lowest unemployment rate since 1992. So it’s not always cheap labor- sometimes it’s just terribly bad government. Let’s look at the case: the German government is pro jobs, the German government is pro manufacturing, the German government is pro worker training, the German government is pro exports. And now let’s look at the Obama government.

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