Here’s the transcript:
“Hello, I’m Marco Rubio, a Senator from Florida. Right now all eyes are focused on my home state ahead of next week’s Republican presidential primary. It’s an exciting contest and I know that passions are high. So I wanted to take a moment to explain to the rest of the country why Republicans in Florida are so excited about this primary: Because we believe our country is in big trouble.
“As you know, earlier this week, President Obama delivered his fourth annual address to Congress. It was an opportunity for the President to talk about his accomplishments over the last three years and to lay out his plans for the year ahead.
“And he missed on both counts.
“You didn’t hear much talk about the success of his Administration—and that’s because there isn’t much.
“Yes, this President inherited a significant national debt, but over the last three years he’s made it worse. Our national debt has grown by nearly 50 percent since he took over, and now, for the first time since World War II, our national debt is larger than our country’s economy.
“Yes, this President inherited an economy where unemployment was too high, but over the last three years he’s made it worse. Today our unemployment rate is higher than the day he took office. In fact, since he took over, it’s been stuck over 8 percent every single month.
“This President didn’t talk about his record for one simple reason; he doesn’t want you to know about it. But you do know about it, because you feel the failure of his leadership every single day of your life.
“The bottom line is this President inherited a country with serious problems. He asked the Congress to give him the stimulus and Obamacare to fix it. The Democrats in Congress gave it to him. And not only did it not work, it made everything worse.
“President Obama has a year left in the White House. So what are his plans now to make things better? What does he plan to do now, that he didn’t do before? Well we got our answer Tuesday night. He plans to divide us against each other. To pit Americans against other Americans in the hopes of generating enough votes to get re-elected.
“He tells Americans worried about their jobs that the way to help them is to raise their bosses’ taxes.
“He tells those who are hurting that the only way they can be better off, is for others to be worse off.
“He tells all of us that the only way for some of us to climb up the economic ladder is for others to be pulled down.
“This divisive rhetoric, this effort to gain political support by convincing some that they will be better off if we punish others, this stuff has never worked anywhere it’s been tried.
“People end up fleeing countries who adopt economic policies based on these flawed principles. And more often than not, they come here.
“They come here because this is not who we are.
“Americans have always believed that all of us can succeed.
“That those who have made it fairly, can stay there. And those who are trying to make it will have a real chance to join them.
“This is what has made us different. This is what has made us prosperous. This is what makes us exceptional.
“And now, for the first time in my adult life, we have a President who’s asking us to abandon our economic heritage.
“To become like the countries people come here to get away from.
“To become like everybody else.
“Yes, people are hurting. Yes, there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor.
“But the way to solve it is not to embrace the ‘trickle up poverty’ economics of other nations.
“The way to solve it is to embrace the American Free Enterprise system.
“No economic system is perfect. But the American Free Enterprise system has empowered millions of people in the past. I know, because I saw it with my own eyes.
“My father was a bartender. And I thank God every night that there was someone willing to risk their money to build a hotel on Miami Beach and later in Las Vegas where he could work.
“I thank God that there was enough prosperity in America so people could go on vacation to Miami or Las Vegas. Where people felt prosperous enough to have weddings or Bar Mitzvahs and, by the way, could leave tips in my Dad’s little tip jar. Because with that money he raised us. And he gave me the opportunity to do things he never had a chance to do.
“Now, we had help along the way. I had student loans and grants from the government to help me get my education. And I went to our public school system.
“That’s an important role for government to play. And so I also thank God that we had an economy prosperous enough to afford to pay for these things as well.
“So, I’ll just close by saying, I hope this year will be the beginning of our work towards a new and prosperous American century.
“Because I know that this idea of a nation where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything, it’s not just something I read about in history books. I’ve seen it in my own life. And there’s no reason why we cannot continue it here, if only we do the right things.
“May God bless all of you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.”
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Wild Thing’s comment…….
I love hearing his speeches, he is always so good!!!
Excellent! We have so many good Conservatives in the wings, those like Rubio, Allen West, and Bobby Jindal. Can you imagine what this nation could achieve with a Rick Perry as President and any one of these men as his VP?
Views on America’s past, present, and future could not be more divergent than those expressed by the junior senator from Florida and the current occupant of the White House.
I wish the senator would express more clearly with facts of how these collectivists of the left when in power have through out history always failed with disastrous results.
How in Russia, collectivists Marx and Lenin laid the groundwork for the rise of the ruthless bloodshed and tyranny of Stalin; how the Bolshevik revolution destroyed a proud and endearing Russian culture so advanced in the arts and so many disciplines to what now nearly a century later a decline so severe and divergent Russia is now so unrecognizable.
Or closer in time and geography, something the senator can more closely relate to, how the Cuban revolution of 1959 led so horribly in betrayal to where half a century later only two tyrant brothers and their lieutenants live well while the rest of Cubans live every day in misery and depravation.
Marco Rubio was born in South Florida. He comes from a background of a good and industrious people who know very well of the loss of liberty, how it can come so quickly, deceit veiled in soothing tones of providing and of brotherhood, yet resulting so destructive and tyrannical with such a life altering betrayal and devastating loss to a country, its people, its proud history, its very culture, its uniting traditions, and its very way of life.
Long isolated from Americans, this largest island and the pearl of the Caribbean, just 90 miles off American shores on the other side of the Florida straits, for more than 50 years its eleven million people and one million people in its diaspora around the world have long suffered and endured the Marxist tyranny of socialism.
It is a story worthy of revisiting and of a closer look by Americans now in this very important election year which will be so contentious and so consequential.
Soothing tones of spread the wealth (drawing on the basest of human emotions, class envy, avarice) result in nothing but spreading the misery, sad separations from one’s very origins brought through the left’s tired, old collectivist creed of sloth and deceit.
Yes we do have Jindall, Rubio and Allen West in the wings.
That’s the problem. They are and remain in the wings.
If the elitist, inside the Beltway, leaders of the Republican Party would see fit to promote the agenda, that the above named, espouse, then maybe they would become more of a factor.
The leadership of the Republican Party keeps sending us the Mc Cain’s, Romney’s and Dole’s. All safe, middle of the road, “go along to get along candidates”. We all know the results of that thinking.
The people of the United Statea are looking for some real change in ideas here. The moment for a Conservative victory is now.
Whomever becomes the Republican Nominee, needs to keep this in mind, as he sets about Campaigning. He needs to bring the Rubio’s, West’s ,Jindall’s, and Perry’s, and their ideas and accomplishments, to the center of the stage. He needs to make sure that the Conservative voter gets the message, that there is some real change on the horizon, not “Business as Usual”.
We are in need of a Candidate that can deliver, rather than, “talk the talk”.
That is precisely the state of affairs of the modern day GOP as Sean well describes.
The years 2000-2006 exemplify the GOP establishment. During this period the Repubs owned the White House and both houses of Congress. For a while things were good politically and economically. Then, the Repubs became complacent, then they began acting like the Dems. Big spending, growing govt., more regulations. A weak Pres. who tended to reach across the aisle.
In 2006 voters overturned Congress and voted Dems back in. The Dems went at it with a vengence the weak willed Repubs could never muster and “voila”, their wild unfettered programs gave us the bursting housing bubble and the worst recession since the Great Depression. A weak Pres. Bush seemed to go into seclusion his last two years and seldom addressed the American people. It was as though we had no president except as a whipping boy.
So then the Repub establishment gave us Loony John McCain whose only rallying cry was Sarah Palin. She invigorated the conservative base and the Reagan type independents, but McCain’s erratic doings were too much to overcome as the Jim Jones of politics won the Oval Office in 2008.
Now the establishment wants to give us Gov. Romney. A northeastern liberal Repub. Perhaps he may beat obama, but what will we have. We will have a liberal, somewhat but not greatly better than obama. Romney will make George Bush’s compassionate conservatism really look like a bit of conservatism.
I just don’t know why the Repub elites seem so satisfied with second place in a two man race. Or why they are so repulsed by true conservatives. It is not enough to win congressional seats and the WH. Somehow we need to turn over the GOP hierarchy.