for an important organization, dedicate yourselves over the course of the next year to making sure that 2014 will be critical for us, critical for taking back the nation, and it is going to be a moment when everybody around the country can hear especially from those of us in the rocky mountain west, that we are not going to stand for it [applause] longer. one of the questions i get a lot and then i will ask my dad, because i would like to hear his view, the media in particular likes to talk about how the republican party is in disarray. we are facing these huge challenges, but we have got this disputes going on inside our party. i would like to hear you talk of

about the introspective's on it, as somebody who has obviously participated in politics and policy for a long time and who has seen our party and the democratic party go through times of change. i would be interested to hear your thoughts on where the party is today and what we have got to do to take back the white house in 2016. >> after the -- obviously i was not happy about the outcome in 2008, but president bush and i had had our eight years, we had worn out our welcome in some quarters, although we are looking better and better every day. it was easy after -- not easy, but it happens to a lot of people, to be down after the 2008 election, and we lost, but then we went through -- i can

remember that morning on january 20 of 2009, when we swore in the new president, there is a certain ritual that goes with that that i have always been fascinated by. there have been five republican presidents since eisenhower. i have worked with four of them. i worked with a fifth as part of the congressional leadership. i have been intrigued by that transfer of power. i can remember when president ford lost in 1976. one of my jobs as chief of staff was to read his concession statement over the telephone to jimmy carter, because president ford had lost his voice. he had been working so hard in this closing weeks of the campaign, his voice was gone.

all he could do was a bare whisper. he called me into the oval office. we drafted a telegram, and then he told me to get governor carter on the phone, which i did. he introduced me and then i had to read that statement. that was a real bummer. that was about as low as you could get when i think about my political career. as i look back over it now and think about it, those particular days, but a lot of my experience is that out of adversity rises opportunity. i think back to that time when we lost the 1976 election, on the heels of watergate, nixon had been forced to resign, and a lot of things you could be pretty grim about, but with the perspective of a little time and history, we had to go through that jimmy carter period to get to ronald reagan.

that morning when i read that telegram, at was for me the beginning of what became the reagan revolution, when we were all reaganites, when we got behind governor reagan and i think did some tremendous work, took back the senate that day and put a man in the white house who believed in all of those things we all believe in, in the creed, if you will, of your institute. i tend now when i look at what is going on out there, and there is an awful lot that i do not like about what is going on -- i will say a word or two about it in a minute -- but i look forward to the next election and all the elections coming up as it is not going to be easy, nobody will hand it to us, we will have to earn it one vote at a time, we would have to raise money, recruit candidates, build the organization, and put forth a program that the american people will believe in and will support, and it is our right as

americans to go do that and our right to go change the government. that is by golly what we are going to do. there is a lot of concern, i hear a lot of discussion and debate these days that is focused a lot on domestic affairs, for good and legitimate reasons. but i am perhaps even more concerned, or at least as concerned about what is going on internationally as i am about what barack obama and his administration are doing domestically. why do i say that? one of the most memorable days of my life was 9/11 when after the planes struck the world trade center in new york, i was in my west wing office, working with my speech writer, and some of the staff gathered around when word came down that there had been an attack in new york

and shortly after that the door to my office burst open, one of my secret service agents came in, he was sitting down in a chair, and he said, sir, we are leaving now. he did not ask. he did not ask if it was ok with me. he grabbed me with one hand and propelled me out the door and down the stairs, headed for the emergency operation bunker underneath the white house. he got part way down there, got into a tunnel, and he told me the reason they had effectuated evacuated me was because there was a hijacked aircraft that have been reported by dulles, headed towards crown. that was american flight 77 that went into the pentagon. what emerged out of that whole day obviously was not a terrorist act, it was not a law enforcement problem, it was not

a matter of us sending out the fbi to go find the bad guy, bringing to trial, and lock him up, it was an act of war. it was worse than pearl harbor. killed more americans than pearl harbor did, took place in the heart of new york city and washington. if it not been for those brave passengers, they would've taken out the white house or the capitol building on flight 93. it is as bad as it gets. one of the key decisions we made in the bush administration, and we made it basically that night and the next morning after the day was over with and the president was back and address the country. lynn and i were evacuated off the south lawn of the white house and flown up to camp david, and we wanted to make sure that the president and i were not in the same location because we want to preserve the continuity of government.

we were careful not to get into a situation where an attack would take us both out. i had the opportunity to watch the reruns on television on what had happened that day. people did all over the country, i am sure. we began to think about what did we have to do now, how do we make sure that never happens again and we get the guys at his -- that did this to us? the key decision was to say that was an act of war, because then we were justified in marshaling all of our resources, including our military manpower, capabilities, using all the powers of the president under article as commander in chief. that is what we did. during the course of that, we put in place at the terrorist surveillance program that is now referred to as the nsa program, basically, what it did was it

allowed us, and i am confident of the program we put in place and we have not been involved in the classified stuff -- but the program we put in place saved as general alexander has said at nsa must stop over 50 attacks on the united states and our friends overseas over the course of the last 10 or 12 years. we put in place the and enhanced interrogation program, waterboarding. some people so that was torture. i do not believe it was torture. ksm may have felt it was torture. the fact was that the enhanced interrogation program was signed off by the justice department using techniques we used on our and people in training, it was not torture, it was a good program that allowed us to develop the intelligence we needed to keep america safe for 7 1/2 years.[applause]

and it worked. the record speaks for itself. the cia put out a classified report in 2004. ksm was subjected to enhanced interrogation. a report was published, classified by the cia, and it has been declassified, although it still has parts redacted. the headline is "khalid sheik mohammed preeminent source on al qaeda." that is the place where we learned most of the intelligence we had, at least in the mid part of our time there, about what al qaeda was about, about where they were based, how they were funded, where the training camps were. on 9/11 we did not know that.

we knew osama bin laden was in pakistan, but that was the extent of our knowledge. the way we kept the country safe was get that intelligence and according to the agency itself, the way we did that was by subjecting him -- because he was subjected more than anybody else to enhanced interrogation techniques. this administration does not get it. they do not. obama made a speech here not too long ago to the national defense university in may and basically said ok, now we are returning back to the pre-9/11 days. we are not at war anymore. we are going back to pre-9/11. we will go try to round up the guys when they blow up. we are no longer on a war footing, if you will, in terms of thinking about the state we're in. i think that is dead wrong. it is an absolute total misreading of where we find ourselves today.

as i look at that part of the world, north africa, a good part of the middle east, not just afghanistan, where they launched 9/11 from, but also yemen and the major struggle underway in egypt, the muslim brotherhood taken power there, the group having spawned all those other radical groups, egyptian jihad, and out of that has come most of the major islamist terrorist organizations. they are out there. look at benghazi in libya, and all across the middle east, clearly in other areas such as pakistan, iran we see obviously significant elements of radical islamist belief and action and activity.

they have a much larger geographic base from which to operate now that they can use as safe harbors than they ever had on 9/11. we have got major problems with respect to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. nobody likes to hear that. that is a dirty word after we went into iraq because of our concern of weapons of mass distruction. that was a legitimate concern. saddam hussein twice had nuclear programs underway. in 1991 we took it out in desert storm. he preserved the technology to get started up all over again. when we took down sadaam, we shut down the iraqi nuclear threat. when we shut down the iraqi nuclear threat, muammar gaddafi surrender all of his stuff. he had centrifuges, he had a weapons design, a chinese nuclear weapons design, all that stuff now resides in the united states. gaddafi did not want to have

happen to him what happened to saddam hussein. when we went after gaddafi, we went after khan. he went into the black market operation himself and was selling nuclear weapons technology to the libyans. they were his best customer. to the iraqis, north koreans, and we shut down khan's black market operation. we took out three major sources of proliferation. that in and of itself is reason enough for what we did to saddam hussein in iraq. the threat has not gone away. you may remember it was discovered in the spring of 2007 that a few months after north

korea set off their first nuclear test that the north koreans had built a nuclear reactor a couple of producing plutonium in the eastern syrian desert. syria's a mess today. imagine what would have happened if the israelis had not taken out that nuclear reactor. we also found from khan that pakistani officials were bribed for the latest technology for enriching uranium. we know from a scientist who has seen it that the north koreans now have 2000 centrifuges operating to produce enhanced uranium. the nuclear program is better now than it has ever been. they have already proven to be first class proliferators. this administration in the midst of all that that is going on claims there is no problem.

we got bin laden. there is no terrorist threat in benghazi. that turned out to be frankly a blatant lie. they are still covering it up. you look at their recognition of the threat out there. it is basically nonexistent. in the midst of the week that obama went to israel and met with netanyahu and they talked about the uranium, the nuclear threat from iran, thereafter they announced they were cutting our naval aircraft battle groups in the persian gulf down to one. do not cross that red line, and at the same time pulled a carrier out, the truman was scheduled to deploy to replace it, and it is still tied up at the dock in norfork. they're cutting the defense

budget by huge amounts. one of the great things we had with ronald reagan was a man who understood what was needed in terms of our national security capabilities, build it, and the first call i made after desert storm was over with was to ronald reagan in california, and thanked him, and what i said was mr. president, i want to thank you for all the $600 toilet seats you bought. he said, darn it, it did not cost $600. then he got the joke. our capacity to win in desert storm was in no small part due to the decisions he made 10 years before about our military capabilities. think for a minute now, the massive cuts underway, sequester of the budget, we have trouble keeping pilot in the air force because they do not get to fly anymore. oftentimes squadrons have just been grounded.

we have a lot of them now who are not maintaining proficiency and they are leaving. what we are doing by the actions of the administration, in some cases, the in action, we are crippling the capabilities that a future president will have 10, 15, 20 years from now to deal with the next crisis. that is how long it can take to build up all of the military forces. it is not like letting a highway contract and somebody is pouring concrete. it takes years to get a first- rate top-notch nco in the marine corps and the other services. to develop the technologies we need, to build tanks and provide for the training and proficiency that our troops demonstrated so tremendously in desert storm. that capability is not going to be there after barack obama gets through his eight years in the white house. one of our major priorities has to be to recognize the threats that still exist that does not

matter that what he says, they are still covering up benghazi, they do not want to admit there is a major threat out there and he could care less about the quality and the state of our military capabilities. i think not only are there a lot of very good reasons to be concerned about where he wants to take the country domestically, with obamacare and so forth, and abuses like the irs, but i am deeply, deeply worried about what kind of national security posture we will have, how good our word -- l be around the word, our world,the our capacity to do with threats, and if you cannot even mount a rescue operation from an hour away from benghazi, and four of our people are being killed by al qaeda terrorists in libya, what does that say for the next time we have a big problem to deal with and

hundreds of thousands of lives at stake? i think the biggest threat we face is the threat of terrorists armed with something deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters, and we have to be able to defeat that threat. i am sure i have gone on longer than i was supposed to. >> i have a question. i want to go back to the nsa program. you said something important, which is you could vouch for the program that was underway when you were in office. but obviously not being read into the into the program now, it is a different situation. i think everybody in this room would agree barack obama is no dick cheney.[applause] when you have a president who has shown himself to have such a complete disreguard for the rule of law, who has shown himself willing to use the irs to go after political enemies, who has

shown himself willing to completely disregard the constitution, to decide i am not going to implement the employer mandate because it is inconvenient for me even though it is the law, who has shown himself frankly completely irresponsible when it comes to protecting americans' privacy, you have a lot of americans out there now, and in light of a lot of news stories we are seeing, that say the nsa made a mistake and they listened to phone calls from washington, d.c., because it has a 202 area code which is similar to the country code for egypt. there is a lot of concern out there, and when you think about the threats that still exists and the fact that we have got to be able to defend ourselves both from the threat that the president is posing to our

freedoms domestically, also from terrorists internationally, what do you do in a situation were you a have a commander in chief who has put an important program at risk, in my view, who may well be undertaking a real abuse of power. if he is willing to do it in areas we can see, what makes you confident he is not doing it in areas that we do not see? >> you get yourself a new 2 --ander in chief. [applause] >> i have some ideas about that. >> no question this is a difficult subject matter, and i know there are a lot of americans, some good friends of mine, who are concerned about the nsa. part of the difficulty is -- and i plead with people, do not conflate the nsa with the irs -- those are totally different problems, totally different issues -- i believe there is ample evidence for the irs that it has abused its power, that

the power and authority of the irs has been used, misused to go and in my mind it ought to be -- we ought to investigate it, subpoena whoever we have to subpoena, bring them to trial, and make certain that we build the safeguards that can be used again. but it would be a terrible mistake because the irs has been abused by barack obama and his people we would therefore turn and say we are going to get rid of the nsa program because it might be abused by this president. but there are not really good examples out there of how the nsa program has been abused. you do not have the kind of evidence there that you got with respect to the irs, or you have old who had been interrogated by the irs about their political beliefs, and keith alexander,

the commander of the national security agency, four star now, he is one of the finest officers i have ever known, as is also true for people like -- now i forgot his name. >> allen? >> before him. i am thinking of mike mcconnell. mike mcconnell was a navy captain on my watch when i was secretary of defense, on the joint staff. i got him promoted to three stars. he ran the nsa on my watch when i was at defense. mike hayden, in charge before alexander, and then went on over to run the cia. those are three gentlemen, all of whom commanded the national security agency at one time or another on my watch. i served on the intelligence committee, worked with them him

a they all worked with me when i was secretary of defense. the secretary of defense controls the bigger part of the intelligence community that does the cia director. i know how hard they work to put together a good program and a program that would allow us to collect intelligence, while at the same time we safeguarded civil liberties of the american people. i am the one that took the request in to the president after i met with the c.i.a. director, the director of the nsa shortly after 9/11 and said that the experts tell me we could do more, we can learn a lot more, we could understand better the threat if we can get additional authority. and that is in fact what the president did. what are the caveats, and he had to review it every 30 days and reauthorize it, or it was going to stop. in terms of the congress knowing

about it, well, i used to brief the committee's, the chairman and ranking members of the committees on the status of the program. we once had a meeting in the situation room which included the speaker of the house, majority, minority leaders of the house, majority, minority leaders of the senate, the chairman and ranking embers of the intelligence committees of both houses. nancy pelosi was in the group. i had been sit down, and the question that was, do we need to get more authorization for this program? this was in 2004. i had been briefed. general hayden there was that day, showed what we have learned, what we have accomplished, and i went around the room, saying, does anyone leave we terminate >> does anyone believe we should terminate the program? no one. they were unanimous. absolutely not.

you bring it back to the congress, italy, and you will tell the bad guys how we are reading their mail. that was the situation we were there. i know keith alexander is now in command of the nsa. i have not been involved in classified meetings since i left four years ago. i am confident with men like general alexander involved, and given the professionals in the intelligence community i have never seen a situation where they violated for political purposes the way has happened with the irs, the authority they have. i do not know how obama deals with that. i know how we dealt with it. we were screwed us in making

sure that that i our is never a group used. every once in a while, a big organization, there were problems that cropped up, but there are safeguards built into it. we have the fisa courts, the foreign intelligence surveillance act courts, that they have to sign off on these programs. before you can dig into any of those records, in terms of reading content, for example, you have to have the authorization from fisa. i know everybody is concerned about it. i understand the concerns. the last thing i would want to recommend is, well, obama might abuse the nsa authority and therefore we ought to shut it down. last possible thing we ought to do. these are good folks, doing the best they can to safeguard the nation, and i like keith alexander covering my back anytime.

>> well -- we can move on off of this, but i think again, if you look back and you talk about abuse, you guys were also scrupulously careful not to have the head of the irs in the white house. he may have been there once. we know the president had him in something like 72 times. and i think there is a real question about in a democracy, under threat, you have programs you put in place to defend the nation. then you end up with a commander in chief who seems not to care about defending the nation, the constitution, the rule of law, americans' privacy, and it gives rise to concerns. i think you have to talk about there has got to be a place between saying that you are going to trust him implicitly,

because we trusted you guys and you had the programs, and we will throw the program out. and i guess that would be my final question on this. don't you think there is a legitimate question the merit people should be asking, and you can't say that program is classified to you cannot talk about it. but when you begin to see the kinds of things we are seeing about the program, those of us who know we have got to defend against attacks from the outside, at the end of the day, that comes directly into barack obama's lap. it seems to me you have to say this is a president who has put us at risk because of his unwillingness to exercise the kind of care and concern for the constitution that you guys did. >> so what is your solution? >> a new commander in chief. >> yeah, exactly. i understand the concern everybody has. i am as much of a small government guy as you are going to find.

but i believe very strongly for a strong national defense. i served over four years on the house intelligence committee. i have been heavily involved in the intelligence business a good part of my career. and i know how dangerous a world we live in, how difficult it is oftentimes to collect the intelligence we need to make sure we get it right, and it is not a perfect business. it just is not. it is very hard. after the secrets that are being kept by the worst regimes are the ones more than anything else they want to protect. sometimes the intelligence community makes mistakes. but as a general proposition, i would argue that for the most

part, what we have done with our intelligence community, especially since the 9/11 period, has been by the book, well managed, not perfect, nobody is perfect, but they do have in place for procedures to make corrections. the last thing i want to do is be in a position to say now we need to shut it down or we need to significantly limit their capacity and their capability, so we will be confident they are not abusing their authority. and we will only reduce their capabilities by 10% or 15%. which 10% or 15% of the next attack are you willing to accept? there was a book written about me called "the 1% solution," because we have to be 100%

successful. host businesses, most line of works, if you get a success rate of 80% or 90%, that is pretty good. when you are defending against the potential attack against one of our major cities by terrorists armed with a nuclear weapon, are you willing to accept 99%? i am not. you have to do everything you can to stop whatever might conceivably be coming out you, and that means you have to be aggressive with the military, you have to be overseas and be actively engaged to make sure that people with technology did not provided with the people to use it against us. it means we have to work doubly hard at home to make certain that we can indeed defend

against that next attack. and as i am saying, based on my own experience, both with respect to our success and respect to our success after 9/11, as well as our military forces, to prevent the next attack, i think nsa is a well- run program, an important program. we have a president that concerns us for a lot of reasons but i would not throw the baby out with the bathwater. i would not say just because we have a president who we do not think is up to the job or does not have the same concerns and cares about the constitution that we all do, that we therefore ought to minimize the capabilities of our defense capability, our defense forces. and our intelligence forces to

protect the nation. i think we got at the wrong way around. we got to beat him at the next election. we got to get him out of office. and we got to a people that we can trust and have confidence in. it is a tough problem. i do not deny it. i despise what he has done with the irs, and what has happened in benghazi. but we should not -- i know so many of our intelligence professionals. they put their lives on the line day after day after day for all of us. and we were successful at stopping all further attacks against the united states during those 7 1/2 years, and, boy, i would do everything to support them, because they deserve it. >> i am glad to see you have not gone squishy.

>> ok. >> he will take a couple questions from the audience. before, i wanted to end by talking about our men and women in uniform. when my dad's memoirs came out, we spent time gather around the country talking about his life and talking about his career. and when i would ask you the question of what was your job that you treasure most, or valued most, i know secretary of defense was normally the answer. and the time you got to spend with our men and women in uniform. and i know one of the reasons submitted people are concerned about the budget cuts and about what is happening in the defense department, because of what it is due to the military. you mentioned earlier what it is doing to our readiness, that we are hollowing out the force, but also what is doing to our veterans, and what we owe to those veterans and put their lives on the line and they come home, and the extent to which the kind of budget cuts we are seeing may well mean, that we

are not taking care of them the way we should be. there is a story you tell in the book and it is a prayer that i wanted to see if you would end our session with and i cannot tell where this prayer comes from, and read this section. >> well, toward the end of my time as vice president, lynn and liz and i were invited to a special occasion. i spent a lot of time when i was at defense and vice president with our guys in special operations forces. a group of them have developed over time a social get-together, and it is all done -- it is not classified, but it is not done out in public.

there is no press. they get together and honor one another. family is included, and spouses are included. linda and i were invited to attend one of these. at this dinner, a young chaplain was asked to deliver the invocation. he said, we are soldiers, agents of correction. may our world see the power of strength. may our enemies continue to taste the inescapable taste of freedom. >> i think there are questions somewhere. >> the question is -- i think it was addressed to you, liz. >> you go first.

>> i have not signed on with anyone yet at this stage. i think we should undergo a generational change in terms of leadership. i do not think we are likely to see somebody who has been engaged in the past regenerate a

new successful campaign. there comes a time when your moment has passed. i want to see somebody else take over, and there are some promising folks out there.

i think of people. a lot of you know them. like kevin mccarthy. how many of you know kevin? he has got my old job. in terms of making the trains run on time he has got a key job. i am trying to remember the name of -- martinez.

i loved her speech at the convention. they had a certain appeal. they are actually making those budgets, cutting taxes. i am not pessimistic. i am inclined to think what they are trying to do is a good thing to do. i do not think we need 23 debates or however many it was.

we have beaten up on each other. we need an orderly process. we also need to do a better job than we have before in the party mechanism. the thing was the machine they built to get the vote out. they built it in 2008, and they kept it going until 2012. it is still cranking out tonight. we need to be better organized than the democrats are. there are a lot of things that will enhance our chances.

i think we will see a lot of people come to the forefront. as long as we end it soon enough so it does not become a death march for whoever we nominate. >> i agree about the next generation, and i think people should think about that when they are thinking about hillary. she is the last generation. she is not the next generation. as the esteemed former vice president pointed out she blew it benghazi and light to the american people about it. i also wanted to point out that

the commissioner of agriculture used to be the republican party chairman. i hope adam will run for governor. i think we clearly have the ability to defeat barack obama in 2016, and we have the obligation to do so for the sake of the nation. >> in case you think you might not be pessimistic, this particular question might change your mind. it is a composite of several questions that were sent out. despite how we got here, the places we were in and the middle east with egypt, syria, iran,

seems as intractable as any of us will ever see. taking on the political side, does it concern you with some people who lean towards the libertarian side of the party that questions on what to do with countries like this might be shoved off and end up being horrendous in the future? >> those are key questions. partly it is important to distinguish in different areas. i look at what is going on in egypt today, and i have been supporting the military. my experience with the military going back to 1990 when it was time to get organized and deal

with saddam hussein in kuwait -- they are a pretty professional force. i think they got involved in the morsi regime because there had been an upwelling of support from the egyptian people where petitions circulated that could be signed only by egyptian voters, and they got far more petitions that called for the removal of morsi, and they got far more signatures than the previous election. i think there is a majority view among the egyptian people that they do not want egypt to become an islamist state like a ram, -- like iran, and i think we ought to preserve our relationships with the egyptian military.

i think it is a lot like turkey in the 1920's. he brought turkey into the modern era. i do not automatically say this is a coup that is bad. my observation is the military has responded to concerns of the people, and what will arise from that will be free elections and another shot at democracy. in terms of the overall situation with respect to serious, -- syria, it is a huge mess. it is almost like whoever wins we are going to have problem's. if there was time to shape that it was some years past, and today we are in terrible

streets, but they are also in a situation where you have to be concerned about who is going to inherit the chemical weapons a already possess. they goodness they do not have a new look, but it is a worrying situation. >> the political side of it -- what happens politically if some of the people have a strong tendency? >> i understand the temptation to say, it is their problem, let them solve it. we decided in 1941 that did not work as a basic policy.in himwork as a basic policy. and him

hima lot of people believed in the 1930's the united states himshould not get involved overseas. it was lit -- a legitimate debate. people believe that. i do not see any way you can look at the threat, the potential for an attack, and say, what happens is none of our concern. the 9/11 terrorist trained in afghanistan. that is where the nuclear trade is taking place. you have got pakistanis dealing with libyans. that stuff is spreading, and we have to do what we can to stop it.

when you have got 19 guys who come into the united states with airplane tickets and box cutters and do what they did to us on 9- 11, how can you ignore that. you try to have support, but they have said, that is your problem. we are going to hunker down behind our oceans. that is a pipe dream that was over decades ago. >> do you want to say anything about the situation? >> i was pointing out what we are seeing across the middle east today is a result of an american foreign-policy attempting to turn back on our allies.

if you want to understand what happens when america leaves a vacuum you have to look over there than syria. the historical record is very clear that a strong america is one of the best guarantors of peace in the world. when you have a president who has really attempted to weaken us, to bring us down a notch, you see a vacuum created like in the middle east today, and vacuums like that are filled by those who wish us ill, filled by those who are using chemical weapons against their own people on the one side of the fight and on the other side you have got al qaeda on the rise.

the world is more dangerous when america walks away, and that is a clear lesson you can see just from turning on the television. >> one more political question. so many of us realized that as republicans we are painted as the rich white guys. unfortunately, some of the people in the front make that an easy case to make, but it is not true. we need to find a way to get around that and present ourselves as more populist, younger, and what other things would either of you recommend that we can change this persona

most of the electorate seems to have of us? >> since you are a rich white guy, maybe i will answer this question. >> cheap shot. i think it is an important question. i do not have anything against rich white guys obviously. i love a number of them, but i think as a party, that is how the mainstream media wants to portray us. what we have to be able to do, it depends on who is speaking upfront for the party. that is very important, but i do not want to see our party falling into the trap of classifying people by the coupler of our skin, by our gender. i thank -- i think that is what

the democrats do. we have to be the party of ideals. we have got to be the party that knows what it stands for. i do not want to see us trying to be all things to all people. ronald reagan made it clear the political party has got to stand for something. we cannot have a tent so big nobody knows what we believe in, but we have to be able to articulate our beliefs. we have to be able to say we believe in the free enterprise system, and we believe in it not only because it makes people wealthy. we believe in it because it has raised more people out of poverty than any other system invented by men. we are the people of opportunity. we know the american dream can be real again, but it is not going to be real if every single

young person falls under the well of a rock obama and the democrats, who are attempting to say, let's give you assistance all along the way. as a mother of five kids, it is amazing for me to sometimes think about the fact that none of them when know what the soviet union was if i was not telling them. there is a history that seems recent to many of us, but to get today they did not live through the fall of communism. they did not live through watching nations try to control every aspect of their citizens lives fall apart and crumble. we know what happened. you can see it today across europe. those are the policies the president is trying to advocate. we have to say there is an economic renaissance possible if we have the kinds of policies

andthat would allow us to get access to energy resources we have here in the united states. if we had a president really committed to energy independence we would have economic growth you could not even imagine. across the board, talking to them, explaining to them, you want the government out of your life. you want to get back to the point of government is best that governs least. the more this government tries to give you things, give you benefits, tell you they can run your life, tell you they can make your life easier, it is a pipe dream, and it is going to end up that for all of us. the benefit we have as republicans is the truth. the truth is on our side.

we have to be unafraid about standing up for what we believe in and making the case to the american people, because if we do it with conviction and pride, we will win today. >> thank you very much, and thank you both for being here. [applause] >> in our original series we look at the public and private

outgoingeastern, homeland security secretary jeanette napolitano delivers their farewell speech. the national alliance for faith and justice marks the 15th anniversary -- the 50th anniversary the march on washington. tonight at 8:00 eastern, journalist marvin cal looks at witharsh on washington georgia congressman john lewis and others. coming up in 45 minutes. former rnc chairman michael steele discusses his party's stance on issues including syria, healthcare, immigration and calls to impeach president obama. at 8:30 eastern former senator discusses cyber issues and his new novel, "gridlock."

>> what we saw in syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. it defies any code of morality. let me be clear. the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent i standards by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. >> latest there from senator john kerry and the actions of the syrian forces in the administration's view