Romney wants the public to know that Jihadists are not an 'armed group of crazed maniacs in the hills of Afghanistan.' Rather, Romney says the United States is facing a 'far more sinister and broad-based extremist faction' with a 'very 8th century view of the world.'
The jihadists are waging a global war against the United States and Western governments generally with the ambition of replacing legitimate governments with a caliphate, with a theocracy.
We have to keep our markets open or we go the way of Russia and the Soviet Union, which is a collapse. And I recognize there are some people who will argue for protectionism because the short-term benefits sound pretty good, but long term you kill your economy, you kill the future. What you have to do in order to compete on a global basis long term is invest in education, invest in technology, reform our immigration laws to bring in more of the brains from around the world, eliminate the waste in our government. We have to use a lot less oil. These are the kinds of features you have to invest in, you have to change in order to make ourselves competitive long term.
I said no to a tax hike; raising taxes hurts working people and scares away jobs. I also said no to more borrowing; borrowing just shifts our problems to the backs of our kids . . . Instead, I went after waste, inefficiency, duplication, and patronage. It is fundamentally unfair to tax people retroactively. If we are to keep faith with the taxpayers of Massachusetts, we need to correct the constitutional error that occurred here.
Every legislator and politician knows this spending can't be justified, so why do they do it? Because it gets politicians praised -- and re-elected. There's no courage involved in spending more money. Drawing a line on spending is hard and fraught with criticism. When I vetoed $458 million of excessive spending in the budget this spring, I knew that community newspapers across the Commonwealth would decry my elimination of local pet projects. And, I knew that the Legislature would over ride most of my vetoes. In fact, they over rode all of them, to a chorus of community acclaim. But someone has to say no.
We need to make America more attractive for legal immigrants -- for citizens -- and less attractive for illegal immigrants. I want to see more immigration in our country, but more legal immigration and less illegal immigration.
We're using too much oil. We have an answer. We can use alternative sources of energy -- biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear power -- and we can drill for more oil here. We can be more energy independent and we can be far more efficient in the use of that energy.
America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home. What is the culture of this country, what are our underpinnings? We respect hard work. ... We are self reliant, we respect human life, we are a religious people. ... We are a purpose-driven people founded on the family unit. I think every child deserves to have a mother and a father.
What is it about America's culture and values that makes us such a successful nation and society? Part of that is we love liberty, we love our country, we're patriotic," Romney said. "I believe it's also because we are a people who love God and look for a purpose greater than ourselves in life.
I am pro-life. I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother. I wish the people of America agreed, and that the laws of our nation could reflect that view. But while the nation remains so divided over abortion, I believe that the states, through the democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate.
In technology, we as a country already invest an enormous amount--for instance, in defense technology, space technology, health--but we also need to invest in some of the emerging technologies that are important at a basic science level such as fuel cell technology, power generation, materials science, automotive technology. We have to recognize that where we invest as a nation, both from a government standpoint but also from a private standpoint, those are the areas we've been most successful.
We can't have as a nation 40 million people -- or, in my state, half a million -- saying, 'I don't have insurance, and if I get sick, I want someone else to pay. It's a conservative idea that individuals have responsibility for their own health care. I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase.
We cannot continue to have an excellence gap with the rest of the world and intend to remain the economic superpower and military superpower of the planet. That's just not going to happen. We're in a position where unless we take action, we'll end up being the France of the 21st century: a lot of talk, but not a lot of strength behind it in terms of economic capability.
If we are going to compete in the global economy, we have to set our education goals higher. It's going to take teachers, superintendents and parents talking to their legislators saying yes, we want more money of course ... but we also want changes in the way our schools are managed. We want our principals to have the ability to manage their schools.
At some point, I think America -- and, importantly, the minority communities -- are going to say, 'it's time to split with our friends, the unions and the Democratic Party, and put our kids first here.' Unequal educational opportunity is the civil rights issue of our time.
