All I have, really, is my creativity.

Lobbying is not a bad thing. I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't have lobbyists or we shouldn't have lobbying to petition our government. It's in the Constitution, and it's something that should be honorable and good.

I think what I'm trying to do, reform-wise, is completely consistent with conservative philosophy. It may not be consistent with some so-called conservatives who live in Washington and make their living like I used to.

Being somebody who wants to be religious doesn't make me perfect and doesn't make me necessarily any better than anybody else. It maybe makes me better than I would have been if I didn't have that level.

I'm not asking people to feel sorry for me.

Some issues lend themselves to grassroots campaigns - homeschooling works well - but others require contrivance and connivance to whip up support. Often, lobbyists will hire vendors to dispatch blast emails and robocalls in the hopes of bombarding Congressional offices with citizen fury.

I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying.