I rise today with no small measure of regret, regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse.

After September 11, it became unpatriotic to question any homeland-security or defense spending, and that let things get out of control.

It's going to take a while for some of these things.

For one, I think as a missionary you gotta be stubborn. And you gotta try to be persuasive.

I think the Respublican party's lost its way. We have given into nativism and protectionism. And I think that, if we're going to be a governing party in the future, and a majority party, we have got to go back to traditional conservatism, limited government, economic freedom, individual responsibility, respect for free trade. Those are the principles that made us who we are.

Unfortunately there are too many examples of members of Congress and other elected officials using language, referring to your opponents in ways that you would have never done before, ascribing the worst motives to your opponents, and assuming that other Americans are the enemies. And that's just not the way it used to be. And I don't think it can be that way in the future.

I feel at some point that the farm state politics will overwhelm the Florida politics.