When you give a speech you don't go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important.

So, for instance, let me make this clear: You know I signed a statement. I will not raise taxes on anybody. I don't want to raise taxes on the American people.

The people who are having the hard time right now are middle-income Americans. Under the president's policies, middle-income Americans have been buried. They're just being crushed. Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a tax in and of itself. I'll call it the economy tax. It's been crushing.

It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done.

Our economy is on the move and we are creating thousands of new jobs, but we need to keep our foot on the gas pedal.

Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.

Iraq is fragile and may fall back into a devastating setting. We're not making the kind of progress in Afghanistan that had been promised. And our esteem around the world has fallen. I can't think of a major country. It's hard to think of a single country that has greater respect and admiration for America today than it did five years ago when Barack Obama became President. And that's a very sad, unfortunate state of affairs.