There's places where a secure fence will work, and that strategic type fencing will work. But the idea that people can easily just stand up and say, oh, let's build a fence and be done with it, wipe our hands, it's going to secure the border, that's not reality.

I am proud to live in a country with an African-American president. But President Obama cannot be proud of the fact that the prevalence of black poverty has actually increased under his leadership. The specific policies advanced by the president and his allies on the left amount to little more than throwing money at the problem and walking away.

When you look around the world, every place that socialism has been implemented, it has failed miserably, destroying the economy, freedom and - in Germany, the Soviet Union and other nations - millions of lives.

I don't want to be the president of the United States. I do want to work with the governors across the country to make the states more pivotal, more powerful, as they should be.

As Americans, we realize that there is no taxpayer money that wasn't first earned through the sweat and toil of one of our citizens.

But of course, now we're told we're in recovery but this sure doesn't feel like a recovery to more than 9 percent of the Americans out there who are unemployed, or the 16 percent of the African-Americans, 11 percent of Hispanics in the same position, or the millions who can only find part-time work or those who have even stopped looking for a job.

America's greatness is not found in the size of its government. America's greatness resides in the hearts and the minds of the people.