Washington has got to, across the board, lower taxes for small businesses so that our mom and pops can reinvest and hire people, so that our businesses can thrive.

Barack Obama can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign.

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me - sports... basketball. I use it because you're naive if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN.

Nothing surprises me anymore. We'll keep doing what we're doing. I'm going to keep going forward with solutions that I want to see applied to this great country, the challenges that we're facing. And things like that [e-mails as governor published] are going to be perhaps a distraction for others. They won't distract me.

I opposed annexing in areas around our city borders, because I knew that if neighborhoods wanted to be a part of the city, well, they would mandate themselves in and invite themselves into a city. That's just one example of even on a local level how dangerous it is for a politician to start thinking they know more than that individual family, that individual business.

Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

One of the most important things, that we [in US] have to engage is unleashing our domestic energy production opportunities. It does come down to "drill, baby, drill," in addition to an "all of the above" energy policy.