A very good friend of mine spent a fair amount of time doing postmortems and met with a number of the senior folks on the Romney campaign and they spent, what was it, $140, $160 million on data. And this friend of mine, who is a very sharp thinker, asked a series of questions, but the most important one he asked, he said, "What decisions did you make differently because of the data?" And he's coming from the private equity world where he wants to know, OK, and the answer from virtually every single senior Romney person was "nothing."

I offer myself as a leader to the people of this country because I think they're looking for solutions, not lawyers arguing over laws or entertainers throwing out sound bites that draw media attention. We need to solve the problem.

Congress needs to send a strong signal that direct communication with the leader of the free world is a privilege, particularly for a regime that has been as hostile as Iran has been towards America for more than three decades. President Rouhani needs to take these two simple steps to demonstrate good faith before any further discussions.

I believe the American people are looking for someone to speak the truth.

I think we need to be fighting for the working men and women of this country, not the moneyed New York interests.

What I am endeavoring to do is simply speak the truth, speak common-sense values, free market principles and the Constitution. For every question, the Constitution is my touchstone.

It is true that I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act, because when I campaigned in Texas I told voters in Texas that I would oppose the federal government having the authority to detain U.S. citizens permanently with no due process. I have repeatedly supported an effort to take that out of that bill, and I honored that campaign commitment.