Text of Mitt Romney's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference

Governor Romney�s Address to the Conservative Political Action Conference � Feb. 7, 2008:

I want to begin by saying thank you. It�s great to be with you again. And I look forward to joining with you many more times in the future.

Last year, CPAC gave me the sendoff I needed. I was in single digits in the polls and I was facing household Republican names. As of today, more than 4 million people have given me their vote for president, less than Senator McCain�s 4.7 million, but quite a statement nonetheless. 11 states have given me their nod, compared to his 13. Of course, because size does matter, he�s doing quite a bit better with his number of delegates.

To all of you, thank you for caring enough about the future of America to show up, stand up and speak up for conservative principles.

As I said to you last year, conservative principles are needed now more than ever. We face a new generation of challenges, challenges which threaten our What is it about American culture that has led us to become the most powerful nation in the history of the world? We believe in hard work and education. We love opportunity: almost all of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants who came here for opportunity�opportunity is in our DNA. Americans love God, and those who don�t have faith, typically believe in something greater than themselves�a �Purpose Driven Life.� And we sacrifice everything we have, even our lives, for our families, our freedoms and our country. The values and beliefs of the free American people are the source of our nation�s strength and they always will be!

The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960�s welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven�t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug�we have got to fight it like the poison it is!

The attack on faith and religion is no less relentless. And tolerance for pornography�even celebration of it�and sexual promiscuity, combined with the twisted incentives of government welfare programs have led to today�s grim realities: 68% of African American children are born out-of-wedlock, 45% of Hispanic children, and 25% of White children. How much harder it is for these children to succeed in school�and in life. A nation built on the principles of the founding fathers cannot long stand when its children are raised without fathers in the home.

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