Gingrich: ‘I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people’

>> everyone in south carolina who decided to be with us in changing washington . [ cheers and applause ] callista and i are particularly happy to have our daughters, our son-in-laws, two chief debate coaches, maggie and robert, who are both right here, and we're delighted to have my sisters are here, robby and susan, just terrific. i also want to recognize several people who are just extraordinarily important in south carolina , making this happen. judge billy and deborah wilkins, just really took over and did a great job. my former colleague, former congressman john nappier did such a great job putting things together statewide. house majority leader kenny bingham helped us with the statewide network, speaker hobby harrel was tremendous, we traveled the last several days together. andrea bauer and vivon long tremendous helping us, peter mccoy was remarkable and finally i want to say we had a team on our staff who worked endless hours week after week. they did a great, great job.

>> a whole new world!

>> there are so many things, callista and i have so many memories from so many parts of the state. everybody, including people who, by accident or misinformation, were for the other candidates. [ laughter ] but everybody was nice to us everywhere, and i just want to say that i think south carolina showed southern hospitality as beautifully as anyplace we've been. [ cheers and applause ] i also want to mention in particular general livingston, who is a congressional medal of honor winner, who gave me the great honor in yorktown of introducing me yesterday and to the man of that courage and that patriotism and dedication and freedom come out and support us meant a great deal and everybody, it was a remarkable evening and i'm grateful for that moment of patriotism. [ cheers and applause ]

>> the biggest thing i take from the campaign in south carolina is that it is very humbling and very sobering to have so many people who so deeply want their country to get back on the right track. [ cheers and applause ] so many people who are so concerned about jobs, about medical costs, about the everyday parts of life, and who feel that the elites in washington and new york have no understanding, no care, no concern, no reliability, and in fact, do not represent them at all. in the two debates we had here, in myrtle beach and then in charleston, where people reacted so strongly to the news media, i think it was something very fundamental that i wish the powers that be in the news media would take seriously. the american people feel that they have elites who have been trying for a half century to force us to quit being american and become some kind of other system. and the reaction, completely misunderstand what's going on. it's not that i am a good debater. i articulate the deepest felt values of the american people . [ cheers and applause ] you know this is a remarkable system. what makes us different from virtually every other system in the world, we are free and because we're free, we can produce leadership from an amazing range of places. now sometimes that leadership is good, we once had an actor who made movie with chimpanzees. he turned out to be one of our greatest presidents and ended up with the disappearance of the soviet empire . we once had a peanut farmer, nuclear physicist, he didn't turn out to be quite as good, but the genius of america is that you can come from any background. i watched tonight the fine speeches of the other three candidates on our side. and i was struck with how much they reflected the openness of the american system . you know, rick santorum showed enormous courage in iowa when he had no money, nobody covered him, and he just kept campaigning.

>> v.p.! v.p.!

>> i rest my case, he has made an impact, right? here is a guy who articulates the values of social conservatism , who articulates the importance of manufacturing and who may have been as right about the dangers of iran as anybody in this country in the last ten years. and then as a further example of how wide open our system is, you have dr. ron paul , who on the issue of money and the federal reserve , has been right for 25 years. and while i disagree with him on many other things, there's no doubt that a lot of his critique of inflation, of fiat money into the federal reserve is absolutely the right direction and it's something i can support strongly. and finally, governor romney, with whom i disagree on many issues, is nonetheless a good example of america . he's hard working . he has been very successful. he has organized large systems. he did a terrific job at the winter olympics , and the fact is, if you look at the four of us, we are proof that you can come from a wide range of backgrounds and in america , you have a chance to try to make your case no matter what the elites think in new york and washington .

>> usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa !

>> well, you sort of just now captured the heart of this campaign. the fact is, we want to run not a republican campaign. we want to run an american campaign. [ cheers and applause ] because we are optimists about the future, because america has always been optimistic about the future, and we believe as our new sign which just got made today points out that if we unleash the american people , we can rebuild the america that we love. now, i believe and callista and i decided to run because we, after a year of conversation concluded that this is the most important election of our lifetime. if barack obama can get reelected after this disaster [ boos ] right, just think how radical he would be in a second term.

>> no more years!

>> so i have a proposal, with your help, we are now moving on to florida and beyond. [ cheers and applause ] and i want you to know that if, and by the way, anyone here who knows anyone in florida , please contact them by sometime tomorrow, okay? and my good friend, luis knows many people in florida and i'm confident he'll have an impact. if i do become your nominee, and i think with your help i will become your nominee, but i need your help. together. if that happens, and it's all up to all of us to work to make it happen, if that happens, then i will challenge president obama to seven three-hour debates, to be fair, to be fair, i don't want you to be disappointed, but i already have conceded that he can use a teleprompter if he wants to. after all, if you had to defend obama care, wouldn't you want to be able to use a teleprompter? now there are a number of key issues that we have to talk about with the president.

>> repeal it!

>> i'm going to get there in a second. [ laughter ] i believe this campaign comes down to economics, including jobs, economic growth , balancing the budget, the value of money, comes down to national security , what threatens us, what we have to do about it, but the centerpiece of this campaign i believe is american exceptionalism versus the radicalism of saul alinsky .

>> usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa ! usa !

>> well, you know, there's a lot to just doing that, because the fact is, what we are going to argue is that american exceptionalism , the american declaration of independence , the american constitution , the american federalist papers , the founding fathers of america are the source from which we draw our understanding of america . he draws his from saul alinsky , radical left wingers and people who don't like the classical america . and one of the issues we're going to address head-on.

>> she would be a great first lady and with your help she will be a great first lady. one of the key issues and i'm prepared to take this straight at the president and frankly straight at the elite media. one of the key issues is the growing anti-bigotry issues of our growing elites, and if you go to newt.org, my campaign site there's a 54-page paper there on the balance of power , putting the judiciary back in its proper role in eliminating dictatdictatorial big ats such as justice berry in san antonio who issued a ruling not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word "benediction" the word "invocation," the word "god," asked the audience to stand or a moment of silence he would put the superintendent in jail. [ boos ] now we don't have speech dictatorship in america by anti-religious bigots, period. the second big theme, frankly, is one that every south carolinian understands. it's jobs, economic growth , balancing the budget, having stable money, and let's be very clear, and again this makes some of the elite media nervous. president obama has been historically the most effective food stamp president in american history . i worked with ronald reagan to create jobs and 16 million jobs were created by the american people in the 1980s . i worked with bill clinton , a democrat to create jobs and 11 million jobs were created by the american people during the four years that i was speaker. i would like to be the best paycheck president in american history and i want to go into every neighborhood of every ethnic background in every part of the country and say to people very simply, if you want your children to have a life of dependency and food stamps , you have a candidate as barack obama . if you want your children to have a life of independenenindependency and paychecks, you have a candidate that's newt gingrich , and i'll bet you we have votes everywhere.

>> newt, newt, newt, newt, newt! newt, newt, newt, newt, newt!

>> part of jobs in the economy is to shrink the power of washington . i just talked tonight with governor rick perry who is deeply committed. i was very generous for his endorsement this week. his passion is implementing the tenth amendment. we are going to work with him to return power to the states, to local governments to get it out of washington , d.c. the one reason that i ask you to be with me and not just for me, if we shrink the washington bureaucracy, we have to grow citizenship back home to fill the vacuum. i am also committed to getting back to a balanced budget and since i am the only speaker of the house in your lifetime to have helped create four consecutive balanced budgets , i think i can tell you as president, i will work very hard to get back to a balanced budget as rapidly as possible, and then to run a surplus to pay down the debt so no chinese leverage exists on the united states by having our debt. part of our long-term national security has to be having an american energy policy . i want america to become so energy independent that no american president ever again bows to a saudi king. and let me give you an example of a common sense conservatism that solves problems. you have well over $29 billion of natural gas offshore. if and as president i will authorize on the very first day the development of it. that natural gas offshore will create jobs that in louisiana average $80,000 apiece. in addition, it generates royalties. part of the royalties should be used to modernize the port of charleston which affects one out of every five jobs in south carolina . but it's not enough just to find the money. the corps of engineers current bureaucracy is so long and so stupid that they currently take eight years to study not to do the project, to study the project. we fought the entire second world war in three years and eight months. now if you can beat nazi germ knee, fascist and japan in eight months it is almost unimaginable it takes eight years to study the project. so i want to fundamentally overhaul the entire federal government at every level to produce a modern, lean, effective federal government . let me also say that the president's decision to veto the keystone pipeline -- [ boos ] you know, you have to wonder how out of touch with reality this administration is.

>> he's clueless!

>> it's one thing to say that they can't play chess at the white house . it's another thing to say they can't play checkers at the white house . but if they can't play tic tac toe , the president says no, we don't want to you build a pipeline from central canada straight down with no mountains intervening to the largest petrochemical center in the world, houston so we would make money on the pipeline, make money on managing the pipeline, make money on refining the oil and make money in the ports of houston and galveston shipping the oil. we don't want to do that because barack obama is taking care of his extremist left wing friends in san francisco . they think that will stop the oil from getting out. no, what prime minister harper who by the way is a conservative and pro-american, what he has said is he's going to cut a deal with the chinese and they'll build a pipeline straight across the rockies to vancouver. we'll get none of the jobs, none of the energy, none of the opportunity. now, an american president who can create a chinese-canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country. but it gets worse. last sunday the saudis announced a deal with the chinese to build nuclear energy facilities in saudi arabia . the saudis are saying we so distrust the obama administration we'd rather rely on the chinese. the iranians for two weeks taunt us with exercises aimed at closing the straits of hormuz, and the obama administration answer is to cancel military exercises with israel because we don't want to provoke the iranians. president obama is a president so weak that he makes jimmy carter look strong. may i just say the debate we'll have with president owe ba mark the outlying of the two america , the america of the declaration of independence , the america of saul alinsky , the america of paychecks, the america of independence, the america of dependence, the america of strength in foreign policy , the america of weakness in foreign policy . those two choices i believe will give the american people a chance to decide permanently whether we want to remain the historic america that has provided opportunity for more people of more backgrounds than any country in history or whether in fact we prefer to become a brand new secular european style bureaucratic social system . [ boos ] i agree with you. i'm running because callista and i looked at the future for maggie and rob theert and decided no, we're not going to go the route of obama and these kind of radical ideas. so in order to carry out this great debate, to rally the american people to reasserting their belief in america , to winning the election decisively this fall, to profoundly changing washington starting on day one, when, by the way, we apoll bollish all the white house czars -- to do that, to do that we need to build on this victory by going to florida . i need your help in reaching out to people in florida . i need your help in finding anybody who believes in what we're doing and telling them to go to newt.org, my first name to sign up, donate, to get involved. we don't have the kind of money that at least one of the candidates has, but we do have ideas and we do have people, and we proved here in south carolina that people power with the right ideas beats big money , and with your help we're going to prove it again in florida . thank