Herman Cain: Good morning. Good morning. I want to thank those of you that stayed out late and drank a lot and still got up to come to this presentation this morning. Because now you can tell those that slept in what they missed.

Our founding fathers said it better than any group of men in history when they said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It didn’t say a guarantee. And there’s nowhere in the Constitution where it says that the federal government should establish a Department of Happy. It said, “the pursuit of Happiness.” But you and I know that the pursuit of happiness in this nation as defined and conceived by our founding fathers is violently under attack. It is under attack from liberal proposals with this administration and this Congress that are designed to strip us of many of our liberties. That are designed to restrict our ability to pursue our definition of the American dream based upon each individual’s aspirations, each individual’s motivation and each individual’s determination; not the dictate of the federal government. And so as we wrestle with beating back cap and trade, and tax and kill; as we wrestle with beating back employee no choice act; as we wrestle with beating back healthcare deform legislation. You see, if something is supposed to reform something it is supposed to make it better. Well there’s absolutely nothing in that proposed legislation, either version, that makes anything better. It just makes everything worse so you can’t call it healthcare reform. Healthcare deform legislation. All of these attacks on the pursuit of happiness, but there is good news. There is good news. The voice of the people is being heard. That’s why they’ve been put on the back burner. The voice of the people is being heard. That’s why they’re being put on the back burner. That is good news. But we’re not done yet. We’ve got some more work to do. We won’t be finished until they’re moved from the back burner to out the back door. And we have an opportunity to do that in November 2010. Move them out the back door.

Now here’s how we do it. It’s really very simple. You see the defend, the founding fathers they did their job. The founding fathers did their job. I did my radio show remotely last night from here, from DC, and I had a caller and I was talking about the Mount Vernon statement that was signed two days ago by nearly 100 leaders of conservative organizations from DC and all over the country, and I was praising the wisdom and the foresight of the founding fathers, and a guy actually called and said, “How can you admire and praise the founding fathers when many of them had slaves?” I said you don’t understand. The wisdom and the foresight of the founding fathers was to set the bar high and not low. It didn’t say we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal except slaves. It didn’t say that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights except for slaves. It didn’t say that. They set the bar high and challenged this nation to work up to those ideals, which we have done. You don’t set the bar low because you will work down to it. The founding fathers set it high and as a nation we have worked up to those ideals. We are the only nation in the world that’s been able to change the way we have changed in the last 200 and some odd years, the only nation in the world. That’s the greatness of America, our ability to change. And so I said I’m just glad that they set the bar where they set it, because over time we have worked up to that. So the founding fathers did their job. They didn’t develop a limited declaration. They didn’t develop a limited constitution. No, they developed those founding principles that we should never, ever get away from, which is why I was proud to be one of the signers of the Mount Vernon Statement two days ago because we needed a reaffirmation, a reconfirmation – and as one of my other callers pointed out last night, he said, “Mr. Cain, we need a revival.” And that’s exactly what this is all about. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m here. This revival is happening. It’s happening across this country. So the founding fathers did their job.

You know, one thing that I love about talk radio is that I learn so much from my callers. I really do. I do listen. I get accused of, you know, only taking calls where people want to disagree with me. But that’s just not the case. If you can make a logical argument for your point of view, I will listen and I will share it with people. But if your argument is illogical and no facts, I will cut you off. I don’t like to waste people’s time. I don’t like to waste people’s time. So another caller called one day and said, “Mr. Cain, I love your show. I love what you, what you stand for.” And she said, “I have a,” she said, “I have a question for you.” I said, “What’s that?” “Where are the defending fathers? The founding fathers did their job.” And she made me stop and think. We must be the defending fathers of this nation. We are the defending fathers. And there are three things that we need to do in order to continue this momentum. In order to be able to do what the second part of the Declaration of Independence says. Too many people call up and say my vote doesn’t count, can we really change things. And I have to remind my audience, and I remind people when I’m giving talks, if you read the Declaration of Independence don’t stop at Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Keep reading. And if you keep reading, it says when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. We’ve got some altering and abolishing to do. Keep reading. People like to stop right there. Don’t stop there. That’s the most important part, is about our right to alter and abolish. And I would like to point one thing out. I recited that without a teleprompter. I’m just saying.

And as the defending fathers, all of us are part of this defending fathers movement. I don’t care whether you call it the Tea Party Movement, the 912 Intelligent Fingers Movement, all of the various organizations. That is the beauty of this movement. It has multiple arms. It has multiple arteries. I said that for the benefit of my doctor friends that are here this morning. Thank you. Yes. Docs for patients. Three things we need to do, quite simply, to make sure we can abolish the liberal control of Congress in November. And just like the founding fathers set the bar high, I believe we need to set the bar high and say we will change control of Congress in November, starting with the House of Representatives. Not that we are gonna reduce the majority. No, we’ve got to set the bar high and make it happen, and here are the three things that we need to do in order to bring it about.

First, stay connected. Stay connected. Every one of you in here is connected to an organization or an initiative or a movement. Stay connected. And one of the reasons that we are experiencing the success that we are experiencing is quite frankly because more people are getting connected. One of my responsibilities is to encourage other people to get connected. Not everybody should or could run for public office. Not everybody should lead an initiative. But everybody can do something, and because we have become more connected as a movement in the last year, that’s why some members of Congress are hearing the voice of the people. Now, the President doesn’t hear us yet. His administration, they do not hear us yet. Harry and Nancy, they ain’t listening yet. But the good news is, the poor conservatives in Congress along with some moderates and independents, they are beginning to listen. They’re beginning to listen. That’s why all of these threatening proposals have been moved to the back burner and it is our job to get them out the back door. So we’ve got to stay connected. One of the, one of the great things that I felt so proud of a couple days ago when we signed the Mount Vernon statement and many, many of the people that participated are here today, is that all of these nearly 100 organizations who for so long have operated in their individual silos, have gotten above the silos and they’re looking across. And somebody made the statement, I don’t remember who said it first, nothing unites a movement like a common enemy. And we have a common enemy. It’s called the liberal attack on this nation. So stay connected.

Number two, stay involved and encourage your friends and neighbors, if they’ll listen, to stay involved. Now you can’t make people get involved, but whenever you hear the statement, I don’t have time to pay any attention to that stuff, you say well, one day you gonna wake up, to paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, you’re gonna wake up one day and you’re gonna be telling your grandchildren what freedom used to be like, because this is an, an environment. We’re already telling them that. This is an environment where we can’t sit back. Do you know, it used to be where we could elect people, send them to Washington, and they were statesmen and stateswomen, and they would do what was best for the nation and best for their constituency. That doesn’t exist anymore. This is why they have to hear from us frequently, loudly and forcefully in between elections. That’s the different dynamic that we’re having to deal with. And that’s why we have pushed these things to the back burner. We gotta stay involved. And so when you have an opportunity to talk with or influence some of your family members. My, my son, he’s 32. My daughter’s 38 and I finally got them to pay attention. You know how I got their attention? I said now dad is not a kajillionaire, but mom and dad are gonna be comfortable in our old age and if I don’t spend it all, the government is trying to take your inheritance. It’s amazing how that got their attention. They woke up the next day as conservatives and didn’t know it. I said welcome to the American dream. Welcome. So stay involved and encourage others to get involved. And, as I tell folk, get off the sofa and get off your anchovies because America’s under attack, but we can save it.

Number three, stay informed. Stay informed. Because if you don’t stay informed and if you don’t know your facts and if you don’t know your history, you can be tempted to drink the liberal Kool-Aid without knowing it and there’s a lot of liberal Kool-Aid out there. And in order to stay informed, you have to be aware of what I call the liberal tactics that they use all the time consistently, no matter which liberal is talking. And if you, if you recognize their tactics you will be able to counter their tactics with good information, good facts and reasonable logic. But sometimes some of these reporters that I see on TV, they are blindsided so quick they don’t know how to react. You have to stay better informed because if you look in the liberal playbook, you will find their three primary tactics. They commit what I call liberal SIN, capital S, capital I, capital N. They commit their liberal SIN and watch this whenever you see a liberal being interviewed on TV. They call the radio show all the time, and sometimes when I know that it’s one of my regular liberals, I will warn the audience. I’ll say, now, we’re gonna take Thomas but you all know what to look for. He’s going to SIN.

S – whatever the topic, he’s going to shift the subject. They do it every time. I was talking to a liberal one night on my radio show. I’d said did you know that President Obama has allowed the national debt to increase over $3 trillion in one year versus George Bush allowing it to grow $4 trillion in eight years. Almost as much in one year as eight years under the Bush administration. So the liberal says, well George Bush got us into this war. I didn’t ask you about the war. We’re not talking about the war. We’re talking about runaway, tsunami spending. But they like to shift the subject. Watch that. Listen for it. And then if you’re in dialogue with them, then you can get them back on track. So they SIN. They shift the subject. They do it all the time.

Secondly, I – they ignore the facts. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in that famous movie, liberals can’t handle the facts. They hate the facts. When President Obama started trying to sell healthcare deform, he continued to use the number 46 million people are without health insurance. Now fortunately, some radio talk show hosts, some news, cable news outlets, and a lady by the name of Sally Pikes of the Pacific Research Institute and others took a look at the data and unraveled that 46 million and found that it was not 46 million people who were going without health insurance because they couldn’t afford it. Some of those people made enough money to buy it but they chose not to and some of those people that were counted in that number were residents of the United States of America but they were not citizens. And do we owe health insurance to every other person in the world? So when you start to peel back the numbers, it’s not 46 million. And then in the President’s address to Joint Members of Congress on just healthcare, he started using the number over 30 million. The real number’s about 10 million. He still has a few others in there. And here’s one other thing about healthcare deform that I want to make sure that I state in case somebody else didn’t state it. We do not have a healthcare crisis in America. We have a healthcare-cost crisis in America, and that proposal is not the way to fix it. I get the liberals who will call up and say, “Well what do you have against all Americans getting healthcare?” I said I have nothing against all Americans having healthcare. There is a right way and a wrong way, and unfortunately your party, your leaders, are trying to shove it down our throats, and we the people are saying not this time. You’re not gonna shove it down our throats. So this is why we have to know our facts. Know the logic. Know the facts.

There are three things we need to do to bring down the cost of healthcare in America. This is not a healthcare seminar, but I gotta take advantage of this opportunity. So when, so when you are in dialogue with a reasonable liberal you can point out to them – I know, there aren’t many of them, but you might get lucky and run across one on the bus or something. Three things would dramatically change the healthcare-cost equation dynamics in this country. No. 1, tort reform. No. 2, level the playing field in terms of who you, who gets a deduction if you buy health insurance. Right now the employer gets a deduction but the employee doesn’t get a deduction – and if you level the playing field such that it doesn’t matter who pays for it, you get a tax deduction for your health insurance. Now let me just say parenthetically, we need to eliminate the stupid tax code. While we got it, we may as well do the right thing by the people. So that’s No. 2. And then No. 3, allow insurance to be sold across state lines. If you do those three things, if you do those three things and if government gets out of the way, we won’t have a healthcare-cost problem. It’s common sense. It’s not rocket science. It’s common sense. So know your facts, know your logic, stay informed. That’s all we have to do in order to be the founding, the defending fathers.

The N, S-I-N, when they can’t shift the subject on you, when they can’t ignore the facts, they name call. You rightwing nutcases. You Tea Party – Let me see if I can’t remember some of them now. Nancy said we were Astroturf. Harry Reid said we were unpatriotic. Janeane Garofalo said that we were red necked tea baggers. And some of the other Democrat leaders in Congress called us crazy. Well, it reminded me of my grandfather when we used to spend time on the farm during the summer. And when we did something to upset my grandfather, we thought he went crazy. And grandpa’s favorite phrase when he was coming after us, when we’d be saying, “But pa, you, you’re going crazy.” He would say, “I’m gonna show you some crazy.” And that’s one of our messages to the leaders in Congress. Yes we are crazy, we’re crazy about the Declaration. We are crazy about the Constitution. And we are crazy about the greatest country in the world – and we want to keep it that way. Yes, we’re crazy. We’re crazy. Oh yeah. We’re crazy. Yeah, next time they say you all are a bunch of crazies say, “Thank you. Thank you.” Yeah, we’re crazy. We’re crazy about this country. We’re crazy about our children and our grandchildren. And so that’s what we have to do as defending fathers. That’s my message to you today. Stay connected, stay involved. Stay connected, stay involved and stay informed. And that way you can combat the liberal SIN.

And with the Winter Olympics going on, it reminded me of the closing song, the words to the closing song of the 2000 Olympics, that reminds each of us as defending fathers of our responsibility. The words to the closing song of the 2000 Olympics said, “Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It’s never easy when there’s so much on the line. But you can make a difference. There’s a mission just for you. Just look inside and you will find just what you can do. The power of one begins with believing that you hold the key to all of your achieving. Just look inside and you will find just what you can do. The power of one begins with believing that you hold the key to all of your achieving.” We have a message for the President, his administration, Harry and Nancy, and the liberals. We, the people, are still in charge of this country.

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