Thank you so much.  You touch my heart again. Thank you so very much. What a sight you are. What a privilege to be here with you again. How much I appreciate your earnest support and your help.

Thank you to Governor Nikki Haley for her wonderful introduction; she's a woman of uncommon courage and conviction, and her principles guide her governance. We need more governors like Nikki Haley!

And thank you for your support from the very beginning. You were there from the very start and made a difference for me. Yourcampaign gave me that early boost. You worked on the front lines—promoting my campaign, you made calls. I owe to each of you and appreciate your help and support through that campaign. 

With the help of so many of you, I had the honor of becoming the nominee of our party for the presidency of the United States. I was given the great privilege of experiencing America in a way that Ann and I had never anticipated that we would get to do. Our fellow citizens opened up their hearts and their homes to us.

Of course, I left the race disappointed that I didn't win. But I also left honored and humbled to have represented values we believe in and to speak for so many good and decent people. We've lost races before in the past, but those setbacks prepared us for larger victories. It's up to us to make sure that we learn from our mistakes, my my mistakes, and that take advantage of that learning to make sure that we take back the nation, take back the White House, get the Senate and put in place conservative principles.

Now, it’s fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party. I utterly reject pessimism. We may not have carried on November 7th, but we haven’t lost the country we love, and we have not lost our way. Our nation is still full of aspirations and hungry for new solutions. We’re a nation of invention and reinventing. My optimism about America wasn't diminished by my campaign; in fact it grew—It grew as I saw the people of America and heard their stories.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers of Las Vegas. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions there. When 9/11 hit and when the recession hit why that tanked her convention business. But she didn't give up, she didn't close down the business, didn't lay off her people. Instead she taught her people how to make furniture and her business thrives.

I've seen perseverance. Harold Hamm drove a truck for ten years so he could afford to go to college. He majored in Geology. He was studying some geological surveys, concluded that there must be oil in North Dakota. [He] Went to North Dakota and drilled a well. Dry hole. I'm told that it costs $2 million to drill a dry hole. He drilled 16 more, they called it Harold's folly up there until the 17th. The Bakken range he discovered is estimated by some to hold as many as 7-excuse me as 500 billion barrels of oil.

I've seen risk taking. The flagging lumber business and mounting losses convinced the International Paper Corporation that they needed to shut down their mill in Ossipee, New Hampshire. Into the breech stepped Jim Smith and Kim Moore, the plant manager and sales manager. They borrowed and invested everything they could find to buy the broken business. They saved their jobs and the jobs of 30 other of their colleagues, and they grew sales now from $5 million a year to $50 million a year.

I've met people of great faith. I had the honor of being in the home of Billy Graham and the residence of Cardinal Dolan and prayed with these men of God.

I met heroes in our armed forces: men and women who re-signed with the National Guard after multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan, knowing as they re-signed that in all likelihood they would on another tour in the future. 

I met heroes in the homes of the nation:  single moms who are working two jobs so their kids can have the same kind of kids other kids at school have [clothes like those that the other kids wear], dads who don't know what a weekend is, because they've take on so many jobs to make sure they can keep the house.

We're a patriotic people. The heart of America is good. Our land is blessed by the hand of God; may we as a people always be worthy of His grace, and His protection.

Like you, I believe that a Conservative vision can attract a majority of Americans and form a governing coalition of renewal and reform. Now as someone who just lost the last election, I'm probably not in the best position to chart the course for the next one. But that being said, let me offer this advice. And perhaps because I am a former governor, I would urge us all to learn the lessons that come from some of our greatest success stories: and that's 30 Republican governors across the country.

They're winning elections, but more importantly, they're solving problems. Big problems. Important problems. Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia secured a constitutional amendment to make sure they could have charter schools. Governor Rick Snyder got in place Right to Work legislation—in Michigan! A number of these Republican governors were able to secure tort reform, and a whole horde of Republican governors inherited budgets that were badly out of balance and have replaced deficits with surpluses. Look these governors have shown that they're able to reach across the aisle, offer innovative solutions and then they're willing to take the heat that you have to take to do important things.

We need leadership and the ideas and the vision of these governors. We particularly need by the way to hear from the Governors from the blue and purple states because those are the states we're going to have to win to get back the Senate and the White House. So people like Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Susanna Martinez, Chris Christie, Brian Sandoval—these are the people we've got to listen to and make sure their message is heard loud and clear across the country.

Now we can also learn from the examples of principle and passion and leadership that we've seen during these last few weeks here in Washington, DC by our Republican leaders. I may be a little biased, but I applaud the clear and convincing voice of my friend, Paul Ryan.

Now if I were to offer advice to any person who was or became the president of the United States, it would be this: do whatever you can to keep America strong, to keep America prosperous and free and the most powerful nation on earth.

It's no secret that the last century was an American century. And it is no secret that over the span of the coming century, that is not written in the stars; America's pre-eminent position is not guaranteed. And the consequence if America were to become surpassed by another nation would be devastating. Why do I say that? It's because the other contending leaders for world leadership—China, Russia, the Jihadists—not one of them accepts freedom as we understand it. Only America and American strength can preserve freedom for us and the world and the people we love.

Freedom depends on America and American leadership depends on a military so strong, so superior, that no one would think to engage it. And our military strength depends on an economy so strong that it can support that kind of a military. And our economy depends on a people that are so strong, so educated, so resolute, so hard working, so inventive, so focused on providing a better future for their children, that the rest of the world looks at America with admiration and respect. That's the America we grew up in, and that's the America our children deserve.

Think about America. Just think about America. What nation but ours would have enjoyed hegemonic military power for 25 years and never have used it to seek revenge against its foes or to seize precious natural resources from the weak?

What nation is the most philanthropic in the world, the first to bind up the wounds of the injured from hurricanes and tsunamis, and war? What nation is the largest contributor to the fight in Africa against AIDS?

Who came to the rescue of Europe when it faced its darkest hour and came to the rescue of others under the threat of tyranny, in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Bosnia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq? Whatever you think of these interventions, whatever, the impulse behind every single one of them was liberation, not conquest. In all of human history, there has never been a great power that has so often used  that power to liberate others, to free the captives. This we must teach our children, and we must ourselves never forget.  

I'm inspired by a nation with people who live for something bigger than themselves—their school, their family, their community, their faith, their country.

I marvel at the prescience and the brilliance and the sacrifices made by the Founders.

I'm proud of our immigrant heritage, proud that so many of us and of our ancestors came here because we wanted to be here, because they wanted to raise their families here, and have a better future, and because they wanted to worship their God here according to the dictates of their own conscience.

I was at a campaign stop in San Antonio, Texas, I met a guy named Sichan Siv. Sichan came here in 1976 to escape the killing fields of Cambodia. His first job was picking fruit, then he was a cab driver in New York City. In 1976 I, well a little later than that he joined the campaign of George Herbert Walker Bush as a volunteer. Thirteen years after coming to this country, he was given a job to work in the White House, then the State Department, and then he was appointed as a United States Ambassador to the United Nations. He said that whenever he stood to speak in behalf of this great country, he would ask himself in what other country in the world would a impoverished Cambodian refugee become its Ambassador to the United Nations.

This nation began with an idea, a noble one. The idea was that every person is endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. Freedom flows in American veins. It invigorates our enterprises, it inspires us to live beyond ourselves, it calls us to care for the suffering and downtrodden. It has made us a great nation.

Today, history and duty summon us again. The country is imperiled by mounting debt, by failing institutions, by families stressed beyond the limits, by schools failing to make the grade, and by public servants more intent on scoring political points than they are on national victories.

Each of us in our own way is going to have to step up and meet our responsibility. I'm sorry I won't be your president – but I will be your co-worker and I'll work shoulder to shoulder along side you.

You see in the end, in the end we'll win, we'll win for the same reason we won before: because our cause is just and it is right.

Look I want to thank you again for your support and your help along the journey. Ann and I are going to treasure the memories we've had throughout our life. God bless you, and God bless this great nation.  We love you.  Thank you so very much.