Senator John McCain spoke Thursday night at the New York Republican State Committee's annual fund raising dinner. This took place at the Sheraton Hotel at New York City. Thank you Joe, thank you. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you for that very kind words. Thank you, Joe, thank you for your leadership of this great party. Thank you, Joe Bruno, thank you for your great leadership and, you know, I know that the Governor in here tonight but I don't know if he ever heard the story of the two inmates in the state prison at the chat line and one said the other one, the food was a lot better in here when you were governor but anyway I am very happy to see you Joe. Bill Bennett, thank you for all you have done for America. Thank you, you are our role model and our leader and Mike Long our wonderful Conservative party President is here. Thank you Mike, thank you for all you do and Lawrence Kadish thank you for your generosity and thank you for welcoming me. I know you have heard a lot of speakers tonight so I will be brief. First of all, after all the wonderful speakers you have had, I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband. On her wedding night said, "I know what I am supposed to do, I just don't know how to make it interesting", you know, and that's it. It's kind of a cute line I find it, goes over at Republican Women's club meetings best. One night I will sit one of these dinners and I was about the fifth guy in line and I said I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth, the speaker who followed me immediately was Senator John Warner. Now, he was not amused by that. I would like to begin by asking your sympathy for the families of the State of Arizona, because Berry Goldwater from Arizona ran for President of the United States, Morris Udall from Arizona ran for President of the United States, Bruce Babbitt from Arizona ran for President of the United States, I from Arizona ran for President of the United States. Arizona may be the only state in America where mothers don't tell their children that some day they can grow up and be President of the United States, it's terrible.By the way we have so little water in Arizona the trees chase the dogs and California has stolen our water and I was recently over at a event with the Governor Schwarzenegger and I have many similar attributes as you know, and there was a bunch of protesters there, there is always protestors in California no matter of what and he was a great big guy over the sign and I walked by and he said, "Hey anybody ever tell you look a lot like Senator John McCain." I said yeah, he said "Don't they just make it mad as heck" so thank you for, Joe for your kind introduction. I thank you all for your support of our party and our president. I thank you and I want to talk you very briefly about a couple of issues. First of all I would like to express my appreciation for Governor, the former Mayor of this city, who Tuesday night corrected a terrible impression that might have been created that somehow that we were not responsible for that we were responsible for the attack on the United States of America and New York City in 9/11. I was proud of Giuliani's comment, of Rudy Giuliani's comments and I was proud of him as an American and so and so I am very proud of him. So, and as you are and somehow and now we have two debates and they always have me standing next to Rudy, I don't know if the fix is in or what but and by the way its great to be in a debate with nine other people I tell you. But any way I won't go into that one. So I want to I want to talk to you just about a couple of things very quickly. One, why did we Republicans lose the 2006 election, it wasn't because of Iraq, Americans are confused and they are sad and they are frustrated by our lack of success in Iraq but if it had been about Iraq Joe Lieberman, my favorite Democrat would never - would never have been reelected in the State of Connecticut because he stood up for the men and the women who are serving and fighting for freedom in Iraq and in Afghanistan and I am proud of him. And I will talk to you in a minute about Iraq but it was because of spending my friends, the Republican Party and the Congress of the United States let's spending go out of controls to the point where we lost our way. We came to power in 1994 to change government and government changed us. We allowed spending to get out of control to the point where we presided over the greatest increase in spending since the great society. As a Republican, we should condemn that. That's not the principles of our party. Let me tell you, I say that - I often say that, I often say that Congress spends money like a drunken sailor, when I never knew a sailor drunk or sober with the imagination of some of my colleagues in the Congress of the United States. Now that's a pretty good line, I use it all the time. Recently I am not making this up. Recently I got an e-mail from a guy, who said as a former drunken sailor, I resent being compared to the members of Congress. I don't blame him. So so what happened my friends, so our base became turned off. We spend $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I don't know if that's a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but it shouldn't be your tax dollars, it shouldn't be your tax dollars and my fellow Arizonans tax dollars and of course in 1987 Ronald Reagan, vetoed the then Highway Bill that had a 100, that had 152 earmarked pork barrel projects on it, okay and he said in his own inimitable style he said I haven't seen this much pork since I gave out blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair. Two years ago the President of United States signed in a law the Highway Bill was 6140 earmarked projects on it including that now famous bridge to nowhere in Alaska. $233 million bridge to an island in Alaska with 50 people on it. Next time you are stuck in traffic as I was on the way over here think of what of your tax dollars is going to. I want to tell you right now, as President of United States the first pork barrel bill that comes across my desk I will veto it and I will make the authors of it famous and you'll know their names. And we are going to regain, and we are going to regain the confidence of our base when the last election they didn't vote Democrat but I will tell you what they did. They became disenchanted and disillusioned and they didn't do the things we need our party base to do if we are going to win elections. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, we are going to get to back to being so and that means less government is best government, government closest to the people is the best government, less taxes, less regulation and a strong national defense, that's what the Republican Party should be all about and that's what we are about. Now you've already had a long evening, so I want to end up by talking to you obviously about the issues that for about the 48th time the Democrats have made us take a vote on and that's the war in Iraq. Now my friends, I would say to you again, let's have some straight talk - the war was mismanaged, the war was mismanaged and we are paying a very heavy price for it in American blood and treasure. We have sacrificed an enormous amount because of it. We have a new strategy and we have a new general and that strategy is to go into places in Baghdad and Iran, Iraq and secure the area, allow the social economic and political process to move forward and give these people an opportunity to live normal lives. That's what this strategy is all about, there are some successes and there are some failures, this is long and it's hard and it's tough. I am not telling you mission accomplished, I am not telling you last throes, I am not telling you a few dead-enders, but I am telling you what happens if we withdraw from Iraq. If we set a date for leaving Iraq, it is setting a date for surrender and we cannot do that we cannot do that. If we leave Iraq there will be chaos, there will be genocide and they will follow us home. My dear friends when we lost the war in Vietnam and came home all we had to do is heal the wounds of war and help those brave men and women who had served in the military be able to come all the way home. We lose this one and they will follow us home. Don't take my word for it. Read Zarqawi, read Bin Laden they want to follow us home because this is now part of the titanic struggle we are in between good and evil, between everything we stand for and believe in and pray for every night and the force of radical Islamic extremism that wants to destroy us and everything we stand for and believe on. We will never surrender - we will never surrender, they will. Thank You. So what does the majority leader of the United States Senate say? The majority leader of the United States Senate says we have lost the war. Young men and women who are fighting over there and sacrificing as we speak would be interested in knowing that. And the American people should know if we lost the war, who won? Al Qaeda? We just lost the war to Al Qaeda? I don't think so. I don't think so. What my friends on the other side of the aisle have forgotten and don't appreciate is that Presidents don't lose wars my friends and political parties don't lose wars. Nations lose wars. And when nations lose wars, nations suffer. I know, and there are people in this room god bless you, who know what it's like to lose a war and how long it takes our military and our institutions to recover. So I want to end up by telling you a very brief story that happened to me a couple of weeks ago and I'll close. But before I do, I would just like to say thank you for your support of our party, thank you for all you do for America, thank you for your support of President Bush and I pray for him and I know you do as well. Little over two weeks ago, I was I was at a hospital room at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. I was President for the awarding of the Purple Heart to a brave young American who is a Navy SEAL by the name of Mark Robbins. His parents were there; his brothers were twins, his sister's fiancée and several of his SEAL Team members. I am always honored to be at the ceremony of awarding of medals particularly the Purple Heart, which, I know, you know was the first medal ever, ever designed by George Washington and one of the most unique as you know. That wasn't the first time that I had met Mark Robbins. Approximately a week and a half or earlier I had come back from a visit to Iraq. And I had stopped at Ramstein, Germany where the Landstuhl Hospital is, where the wounded are taken from Afghanistan and Iraq and treated and then sent on to Bethesda and Walter Reed another hospitals. I was visiting the wounded. I walked into Mark Robbins' hospital room. Less than 48 hours before I walked into that hospital room, Mark Robbins' and his SEAL Team had been in a vicious firefight outside of the city of Baghdad. In the course of that firefight, one of the Al Qaeda had stood with an RPG and was about to fire at his comrades. He stood, killed the guy. In the course of that, he he took a AK-47 bullet in his right eye. It followed the course of his skull, the curvature of his skull and exit at the back of his skull. Mark Robbins' walked to the helicopter, from the helicopter he walked to the medical hospital. I walked I walked into his room, he was asleep. One of his comrades was there with him; he was his SEAL Team member. I said, I'll go on. I was down in the hall visiting another wounded soldier and his and his friend Petty Officer Swink came and said, "Mark would like to see you." I went back and walked back into his hospital room. He was he was lying on his hospital bed. He said, "I want to sit up." He sat up in his hospital bed and he grabbed hold of my hand. And he said, "Senator McCain Senator McCain, thank you for coming to see me. God bless you for supporting us." And he grabbed to hold my hand and he held my hand as tightly as he could, and he said, "Senator McCain, we can win this fight. We can win this fight." My friends, I'll take Mark Robbins' word for it and all the brave young men and women who are serving and making this world safe as we speak. God bless you, God bless them and God bless America. Senator McCain took his campaign to Michigan today and next week he'll be in Oklahoma and Texas.
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