Rudy Giuliani's CPAC Speech

Full transcript here. An excerpt:

We’re not a country of one ethnic group. We’re not French or German or Italian or Spanish or whatever group. We’re not Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or anything like that.

We’re all different religions. And we’re all different races.

Since we’re not identified that way, what identifies us as Americans? The thing that identifies us as Americans are our ideas. And our ideas are wonderful ideas. And they’re ideas that the world is moving toward.

Ronald Reagan understood that. He understood that and he was able, therefore, to make very difficult decisions and to stick with them even when they were unpopular.

I remember when he deployed the cruise missiles and pointed them at the Soviets. Very, very unpopular. ABC did a documentary about the end of the world when he did that.

And then I remember when he walked out of Reykjavik —very, very unpopular.

A typical politician wouldn’t have done either of those two things. Maybe even a typical president wouldn’t have done either of those two things, because they made him unpopular. His unfavorability went up; his favorability went down.

So why did he make those decisions? He made those decisions because he could consult something broader than just public opinion. He could consult a set of ideas, a set of principles, a set of goals. And he could say: Well, right now public opinion actually isn’t correct.

Abraham Lincoln had to do the same thing during the Civil War. The Civil War was very, very unpopular. Draft riots in New York in 1863. Three generals that turned out to be failures.

Lincoln was viewed by many, many people as an incompetent president. The war took too long.

Well, Abraham Lincoln actually didn’t have to listen to polls on CNN. They didn’t have them then. (Laughter)

But I suspect, even if they did have polls on CNN, and ABC and NBC, Abraham Lincoln would have made exactly the same decision, which is: It’s my goal to keep this union together. It’s my goal to end slavery in order to extend freedom. And I’m not going to cave in to the immediate pressure of public opinion because, if I do and we end this war and we entreat frustration, we’re going to have two separate countries and they’re going to go to war with each other who knows how many times in the future and we’re going to lose a lot more lives.

And those are the calculations that leaders have to make. And when you do nonbinding resolutions, you’re trying to escape the responsibility of making those decisions. (Applause)

There’s another thing they learned from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan used to say, "My 80 percent ally is not my 20 percent enemy."

What he meant by that is that we all don’t see eye to eye on everything. You and I have a lot of common beliefs that are the same, and we have some that are different.

You just described your relationship, I think, with your husband, your wife, your children. We don’t all agree on everything.

I don’t agree with myself on everything. (Laughter)

And the point of a presidential election is to figure out who do you believe the most, and what do you think are the most important things for this country at a particular time?