Mike Huckabee Republican National Convention Speech Transcript (9-3-08)

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If you're a flight attendant or baggage handler and you're asked to take a pay cut to keep your job, you want something to change.

If you're a young couple losing your house, your credit rating, and your American dream, you want something to change.

John McCain offers specific ideas to respond to this need for change. But let me say there are some things we never want to change -- freedom, security, and the opportunity to prosper.

Barack Obama's excellent adventure to Europe took his campaign for change to hundreds of thousands of people who don't even vote or pay taxes here.

Let me hasten to say it's not what he took there that concerns me. It's what he brought back. Lots of ideas from Europe he'd like to see imported here.

Centralized governments may care for you from cradle to grave, but they also control you. Most Americans don't want more government, they want a lot less government.

It was in fact the founder of our party Abraham Lincoln reminded us that a government that can do everything for us can also take everything from us.

I get a little tired of hearing how the Democrats care about the working guy as if all Republicans grew up with silk stockings and silver spoons. In my little hometown of Hope, Arkansas, the three sacred heroes were Jesus, Elvis, and FDR, not necessarily in that order.

My own father held down two jobs, barely affording the little rented house I grew up in. My dad worked hard, lifted heavy things, and got his hands dirty. In fact, the only soap we had at my house was Lava.

Heck, I was in college before I found out it wasn't supposed to hurt to take a shower.

Let me make something clear tonight: I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich, but because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.

John McCain doesn't want the kind of change that allows the government to reach deeper into your paycheck and pick your doctor, your child's school, or even the kind of car you drive or how much you inflate the tires.

And he doesn't want to change the definition of marriage. And unlike the Democratic ticket, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin believe that every human life has intrinsic worth and value from the moment of conception.

And speaking of Gov. Palin, I am so tired of hearing about her lack of experience. I want to tell you folks something. She got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.