 Well, thank you all very much, but it's you who deserve the applause for your hard work and your great generosity. Senator Hines, John, wherever you are, I want to thank you especially for chairing the committee this year. Bob Dole, our fearless majority leader and the rest of your leadership team. Now I don't know whether they've gotten down off the hill yet or not, but anyway the rest of that team, Alan Simpson and John Chaffee and Bill Armstrong and again John Hines again. Anyway they all deserve our heartfelt thanks for making 86 a banner year in the Senate for the Republican Party and also for the United States of America. I, you know, have just been down in Texas and Florida and South Carolina, started yesterday morning and don't seem like I could have made all those places in that short a time, but I got back a little while ago here in the South Loan. And I have to tell you, it was a great thrill to stand up there for one of our candidates for reelection, Paula Hawkins, and get a call just before I stood up in front of her fundraiser and then say to them that as of the few moments before, that my nominee for a judgeship had been approved by the United States Senate. And I remember it wasn't so many years ago before we won a majority in the Senate that most of the news coming out of the Congress was bad or worse. And it was like that story of the traveling salesman who had been having a very rough time and finally sat down at a roadside cafe. Waitress took his order there and asked him what he wanted and he said a cup of coffee, just a couple of eggs. And back she came and she put the order down in front of him and he was still feeling pretty low and she said, will there be anything else? Well, he said, yes, you might give me a few kind words. She said, don't eat the eggs. But the Bible says you shall know a tree by its fruits. And in the later 70s, the Democratic Party took over this town and America tastes the bitter fruit of its left liberal policies. Economic policies based on a philosophy of envy produced a shrinking future as inflation stole away our savings and burdensome taxes crushed our incentive to work and invest. Our foreign policy was based on the idea that America was history's bad guy. The blame America first syndrome resulted in some strange things such as when our then ambassador to the United Nations described the introduction of Cuban troops into Angola to prop up the pro-Soviet regime there as, quote, a stabilizing influence. We saw our federal courts stacked with judges. You might say always blamed society first. They saw the criminals as victims rather than the victimizers. And we seem to place the protection of innocent citizens very low on their list of priorities. We saw our schools become like laboratories for all kinds of social experimentation. And it was no accident that crime was on the rise and scholastic aptitude scores were plummeting. Everyone thinks those days are far behind us. They only have to look at the battles we've had to fight in the Congress this year. Every budget vote is used as an excuse by the left to slash defense spending, scuttle the strategic defense initiative, and call for tax increases. Took several votes for the House to bring itself to face up to the reality of Soviet expansionism on the American mainland. And in the Senate we have some who pulled out all the stops to try, as I said earlier, to defeat our judicial nominees, simply because they didn't like their conservative philosophy. Think what this year would have been like without a firmly Republican Senate. What would be left of defense spending? Would there be any aid to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters? No. And what chance would our judicial appointments have? Let's not forget one of the proudest achievements of this or any other Senate. I mean their revolutionary tax reform legislation, reform that once again proved that simpler is better. Well, 1986 is going to determine whether we keep going along the road of progress, or whether we make a U-turn and regress to those years of stratospheric inflation and taxes, liberal social experimentation at home, and weakness abroad. Republicans have a larger flak exposed this year than in any year since we achieved the control of the Senate. Twenty-two of the 34 seats that are up for election are held by Republicans. And despite that, I couldn't be more optimistic about this year. For one thing, there's been a sea change in the American political scene for the first time in decades about as many Americans identify themselves as Republicans as do Americans identify themselves as Democrats. Even more encouraging, America's young people are coming to our party because they see us as the party of hope and opportunity of a strong and youthful America, that we're the party with vision, whether it's tax rate cuts that liberate incentive or a strategic defense initiative that could free this world from the threat of nuclear war. We're the party that sees every problem as an opportunity and every roadblock as a challenge. And I have to tell you, coming home just a little while ago and landing in Marine 1 on the South Lawn out here, you would have been thrilled if you could have seen what I saw. 300 young people, college Republicans who are in town here and have been for a couple of days for a leadership conference. They all came over here to see me in and to have a chance to see the White House. But you looked at that group of enthusiastic young people carrying our label very proudly. You stopped to think of what I've said here about those between the ages of 16 and 24 and how the increased number that is for us. And you just have to look down the road just a few years and when they come out to join us, we're going to be the majority. They're the greatest group of young people and I've seen them on campuses, I've seen them in high schools, I've seen them in the Marine base down there. And we can stop worrying about who's going to be in charge in the 21st century. They're the greatest group of young people I think that we've seen in years and years. Well, we're the ones who put no limit on America's future because we know that America's resources are as inexhaustible as the spirit and the imagination of the American people themselves. So I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your hard work and generosity. I remember well that it was the trust that started it all, raising the seed money that lifted the NRSC from a valuable but small workhorse to a major campaign strategy and fundraising force and setting the stage for victory in 1980. This year, the trust eight years of leadership and investment is at risk and we need you all now more than ever. We've got an uphill struggle before us, but I have no doubt that with your continued support, 1988 will turn out to be a good year, indeed a great year. I know I shouldn't stand here any longer and interfere with your fun and pleasure by talking, but it's so good to see you all here and it's been so different from back in a day and talking about those young people. Do you mind if I just tell you a little personal experience that I still treasure? You know how often when you get in an argument or something, you're home when the argument's over before you think of what you should have said right. Well, I had a turnaround on that once when I was governor and you remember those days when the campuses were on fire and not with enthusiasm. I mean on fire, burning them down. And if I went near a campus in California, they wouldn't just burn me in effigy. They do the real thing. And one day the student officers of the nine California campuses demanded a meeting with me. Well, I was delighted because they say I couldn't go near a campus. Well, then they came and in that day, they didn't look like these kids out here today. Most of them were barefoot and they all had t-shirts on and most of the t-shirts were torn. They slouched and slumped into their chairs and then one who was a spokesman started in on me. And he said, Governor, it's impossible for you to understand us, impossible for you to understand your own children. When I tried to pass it off, I said, well, we know more about being young than we do about being old. And he wouldn't have it. He said, no, I mean it. And then he went on. He said, you didn't grow up like we have in a world of instant electronic communications, of space travel, journeys to the moon, nuclear power and cybernetics and so forth. Well, he went on just long enough that the answer did come. And when he paused for breath, I said, you're right, we didn't have any of those things when we were your age. We invented them. It sure changed the subject. Well, anyway, I couldn't resist telling all of you that. But again, as I say, I'm so high on our party and the future for us. And yet right now, we've still got a struggle along battling uphill, particularly in that one house. Do you realize that in these five and a half years that we've had the Republican majority in the Senate, other than that, only four times in the last 50 years have Republicans controlled the Congress of the United States. And now we only have to. We have one house, but not the other. So other than that, for all the rest of the time, they've been in control. And the things that are wrong, they're trying to be corrected are all of their doing from taxes on and want to be wonderful just once. No Republican, a Republican president, Eisenhower, he only had a Republican legislature for two years out of his eight. I didn't have a Republican legislature in California for seven of the eight years that I was there. And I just, I lie upstairs there waiting to see if Lincoln's ghost is for real and think every once in a while. I don't know what it would be like to be able to propose something to a Congress of our own party there in both houses. But again, I say thank God for these senators who are here among you, because without them we never could have achieved what we have achieved. That's, they did it. So thank you all for what you've done and keep on doing it. Thank you. Let's talk into the Marine. Forget our pictures. Stay with us. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.