...I want to talk to you a little bit this morning and then turn it over to Terry about the unbelievable opportunity and the unbelievable challenge that this 2004 election faces.  Because the 2004 election is both--an opportunity and a challenge, and it's important that we look at it as both.

On January 22nd, 2001, President Bush swore in the commissioned officers who would serve in the White House.  When he swore us in he told us, "We are not here just to mark time."

From his first days as a candidate to his first term as a President, George W. Bush has done much more just than mark time.  In event after event our President has seized the moment.

He has transformed challenges into opportunities.  He has led our nation to overcome some of the greatest tests in our history.  Because he insisted on solving those tests, on solving those problems--not just passing them on to future generations, future generations of Americans will have more security, more prosperity and more opportunity as a result of the president's leadership.  And because our President has developed solutions to these problems based on the compassionate conservative principles that we believe in and that our party stands for, our party today has the greatest opportunity in generations.

Victory on November 2nd, 2004 would be the first time in 80 years that the party of Lincoln has re-elected a President and has returned majorities to the House and to the Senate.  The last time that happened Calvin Coolidge was sitting in the Oval Office.  Only Kjellander remembers that.

It's hard to think of an American President who faced more challenges than the challenges that confronted George W. Bush.  Think about his first year in office:

He entered office after one of the closest elections in American history.  The Senate was split 50/50; we had just a 6 seat majority in the House of Representatives.

As he was running for President in 2000, the stock market peaked in March, and the economy was slowing by July.  By the time he was sworn in in 2001 the economy was in a recession.

Then our country's financial markets were rocked as corporate scandals during the 1990s finally came to light.

The Chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors described the opportunities facing this President.  "The economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office, and the corporate scandals that are rocking America began much earlier."  Those weren't our only challenges facing the President.

Despite years of federal commitment to education, the National Assessment of Education Progress in 2001 revealed that 1 out of 3 white children in the 4th grade, 2 out of 3 African-American children in the 4th grade, and 58% of Hispanic children in the 4th grade couldn't read at a basic 4th grade level.

And on September 11, 2001, terrorists declared war on our country.  Three thousand lives were lost and our nation grieved these senseless deaths.  A new generation of heroes was born at Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania.

These attacks worsened the recession.  Airlines were grounded for days.  Millions cancelled travel plans.  New construction came to a halt as builders feared lawsuits in the event of a future terrorist attack.  Financial markets were devastated, and the costs of cleanup ran into the billions.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, President Bush responded to each of these challenges by seizing the day.  Not only did he lead America to confront these tests. He united our nation behind solutions that would transform crisis after crisis into opportunity after opportunity.

He led the world in the war on terror.  Just as President Truman provided a roadmap through the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, President Bush has put forward clear principles for the nation and the world to defeat terrorism.

First, we will treat terrorists and those who support, those who finance, and those who harbor terrorists exactly the same.  All will be brought to justice.

Second, justice will be done where the terrorists gather.  We will bring the battle to them, not wait until they attack our homeland.  As Chairman Gillespie has noted as long as George W. Bush is President, the front lines in the war on terror will be Baghdad and Kabul, not Boston and Kansas City.

Third principle, America will lead global efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.  We will strengthen our intelligence, we will strengthen our law enforcement so that we can look for and break the links between dangerous regimes, weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations.

And, finally, our President will confront terror with hope, fear with freedom, and will work to promote democracy all over the world, including places that have not seen democracy before.

President Bush has done more than just talk principles.  He has made these our national policies.  And while much work remains to be done, today al Qaeda's leaders are either dead, incarcerated or hiding in caves, and little girls in Afghanistan for the first time in many years can go to school.

The dictator of Iraq has been deposed, and his cruel sons no longer torment the Iraqi people.  Twenty-four million once captive Iraqis can now taste freedom for the first time in their lives.

Some criticize this war on terror as unilateral or as pre-emptive.  But didn't September 11 teach us that we cannot wait while threats gather?  That we must connect the dots, even if other nations refuse to see the patterns?  That pre-empting terrorists before they acquire weapons of mass destruction, before they come to shores, before they can harm Americans here at home--isn't that the goal?

Our President has transformed challenges into opportunities at home as well.  To confront a recession and protect jobs, he passed two of the three largest tax cuts in American history.  To ensure prosperity in the future and opportunity for everybody, those tax cuts focus on encouraging investment and help people trying to enter the middle class.

The President's plan allows working families to keep more so that they can do more for themselves and for their communities.

We've passed the most comprehensive corporate responsibility reforms since the New Deal and for the first time in a decade our President has fast track authority so that goods and services made in America can be sold around the world.

We've passed the most significant education reforms in a generation to confront those statistics from 2001 that I just mentioned.  Every child will be tested to make sure they're learning and we'll rely on programs that work like phonics.

Presidential leadership is making prescription drug coverage a real possibility for seniors, not just a campaign slogan to frighten our parents and grandparents.

President Bush is also working for a more compassionate America.  From helping AIDS victims in Africa to faith-based initiatives and welfare reform at home, President Bush has helped make sure that the party of Lincoln has an agenda worthy of our president's ?founder.

The American Dream has always rested on the twin pillars of ownership and opportunity, and our President has an agenda to accomplish both: closing the gap between minorities and non-minorities in home ownership, making sure that more people, if they want, can own a small business, allowing younger workers to own a portion of their retirement if they choose.

Ladies and Gentlemen, all of these good policies are also great politics.  And the President's leadership hasn't just transformed challenges into opportunities for our country.  It's provided a record that will allow this Republican National Committee to seize the political moment next year.

The 2000 election was the third election in a row where neither party was able to get 50% of the vote—hasn't happened since the 1880s.  Bill Clinton is the only President in American history elected to win back to back elections and never win a popular majority.

From an electoral perspective, if you look at the last 5 Presidential elections and you add up the states the Democrats have won 3 times, 4 times, and 5 times and the states Republicans have won 3 times, 4 times, and 5 times, you get 273 electoral votes for Republicans, 265 electoral votes for Democrats.  And in the last election as we all know, 60 electoral votes were decided by fewer than 25,000 votes.  Control of the U.S. House between 1996, 1998 and 2000 was decided in each election by less than 1% of the vote.  After the 2000 election, based on these results, Michael Barone, the editor of the Almanac of American Politics called America a "49% nation" with neither party able to command a majority.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, what a difference two years of strong presidential leadership and two years of RNC focus on grassroots made.  Because despite this 49% nation, last year our President and the people in this room made incredible history and transformed the political landscape.  The President's party usually approaches its first midterm election as a challenge. We approached it as an opportunity and we worked together to try to seize the day.

Despite how closely divided our country is, George W. Bush's Republican Party for the first time in American history won back the U.S. Senate in its first midterm election.

The President's party usually loses House seats.  For the first time since 1934, when one out of five Americans was unemployed, President Bush's Republican Party gained seats in the U.S. House.

We had to defend 23 out of 36 governor's mansions, and despite that today Republican governors have a majority of statehouses in America.

And while the President's party usually loses 350 net seats in state legislatures in midterm elections, we won 175 so that today there are more Republican state legislators than Democrat state legislators for the first time since 1954.

In 2000 [sic -2002] Republicans broke the 49% nation barrier for Senate, for House and for governorships.  And it's not just in 2002.

Today the American people understand our President's extraordinary leadership.  75% of American voters told the Gallup poll most recently they believe this President is a strong leader.  57% say he cares about the needs of people like them, the one leadership attribute that a majority of Americans never believed about Ronald Reagan—even though Ronald Reagan won 49 states.

The President's leadership has allowed our party to make gains among key voting groups.  Suburban voters, who we lost by a few points in 1996, supported our party in 2000 and supported us by 19% in 2002.

We made history in 2000 when we won 35% of the Latino vote and we made history again in '02 when we won 39%, the most ever the Republican Party has received. We improved our support among Catholic voters.  We had a 16% loss in 1996 and we split the vote in 2000 and 2002.

And under the President's leadership, and thanks to efforts like your Winning Women effort that Ann Wagner has put on, we cut the gender gap in half as a result of this President's leadership. We improved our performance among union households, winning 40% of the union vote in 2002. And young voters who backed Clinton/Gore in 1996 by 19% had a 19 point swing; they split their vote in 2000 and they split their vote again in 2002.

The President's leadership has invigorated our grassroots, the mainstay of this Republican Party. Between 2000 and 2002, in the 32 states where voters register by party, we've cut the Democrat registration advantage by nearly 500,000. In the same timeframe--you hear a lot about support, financial support in politics--the RNC has received contributions from over 950,000 first-time donors.   Bush-Cheney has already received almost 100,000 first-time Bush-Cheney donors' support this year.  We have 325,000 team leaders ready to work to re-elect our President and our Republican majorities in Congress.  And between Bush-Cheney and the RNC, we have 6 million regular e-leaders.

Ladies and gentlemen, the leadership of our President, of Denny Hastert, of Bill Frist, of George Pataki, and of so many others have transformed what it means to be a Republican and their leadership provides us with an incredible opportunity.  We can make history in 2004 if we make lasting the gains our party made in 2002.

Now what we need--.  The last 3 presidential elections were so close for a reason.  Our country's divided politically.  Things are very close.  And we're not the only ones who understand the transformative power of this President.  Our friends leading the Democrats' party understand it too.  As Chairman Gillespie noted, to quote them, they are "maniacally focused" on defeating President Bush.

And their will to power knows few limits.  In just the past few weeks, leading Democrats running for president reversed long held positions on the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein for short term political gain among Democrat primary voters.  If they're willing to sacrifice principle on this, just imagine what they'll say and do to try to get elected.

But just as the President transformed great challenges into opportunities, we must take on their challenge.  Our numbers look good today, but as we've predicted for some time, those numbers will come down.  We must prepare for an election every bit as close and every bit as hard fought as the 2000 election.

And the best way we can prepare for 2004 is to use the President's leadership, his policies and his examples to help our party this year.

We must meet Marc Racicot's goal of registering 3 million new voters.

We must echo the President's message and share his positive vision with America.  We need you on talk radio.  We need your letters to the editor.  We need your emails.  And we need your blogs.

We must employ new technologies like voter vault to re-energize our grassroots and to ID as many voters as possible.

We must sign up county chairmen, precinct leaders, and Bush team leaders to recruit new activists, to register voters, and to sign up volunteers.

We must use every county fair this summer to have a Bush-Cheney and a state party booth to welcome new volunteers and to sign up new voters.

And we need Republicans present at every naturalization ceremony to say the same thing to today's newest Americans that was said to the father of our new chairman: "Welcome to America.  The party of Lincoln wants your support, your ideas and your energy."

Ladies and gentlemen: this next election will be tough.  It will be an incredible challenge.  It will include difficult days.

But think about how our President has handled the unbelievable challenges he's faced.  By leading on principle, by doing what's right, and by insisting on solving, not passing on tough problems, our President has transformed challenge after challenge into opportunity after opportunity.

In his seminal work, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote for the need for conservatives to embrace change.  "Conservatives inherit from Burke," he wrote, "a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the times."

By applying conservative principles to take on challenges like global terrorism, a recession, corporate scandals, a school system that was leaving too many children behind and so much else, President George W. Bush has made history and ensured a better tomorrow.

He's also provided our party and all who share our convictions with an opportunity—one that we realized in 2002 and we must work for again in 2004.

Members of the RNC: we have an opportunity not seen in our lifetimes or our parents' lifetimes.  Let's work together to seize this incredible moment, and let us start today.  Thank you very much.

On January 22, 2001, President Bush swore in the commissioned officers who would serve in the White House. He reminded us, “We are not here just to mark time.”

From his first days as a candidate to his first term as President, George W. Bush has done much more than mark time. He has seized the moment.

His leadership has transformed challenges into opportunities. Because President Bush has confronted great challenges, our nation has overcome some of the greatest tests in our history. Because he has insisted on solving those problems—not just passing them on, future generations will have more security, prosperity and opportunity. And because our President has developed solutions based on compassionate conservative principles, our party today has the greatest opportunity in generations.

Victory November 2, 2004 would be the first time in 80 years the party of Lincoln has re-elected a President and returned majorities to the House and Senate. The last time this happened Calvin Coolidge was running for re-election. Only Kjellander remembers this.

It’s hard to think of an American President who faced the challenges confronting George W. Bush. Think of his first year in office:

He entered office after one of the closest elections in American history. The Senate was split 50/50 and Republicans had just a 6 seat margin in the House.

As he was running for office in 2000, the stock market peaked in March, and the economy was slowing by July. The economy was in recession by the first quarter of 2001 when the President took office.

Then our country’s financial markets were rocked as corporate scandals from the 1990s came to light.

The Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors described the economic difficulties facing this new President. “The economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office, and the corporate scandals that are rocking America began much earlier.”

Despite years of federal commitment to education, the National Assessment of Education Progress in 2001 revealed that 1 out of 3 white, 2 out of 3 African-American and 58% of Latino-American 4th graders couldn’t read at a 4th grade level.

And on September 11, 2001, terrorists declared war on our country. Three thousand lives were lost and our nation grieved these senseless deaths. A new generation of heroes was born at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania.

These attacks worsened the recession. Airlines were grounded for days. Millions cancelled travel plans. New construction came to a halt as builders feared lawsuits following a terror attack. Financial markets were devastated. The costs of cleanup ran into the billions.

President George W. Bush has responded to each of these challenges by seizing the day. Not only did President Bush lead America to confront these tests. He united Americans to overcome these tests and proposed solutions that would transform crises into new opportunities.

President Bush has led the world in the war against terror. Just as the Truman doctrine provided a roadmap to contain communism, President Bush has put forward principles to protect our nation and the world by defeating terrorism where it grows.

First, we will treat terrorists and those who support, harbor, finance, and assist terrorists the same. All will be brought to justice.

Second, that justice will be done where the terrorists gather. We will bring the battle to them, not wait until they attack our homeland. As long as George W. Bush is President, the front lines on the war on terror will be Baghdad and Kandahar, not Boston and Kansas City.

Third, America will lead global efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. We will strengthen our intelligence and law enforcement to look for and break the links between dangerous regimes, weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations.

And, finally, we will confront terror with hope, fear with freedom. Our President will work to bring freedom and democracy throughout the world.

The President has done more than just talk principles. He has made these our national policies. While much work remains to be done, al Qaeda’s leaders are now hiding in caves, and Afghan girls can attend school.

The dictator of Iraq has been deposed, and his cruel sons no longer torment the Iraqi people. Twenty-four million once captive Iraqis now taste freedom.

Some criticize this war on terror as unilateral or pre-emptive. But didn’t September 11 teach us that we cannot wait while threats gather? That we must connect the dots, even if other nations refuse to see the pattern? That pre-empting terrorists before they acquire weapons of mass destruction, before they come to our shores, before they can harm America is the goal?

The President has transformed the federal government to protect our homeland.

Our President has turned challenges into opportunities at home as well. To confront a recession and protect jobs, our President passed two of the three largest tax cuts in history. To ensure prosperity in the future, these tax cuts encourage investment and assist those trying to enter the middle class.

The President’s plan allows America’s working families to keep more so they can do more for themselves and their communities.

The most comprehensive corporate responsibility reforms since the New Deal are now the law of the land. For the first time in a decade, our President has fast track authority to negotiate free trade.

We’ve passed the most significant education reforms in a generation with high standards and testing to make sure every child is learning. We’re relying on programs that work like phonics.

Presidential leadership is making prescription drug coverage a real possibility for seniors, not just a campaign tactic used to frighten our parents and grandparents.

President Bush is working for a more compassionate America. From helping AIDS victims in Africa to faith-based initiatives and welfare reform at home, President Bush has helped make sure the party of Lincoln has an agenda worthy of our party’s founder.

The American Dream has always rested on the twin pillars of ownership and opportunity. Our President has an agenda to accomplish both: closing the gap between minorities and non-minorities in home ownership, promoting small business development, allowing younger workers to own a portion of their retirement if they choose.

Good policy is good politics. The President’s leadership hasn’t just transformed challenges into opportunities for our country. It’s provided a record that will allow our party to seize the political moment.

The 2000 election was the third in a row where neither party won 50% of the vote—the first time this has occurred since the 1880s. Bill Clinton is the only President in American history elected to back to back terms never to receive a popular majority.

From an electoral perspective, if you look at the last 5 Presidential elections and add up the states Democrats have won 3, 4, and 5 times and the states Republicans have won 3, 4, and 5 times, you get 265 electoral votes for Democrats and 273 for Republicans. In 2000, 60 electoral votes were decided by fewer than 25,000 votes. And that doesn’t count Florida. Control of the U.S. House was decided three elections in a row by less than 1% of the vote. Based on these results, Michael Barone called America a “49% nation.”

Last year, President George W. Bush’s leadership, your efforts and the incredible Republican candidates transformed this political landscape. The President’s party approaches its first midterm election as a challenge to be overcome. We approached it as an opportunity to be seized.

Despite how closely our country is divided, last year, the President’s party won back the U.S. Senate in a first midterm election for the first time in history. While the White House party usually loses House seats, we won them in our first midterm -- the only other time a President’s party has done that was 1934.

Despite having to defend 23 out of 36 governor’s mansions, Republicans still maintain a majority of Governor’s mansions. And while the President’s party loses an average of 350 net seats in state legislatures in midterm elections, we won 175. There are more Republican legislators than Democrats for the first time since 1954.

Republicans broke the 49% nation barrier in 2002. Republican candidates received 51% of the vote in the House and nearly the same in races for the Senate, and for governor.

The American people understand our President’s extraordinary leadership. 75% of voters call our President a strong leader in the latest Gallup poll. 57% say he cares about the needs of people like them, the one leadership attribute that a majority of voters did not see in Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1984—even though he won 49 states.

President Bush’s leadership has allowed our party to make gains among key voting groups. Suburban voters, who Republicans lost in 1996 by 4%, supported our party by 3% in 2000 and by 19% in 2002.

We made history in 2000 by winning 35% of the Latino vote—the most any Republican won since Ronald Reagan in 1984 (who won the same)-- and again in 2002 by increasing our Latino support to 39%. We improved our support among Catholic voters from a gap of 16% in 1996 to a statistically insignificant 2% loss in 2000 and 1% loss in 2002.

Under the President’s leadership, the gender gap has been cut in half. We lost the women’s vote by 16% in 1996, 8% in 2000 and just 2% in 2002. We improved our performance among union households, winning 40% of the union vote in 2002. And young voters backed Clinton/Gore by 19% in 1996 but split their support down the middle in 2000 and 2002 between the parties.

The President’s leadership is transforming grassroots politics. Between 2000 and 2002, in the 32 states where voters register by party, we have cut the Democrat registration advantage by nearly 500,000. In the same timeframe, the RNC has received contributions from over 950,000 ‘new’ donors. Bush-Cheney ’04 has already received support from almost 100,000 first-time Bush Cheney donors. We have 325,000 new team leaders ready to work to re-elect our President and Republican majorities in Congress. And between Bush-Cheney ’04 and the RNC, we have 6 million regular e-leaders.

Ladies and gentlemen, the leadership of our President, of Denny Hastert, Bill Frist, and George Pataki have transformed what it means to be a Republican. Their leadership has provided us with an incredible opportunity: we can make history in 2004 if we make lasting the gains our party made in 2002.

This will not be easy. The last 3 Presidential elections were close for a reason: the country is very competitive politically. And we are not the only ones who understand the transformative power of this President. Our friends leading the Democrat party understand this as well. As Chairman Gillespie noted, they are “maniacally focused” on defeating President Bush.

And their will to political power knows few limits. Just this past week, leading Democrats reversed their long held positions on the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein for short term political gain among Democrat primary voters. If they’re willing to sacrifice principle on this, just imagine what they’ll say and do to try to get elected.

But just as the President transformed great challenges into opportunities, we must take on their challenge. Our numbers look good today. But as Matthew Dowd and so many others have predicted, these numbers will come down. We must prepare for an election every bit as close as the 2000 election.

And the best way we can prepare for 2004 is to use the President’s leadership, his example and his policies to strengthen our party this year.

We must meet Marc Racicot’s goal to register 3 million new voters.

We must echo the President’s message and share his positive vision for America. We need you on talk radio. We need your letters to the editor. We need your emails. And we need your blogs.

We must work to employ new technologies like voter vault to re-energize our grassroots and identify as many voters as possible.

We must sign up county chairmen, precinct leaders, and Bush team leaders to recruit new activists, register voters, and sign up volunteers.

We must use every county fair this summer to register new voters and sign up Bush/Cheney volunteers.

We need Republican leaders present at every naturalization ceremony to say the same thing to today’s newest Americans that was said to Jack Gillespie: “Welcome to America. The party of Lincoln wants your support, your ideas and your energy.”

Ladies and gentlemen: this next election will be tough. It will be an incredible challenge. It will include difficult days.

But think about how our President has handled the unbelievable challenges he’s faced. By leading on principle, by doing what’s right, and by insisting on solving tough problems, not just passing them on, our President has transformed challenge into opportunity.

In his seminal work, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote the need for conservatives to embrace change. “Conservatives inherit from Burke,” Russell Kirk wrote, “a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the time.”

By applying conservative principles to take on challenges like global terrorism, a recession, a school system that was leaving too many children behind and so many other challenges, President Bush has made history and ensured a better tomorrow.

He’s also provided our party and all who share our convictions with an opportunity—one that we realized in 2002 and we must work for again in 2004.

Members of the RNC: we have an opportunity not seen in our lifetime or our parents’ lifetimes. Let us work together to seize this incredible moment. And let us start today.