(LAUGHTER)

I was tied up at the time.

(LAUGHTER)

But the fact is...

(APPLAUSE, EXTENDED STANDING OVATION)

(LAUGHTER)

But I want to say this --- you've asked: What's the difference? No matter which one of us is on this stage --- and, look, I like to be funny, let me be real honest with you. There's nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president. Let me tell you why.

(APPLAUSE)

If she's president, taxes go up, health care becomes the domain of the government, spending goes out of control, our military loses its morale, and I'm not sure we'll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country's ever faced in Islamofascism.

(APPLAUSE)

We've got an enemy that wants to kill every last one of us. We cannot be soft. We must be strong.

We'll sign crazy bills like the Law of the Sea Treaty and give away our sovereignty.

And that's why, with all of the fun we're going to have talking about it, there's nothing funny about Hillary being president.

(APPLAUSE)

PAUL: I think in many ways they haven't followed our platform and they don't follow the Constitution. So they're really not following (inaudible). I think in many ways we have become big spenders. Republicans are the big spenders. Our big-government conservatives, they're part of the neo-conservative movement. They've lost their traditions about traditional conservatism and the Constitution.

We have benefited for so many years and decades by having a position of less use of force. Eisenhower won his election in 1952 by trying to clean up the mess that Democrats created in Korea. Nixon won in '68. We continuously won in taking this position of a more commonsensical foreign policy.

Like I said, even George Bush won criticizing this interventionism, and now all of a sudden, just in this short period of time, we have accepted the Democrats' position on foreign policy, on entitlements, on deficits. I mean, we have lost our way.

No, I think that the position of the Republican Party today has not fulfilled their traditions.

And that's why we lost last year. And if we don't go back to our traditions and believe in the Constitution, limited government, personal liberties, and a foreign policy that's noninterventionist, that won't bankrupt us, so that we can defend this country --- we can't even defend our own cities while we're prancing around the entire world.

(APPLAUSE)

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

Now, Senator Clinton has nothing new to offer. She's endorsing the same policy. She said that the troops would be there for another five years, continue to build this embassy that's going to be bigger than the Vatican, continue to build 14 air bases as are going on there, these private bases going on there, and never change.

PAUL: We in this party have to realize the American people are sick and tired of big government, big government overseas, an empire we can't maintain, the bankruptcy of this country, and also the attack on our personal civil liberties. We don't have privacy left anymore, and Hillary Clinton offers no solution to that, and neither does any of the Democrats. And we are not doing a very good job either.

If we don't recognize that, we don't have a chance because we need to get back to the basics, believe in the Constitution, believe in the rule of law, and not allow our government to spend endlessly and bankrupt this country.

(APPLAUSE)

And we won an election on that.

But here we are. We're over there and we've invaded this country and this is just another unintended consequence. The war is spreading, the war is likely to go into Iran, nobody's willing to take anything off the table.

What would it be like if somebody came in here into Mexico and did some of these things --- say, like, putting missiles in Europe? We're just looking for trouble. It's so unnecessary. And we jeopardize ourselves. And, quite frankly, we're not able to afford this.

So we don't need to go looking for trouble. We don't need another Cold War. And all we have to do is start talking to people and trading with people.

We don't need to assume that the world is going to blow up. Just think of...

(AUDIENCE BOOING)

PAUL: When I was drafted into the military, and I served five years in the military, the Soviets had 40,000 nuclear weapons.

And here, we're now learning about agitating and putting missiles in Europe.

PAUL: It's the Turks' business. It's not our business.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

(APPLAUSE)