These are our favorite quotations from speeches made yesterday and today (February 18 and 19, 2010) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC ) being held in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of the American Conservative Union.

Mitt Romney (find the transcript of the whole speech here):

On our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, “You have the right to remain silent!”

We will keep America, America, by retaining its character as the land of opportunity. We welcome the entrepreneur, the inventor, the innovator.

American patriots have defeated tyrants, liberated the oppressed, and rescued the afflicted. America’s model of innovation, capitalism and free enterprise has lifted literally billons of the world’s people out of poverty. America has been a force for good like no other in this world, and for that we make no apology.

Marco Rubio (find the transcript here):

There is no greater risk to this country than the risk posed by radical Islamic terrorists. Let me be clear about something. These terrorists aren’t trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to defeat radical Islamic terrorism. We will punish their allies, like Iran, and we will stand with our allies, like Israel.

The final verdict on our generation will be written by Americans who haven’t even been born yet. Let us make sure they write that we made the right choice, that in the early years of this century, faced with troubling and uncertain times, there were those who believed that the great American story had run its course. But we did not agree. Fear did not lead us to abandon our liberty. Uncertainty did not lead us to abandon the entrepreneurial spirit. We fought for and held on to those things that made us exceptional. And because we did, there was still one place in the world where the individual was more important than the state. Because we did, there was still at least one place in the world where who you come from does not determine where you get to go.

Mike Pence (find a report of his speech here):

Some people around here like to call this the ‘party of no.’ Well, I say no is way underrated here in Washington, D.C. Sometimes no is just what this town needs to hear.

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi loses her job.