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my hand as a campaign contribution. There was Whitney from Fulton County, a young woman who sought me out during a taping for a television program with tears in her eyes to tell me about her mother. Whitney's mother had recently passed away following a brave fight against breast cancer. One of her mother's final wishes was to vote for me because she was excited about my message of hope and change for the future.
    We won thousands of college students who vigorously volunteered to help in the campaign, and we won hundreds of high school students who could not even vote yet. A tenth grade student, Jade, was asked why so many young people were supporting Herman Cain. She replied, "He gave us something to be excited about." Priceless.
    We won thousands of white, lifelong conservative Democrats who told me it is time to turn the page on the racial divisions of the past, and we won scores of African-Americans who voted Republican for the first time in their lives. My eighty-year-old mother was at the front of that line.
    We did not lose. We won thousands and thousands of new voters-- new voices -- looking for a political home.
New Voters
    These new voters did not work hard every day to support me because I was a lifelong friend or a known celebrity. They supported me because they heard a new voice of common sense and renewed hope for substantive change. Stories like those just mentioned are a reminder that the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice by so many people were not in vain. We succeeded in spreading a message of economic freedom through aggressive solutions and inspired motivation to every corner of Georgia. The message resonated with people who had never before voted, who had never voted Republican, or who never would have considered voting for an African-American.
    I believe this new voter phenomenon is occurring across the nation. Although the 2004 Georgia primary attracted just over 30 percent of registered voters, the general election this last presidential election year attracted a record number of voters to the polls, well in excess of the usual 50 percent turnout.
    Conservative Democrats are leaving their party because it has adopted liberal positions radically different from the values of mainstream society. Any group convinced that it is a "victim" flocks to the Democratic Party looking for relief in the form of money from the federal treasury. Democrats run and get reelected to office with proclamations that the answers to this nation's problems are to throw more money at broken structures like Social Security, Medicare, and now health care. Senator Zell Miller documents the state of the national Democratic Party exceptionally well in his book A National Party No More .
    Conservative Republicans are looking for other options. They feel taken for granted when their candidates move to the ideological center in election years and abandon traditional Republican ideology. For example, fiscal responsibility or spending the people's money responsibly has long been a pillar of the Republican Party. But in the last four years of a Republican controlled Congress, discretionary spending has increased in double-digit fashion every year. The cumulative increase in discretionary spending has been nearly 40 percent in four years.
    Increasing numbers of newly registered voters, including young African-Americans, refuse to identify with either party and instead consider themselves Independents. Many young people have given up on government and choose not to participate at all. That's not a solution. It's another problem. The result of this phenomenon is a growing number of people who feel politically homeless . This does not mean they do not identify with one of the major political parties for practical reasons. It means more and more people are discouraged, disappointed, and disgusted with politics and politicians as usual.
    The new voters in Georgia--displaced Democrats, rebellious Republicans, irate Independents, and