I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates.

As a kid, I was drawn to Ronald Reagan because he was a Republican and a conservative. But most of all, I admired him because of his eternal optimism in the American people.

That thought came into my head when we were all standing at the Reagan Library last Wednesday. President Reagan was good for America because he was an optimist.

Sadly, the debate taking place in the Republican party today is not focused on that optimistic view of America. Instead, it has drifted into personal attacks.

In the end, I believe that voters want to be for something and not against someone. Instead of talking about how bad things are, we want to hear about how we can make them better for everyone.

We need to get back to the basics of our party:

We are the party that believes that people create jobs - not the government - and the best way to grow the economy is to get the government out of the way and build it from the ground up.

We are the party that believes that the way to measure success in government is by how many people are no longer dependent on the government - because we ultimately believe in the dignity of work.

We are the party that believes that a strong military leads to peace through strength and that will protect our children and future generations - we believe that good will triumph over evil.

We are the party that believes in the American people - and not the federal government.

These ideas will help us win the election next fall and - more importantly - these ideas will help make our country great again.

To refocus the debate will require leadership. While I was sitting in church yesterday, the pastor's words reminded me that the Bible is full of stories about people who were called to be leaders in unusual ways.

Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top of the field. With that in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately.

I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current frontrunner. This is fundamentally important to the future of the party and - ultimately - to the future of our country.

This is a difficult decision as so many wonderful people stepped up to support our efforts. Tonette and I are so very thankful for the many outstanding volunteers and the excellent staff who helped us throughout the campaign. You have become like family to us.

And speaking of family, I want to personally thank my wife Tonette - who has been a rock - as well as our amazing sons Matt and Alex. I thank my parents, my brother David and his family - and all of our other family and friends for their love and support.

Most of all, I want to thank God for His abundant grace. Win or lose, it is more than enough for any of us.

Thank you.

America is a nation of immigrants, but everyone knows our immigration system is broken. By picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore, President Obama has only made our immigration problems worse. Sensible and fair immigration policies start with securing the border and enforcing the laws that are already on the books.

Amnesty is not an option. That’s why as governor, I authorized Wisconsin to sue the federal government in order to stop President Obama’s unlawful executive amnesty. As president, I will eliminate Obama’s executive amnesty actions altogether on my first day in office.

Citizenship should have a high standard. And when it comes to legal immigration, we must ensure we have a system that prioritizes working families and their wages in a way that improves the American economy.

Five lines from Governor Walker’s Foreign Policy Speech you need to read:

> Today, however, I have a simple question: Are we safer now than we were seven years ago? Anyone who believes the answer to that question is yes should vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

> White House officials insult the Prime Minister of Israel. Sadly, they never seem to criticize the Iranian Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard commanders who have oppressed the people of Iran and helped kill thousands of our soldiers in Iraq.

> We can no longer afford to be passive spectators while the world descends into chaos.

> Now is not the time for untested leadership. I have been tested like no other candidate in this race. As President, I will send the following message: the retreat is over. American leadership is back and, together with our allies, we will not surrender another inch of ground to terrorists or any other power that threatens our safety.

> America will not be intimidated. And neither will I. America must be, not only the land of the free, but the home of the brave. An America that is unintimidated.

It’s been happening for years. Like clockwork every election cycle, the politicians on Capitol Hill vow to get our economy growing again and create more jobs.

Those of us outside the Washington bubble have all heard the talk, we just haven’t seen the results.

On the national level, unemployment and taxes are too high, and economic growth and labor participation are too low. Meanwhile the federal government just keeps getting bigger. For all of the fighting the politicians in Washington do, victories on behalf of the taxpayers are few and far between.

In Wisconsin, we don’t just talk about growing the economy, cutting taxes and shrinking government, we actually make it happen. When I became governor, I inherited a mess. The state was saddled with a $3.6 billion deficit and unemployment was over 8 percent. Wisconsinites had endured so many years of tax hikes, many had stopped believing they’d ever be cut. 

A week after I was elected, I met with all of the state’s Republican lawmakers and said that the voters had told us they wanted big, bold reforms.  Some in the statehouse didn’t want to challenge the status quo, but I told them it was put up or shut up time.  If we didn’t do what we said we’d do, the voters would have every right to throw us out. We adopted a strategy that’s rare in politics: we actually delivered on our campaign promises.

We said we'd cut taxes and we did, lowering them by $2 billion and eliminating an entire tax bracket in my first term alone. By 2017, we will have provided taxpayers with $4.7 billion in honest to goodness tax relief, jumpstarting the economy and helping hardworking citizens. We’ve also cut property taxes every single year I’ve been governor, and they are now lower than when I came into office.

To help our businesses grow, we eliminated miles of bureaucratic red tape. We made Wisconsin a friendlier environment for businesses and workers by becoming a Right to Work state and giving workers the freedom to decide whether or not to join a union. We turned around a $3.6 billion deficit and balanced every budget I have signed as governor. We did it by cutting wasteful spending and eliminating sweetheart deals for the special interests that were bad for taxpayers.

We didn’t just shake up the status quo, we turned it on its head, and peoples’ lives are better because of it. Our unemployment rate is now below the national average at 4.6 percent, down from 8.1 percent before I took office. Prior to my election, Wisconsin had lost over 130,000 jobs. But since I’ve been governor, the state has created nearly 150,000 new ones, and our labor force participation rate is now higher than the national average.

If we want to get our national economy growing again, cut taxes and shrink government down to size, we need more than someone who is good at giving speeches and making campaign promises. We need a leader who can deliver results, just like we’ve done in Wisconsin.