Good evening. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Well let me say, that as much as I appreciate the magnificent opportunity to speak tonight, I gotta be honest with you, I was really originally hoping for the slot on Thursday night called the acceptance speech. But I want you to also know that I am genuinely delighted to speak on behalf of my second choice for the Republican nomination for president, John McCain.

John McCain is a man with the character and the stubborn kind of integrity that we need in a president. But I want to begin by doing something a little unusual. I'd like to thank the elite media for doing something that quite frankly I wasn't sure could be done, and that's unifying the Republican party and all of America in support of Senator McCain and Governor Palin.

[applause]

The reporting of the past few days have proving tackier than a costume change at a Madonna concert.

I grew up at a time and in a place where the civil rights movement was fought. And I witnessed first-hand the shameful evil of racism. I saw how ignorance and prejudice caused people to do the unthinkable to people of color - and it wasn't so many years ago.

I want to say with the utmost sincerity - not as a Republican, but as an American - that I have great respect for Sen. Obama's historic achievement to become his party's nominee