Now, America is a land of second chances, and I gather you have room for the estimated 6 million of us who know we got it wrong in 2008 and who want to fix it.

I think the most overused words in our vocabulary in the South are black and white.

Well, one of the things a lot of Americans don't know, when Mitt Romney is nominated a few days from now, he will be the most experienced executive to be nominated for the presidency since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, who had run a university and had run the allied war effort. That's actually a big deal.

Wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities.

Ask yourself if these Democrats still speak for you. When they say we have a duty to grow government even when we can't afford it, does it sound like compassion to you - or recklessness?

John F. Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don't worry about paying the bill, it's on your kids and grandkids.

Historyis nothing other than a collection of the lives of people, some of them great, some of them ordinarynothing other than a collection of what people have done in challenging circumstances and how they have risen to those circumstances.