[Roguish Lawyer]

Since I last stood -- (cheers, applause continue) -- thank you very much. Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller family has been born: four great grandchildren. Along with all the other members of our close-knit family, they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions, and I know that's how you feel about your family also. (Applause.)

Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face. Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in. And like you, I ask: Which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family? (Cheers, applause.)

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight, for my family is more important than my party. (Cheers, applause.) There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future, and that man's name is George W. Bush. (Cheers, applause.)

In the summer of 1940, I was an 8-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war, but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in a speech that summer, told America "All private plans, all private lives have been, in a sense, repealed by an overriding public danger."

In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time. And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue. (Cheers, applause.)

Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "Here lies a president" or "Here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter. (Cheers, applause.)

Where are such statesmen today? (Cheers, applause.) Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most? (Cheers, applause.)

Today -- today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief. (Cheers, applause.) What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?

I can remember when Democrats believed it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. (Cheers, applause.) But not today! Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators. (Applause, cheers.)

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers. Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers. (Applause.) Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers. (Applause, cheers.)

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. (Applause, cheers.) And our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. (Applause, cheers.) It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. (Applause, cheers continue.) It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. (Applause, cheers.) It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag. (Applause, cheers.)

[continued next post]