I've flown across America I've scaled fences I've stood under windows and gone out of my way hundreds of times. I'm a hopeless romantic. There's no hope for me.

I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire Barack Obama is president of the United States is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again.

We've got the wind at our back right now. Americans are waking up to the realities of their previous choices. We must keep America moving back to preeminence because our values and conservative ideas are the world's greatest hope.

And if there's any hope for America it lies in a revolution and if there's any hope for a revolution in America it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara.

My deal is have a flat simple tax. And - Americans want - Americans I hope - aspire to be - be wealthy. I hope they aspire to have a better quality of life. And we have this class warfare that's going on now. And I don't agree with that. I'm interested in people getting to work.

I hope that the mistakes made and suffering imposed upon Japanese Americans nearly 60 years ago will not be repeated against Arab Americans whose loyalties are now being called into question.

My mother was one of seven girls whose parents went to bed hungry so their children wouldn't. My father lost his mother when he was nine. He left school and went to work for the next 70 years. They emigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life.

But since her earliest days America has inspired people from all over the world. Inspired them with the hope that one day their own countries would be one like this one.