ST. PAUL, Minn.—Claiming her historic spot on the Republican ticket, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin uncorked a slashing attack on Barack Obama Wednesday night and vowed to help John McCain bring real change to Washington.

“Victory in Iraq is finally in sight; he wants to forfeit,” she said of the Democratic presidential nominee.

“Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.

“Government is too big; he wants to grow it.”

A packed Republican convention hall roared at every line delivered by the 44-year-old Alaska governor, the first woman ever named to a Republican national ticket.

The Alaska governor had top billing at the convention on a night delegates also lined up for a noisy roll call of the states to deliver their presidential nomination to McCain. At 72, the Arizona senator is the oldest first-time nominee in history, collecting his party’s top prize after pursuing it for the better part of a decade.

One by one, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, all losers to McCain in the contest for the Republican nomination, urged delegates to send their former rival to the White House. The also-rans teamed up in a head-on lunge at Obama, questioning his ability to protect the nation in perilous times and delivering a hard-line partisan call to GOP arms on behalf of the man who ran against them—and beat them—with a promise to be less partisan.

After days of convention-week controversy, much of it surrounding her 17-year-old, unmarried pregnant daughter, Palin drew cheers from the moment she stepped onto the convention stage, hundreds of camera flashes reflecting off her glasses.

“Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys,” she said as the audience signaled its understanding.

In her solo debut on the national stage, she traced her career from the local PTA to the governor’s office, casting herself as a maverick in the McCain mold, and seemed to delight in poking fun at her critics and her ticketmate’s political rivals.

Since taking office as governor, she said she had taken on the oil industry, brought the state budget into surplus and vetoed nearly one-half billion dollars in wasteful spending.

“I thought we could muddle through without the governor’s personal chef—although I’ve got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her.”

Not surprisingly, her best-received lines were barbs at Obama.

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” she said, a reference to Obama’s stint as a community organizer.

“I might add that in small towns we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t,” she said.

That was a reference to Obama’s springtime observation about some frustrated working-class Americans.

By contrast, she said of McCain: “Take the maverick out of the Senate. Put him in the White House.

“He’s a man who’s there to serve his country, and not just his party.”

“In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers,” she said in another cutting reference to Obama’s campaign theme. “And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”

If McCain and his campaign’s high command had any doubt about her ability at the convention podium, they needn’t have. With her youthful experience as a sportscaster and time spent in the governor’s office, her timing was flawless.

Giuliani, mayor of New York during the Sept. 11 attacks, said Wednesday night that Barack Obama and the Democrats “are in a state of denial” about the threat of terrorism against the United States.

Giuliani said John McCain can be trusted to confront and defeat “anything that terrorists do to us.”

He reminded the Republican National Convention that he’d said in a Republican campaign debate a year ago that had he not been running for president himself, he would have been supporting McCain.

“Well, I’m not, and I do,” he said in what was to have been a keynote address but wound up late on the convention agenda.

Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee told the convention that McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, his running mate, are the right choice for the future of America and that Obama would be the wrong one.

Giuliani praised Palin as “one of the most successful governors in America—and the most popular.”

She’s been governor for two years, after eight as mayor of tiny Wasilla, but Giuliani said she’s ready for the vice presidency. “She already has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket,” he said.

Giuliani said Obama is a celebrity senator without a record of leadership or legislation.

“He’s the least experienced candidate for president of the United States in at least the last 100 years,” he said to the cheering, chanting convention. “Nobama, nobama,” came the chants from the floor and the galleries. And “Zero, zero” when Giuliani said Obama has no experience.

Giuliani said that is not a personal attack—“it’s a statement of fact. Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing, Nada ...

“The choice in this election comes down to substance over style,” he said. “John McCain has been tested. Barack Obama has not.”

With that, Giuliani turned to the subject that once led Sen. Joe Biden, now the Democratic vice presidential nominee, to say that his sentences as candidate consisted only of a noun, a verb and 9-11. Giuliani came to national note with his personal leadership in New York after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people. His work in rallying the city vaulted him into the presidential race.

“There’s one purpose that John McCain understands, Republicans understand, that overrides everything else,” Giuliani said. “John McCain will keep us on offense against terrorism at home and abroad.

“For four days in Denver and for the past 18 months, Democrats have been afraid to use the words ’Islamic Terrorism,”’ Giuliani said. “... They are in a state of denial about the biggest threat that faces this country.”

He said McCain will face that threat and win.

The McCain campaign had announced that Giuliani would be the convention keynote speaker on Tuesday night, but the schedule was shuffled and most of opening day was dropped because of the threat of Hurricane Gustav to the Gulf Coast. Giuliani’s speech was delayed, but he nearly doubled his allotted 15 minutes and set the convention to roaring. When he said that McCain advocates an energy program that would use every approach, including drilling, they shouted “Drill baby, drill.” He chuckled and repeated the line.

Romney played on Obama’s campaign call for change—but not the change the Democrat wants.

“We need change all right,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington—throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain.”

Romney said Obama “ducked and dodged” when he was asked about the threat of Islamic terrorism. “John McCain hit the nail on the head,” he said. “Radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it.

Huckabee, once governor of Arkansas, said that Obama lacks experience and judgment in foreign policy.

He said the Obama’s nomination as the first black candidate on a major-party ticket is worth celebrating “because it elevates our country.”

“But the presidency is not a symbolic job,” he said, “and I don’t believe his preparation or his plans will lift America up.”

Huckabee drew on his own biography growing up in Arkansas as he used his address to tout former rival McCain and blast Obama as a president who would make the nation less safe.

“Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give madmen the benefit of the doubt,” Huckabee said in a prime-time address at the convention. “If he’s wrong just once, we will pay a heavy price.”

Calling McCain his second choice for president, Huckabee said he originally hoped to deliver another address at the convention—the one accepting the Republican presidential nomination. But the former Arkansas governor, who dropped out of the presidential race in March, had to settle for a spot on the convention lineup wedged between two other also-rans for the nomination, Romney and Giuliani.

Huckabee sharply criticized Obama and used his own biography as a native of Hope—the same hometown of former President Clinton—to blast Obama and Democrats as out-of-touch.

“I really tire of hearing how the Democrats care about the working guy as if all Republicans grew up with silk stockings and silver spoons,” Huckabee said. “In my little hometown of Hope, Ark., the three sacred heroes were Jesus, Elvis, and FDR, not necessarily in that order.”

Huckabee later added, “I’m not a Republican because I grew up rich, but because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.”

Arkansas’ delegates chanted “We Like Mike” as Huckabee wrapped up his address. Prissy Hickerson, a delegate from Texarkana and longtime friend of Huckabee’s, sported a Huckabee for President campaign button.

“I’m just so proud of him. It’s amazing to me to see him on a national stage,” Hickerson said.

Huckabee surprised many with his win in the lead-off Iowa caucuses earlier this year and racked up victories in seven other states, including his home state of Arkansas, before dropping out of the race in March. Huckabee ultimately didn’t get the No. 2 spot on the ticket, but has enjoyed a higher profile nationally because of his campaign.

Since dropping out of the race, Huckabee has joined Fox News as a political commentator, started a political action committee and is working on a book to be released in November.