Additional Convention Thoughts

I was a little tired last night, but let me go ahead and share a few brief thoughts on the GOP Convention:

• Michael Steele’s speech had one of the best slogans. Forget “Drill here, drill now.” “Drill, baby, drill.” is in.
• Mitt Romney delivered a great speech, however the one part I remembered most was the former Governor of Massachusetts going off script to criticize Eastern elities. What the heck? Particularly given that was who supported his campaign in numbers.
• Mike Huckabee ‘s speech was excellent and he did a good job speaking to working people. His off-the-cuff remark that the media coverage had been “as tacky as a wardrobe change at a Madonna concert” was well-delivered. You want to know how well Palin has done bringing the right together? Well, Kathryn Jean Lopez gave Huck a hearty Amen.
• Linda Lingle: I’m sorry, but what were they thinking. In the midst of an all-star line-up of speakers, Lingle was a dud with poor delivery.
• Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani skewered Obama. The salient point was his attack on Obama’s 150 present votes in the Illinois Legislature. “It was just too hard.” And pointing out the sexism of the media attacks on Palin’s motherhood.
• Going through Palin’s speech, it’s hard to pick highlights, it really was that good. This was a strong statement early on:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. 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 listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

And another:

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign.

• As for the point about the speech being written. He who has never supported a politician who had speech writers cast the first stone. Politicians in Washington use speech writers, probably the only exceptions to this rule this cycle are Obama, Huckabee, and Ron Paul. It should be noted that according to one report, the Teleprompter stopped working and Palin went from memory. Nice talent when compared to a nominee on the Presidential side for the other party that is teleprompter dependant.
• If I were the media or a lib blogger, I would drop the attacks on Palin and focus my attention at the top of the ticket. Their attacks are only strengthening the ticket and weakening Obama’s change meme. If they want to spend 2 months trying to personally destroy Sarah Palin, they’re going to have a nasty awakening on November 5h.