Governor Sarah Palin absolutely overwhelmed the Republican National Convention last night with one of the best speeches of this political season. What was impressive about this was not just her amazing poise, grace, and precision in delivering the speech, but the fact that it followed a rousing series of former Presidential candidates who threatened to steal the show! Mayor Rudy Giuliani hit a major homerun with his speech much like President Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention last week.
I would equate the Huckabee and Romney speeches to the brilliance of Senator Hillary Clinton’s speech at the DNC. They were powerful, effective, and served their respective purposes.
The talking heads on television kept repeating that “a star was born” during Palin’s speech. One of the channels had Howard Wolfson (former leader in the Hillary Clinton campaign) who suggested that Barack Obama bring his A-game to combat the McCain-Palin ticket. In fact, Wolfson had nothing but positive words to say about Palin to the extent that it was almost awkward.
Palin’s line of the night: “Some people use change to advance their careers, others use their careers to advance change.” WOW! Talk about knocking home a grand slam! That line will probably be the best line to come out of the entire convention and possibly this entire campaign (on both sides). Amazing – absolutely gorgeous speech writing.
Now, whether you agree with that ideology or not is up to you, but I thought Governor Palin’s speech was perfect. And I’m glad that those stupid Greek columns were bashed – man, I hated those things!
But let’s not overlook Rudy and his contribution tonight. He made such a great speech that I was very concerned about anyone’s ability to follow him. He had the crowd in the palm of his hand and even his off-the-cuff comments were dead on accurate. The most memorable part of his speech had to be when he mentioned that Senator Barack Obama was a community organizer and he giggled afterwards – drawing a similar reaction from the crowd. His comment of, “What?” was the perfect accent to the crowd’s reaction.
However, I’m not very comfortable with people bashing the concept of being a community organizer. I actually DO know what a community organizer is and what they do on a daily basis and it’s a much-needed occupation in many of the downtrodden places of our nation. That said, I’ve seen and worked with a large number of community organizers in my current and previous careers and organizing communities is NOT a good foundation to build a Presidential campaign on. Granted, the Obama folks have never made this claim, but the Republicans have masterfully made his previous occupation an issue. Good move.
All in all I think the Republicans have had a great convention even though it got off to a slow start. And I can’t reiterate enough how showstopping Governor Palin was in her speech. Brilliant.