Sarah Palin's RNC Speech

Last night was a moment for Palin to introduce herself to the nation and show she is just an average American mom who happens to be the Governor of Alaska. Maybe not someone you'd like to have a beer with (ugh, I hate that insulting comparative) but rather someone you could relate to on a personal level. I guess she started off doing that but as the speech went on (...and on and on) she pivoted and went after Sen. Obama. That's what nationally known V.P. candidates are supposed to do. Sen. Biden was nationally known. Yes, he did a brief biographical intoduction of himself but it was perfunctory and then he lit into McCain and the GOP. As for Ms. Palin she is compelely unknown to voters who don't follow politics like we do and tune in to see what all the media frenzy is about.

I was going to take the time and review the speech myself but over at fivethirtyeight.com contributor Nate pretty much spoke for me in this nice final analysis:

"The way to evaluate a speech like this is by what people are going to remember in the morning, and the only thing that people are going to remember about this speech in the morning is that she went after Obama - a lot -- and that at times it seemed fairly personal. It was almost kind of fun at first -- I don't think people saw it coming, and she got three or four really good lines in. But then it became too much -- sarcastic and mean spirited. Everything else -- the outsider stuff, the family stuff, the media critique -- is going to be forgotten about. In fact, the Republicans will look like whiners if they go after the media after that speech.

I don't think the Republicans are doing as good a job as the Democrats were doing about pairing their speeches to the strengths of the speaker. It's as if they wrote seven or eight speeches, and drew lots to determine who would deliver which one. So you have Mitt Romney -- one of the wealthiest men ever to run for office -- critiquing east-coast elitism, and Mike Huckabee -- who is an economic populist in disguise --critiquing big government, and Sarah Palin -- who voters don't know one iota about -- critiquing Barack Obama's biography."

I could not agree more. As far as I'm concerned this new tact of taking on the MSM is a deadender for them. We on the left complained for awhile during Ronald Raygun's tenure and then threw their hands up at the end of Clinton's two terms and created our own infrastructure.

Nate's post drew a comment that I think really sums up the outcome we can expect as the campaign unfolds:

"Steven said...
Nate,
I think you are right. My wife, who knows next to nothing about Palin (just like the rest of America...), watched the speech and told me, "She sounds really mean." I guess that's one feminist Palin's not winning over...."

We'll see but I think she just pushed away the independent female vote whom she was supposed to woo by her selection. Instead she just fired up a shrinking, rabid evangelical base with a martyr complex. I thought it was ironic the night before Bush referenced the "angry left." Last night with Palin following Guiliani it looked like a pretty "angry right."