did she say anything about her platform?

I am very impressed with Sarah Palin. I think she hit a grand slam home run. Whether the Republicans get a big bounce out of this I don't know, but I suspect they will.

Now we know we can't underestimate her. I know people may belittle her for being the Miss Alaska runnerup in 1984. But I have personally known winners of beauty pageants before. They win not only because they are physically attractive, but because they are smart, quick witted, poised and good public speakers.

I say to Joe Biden, beware. Winning a political debate is not about winning debate points and winning on the facts. It's about charm, confidence, wit and the ability to connect. Being long winded and trying to speak in paragraphs is the prescription to losing. Sarah Palin will be a very good debater.

Hopefully, the scandals will bring down the ticket. But after the speech, I am more convinced than ever that Obama made a huge mistake by not picking Hillary. Picking Hillary would have blocked McCain from choosing Palin and prevented teh GOP from grabbing a share of the woman's rights claim.

Angry without any reason to be, given she has no relation to neither McCain nor Obama. She was completely reading a speech written for her, and half of it was demonstrably false. The good news is that the harder she goes after Obama, the more room his campaign has to counterattack. I think he will, but focus it all on McCain.

I feel incredibly insulted. And I think she insulted anyone who supports Obama or is leaning that way. Perhaps she's angry over the past few days, but I have no idea who she tried to appeal to.

She certainly preached to the choir....

Was a very nice speech, but only offered semi-specifics about energy, nothing else, not even about the economy.

And the notion that the only way you can fight for Americans is through the military is very offensive.  People that work for charities, churches, nurses, police officers, even soup kitchen volunteers should be extremely offended.

Palin gave them alot of red meat, and has certainly energized the base.

The base, however, will be deflated in the next few weeks as middle America learns more about Sarah Palin, and continues to break for Obama.

I really think that McCain's numbers will be in the shitter some time before Halloween.

I thought she put on a polished performance (but wouldn't you expect that from a former pageant queen and sportscaster), but she was really angry and disgusting.

Great speaker?

She was just another run of the mill mean spirited attack dog.

She can read the telemprompter without fucking up but her nasal delivery and mundane delivery was putting me to sleep. It was the readmeat that saved her speech but other than appealing to the extreme right I don't see what she did here.

C-

... and John McCain too.

"SEPARATION ANXIETY"
http://versusplus.com/separation.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jhh8Go-- XU

...because their policies are not viable.

Did they just play "pass the baby"?  Holy crap!

Were we watching the same speech? My wife was gagging, and the blogs I've been reading are running about 4 pro and bazillions against!

She is shrewd, and did well. The base will lick it up.

But calling it a "Grand Slam"? (wolf blitzer)

Maybe if in a T-Ball league.

Now Wolf is calling it historic?  It was brutal and did not speak to kitchen table issues at all, did not speak to regular americans at all: she spoke to angry afraid republicans and only for a little while longer will they have their moment...

That speech was soooo much better then Barack Obama's speech! Yes!

HAHAHA!!!!!

ok... I am lieing. :)

Progressive Blue

Pit bull with lipstick is pretty close.

That talk about the media was just more ridiculous talking points from the McCain campaign.  How dare the media come out of their eight year stupor and ask republicans actual, you know, questions?

Burning a kickass cd to listen to on the drive to work tomorrow.

The arrangement of songs is absolutely crucial.  You gotta have some peppy upbeat songs at the beginning in case you get to the office before the ones at the end get heard.

Also, you need to have a couple acoustic wind-down ones at the end so you can chill on the ride home.

This is typical GOP Democrats-as-traitors stuff that has won them so many elections in the last 40 years.  If they win with this, what the hell, the country probably deserves them.

Where is the talk about understanding the needs of the working mother, the guy in Scranton who's lost his health insurance, the workers in Cleveland who just got told the plant is shutting down, the millions of everyday Americans who are one missed paycheck or one illness away from losing their homes?

"This election is not about me.  It's about you."

Lets hope the MSM does not cave and ignore the fact that she is just another corrupt Republican politician...

i think the speech will keep her on the ticket, but i don't think she converted any undecideds.  On a gut level, i honestly thought Biden's personal story was a lot more moving, and i think more american's can relate to his story.  America is going through a lot right now, and i felt like the democrats reached out and let the people know they are listening.  Republican's will love this speech, but what else did it offer?

Sarah Palin was basically introducing herself to America tonight, I'm not sure being quite so mean-spirited will endear her to voters meeting her for the first time.

But who knows?  I'm incredibly biased.  I guess polls will tell us in the next few days.

I expected better from her.  It was just adequate.  I do think that the Democratic ticket should focus more on middle America and their concerns.  Adopt some Bill Clinton's empathy.

but is that Karl Rove being critical of it (or just someone who looks like Rove)?

Lots of fire and brimstone, the best thing that monochromatic room has heard all week, but she left open various contradictions (Was that for or Against the Bridge to Nowhere, and in which order again?).

The difference in conventions will come as it ends.  John McCain has to wrap this thing up and send the crowds streaming angrily into the streets, not something he has been excelling at...

think lying from her teeth won't get called out especially now that she has taunted the press?

This has to be the best VP pick Obama could have hoped for, Gibbs was just gleaming this week and I don't blame him.

Putin is shaking in his boots over the PTA mayor, she even got my republican aunt to switch over to Obama.

Unfortunately, I think they are right. Republicans have better intuition than Democrats on how to be persuasive. Democrats are better at governing, but unfortunately, Republicans are better at campaigning. Even though I disagree with everything that Palin said, I thought her speech was better than Obama's acceptance speech. She was very persuasive.

She delivered (read from the prompter) fine, but huge chunks of it were utter bullshit lies.

Maybe it's me, but I thought she came off snotty as all get out.  Smirking and smarmy.  Where have I seen that before?

Oh yeah, we've been seeing that for the last 8 years.

The Republican brand of Bush/Rove was spiteful and hateful towards all of those who did not agree.  That brand is now in the gutter.  Yet, this speech was delivered very much in the form of the Bush/Rove brand.

She was too mean-spirited, too hateful, too crass, too unbecoming and simply too rough.  This was a very bad introduction to the American people.  

any emotion in her voice..delivered very flat. Of course there were places where the Republicans cheered as ordered....well organized boorish convention thus far.

I don't know how you can say this was a good speech.  She is a terrible speaker.  I was praying for my TV to break so I didn't have to hear that terrible accent and horrendous speaking cadence.  She's terrible... nearly as bad as McCain.  

That's what Giuliani just said.  The republicans are united?  Hah

Well, that settles he question of whether they are hoping to run from the Bush/Cheney record. For all her talk about shaking things up in Washington, it is clear that Management has decided that they have to win or lose this with the base as in 2000 and 2004.  I thought she came across as shrill and unlikeable, like the parent everyone hates at the PTA meeting.  She is a good speaker and the base loved it but outside the convention building this will not play with anyone in the middle, let alone Democrats.

No one has answered this question for me yet.

She proved she could deliver a speech, which was likely not of her own creation.  Neither impress me one way or another because much of the applause lines were either insults or piggybacking on the populist platform the Dems have been running.

At the end of the day, she still looks like a homeroom mom to me.  I mean that as no insult to her as a woman, but when I hold her presence up against Hillary's, she does not come across as a states person.

I am just soooooo disgusted with the mingling of extreme religious ideology with political platform I cannot stand it.  Every time I see Sarah, I just see another Rovian-tool used for tweaking the emotions of religious zealots nationwide.

Come on November.  Can't get here quick enough.....

When the going got tough, she lied through her teeth about pressuring the Alaska Chief of Public Security to fire her ex-brother-in-law.  If she had the toughness that she pretends to have on stage, she would have said, "Damn right I tried to have him fired."  

But, Sarah Palin lies and hides behind lawyers.

We do not need four more years of fake bravado writing checks that will have to be cashed by the American public, soldiers, sailors and marines.

Just catching Palin's speech now, but please skip the Tracy Flick jibes. That was one of the media's favourite ways of denigrating Clinton, the irritating Tracy Flick. It's just a variation on the cackle criticism, and one of Olberman's more adolescent moments.

Good response from the Obama campaign...  This woman is really George Bush in a hairbun in everything she does and believes in...  there should be little problem tying her to the politics of the last 8 years... she epitomizes them...

I didn't watch... I couldn't bear to see this walking wedge issue try and tear down everything we've built up by pretending to care...

I have no idea how people will view this speech... We'll see in a few days...

I do wonder, though, if the "base" will react as strongly to McCain's speech... or is he just an afterthought?  Has anyone remembered a VP overshadowing the actual candidate so much?  Will she continue to do so?  What does that mean in the end?

It seems that the base is going to vote for Sarah Palin and hope that John McCain dies so he can get out of the way!  How morbid!

Regardless of what happens, the Republicans have a new rising star, and that is going to be a problem for all of us in the future...  Let's hope the scandals will destroy her before that happens...

before the VP announcement that she would be a fatal pick, thinks she did a great job.

"The problem is that her lack of history on national security undermines the entire Republican argument about Obama being unprepared, and there is no way to cure it."

I have to agree that unless the mood of this country is somehow different to what I think it is this speech, while effectively crafted and delivered, is not going to move the needle nationally. Way too angry and caustic and far too little about how this team would help the middle class. And how galling for her to say that John McCain doesn't run with lobbyists--his entire campaign hierarchy is populated with them.

I gotta believe that this speech is going to turn off more than it brings in.

I don't know if this crap will fly in economic times as bad as these.  Usually it does.  Usually scare the people tactics, bullying, and right wing visionary moments do it for the GOP.  I'm not sure they will this year, hopefully not.  Hopefully this garbage will just seem kind of irrelevant to what people's lives are like.

I'm still laughing at the dunces on DU who were mocking her during the speech, insisting it was a flop. I kept insisting they were going to be shocked at the post-speech reaction. Indeed, they are.

And I still have no idea how we took her lightly. That's why I watch all the debates on CSPAN every cycle, so I'm familiar with the so-called lesser candidates.

Tonight she started out nervous and rushed. She really relaxed and hit a stride when she introduced her family, and that confidence carried over to at least the next 20 minutes. Then the speech writer sabotaged her in the final 4 or 5 minutes. That was comical. You could almost pinpoint the area where the speech wasn't her style and she wasn't comfortable delivering it. She lowered her voice and lost the proper placing of emphasis.

It's a massive, massive advantage to have the second convention. That's what I take from tonight, and no doubt tomorrow.

The GOP convention was very weak until Giuliani and Palin. Romney's speech was horrible, some type of liberal/conservative time warp, then Huckabee's was cutesy crap that may have flattered him but didn't accomplish anything.

Like I posted the other day, polls taken between conventions are meaningless.

The only really bad speaker in a mjor party I have seen is McCain.  She did "fine".  BFD

She's angry, Rudy's angry, Mittens is angry and at what?  they've had the Whitehouse for eight years and the congress for six of those.   They've been making the rules and calling the plays almost unfettered.  What in the sam hill are they angry about?

Because Democrats have the audacity to campaign against them?

The whole evening seemed unusually mean spirited, even for a GOP convention.  No rousing presentations on the military or framing of the realities of avergae Americans, just a bunch of dogs chewing on fake bones.

The point is, I'm not sure how well any of that would play to the audience of middle of the road Americans.  They aren't looking for jingism and "Family Values" right now -- they're looking for solutions.

Seriously, if you weren't in that hall or dead in the heart of a red state, was any of that directed at you?

My thoughts:

1. That was a hell of a speech. Forget the content for a second: it truly excelled in terms of her presentation.

2. Don't be surprised to hear that the GOP raised $1-2 million overnight because of this speech.

2. There was a slight excess of edge and anger. If the Obama campaign is smart, they will use this as an opportunity to help define Palin as mean, heartless, and cold.

3. She's sticking with that utterly silly line about the "bridge to nowhere" -- she needs to be held accountable for that.

5. She's a serious talent. Don't underestimate her. I think Biden will be more than fine in the debates, but she'll be a net-plus for McCain over the next 60+ days.

The "hockey moms" coda took blacks, Latinos, and everyone but "middle America" right out of the political equation.

The Republicans picked Palin because they can make her into anyone that want her to be.

Divisive as President Bush in 2000 and 2004: check.

All the hope just got sucked right out the room, folks!

Good speech for the base.  However, honestly now what?  We still have job losses, we still have a wrong track at 80%.  Nothing has changed.

' she's smart and likeable and funny... But why did McCain choose her?'

To balance the ticket?

Speech to Nowhere...

I smell trouble, though my instincts have often been wrong.

Hockey Mom/Pit Bill will be the take away, not the lustful hating.  

I'll be interested to see how many actually watched this speech because unless a viewer saw the negativity and hating, the impact of the speech and performance will be positive for the GOPers as filtered through media clips and coverage.

Think Blitzer.  McCain just stiffarmed his organization for practicing journalism and he already is beside himself with praise for the speech.

The environment is too favorable for me to get all nervous nellie, but this thing will be close and when all is said and done, unless the scandals undermine Palin, she will be a net positive to the McCain campaign.  And the impact of the scandals are not yet clear to me if the GOPers are successful in their efforts to roll them all up into "attacking the family".  

She'll be tough, not scary, for those independents and moderates who hear and see "Hockey Mom" while she helps to significantly increase right-winger enthusiasm.  Then McCain will ramp up his maverickyness to go after the indies the ticket needs while she rallies the support on the home turf.

"If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat."

The Republican brand of Bush/Rove was spiteful and hateful towards all of those who did not agree.  That brand is now in the gutter.  Yet, this speech was delivered very much in the form of the Bush/Rove brand.

She was too mean-spirited, too vicious, too hateful, too crass, too unbecoming and simply too rough.  This was a very bad introduction to the American people.  

Before, Biden would have come off as being a mean old chauvinist man against that brave little Christian girl Sarah but now...?

People will expect them to tear each other to pieces in a Twilight of the Gods battle while wearing big giant smiles the entire time.

Biden now has license to take the gloves off!

Here's a word cloud of Palin's speech for anyone that's interested.

Palin is a nut.  Her family needs her and yet her personal ambition is more important.  That speech was IGNORANT at best.  Hate, and almost a out-of-touch sense of reality when looking at the current state of affairs.

The reality is that if Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic nominee nobody would have ever heard of Sarah Palin and Republicans would still be attacking her as a woman.  Nobody should be surprised that she can read from a teleprompter, but what did she say about policy and her view of where she would like to take our country?

Sarah Palin is now fair game. Let's attack with the facts and maybe we need to take a lesson from Adlai Stevenson, Democrats will continue to tell the truth and point out Republican lies.

is that no one was blown away, or even seriously impressed.

Watch the cadence of the speech: Attack. Pause. Applause. Attack. Pause. Applause. Attack. Pause. Applause. The audience was carrying her, she never (except for some of the biography) carried them. Remember, that's her base.

Even Rudy inadvertently downgraded it. To paraphrase him "She did a great job....considering blah blah blah". Watch the pundits. Even while they say it was a grand slam, they say it in a very clinical manner. They lack the mildly stunned loss for words that a good Obama delivery imparts.

I sincerely doubt she moved the needle across America.

Move the needle or not, it made clear where the next 60 days are going to be played out.  Obama and team need to slap this back hard, fast and unrelenting.

Wow. Guiliani delivers the keynote and tears into Obama. Mark Warner delivers the keynote and plays nice. Once again, we show our lack of spine. When are we Democrats going to learn that we have to attack hard and attack every day to beat the Republicans?

America is just ridiculous. She read a speech and the wacko right has an orgasm.  Unreal.

as most Americans know, Abraham Lincoln once famously said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  This is exactly what Palin and the Republicans were doing tonight.  Through misrepresentation, sarcasm and downright nastiness, how do they expect to govern?  Do they really expect Democrats who have been called unpatriotic, cowardly, elitist and now sexist to simply play nice after this is over?  The Republicans need to figure out that running the country is more important than the election to get there.

Giuliani and Palin reminded me why I hate Republicans so much.  Petty and vile, they have nothing to offer the country but bad one-liners.

I think McCain will get a moderate bump in the polls, but I don't think Palin is a valuable asset in the long-term.  She's not going to go before the media often, and her scandals will follow.

I'd give her speech technically about a B or so. Decent political speech, only mangled her words a few times, managed to sound like she knew who the countries and leaders she talked about were (mostly; it was shaky in a few places, to me anyway). Personal stuff was ok... but not much better than ok, which is surprising.

But there were two big problems with the speech. First: negative. Negative, negative, negative. This is in theory her introduction to the country. The country just found out that she's very negative. I'm willing to bet that among the conservative base she'll have good approval ratings -- she was negative about the things they're negative about -- but outside of them, I suspect she did some serious damage to them, among people who heard the speech.

Second: entirely too fact-check-able. She repeated the Bridge To Nowhere lie. If there weren't actual photos of her wearing a shirt in favor of it, she might maybe make that fly. But in this case, I think that's a non-starter. She claimed a lot of reformer cred that she just doesn't have, after the past few days. If she could've given that speech four days ago, it might've made the attacks look petty. As it is, I think it may make her look like a liar.

Combine that with the attacks on Obama, most of which just plain aren't true, and toss in that 25% of the nation tuned into Obama's speech and according to some polls nearly 70% of voters have seen it either live or via DVR/YouTube/whatever -- so that people know they're not true -- and it really doubles down on the untruthful hit.

She also tied reform and change to McCain, which would be a good thing for them, if Obama hadn't already done a pretty solid job of framing this as McCain = Bush, with Bush's active assistance yesterday. I'm not sure that the base wants to hear that McCain represents a great change from Bush, and I'm not sure that independents are really buying it.

She did a good job delivering a mediocre speech in a bad situation. Points for effort, and yes I think it'll move some voters. Both ways.

Last point: there's a minefield left being, and I'll be really curious to see if the press makes that point or not. A lot will depend on whether McCain has pissed off the rest of the media as much as he's clearly pissed off Time. The minefield is that, now that she's rattled off some foreign countries, leaders, and positions, she's going to be asked questions about them -- if the media get to. If they don't, the obvious question the media needs to ask, right away, is: why won't she take our questions? What I'm hoping for is to see that built into coverage of the speech. I'll be happy enough with a headline saying "Palin Delivers Stirring Speech" if the immediate subtext is "now she needs to do press conferences and town halls and get asked unscripted questions".

In many ways this was like Nixon's Checker's speech. In 1952, scandal almost caused Ike to drop Nixon from the GOP ticket. But becuase Nixon talked about his dog, he unfortunately laid his scandals to rest and 24 years later he had to resign as President because of Watergate.

Palin also talked about drilling - and earlier during the Guliani speech the crowd chanted "Drill Baby Drill, Drill Baby Drill..." We must not let the Republicans win on the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge drilling issue. They are winning that debate.

What we've got to understand is that the Republicans are using the drilling debate to defeat environmentalism. If you read Jerome's and Markos's book, Republicans use issues for multiple purposes. The purpose of their drilling stand is to scare people into voting for them and to defeat environmentalism.

I think the AP offered at one impartial article on the Palin speech.

I found the article at The News Observer:

http://www.newsobserver.com/1573/story/1 205394.html

I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.  But when she once again said "I told Congress, 'thanks, but no thanks' on the Bridge to Nowhere" she lost me.

The press has spent the last four days showing that she supported that bridge before she unsupported it.  And she kept the money that Congress had earmarked for the bridge anyway.

It doesn't take a lot of brains to realize that when you've been caught in a boldfaced lie, that you shouldn't repeat it again in your acceptance speech.

Bottom line...this woman scares the shit out of me.  God help us if she gets anywhere near the Oval Office.