John McCain has picked for a running mate someone who gives me real hope for the years ahead, and a new generation. Sarah Palin talked tonight about an America of individual responsibilities, a country proud to win its wars and defend its interests – not a vale of groaning victims waiting for rations of relief from Washington.Democrat Taylor Marsh: (Pajamas Media)
Sarah Palin made her party proud last night in a speech that delivered her to star status. ... Republican elites can relax, while the conservative base basks in the babe who takes the senior out of the senator. McCain’s hail Mary Palin can deliver a speech.Michael Crowley (New Republic)
Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing--few if any would ever vote for McCain--but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked.Jim Sleeper (Talking Points Memo)
if you didn't sense last night how deeply Sarah Palin channeled some of the country's deepest, most powerful currents of pent-up indignation and yearning, you don't sense the trouble we Democrats are in.Rhetorically, she was the anti-Obama,. She was stirring precisely because she was so artless, matter-of fact, and "American" -- with no cadences or grand, historic resonances, but with plenty of mother wit and shrewdness. Credit her as much as the speechwriters..
The two currents she tapped -- the ones that roared up from so deep in the crowd that you could feel them riding on love more than hate -- weren't the ones unleashed by her or Rudy Giuliani's disparagements of Obama.
They were riptides of deeply wounded pride and groping loyalty, a yearning for vindication of something that is not to be disparaged at all.
The gang at National Review Online discuss the speech here.
Don Surber:
We didn’t get a Reagan this year. We got a Thatcher.
Here's the speech in its entirety:
