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Actually, many of us don't think the speech was particularly brilliant.
It reminded me of a less skillfully delivered version of the 1988 speech offered by the then Governor of Texas (my mind is blanking on her name right now) discussing George H.W. Bush.
Now, I'll admit, Ms. Palin will go from this platform on to greater things in the Right wing of the Republican party and will likely be the religous right's standard bearer in 2012.
She did what McCain needed her to do, energize the religous right. But when you need to do that much work to energize your own party, your in a bad way.
Barak Obama faced a similar challenge with his own party base but he didn't just pick a running mate off the rack to answer that fracture. Instead he brought his party together on his own terms using his allies in the party and his own charisma, something John McCain simply couldn't do.
There was no standard bearer for the Religous right who could give John McCain what he needed the way the Clintons did to their base, so McCain rather than finding a complementary VP who could help him woo moderates was forced to shore up his base, and waste energy stemming the tide against him, instead of building bridges to the future.
McCain is behind and is playing Defense.
One should realize that is not a good place to be. Criticism of Ms. Palin's speech just shows how little she helped with who McCain needs most, independants and moderates.
Moderates look at her borrow and spend history, her lack of middle ground on social issues, and her rather unseemly abuses of power, and are turned off.
She needed to overcome that, she didn't. In 2012 she might be able to, when shes' at the top of the ticket, in the way Regan did, but for now, there are just too many fiscal republicans who look at her and see the worst aspects of George Bush, just as conservative republicans see what they believe are the worst aspects of George Bush in John McCain.
She got a crowd of volunteers to cheer her. That's not that big a deal. But we can easily wait for the poll numbers and neilsen ratings to find out if she really did accomplish anything.
Right now we're all just blatering our opinions about how she effected a single person (ourselves individually).
After Obama's convention he topped 50%, we'll have to see if McCain can do the same.
