By Chip Hanlon | September 04, 2008 | 2:58 PM | 10 Comments
After last week's announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, I was surprised at the number of Republican friends who had misgivings about the pick. Don't get me wrong, a majority of the folks I spoke with were excited about it, as was I, but there were still quite a few who worried about her experience and that in picking her McCain had squandered his ability to hit Obama on the issue of experience.
Well, the title of this post is the entire text of an email I received from one of those doubters while I was at the convention hearing Palin's speech live last night. I suspect other Republican doubters had the same reaction: relief, if not outright excitement.
In the arena, I can tell you there was only one emotion: jubilation. I've been to my share of UCLA-USC football games, saw the Angels win game 7 of the 2002 World Series at home and saw the Ducks close out the Detroit Red Wings in the conference finals on their way to their first Stanley Cup in '07; aside from some of those particularly memorable, raucous sporting events, the Xcel Center in St. Paul was as electric an audience as I've witnessed.
And I can't stand political speeches... despite being active, politically, I hardly attend actual speeches because they're always crafted with the specific intent of saying nothing interesting at all. In fact, Tuesday night's program featuring Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman was a perfect example; apparently, those speeches came off well on TV, but I found them so canned that I wanted to jump off the roof of the stadium. It was painful to watch and there was no energy in that building on Tuesday at all.
Not so on Wendesday... that place was rocking. I'm actually glad I got to see Palin's speech, which might sound odd, but I wasn't in town for a week-long party (that's really all that happens at these conventions, it turns out...this was my first). I was there to stir up a little trouble, meeting with elected officials and groups to line them up behind the Lincoln Club's call for new GOP leadership in Congress, a July story which caused a few ripples in D.C. because national columnist Robert Novak broke it a few hours before we published the piece.
In the midst of the week-long Republican love-fest, I was one of the few GOP-ers there to pick a bit of a fight, but still managed to get into the building to see the Tuesday and Wednesday programs. Glad I saw Palin.
Speaking of troublemakers, I also came across a few of the Ron Paul folks. Cuckoo, cuckoo...have to write about that in coming days. Wow.
Back in the office (painfully early flight home from Minnesota this morning) and back to posting here... see you tomorrow.
-CH
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