After a rather subdued first night, the Grand Old Party sent out a couple of warhorses to rally the troops and ratchet up the enthusiasm level to prepare the ground for Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech tonight.
Delegates got several opportunities to roar their approval when former Senator Fred Thompson - a man that the media mercilessly slammed as boring and without spark as a speaker - brought the assembled mutlitude to their feet several times. First, a ringing defense of Sarah Palin:
Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union -- and won -- over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.
Let's be clear ... the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment.
Sound like anyone else we know?
Then, with a booming, impassioned denunciation of Barack Obama and heartfelt sentiments regarding John McCain:
To deal with these challenges the Democrats present a history making nominee for president.
History making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for President. Apparently they believe that he would match up well with the history making, Democrat controlled Congress. History making because it's the least accomplished and most unpopular Congress in our nation's history.
Together, they would take on these urgent challenges with protectionism, higher taxes and an even bigger bureaucracy.
And a Supreme Court that could be lost to liberalism for a generation.
Joe Lieberman was more restrained, less partisan, but effusive in his praise for the nominee: I'm here to support John McCain because country matters more than party.
I'm here tonight because John McCain is the best choice to bring our country together and lead our country forward.
I'm here because John McCain's whole life testifies to a great truth: being a Democrat or a Republican is important.
But it is not more important than being an American.
Lieberman's very presence was a slap in the face to Obama and the Democrats - a man who just 8 years ago was his party's Vice Presidential nominee showing his unequivicable support for the nominee of the other party doesn't happen very often in history.
The first two days of the convention are now history. If I were to grade out the Republicans I would give them a C+ so far. How this convention will be remembered, however, will be history's judgment of the way both Sarah Palin and John McCain perform on the biggest stage they have ever faced - a national TV audience in excess of 25 million watching and waiting to see if the two are up to the challenge.
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