They're doing the postgame on the Palin speech. Chris Matthews thinks it will play in Scranton. I'm not so sure. She was pretty tough on the O-man. Tougher than she should have been, I think. The lines devoted to mocking Obama clearly got the lion's share of the speechwriters' attention. They did pretty good.
But there were so many of them, plus the bit about voting for John McCain out of spite for Harry Reid, whom not enough people know to be much of a lightning rod... it just seemed offputting even coming from a hockey mom (of five!) from Alaska.
Eugene Robinson said afterward that her speech was good where she talked about her biography, but not when she was on the attack, or as he put it "when he wasn't the real Sarah Palin." I don't know how any pundit gets comfortable talking about the "real" Sarah Palin at this point. For all we know that was just the speech she wanted to give.
It's entirely possible that my sensitivity to criticism of Democrats is higher then the average American's, but I don't feel the same way about Rudy Giuliani's speech. Rudy did a phenomenal job. Pat Buchanan was practically foaming at the mouth when asked to comment. He talked about Rudy "tearing and ripping" and it was a pretty good description.
I appreciated that, in addition to all the ridiculous and offensive attacks, he made the effort to dig up some legitimate ones. The public financing reversal was a big story, so you'd expect that. But he called him out for caving on FISA, which is a little suprising/galling since the shift was toward the Republican side, and the "undivided Jerusalem" statement which was quasi-accidental and had to be walked back the next day, was a true gaffe.
Josh Marshall
wrote that Rudy "seems to get genuinely angrier the longer the speech goes on," which is definitely true. But that works for Rudy. We know he's mostly in it for the crowd's love. He went on so long they had to scrap Palin's introductory video.
Anyway. A for Rudy. B+ for Palin.
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