the speech

I didn't get to watch Sarah Palin's convention speech live (I was cramming for prelims), but I wanted to catch it on Youtube to see why columnists like Mike Murphy now call it "The Speech."

I mean...capital letters? Really?

So watch it I did. And you know what? There was absolutely nothing special about the content. Warm-and-fuzzy family bio, touting McCain's bio and experience, claiming Democrats want to raise your taxes. (In fact, there was really only one Republican idea or proposal or promise in the whole thing - drill for more oil.) Other than some obscure jeering at Obama for having been a "community organizer," it was the mirror image of Joe Biden's completely generic speech.

Basically, here are my take-home points from the Palin speech:

1. Republicans are so desperate to seem down-home and folksy that Canadian accents now pass for authentic rural charm, and hockey is suddenly an all-American sport. It's basically: "You're white. You have lots of kids. You say you believe in typical Republican stuff. You're one of us!"

2. The one and only Republican idea is to drill for more domestic oil. This is the only thing that got them mileage in the run-up to the convention, so I'm not really that surprised.

3. The burst of negative news following the Palin selection was so intense that it lowered everyone's expectations to the point where any speech that didn't involve slobbering all over herself would have wowed the chattering classes.

News flash: if you expect Republicans to all be a bunch of half-evolved shit-chucking apes, you're bound to be disappointed. They are actually fairly intelligent, informed, articulate people. People with narrow interests, awful policy ideas, and bigoted attitudes toward large chunks of the American population, to be sure. But underestimating them only gives them a low bar to clear.