Palin's triumph
Becky, who came into last night's speech feeling very hostile to the Palin pick, watched the speech on TiVo this morning and said, "Palin is kind of enchanting. I like her."
If the speech's mixture of "enchanting," small-town, down-home folksiness and brutal, scathing, pitbull-with-lipstick attacks on Obama was pitch-perfect enough to appeal to someone like Becky -- a "high-information" voter who has been quite hostile to all the GOP's negativity, and to the McCain-Palin ticket generally -- I imagine it appealed even more to its target audience: low-information, driven-by-feelings swing voters.
If so, Peggy Noonan's column may be right, and Peggy Noonan's live-mic gaffe may be wrong.
Myself, I thought it was a very solid speech, but not earth-shatteringly great -- though, as I said during the liveblog, I was struck by the potential power of Palin's perpetual personalizing (say that five times fast) of Obama's "bitter" gaffe throughout the remainder of the campaign. That's a gold mine for McCain right there.
Also, my personal assessment of the speech may have been hindered by the fact that I was somewhat distracted by running the liveblog. It's hard to get swept up in the emotional power of a moment when you're only half-watching.
Speaking of the liveblog: stay tuned for another one tonight, complete with a live chat (again). I'll probably get things started around 9:30 PM EDT. Y'all come on back now, y'hear?
If the speech's mixture of "enchanting," small-town, down-home folksiness and brutal, scathing, pitbull-with-lipstick attacks on Obama was pitch-perfect enough to appeal to someone like Becky -- a "high-information" voter who has been quite hostile to all the GOP's negativity, and to the McCain-Palin ticket generally -- I imagine it appealed even more to its target audience: low-information, driven-by-feelings swing voters.
If so, Peggy Noonan's column may be right, and Peggy Noonan's live-mic gaffe may be wrong.
Myself, I thought it was a very solid speech, but not earth-shatteringly great -- though, as I said during the liveblog, I was struck by the potential power of Palin's perpetual personalizing (say that five times fast) of Obama's "bitter" gaffe throughout the remainder of the campaign. That's a gold mine for McCain right there.
Also, my personal assessment of the speech may have been hindered by the fact that I was somewhat distracted by running the liveblog. It's hard to get swept up in the emotional power of a moment when you're only half-watching.
Speaking of the liveblog: stay tuned for another one tonight, complete with a live chat (again). I'll probably get things started around 9:30 PM EDT. Y'all come on back now, y'hear?
posted by Brendan Loy at
9/04/2008 12:10:00 PM
