Well, it wasn't so much a focus group as it was eating dinner with my parents and my younger brother as we watched the speech tonight. Sure, we're all GOP partisans, but none of us voted for McCain in the primary. They knew I'd been hoping Palin would be the pick, and this was the first time we would be able to get together and watch her in action and talk about her.

They all agreed that she did a fantastic job. "She's forceful without ever sounding strident," my brother pointed out, making the implicit comparison with You-Know-Who. "She can be quite the attack dog," my mom said, smiling. She also thought her line early in the speech about being an advocate for families with special-needs kids was powerful. Seeing as how I'm a retard, I can understand how that would resonate with her. She had my dad laughing at a lot of her digs at Obama, particularly the one about a small town Mayor being comparable to being a "Community Organizer," but with responsibilities. As for me, I thought she hit a lot of the right notes: pride in her small town roots, hitting back at the MSM, sounding some strong notes on National Security, and stressing her experience on energy policy, to name just a few. We haven't been advocating her as the Veep candidate here at dpud for nothing. Bring on the debates!

(By the way, I would have posted this much sooner, but it turns out that the queasy feeling I began to have in the pit of my stomach during dinner had absolutely nothing to do with jitters over how well Palin would perform. No, that was due to an...unrelated digestive problem. I'll spare you the details. Trust me, you'd rather not know.)

Update: Even though a majority of the commenters are dismissive, it's interesting how several liberal TNR readers are "are a little panicked."

Posted by: Sean M. at 02:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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