I very much agree with the 16 "pointlets" Jay Nordlinger makes about Sarah Palin's speech last night. I'll list a sampling, but do read the entire list for yourself. (More commentary follows on page 2).
1. She’s one of the most talented politicians in America — a natural. You can’t learn that kind of thing. You simply have it (or you don’t). I suppose Sarah Palin will get better as a politician. But she’s damn good now. She will not hit her stride. She entered with her stride.
8. At times during the speech, I thought, “John McCain hit paydirt — a superb pick.”
12. Said the governor, “I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”
16. Sarah Palin is a sensation. Conservative Republicanism is now represented by a genuine political-oratorical star — a virtuoso. You are tempted to say (as has been said), she’s our Obama. We can only hope she’ll be around for a long time to come, in whatever posts.
Here is the text of her speech. Read on for additional commentary . . .
Yuval Levin - She seems to be a genuine political talent, and at the same time a
genuine and natural conservative, whose ideas and priorities emerge
directly out of the life she leads, a life that others can connect to.
For those who want to better ground both fiscal and social
conservatism in the real lives of middle class American families, a
leader who does so by example and can also articulate something of the
meaning of the link could
make all the difference. It’s much too early
to say if Palin could be such a leader, but on that front as well as in
terms of pure campaign politics, tonight was a good sign.
Lisa Schiffren - The Most Impressive Woman Speaker I have ever heard, was Sarah Palin, tonight. (Always excepting Thatcher.) It took Hillary 16 years in the public eye, and she never quite got there. The speech was brilliantly written. It gave Palin room to introduce herself, to be funny (the difference between hockey moms and pit bulls — lipstick!), to be strong, to be charming, to be tough, and to display amazing political talent. She backed down on nothing. Her pokes at Obama were masterful. She wielded the knife with a smile on her face. Who knew that the response to his gibes at small town Americans being bitter was to put a small town mayor out there to defend the honor of normal Americans?
And, while we're at it...the new hair style and more subtle color, and the perfectly classy, upmarket suit, take a natural beauty and maker her look the part. Actually, she looked and sounded better than any Hollywood evocation of a female President or Veep. Bourgeois mainstream women will ultimately, if not immediately, give her another look.
Victor Davis Hanson - Tonight I flipped to CNN and was struck by the talking heads flipping out about the Giuliani/Palin mocking of community organizers—as if the Obama team's dismissals of "small-town" mayors was fair play. The MSM networks are going ballistic at her speech and apparently never imagined that anyone would dare bite back—and also at them, the 'elite media' of the press, no less!
. . . So things heat up and are getting ugly as they always seem to do by September in an election year. Today it was no accident in the wake of the attacks on Palin that suddenly Obama comes out with pro-abortion ads attacking the pro-life position of McCain. The timing is a sort of subtext about the current and recent Palin jr. and sr. pregnancies: apparently Team Obama want the viewer to see a pregnant teen-ager and a Down syndrome child and ponder something like: "under John McCain abortion in these cases would have been impossible." [Me: I hadn't thought of that. How ugly if that is the Left's message. We may indeed be in a decisive battle for the soul of America.]
Cliff May - She is a natural politician — in the best sense. She doesn't read the text — she makes the words her own. She absorbs energy from the crowd and radiates it back. She communicates with her expressions. It's an impressive performance.
David Brody - The Democratic Party, especially the Obama campaign has a problem on its hands. Sarah Palin can not be stereotyped as the crazy pro-lifer. They may try that but the problem is that she doesn’t fit neatly into any one box. She can play reformer, independent thinker, energy policy wonk, pro-lifer, attack dog or PTA mom. She’s multi-faceted. She isn’t one dimensional. That’s got to be a concern for the Obama campaign. If I’m Joe Biden, I’m already plotting strategy for that big debate on October 2nd. He’s going to need a lot of time to figure it out.
Bottom line is this: the GOP has found its attack dog. Her name is Sarah Palin. But they have found something else too. They have discovered a rising star in their own party, somebody who proved Wednesday night that the big bright lights of national politics don’t scare her one bit. If this were the Stanley Cup Finals, she would be skating the cup around the ice tonight in a proud victory lap.