It was quite something. The good news was that about 50% of what Palin and McCain said stuck to the truth. The bad news was that the untruths left me wanting to wear hip boots.
You can get a full view of the event last night from the local paper, including video, transcript, and photos:
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/...
But I thought I'd like to add my two cents worth.
The event was held in Green Bay at Resch Center, across from Lambeau Field. The arena holds 10,000 people in the seating, and it was full. There were an additional 1000 or so folks standing on the arena floor (That's where I was). I'll post pics at some point--I need to upload them to an approved site first. There were at least 100 Obama supporters picketing the event. One particularly effective protestor carried a sign along the long line to get in (that line wrapped around the Don Hutson Packers practice facility) that said "Check out the facts at Factcheck.org."
The event was more like a football pep rally than a political speech. The seat locator signs over every exit from the stadium had been replaced with lighted signs that said, alternately, "McCain-Palin" and "Country First." I've been the the arena often for other events, so that was a bit surreal--though since seats were first come /first serve, they didn't need the numbered section signs. A local high school band played patriotic songs very well--Wisconsin has fabulous music programs in the public schools. They left before the speeches started. John Guard, the Republican candidate for Wisconsin's District 8 House seat (First-term incumbent Dr. Steve Kagin is in a hotly contested race against him) opened with a speech about how Democrats, and Kagin in particular, are responsible for the high gas prices because they are blocking drilling offshore. Chants of "drill, baby, drill" filled the arena. Then, after he finished, the arena went dark, then star shaped rotating lights scanned the crowd while a tape that sounded like Japanese Volcano drummers played. McCain and Palin came in (I swear I'm not making this up) to the arena through a black-cloth shrouded tunnel that led into a twenty-foot-high yellow cut-out of the outline of the state of Wisconsin. The lights came up and the music came to a crescendo as they moved through a prepared walkway to the podium. It looked exactly like a high school football game. Though with Packers' colors. Green and gold pom-poms and green and gold blow-ups (they look like giant sausages, and make a loud clacking noise when you hit them together) were in wide use throughout the rally, sold to the folks in the stands.
The first speaker was a former Hillary supporter who is now a McCain backer. Next came Sarah Palin. Her speech ran less than 8 minutes--she introduced her husband, reiterated her support for doing something about energy ('More "drill, baby, drill" chants) and said that the United States has more oil deposits than anywhere else in the world. (My comment--"Say, what?") She promised support for special needs children and gun owners and hunters. These are big, positive issues in Green Bay. She did not say a thing about the bridge to nowhere. Also, the Heart song "Barracuda" was not played.
Then McCain came on. Cindy was nowhere in sight. A lot of his speech was a replay of his convention speech, incuding the line that Sarah Palin cut back on earmarks in Alaska. But a good chunk at the front (after saying what a pleasure it would be to introduce Sarah Palin to Washington) dealt with the recent economic travails, which he said were the Democrats' fault, particularly Obama's. He promised to regulate Wall Street and run the evildoers out of town. (I wondered privately if that included Phil Gramm, who led the vanguard of the regulatory changes that made this whole mess possible. If so, McCain certainly declined to mention him by name.) There were cheers at that line--which is very weird, because government regulation is anathema to republicans. There was lot of emphasis in McCain's speech about how democrats would raise everybody's taxes to unheard-of heights, leaving them too poor to pay for the overpriced gas the democrats caused, and causing job losses everywhere.
Protestors interupted the speech at least twice, and were surrounded by placard-holding Republican volunteers screaming "USA!" until the police took them away. One guy didn't say anything--he just wore an Anti-McCain Tshirt under his jacket, which he opened as the rally started. The police took him away, too.
In the last month I've been to an Obama rally in Milwaukee (I think he filled all 15,000 seats in the stadium, plus standing room) and I've volunteered at the Biden speech (he filled the available 3000 seats) in Green Bay. Neither resorted to tricks of sound and staging, much less football-style state-shaped arches. They stuck pretty close to the truth in their speeches. Their audiences were equally enthusiastic--and much better informed. When Biden made a little slip, somebody from the audience called out a correction, which he laughed and took. One particularly noticeable difference--the Obama rally had the governor Jim Doyle, both Democratic senators from Wisconsin, Herb Kohl and Russ Fiengold, the local House Representative, and a bunch of union heads doing warm-up speeches. The Biden speech also had a slew of local democrats and union people doing warm-ups. The McCain/Palin rally had a former Hillary voter, John Guard, and that's it. The lack of local politicians was quite noticeable. There are elected Republicans in Wisconsin--but McCain didn't seem to have any handy.
The Republicans watching didn't seem to have clue that the level of BS in the room was hip deep and rising. I think years of watching Fox News has divorced them from reality.
The crowd got what they wanted--and they were very happy with the rally.
Me, not so much.