I think Andrew Sullivan hit the nail on the head. I think Sarah Palin will give a good speech tonight and will receive a lot of praise from the media. She has some good sound bites in her speech and has proven to be a decent orator.
From the article:
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In all likelihood, Sarah Palin will deliver a speech that will tear the roof off the Xcel Center tonight. Every single commentator on the cable and the networks will declare it a triumph. The base will exult at their Joan of Arc triumphing over the evil, despicable vile press, who have had the effrontery to ask a potential future vice-president of the United States basic questions about her life story and record...
The GOP machine will ensure that her speech is great.
She just has to read it from a TelePrompter. It's not that hard. And the crowd will be lifting her up to the rafters. There will be almost nothing about foreign policy because she has demonstrated a total lack of even interest in it her entire life, and has no knowledge of it whatsoever. There will be plenty about drilling and oil and "reform" and an attempt to dress up what is unavoidably a very short career in a very distant and sparsely populated place into a template for the future of Republicanism.
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The GOP will receive a bounce from this convention.
The most important thing to remember though, is that one of the most important things in politics for a new candidate's initial foray into national politics, is how the candidate is initially defined.
Sarah Palin failed this horribly. She let her opponents define her. First opinions are hard to change, especially in less than 9 weeks.