Blue Collar Muse

Like most bloggers, I enjoy the sound of my own voice and enjoy reading my own opinions. If I didn’t, I suppose I wouldn’t have any business blogging. I believe I have something relevant to say and that I say it well. That so many of you come by to read each day tends to reinforce that belief.

It further keeps me honest. I try not to post things simply to be posting things. If I put something up here, it’s because I believe it is insightful or important, even if it’s quick and silly as well. It’s also why I don’t do much “Cut and Paste” posting. While I often link to others for the information and observations they have, I seldom simply point to another person’s work and say, “What he said!”

Today, I’m doing that. Today I’m linking to a post from Joshua Trevino who is in Minneapolis bringing first person reports and pictures from the RNC. His post last night on the acceptance speech of the GOP VP nominee is phenomenal. While The Much Younger Trophy Wife and I watched with two of our girls from the couch, Joshua was there and his observations and insight deserve your consideration more than what I might write. He captures the spirit of what my family, and tens of thousands of other families, witnessed from Minneapolis. He adds to that the framework into which that speech must be set. He notes that, while yesterday we were dispirited and fractured; FisCons, SoCons and NeoCons; Conservatives and Republicans; RINOs and Right Wingnuts; today, we are all simply ‘Sarah’s People’!

There is the Sarah Palin you saw on television, and there is the Sarah Palin I saw in the XCel Center here in St Paul, Minnesota. I don’t know how it played on TV. I don’t know what the news media said. I don’t know how the pundits assessed the speech. I don’t know what narratives the blogs are spinning. I only know what I saw. I only know what I felt. I only know what effect Sarah Palin had on the thousands of men, women and children assembled to hear her accept the Republican nomination for Vice President of the United States. I only know what word describes all that best.

The word is electric.

It is difficult to express how dispiriting this Republican convention has been. Compared with the victory-fest in NYC in 2004, the RNC here at St Paul has been a muted affair. Enthusiasm was dampened for myriad reasons: John McCain is everyone’s second choice; Hurricane Gustav threatened the whole celebration; the party is at a historical nadir; and most of all, the George W. Bush Administration has indulged in compromise of principle after principle. Earlier today I went on Cenk Uygur’s radio show as the conservative punching bag, and got hammered on a series of points that I had to concede — civil liberties, wartime management, fiscal responsibility, and more. It’s a tough spot to be in, when your partisan standard-bearer has forced you into making excuses. I’m not the only one in that position and its accompanying state of mind; and I was not the only one to feel that this convention was more funeral than sendoff — more a goodbye than a beginning — and more pro forma than joyous.

Then came Sarah Palin.

Please visit Joshua’s site to read the rest of this excellent article!

Blue Collar Muse

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 7:42 am and is filed under 2008 election season, Blogging, Blogroll, Conservative, Family, McCain Palin 2008, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.