Reflecting on the Republicans

After returning from the Democratic National Convention, I had amazing insight into conventions that continued on with the Republican National Convention. Here are some of my reflections as and outsider looking it, but with previous convention experience.

While waiting in the Denver International Airport, waiting to go home, we decided to see if John McCain had announced his veep candidate. We discovered that he had and we were all pretty surprised about his choice of Sarah Palin. Admittedly, I questioned it a bit, but after watching her at the convention, she is going to be a formidable candidate. It was very effective timing for the announcement - it completely cut into Barack Obama's convention bounce. As for the Conventions, i thought both of them were great successes. 

Tuesday night of the Convention was an interesting night, since attention had to given to the current President, George W. Bush. I saw nothing that was truly bad about the speech, but you could tell that everybody involved wanted to get it over with. In the end, the Republicans did a pretty good job of getting past Bush and moving towards a McCain/Palin era in the Republican Party. 

Until Wednesday, the Convention didn't really have that much energy, but about halfway through Rudy Guiliani's speech, energy was in the building (and the party), especially after Sarah Palin was finished with them.  I thought both Palin and Guiliani's speeches were tremendously sarcastic and derisive, but it played well with the crowd. However, I have to admit that Palin is a very good speaker and that it was a good speech, even though I didn't agree with any of it. I also thought Mike Huckabee was very good, but I'm partial to him. My respect for him increased when he acknowledged the historic candidacy of Barack Obama, which besides Huckabee and McCain, nobody else acknowledged. That annoyed me, because every major speaker at the DNC went out of their way to commend John McCain on his service to the country. 

Thursday was John McCain's day in the sun. I thought that Sam Brownback had a good speech that I really liked, but I remember liking Brownback during the primary campaign. As for McCain's speech, I definitely think that it was topped by his veep candidate Palin. It was long and was methodical, though I have to say that it really hit a crescendo at the end, which is what you want speeches to do. 

While watching the Convention on television, the dramatic differences between the two parties really struck me. The differences in delegate composition of both parties was dramatically obvious. I also thought that the Xcel Center, in comparison to the Pepsi Center created drastically different vibes from both conventions. After seeing the DNC convention stage in person, I thought that the RNC stage was not the most impressive effort. Having said that, the simplicity of it reflects John McCain.

All in all, after the two conventions, I think that the election of 2008 will be a dog fight and that there will be a lot more fun before things are said and done!

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