ELECTRIFYING the Base

From NRO, several snippets of why Sarah Palin's breakout speech last night was a seismic event in American politics:

First, former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy taps into the current that Sarah Palin electrified in conservatives last night (emphasis mine):

More importantly, the speech tapped into a teeming reservoir of repressed rage. Memo to Barack Obama: You’re right, many of us are bitter. We are damn angry about being framed as “the American Taliban” because we love our country and think it’s exceptional as is; because we think you deal with evil by defeating it, not cozying up to it; because the change we think we need is a government that shrinks and gets out of the way, not a confiscatory, will-sapping Leviathan; because we don’t see “patriotism” as the willingness — the eagerness — to catalogue America’s flaws while never acknowledging her greatness; because when it comes to “reputation in the world,” we think it’s the “international community” not the United States that has a lot of catching up to do.

But Sarah Palin didn’t court this anger with more anger. That would be a turn-off. What most frustrates Americans is that we are a happy, optimistic, can-do people ceaselessly harangued by media solons, delusional academics, post-sovereign Eurocrats, and the Democrats who love them. While we free and feed the world, they can’t tell us enough that we’re racist, imperialist, torturing louts. We know it’s a libel, an endless stream of slander. But we also know it’s an absurd libel. We’re tired of hearing it, but taking it too seriously would give it power it doesn’t deserve.

So Sarah Palin was sarcastic and biting. That’s how a happy warrior deals with absurdity. That’s how a happy warrior rallies the troops.

We are in a war against terrorists, and the other side has nominated a man who has been a friend and business partner of an unrepentant, America-hating terrorist. The press lauds Obama as post-partisan when even a cursory glance at his record shows he is as partisan as it gets. The press lauds him as post-racial, but he sat comfortably for years in Trinity Church, drinking in the racist ravings of Jeremiah Wright, and he sat comfortably for years in rough-and-tumble Chicago, playing by-the-numbers race-based politics.

Obama blathers about “change” but then chooses as his running-mate a Washington relic who has managed in 35 years to be wrong on just about everything while compiling a record nearly as slavishly Leftist as Obama’s. In an era of complex, vicious, asymmetrical threats, Democrats give us a “community organizer” without a shred of executive experience who, in his years as a state legislator, voted “present” when it was time to make the tough calls. ...

Read the whole thing.

Next, Seth Liebsohn in The Corner:

The idea, planted by the media and Democrats, that she wasn't vetted: gone, because not believable or important anymore.

The idea that her family is from Peyton Place or says one thing and does another: gone.

The idea that she's a lightweight: gone.

The idea that she was picked only because she was a woman or a strong conservative: gone.

This is all not just the power of a word fitly spoken, it's the dominance of character of the person doing the speaking. It shined through big last night, bigger than any media, political, or speech coach could make happen.

Yes, debates and interviews to come but in the story of Sarah Palin, we now have read chapter one, the prepublication reviewers got it wrong, and we liked the first chapter so much we can't wait to get to chapter two.

Exactly!

And finally, Mark Steyn delivers the coup de grâce to the angry leftist media set up that made the whole thing possible:

I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin - whoops, I mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin - as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz, half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn't worked since he was an extra in Deliverance.

How's that narrative holding up, geniuses? Almost as good as your "devoted husband John Edwards" routine?

I trust even now Maureen Dowd is working on a hilarious new column mocking proposed names for the Governor's first grandchild. Perhaps Richard Cohen can just take the week off and they can rerun his insightful analysis comparing the Palin nomination to Caligula making his horse a consul. Whereas we sophisticates all know that if McCain were as smart as Obama he'd have nominated a dead horse to be his consul. No wait...

Heh.

This isn't over. There are debates and miles to go before this year's election can be certain; but one reason the Party is so pumped is that NO MATTER WHO WINS this year, there is a new voice of conservatism that has injected new energy into a party I had all but left for dead several months ago.

And personally, I think you were getting a sneak preview of the first female President of the United States.

Today, for Conservatives, there is new hope that the Republican party has finally recognized that its future lies not in selling out to the Leftists, but in firmly defending the principles of Reagan Conservatism. We have seen the party's future, and she is electrifying.

Mike Gallagher (God bless him...) tapped into the vibe today with this, which I thought was perfect for the moment, because she is a Natural. Watch and enjoy: