According to Dreher, former Bush speech-writer Matthew Scully is writing it. (Scully wrote a piece for the Atlantic last year about Michael Gerson and speech-writing for Bush.) One of Dreher’s tips for Palin:
She has to show that she’s tough, and not intimidated by all the scrutiny and all the garbage of the past few days. She’s got to look like a fighter, but also cheerful — a happy warrior.
Crowley also outlines what she needs to accomplish tonight.
David Brickner’s sermon at Wasilla Bible Church on August 17, 2008. Sarah Palin was in attendance and a collection was held.
JPod defends Palin attending a sermon by a Jews for Jesus speaker:
Evangelical Christians like the members of Sarah Palin’s church love Jews so much they want to save us. I, for one, am not offended by their loving attention, though I really wish they wouldn’t waste their time on me.
Just a word from the bleachers. 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. Such effrontery has now been greeted by a presidential campaign refusing to answer simple questions that anyone with access to Google can figure out. McCain’s relationship with the press corps has hit the ocean bed – which is ironic, since McCain has given the press the wackiest and most copy-ready nominee in recent history.
Nonetheless, 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.
And there will be a swing, as there often is, in the polls, maginified by a huge, temporary sigh of relief that the nightmare of the last five days have at least been lanced by an actual public appearance that is more than a quick intro. The GOP is an operation these days that creates its own reality. There were WMDs in Iraq. We do not torture. We are fiscal conservatives. We have won the Iraq war. You know the drill by now: just keep saying it again and again and refuse to answer questions and as long as you have God on your side, everything is okay.
And then it will start all over again. It feels like a decade since Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in Denver. It will feel like a century between now and November. But no one will be able to complain that it has been boring.
"Children, I couldn’t help monitoring your conversation … Now, let’s have no more curiosity about this bizarre cover-up," – Principal Skinner, channeling Steve Schmidt.
McCain’s new ad reflects the McCain camp’s very stupid contempt for Obama:
Marc asks: "A new McCain ad compares a presidential candidate to a vice presidential candidate. Has this ever happened before? Is the frame of the race now Obama v. Palin?" They’d better hope not.
Terry Moran reports.
Larison analyzes the new excitement in the Republican base:
…the enthusiasm derives from the feeling that conservatives compelled McCain to back down from picking Lieberman and choose “one of us” instead.
Enthusiasm for Palin is as great as it is because it is the sort of thing that many conservatives assumed McCain would never do, and it is as powerful as it has been because the contempt for McCain among many movement conservatives runs so deep. In yielding to movement demands, McCain submitted himself to people whom he has made a career of spurning. While it is commonplace to say that the Palin choice reinforced his “maverick” and “gambler” reputation, which is still partly true insofar as the choice is politically risky in the general election, the choice really represented a moment when McCain surrendered to what he considered to be political necessity.
Feel the love.
Just ask him, will you?
[Re-posted.]
The Dish 