August 31, 2004

Peter Robinson on Republican Convention on National Review Online

Well, I’ll be: Whereas the Democratic delegates seem to have been permitted only professionally printed signs and placards, the Republicans waved a profusion of crudely hand painted signs; whereas the Democratic delegates behaved with an obedient passivity, applauding and cheering only and precisely as they were expected to applaud and cheer, the Republican delegates hooted and hollered and booed — what richness, what sonority, what a sense of release, in the booing directed at Michael Moore! — even when the speakers would clearly have preferred them to stop; and whereas the Democratic delegates found themselves participating in a convention that ran precisely on time, the Republican delegates found themselves in the middle of an event that had careened off schedule, with the final major speaker, Rudy Hizzelf, failing to wrap it up until almost half an hour after primetime had come to an end. In a word: glorious.

About the two headliners, Rudy and John McCain, the first observation is the most important: They were something that the two headliners on the first night of the Democratic convention, Bill and Hillary, simply were not: authentic.

McCain’s speech was beautiful — simply, truly, beautiful — and, by way of tribute to the rhetorical arts, tomorrow morning everyone ought to reread just as much of the text as the New York Times can bring itself to print. The diction was exquisite, the use of parallelism fine, the pacing flawless. And the case: John McCain, a man more thoroughly acquainted with the horrors of war than all but a few now alive, argued soberly, calmly, and in detail, that the present war was not only justified but unavoidable. McCain, as all the world knows, has argued that we committed too few troops to the task. And as he himself said tonight, he honors, and counts as his friends, many Democrats. But on the essential point, the vote that we must cast on November 2, he insisted on unity. I’ve never seen him so selfless, or so good.

Rudy? He went on too long, but who cares? He was tough, funny, and — a peculiar trick — abrasive in a completely charming way. In other words, he personified New York. And the crack about Kerry and John Edwards — that Edwards needs two Americas so Kerry can vote for a measure in one America and then against the very same measure in the other — was a stroke of political genius.

I repeat: Glorious.

It was indeed a glorious evening and 6 hours later, I'm still basking in the warmth and wonder of it all!
McCain's speech was rousing (as was Ron Silver's with his challenge to Hollywood's phony facade of caring about human rights!)--it was truly Sen. McCain's finest hour.
I thought he was going to cry at the end, he seemed to feel what he was saying about supporting President Bush and winning this war so intensely.
His speech even moved the Dims, if WaPo articles like this one by the poisonous Richard Cohen are any example:
Needed: Straight Talk From Kerry
Where's our McCain, the Libs wanna know?
Well, you're looking in the wrong party, my friends!
And McCain's dig at Michael Moore's fraudulent movie was just too delicious, made all the sweeter by the fact that Moore was there "covering" the convention for USAToday.
The lady family members of 9/11 victims--Debra Burlingame (whose brother was the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon), Deanna Burnett (whose husband was one of the Flight 93 heroes) and Tara Stackpole (whose husband was one of the 343 firefighters who died in the Towers)-- moved me to tears again with their stories and their call to support Bush as a way to honor the sacrifice of their loved ones.
I was also touched by the words of Zainab Al-Suwaij, the Iraqi woman living in this country now who got quite upset when she stated that "Saddam was a murderer." and who seemed to speak from the heart when she thanked President Bush and all of us for liberating the country of her birth.
Rudy's speech was very powerful...funny, emphatic, persuasive, cogent; you could see how he would have been a formidable prosecutor and for the first time, I saw he could be an awesome president (2008, perhaps?).
Rudy's best point, IMHO, was that he stressed that President Bush has stayed the course with his plan to take the fight to the terrorists, even though it has cost him popularity and brought so much criticism on his head.
Rudy knows that Bush will do the right thing for this country and our security, not the popular thing or the thing the polls say to do, like a Clinton or a Kerry.
All in all, it was an unforgettable night of stirring speeches and I can only hope you saw it, too, even though the major networks didn't carry it (as powerful as it was, you can easily see why! They're just plain afraid of the power of the GOP message.).
If you didn't or if you'd like to hear the speeches again, here's a link to the video:
Video: Major Convention Speeches