Ok, I just sat through what I considered to be the most important speeches of the night -- Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Guiliani, and Sarah Palin.

I was disappointed in Mitt's speech and I must admit that 10 minutes into it I got bored and started playing guitar.  I did have to pause a few times though.  Mitt Romney accusing anybody of being an eastern elitist is laughable at best and insulting at worse.  But I understand his reason for speaking tonight.  He's a cheerleader much like Brian Schweitzer was during the Democratic convention -- great for firing up the base but useless in the end.

Being the good southern boy that I am, I always enjoy hearing Huckabee speak.  Don't get me wrong, I'd never vote for him.  He scares me but he is a lot of fun to listen to when he's on his own agenda. But tonight he just repeated the party line and I must say that when he focuses on being a Republican first and himself second he loses a lot of his charm.  I listened to the last story he told with real interest expecting the pithy and entertaining punchlines that he's famous for but what I got instead was pandering.  I'll tell you now that I have never served in the military and I'm eternally grateful to the men and women who lay down there lives to protect me and my country.  It's very discouraging when the Republicans repeatedly beat me over the head with the idea that all veterans must be Republicans. Republicans do not have a monopoly on patriotism.  Neither do Democrats.  Great men and women of all walks of life, from all socio economic strata, from both parties have suffered for this country.

Rudy was funny, charismatic and entertaining when he was talking about McCain but he completely lost me when he began talking about Barrak Obama. He only spent a very small amount of time on why I should vote for McCain.  The rest of the time he spent telling me why I shouldn't vote for Obama.  Look, I understand that these conventions aren't aimed at me.  They are

for the base.  They are meant to energize the people who are already voting like them, Republicans and Democrats alike.

What amazed me the most about these three speeches is that all three men at one point or another tried to make the current high gas prices seem to be the Democrats fault.  Maybe I'm wrong but wasn't gas something like $1.75 a gallon when President Bush took office?  How is the fact  that it is now just south of $4.00 a gallon the Democrats' fault?  I was befuddled by it.  Mitt Romney even went so far as to say the Democratic party was the party of "Big Brother" when it was the Bush administration that gave us the decidedly unpatriotic and un-American Patriot Act.  But like I said earlier, I know what these conventions are about -- party rhetoric, a chance for each party to outline their talking points for the rest of the campaign.

But the highlight of the evening was finally realizing why I will not be voting for the Republicans this year.  Sarah Palin is an accomplished speaker and either she has rehearsed the Republican play book extensively or she has really good handlers.  Doesn't matter to me.  I'm sure the Democrats have to keep some pretty hefty handlers on Biden too.  I didn't listen to her speech expecting to hear anything new.  I assumed that she, like everybody else at both the Democratic and Republican conventions would just rehash the same talking points over and over again... and I was right.  So, if I knew I wasn't going to hear anything new why did I listen to the speech?  I wanted to get a sense of her personae -- the way she carries her self -- and I saw a lot of things that I absolutely do not like.  She is at once charming and venomous, charismatic and condescending.  Now, you can say that I already had my mind made up about this before I even watched the speech or you can call me a sexist.  I don't care.  I know how I felt watching her.  It is unquantifiable and I won't try to explain it.  I feel like Sarah Palin will get us into trouble.

There are some other less interesting things I noticed and thought about while watching the convention this evening. First, every single person who took the stage tonight blasted the "liberal media".  I'd like to know how those same Republicans would have felt if the media that they love to blast just got up and walked out, decided not to air their conventions, decided not to air their commercials.  Republicans have no problem ripping the media apart and then paying them god knows how much money to run their ads.  Hate the media, love the medium.   And did anybody else notice the those "hand painted" hockey mom signs weren't hand painted at all?  They were prints.  I'm sure the Republican party

paid for them and I don't blame them but it does seem just a little deceitful.  The intent was to make it look like real hockey moms had spent time painting signs for Sarah just like they would for their own sons and daughter games.  Probably worked on a lot of people too. Worked on me until my wife pointed it out.

So, the conclusion?  Well, it was business as usual.  The same ol' thing we've come to expect from both the Republican convention and the Democratic convention.  Same talking points, same barbs, same everything. Honestly if you didn't know which convention you were watching you'd have been hard pressed to tell them apart although I think the music was better at the Democratic convention.  But that's just my opinion.