'Vicious' Speech Bodes Well

How’d Sarah Palin do in her convention debut? Commentators agree that she showed impressive speaking skills, but part ways on whether she was convincing as a potential VP.

• The speech was “great” but “vicious,” Dahlia Lithwick writes at Slate. Palin, uses what Lithwick calls a risky tactic: “If your opponent is larger than life, strive to be smaller than life.”

• The New Republic’s Eve Fairbanks thought Palin was “lovable,” but still came away unimpressed: “Just because we’re a nation of 100,000 Wasillas doesn’t mean all those 100,000 mayors ought to be in the White House.”
• At the Guardian, Michael Tomasky thinks that Palin put the speech to good political use and managed to “save her candidacy,” for now. "And, since she opened up a can of whup-ass on the Democrats, it entitles them to open up a can on her."
• John Fund, observing the enthusiastic response to her Obama skewering, writes in the Wall Street Journal: "Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher.

(More Sarah Palin stories.)