{"id":225,"date":"2008-09-02T22:19:03","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T22:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/tuesday-night-rnc-liveblogging-1.html"},"modified":"2008-09-02T22:19:03","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T22:19:03","slug":"tuesday-night-rnc-liveblogging-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/tuesday-night-rnc-liveblogging-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Night RNC Liveblogging &#8212; The Thompson Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.&#8221;<br \/>\nWas that suposed to refer to Hillary?  Not sure that&#8217;ll help win over the Hillary voters.<br \/>\nThey seem to feel the media is one of the biggest enemies in America.<br \/>\nThe story of McCain&#8217;s POW experience is truly inspiring (though I think we&#8217;re going to really need to retire the idea that McCain&#8217;s campaign is reticent to talk about his POW experience).<br \/>\n&#8220;The Senate has always had more than its share of smooth talkers. And big talkers.<br \/>\nIt still has.&#8221;  I&#8217;m assuming, &#8220;smooth&#8221; = Obama, &#8220;big&#8221; = Biden<br \/>\n&#8220;The respect he is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to American critics abroad&#8221; &#8212; standing ovation.  Obama is, in effect, a traitor.<br \/>\n&#8220;To deal with these challenges the Democrats present a history making nominee for president. History making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for President.&#8221;  Hmmm, not sure that really works.  To fail to acknowledge the actual historical significance seems more than a bit pity.<br \/>\n&#8220;This is the kind of character that civilizations from the beginning of history have sought in their leaders.&#8221;<br \/>\nBiggest applause so far: &#8220;It&#8217;s pretty clear there are two questions we will never have to ask ourselves, &#8220;Who is this man?&#8221; and &#8220;Can we trust this man with the Presidency?&#8221;  I guess that would be referring to Mr. Obama?<br \/>\n&#8220;And we need a President who doesn&#8217;t think that the protection of the unborn or a newly born baby is above his pay grade.&#8221;  Biggest applause of the night &#8212; a reference to Obama&#8217;s gaffe at the Saddleback forum. I think he may have lost evangelicals with that one line.  Why hasn&#8217;t he tried to clarify that?<br \/>\nThe crowd here LOVED that speech.   It seemed to me highly effective in conveying McCain&#8217;s strongest selling point &#8212; his character as a POW and trying to tie it to his maverick reputation.<br \/>\nPotential sour notes: implying that Obama went to Europe so he could criticize America and thereby draw applause.  This would seem to be in keeping with the comments McCain made earlier in the campaign that Obama puts politics before country.  So the slogan, &#8220;country first,&#8221; obviously is intended to have two meanins &#8212; McCain always has, and Obama doesn&#8217;t.<br \/>\nI also wonder if the comment that the only thing that makes Obama&#8217;s nomination history making is his liberalism will strike people us ungracious and overly nasty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.&#8221; Was that suposed to refer to Hillary? Not sure that&#8217;ll help win over the Hillary voters.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tuesday Night RNC Liveblogging - The Thompson Speech - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/tuesday-night-rnc-liveblogging-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tuesday Night RNC Liveblogging - The Thompson Speech - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.&#8221; Was that suposed to refer to Hillary? Not sure that&#8217;ll help win over the Hillary voters.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/tuesday-night-rnc-liveblogging-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-02T22:19:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tuesday Night RNC Liveblogging - The Thompson Speech - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/tuesday-night-rnc-liveblogging-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Tuesday Night RNC Liveblogging - The Thompson Speech - Steven Waldman","og_description":"&#8220;Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.&#8221; Was that suposed to refer to Hillary? 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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