Republican Vice President nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech Wednesday night electrified her party’s convention in St. Paul, Minn., along with Republicans across the country and in the Aspen area.
“I thought she was absolutely over the top and wonderful,” Carol Brown, a delegate to the convention who lives in Glenwood Springs, said from the convention floor yesterday. “She very clearly outlined the differences between her and the Obama-Biden platform. And I think she connected with normal people in America so well.”
Palin’s highly anticipated 40-minute address has been hailed as a possible gamechanger for a McCain campaign that had yet to find a prevailing message, and as the debut of a woman who could be the party’s post-Bush era star and savior.
“It has turned this into a very exciting race,” said Linda McCausland, chairman of the Pitkin County Republican Party.
McCausland pointed out, also, that Palin’s speech was viewed on television by almost as many people as Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver last week — indicating a newfound fervent national interest in the Republican ticket that had previously been overshadowed by Obama.
Palin’s speech garnered 37.2 million viewers, compared with 38.4 million for Obama — and more than 13 million more than watched her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, last week.
“People are truly excited about her,” Brown added. “We’ve been getting calls here [in St. Paul] from families and people all over about her. She’s really turning things around.”
Coming only four days after she was surprisingly named McCain’s running mate, Palin’s speech sought to introduce the unknown 44-year-old Alaska governor to voters. And falling on the heels of a revelation that her teenage daughter is pregnant and unwed, it also reached to ensure Republicans of her conservative family value bona fides.
The local party faithful think it worked.
“She is the whole package,” McCausland gushed. “She was attractive and at ease in front of that whole, massive audience, plus the television audience. ... And I thought it may have been more hard-hitting because of the way she presented it.”
The hard-hitting attack portions of Palin’s address were delivered with a smile and a biting sarcasm — ridiculing Obama as an out-of-touch elitist, while painting herself as an average “hockey mom.” Palin referred to herself as a pit bull in lipstick, and backed up the claim by unabashedly mocking Obama’s perceived lack of experience.
“She’s definitely a working person and a mom who relates to real people,” Brown said. “She is not there to take from the people, or to live in the lap of luxury. She is there to work for all of America.”
Brown and McCausland also noted independently that they were impressed with Palin’s openness to expanding domestic oil drilling, while also developing alternative energy sources.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
