Elephants on the March -- Thursday at the RNC

Some thoughts on the go about the most important night of the Republican convention.

Meg Whitman, former EBay Chairman, a billionnaire, sometimes mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate, speaking about the economy, gives the impression that in a debate she could buy and sell Joe Biden and make a profit on both ends. Carly Fiorina gives the same impression with an added political touch. I like CNN's countdown box on the lower right corner of the screen -- counting the minutes and seconds till Palin's speech as if was a liftoff into space.

I have never felt any kind of emotional connection when listening to Mitt Romney. He's a business conservative who only seemed to be speaking with passion during his presidential campaign when he talked about his grandiose plans for rejuvenating the auto industry in Michigan. On social issues, I thought it out and conjecture that his so frequent changes in belief were not because of insincerity, but because he treated his position on them as a product that he as a businessman was trying to sell. If you are trying to get the public to buy a product, you don't offer for sale the style of widget that you happen to like, do you? No...you offer the style of widget that you think the market wants to buy. And if the people of Massachusetts like different coloured widgets that the people voting in Republican presidential primaries, you offer each group the kind of widget they want.

Having said all that, Mitt sounded like a man who would have been a good vice presidential candidate. Between Mitt, Huck, and Rudy, the Democrats may have had the superstar public speaker in Obama, but the GOP who had the deep bench, and Rudy probably came through better in the clutch even than Obama.

I was hoping that Palin would put the line accepting the nomination of her party at the end of the speech instead of in its traditional place at the beginning. It would have made a great exit line.

From Palin what we were looking for was poise and confidence. As some blogger I cannot remember wrote earlier today, half of getting past the doorman is acting like you belong where you're going. She had established that before the two minute mark had past. The rest is now history. I was hoping for the best, but not expecting the best acceptance speech by a member of a GOP ticket since 1984. I was hoping for three or four memorable or funny lines, not 15 or 20.

Just from hearing Gov. Palin's rollout speech in Dayton I was completely astonished why anyone would assume that Sarah Palin was likely to be demolished by Joe Biden in a debate. If such a demolition is in the Democrats' plans, I would suggest they think again.