Apparently the leadership of the Republican Party thinks voters are
turned off by specifics, and so Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech as
its presidential nominee last night was a hodgepodge of generalities,
musings on courage, reminiscence about his years as a POW in Vietnam,
and rabble-rousing calls for change.

But what would that change entail -- what new programs or policies or
ideas? That was left to the audience's imagination. On CNN, Jeffrey
Toobin called McCain's address one of the worst convention speeches he'd
ever heard. Yet even he had to admit that it was kind of exciting to
watch. Maybe McCain understands television better than people think.

He used the word "change" at least 10 times in his bombastic speech --
the convention's emotional climax -- but since the Republicans have
controlled the White House for the past eight years, what does McCain
want to change from? And to? It really is an audacious ploy, to tell
people that the country's got to correct the mistakes made by a
political party when that's the very party you represent.

It's like staging a revolution against yourself -- saying that the
Republicans have got to go so the Republicans can move in and clean up
the mess.

Tom Shales
Washington Post


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It's going to make for some interesting television commercials...

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:30:42 -0400, hk wrote:

Apparently the leadership of the Republican Party thinks voters are
turned off by specifics, and so Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech as
its presidential nominee last night was a hodgepodge of generalities,
musings on courage, reminiscence about his years as a POW in Vietnam,
and rabble-rousing calls for change.

But what would that change entail -- what new programs or policies or
ideas? That was left to the audience's imagination. On CNN, Jeffrey
[...]

Obama didn't mention a single specific in his acceptance speech
either. So what? Acceptance speeches are rallying cries, not
specific policy speeches.

The Democrats have controlled congress for the last 2 years, and for
50 of the last 55 years, and Obama has voted along party lines nearly
100% of the time during his Senate career. What kind of "change" is
that? McCain, with his record of going against the party line at
least some small percentage of the time, is more of a change than
Obama.

I think you're finally losing it Harry. The frequency of your posts
during McCain's speech reminds me of a 4 year old saying "are we there
yet? are we there yet" over and over during a long car trip. Except I
envision your mouth frothing while you were typing posts here instead
of actually watching the speech.

Steve