GOP Convention....

The first day of the Republican National Convention was cut short due to Hurricane Gustav making landfall in Louisiana. The Republicans were scrambling because they wanted to show America that they can handle another crisis after their failed response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. On the first night of the convention President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were both supposed to give prime time speeches at the convention. Then President Bush and Vice President Cheney both pulled out of their speaking commitments, because they needed to watch the situation with Hurricane Gustav and to oversee the federal response to the crisis. This was a blessing to John McCain who has been trying to distance himself with the current administration, and bad for Obama who has been trying to show McCain as Bush's 3rd term. While the media was focusing their coverage on Hurricane Gustav the McCain campaign released some shocking news to the country, the McCain's Vice Presidential pick, Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter was pregnant. The country was shocked and it turned into a media frenzy. The left said she couldn't run a country because she couldn't even control her daughter. They also said that she needs to be taking care of her kids instead of running for Vice President. The right mostly praised Palin and her family for being a strong family and praised her daughter for not having an abortion.

On the first night of the convention McCain called on all Americans to come together and support the Gulf Coast. The Governors of the Gulf Coast all left the convention to get their state ready for whatever was going to come their way. This showed America that the Republicans were willing to give up a night of their own convention to focus on the Hurricane and the Gulf Coast, it also showed them that they were well prepared to handle another disaster. By Tuesday morning the damage from the Hurricane showed to be minimal and the Republicans went back to their full convention schedule.

Tuesday night President Bush was given a small speaking role at the convention, but just addressed the delegates by satellite. He gave a short speech praising McCain for his service to the country. Then Presidential candidate Fred Thomson gave a speech describing McCain's military service and his time as a POW during the Vietnam War. The last speech of Tuesday night was by former Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate and now independent Senator Joe Lieberman. He said he was supporting McCain because he would put the country first above his own party.

Wednesday night was one of the most anticipated nights of the convention. For the past 2 days the media was talking about Palin's daughters pregnancy and now it was Sarah Palin's chance to introduce herself and her family to the country. The next day it was announced that 40 million people watched her prime time speech, which was about 2 million more viewers than Obama's acceptance speech the week before. Palin proved that she was a game changer in this race. Before to vote McCain was largely just a vote against Obama, but now she has brought tremendous energy to this election. If McCain doesn't win this year, I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Sarah Palin yet. I would say the convention was a huge success. With the media's attention focused on the hurricane, Palin's daughter, Palin, and other convention news, which left Obama mostly out of the headlines. Which is what the Republicans needed in order to get their message out there and to achieve a sizable post convention bounce, which Obama did not really get after his convention.