“The Most Macho Speech of the Evening” : The New Agenda.

“That’s what one of the CNN people called Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention tonight, and Amy Holmes, a conservative commenter for CNN said, She balanced toughness and femininity very well—something Hillary Clinton got a lot of flack for.

It’s clear from the above comments that gender is still a central issue in the campaign.

What struck me as notable tonight was my impression that she could be right here in my living room, talking to me (in fact, her accent reminds me of my Aunt Linda) and, as Anderson Cooper noted on CNN, talking to small town America was the thing that won George Bush the White House.

Average Americans will listen to her and feel like they know her, and in a way they do—she’s our neighbour, our sister, or the woman we chat with when we’re in line at the post office. We get Sarah Palin. She’s one of us. And she’s sharp, too. The speech had some funny lines. My favorite: That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.

It was a great introduction to Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate.”

One of AdvancingWomen’s favorite lines was “What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?  Answer: Lipstick.

Which brings to mind Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous saying:  ” A woman is like a tea bag. You don’t know how strong she is until she’s dropped in hot water.”

Another noteworthy comment was McCain’s observation, regarding Sen. Obama’s claim that he had more experience than Palin: “Sarah Palin has 24,000 employees in the state government” and was “responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply.” He added that he was entertained by the comparison of her experience to that of Mr. Obama and that “I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America.”