Notes On McCain’s Speech « The Washington Independent

Just a few thoughts on Sen. John McCain’s acceptance speech. The campaign sent out the prepared remarks to reporters just as McCain took the stage. It released a few paragraphs beforehand, but they weren’t taking any chances with it showing up on the Internet early.

McCain discussed in more detail the events leading up to his capture in North Vietnam than I’ve heard previously on the campaign trail. Perhaps Mark Salter has been saving that up for a while. Also, lots of stuff came straight out of the stump speech — for example, education is the civil-rights issue of the 21st century and stop sending money overseas to countries that don’t like us much.

The speech focused on getting the Republican Party back to basics: the party of Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln.

Not much in the way of attacks on Obama, except the standard, “he’s gonna raise taxes.” The Obama camp immediately sent out a fact-check email taking issue with this. McCain warned Obama would close markets, create a government-run health-care system. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) was the attack dog tonight.

While the crowd was definitely enthusiastic, it seemed relatively subdued, at least compared to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s red meat-athon last night.

McCain spoke about his energy plan. Whatever happened to “The Lexington Project?” Or was it “The Project Lexington?” Whatever. He hasn’t referred to that in many weeks. It was a gimmick anyway that kind of lost its punch when “Drill Here, Drill Now” more or less took over.

Big call to arms finish draws lots of cheers. From the prepared remarks:

Fight for what’s right for our country.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children’s future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.

As balloons and confetti fall, McCain was joined onstage Gov. Sarah Palin and their respective families, as what will likely become her theme song played: Heart’s “Barracuda.”

Now, we can finally stop writing “presumed” or “presumptive” or “likely” before the word nominee. Cheers to that.