As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, I thought her speech was excellent for the base of the Republican party. It was sarcastic, snide, and dismissive about Obama in a very disrespectful way that tended to stay away from actual substance. It’s unclear to me how well this plays with those who are undecided or “sway-able” by personality politics likes this.

The other thing that struck me (also posted to Twitter last night, hint, hint) was the sheer volume of blatant lies and demagoguery in the speech. One thing about the Democratic convention was that Biden and Obama poked fun at McCain, disagreed with him, and said he didn’t get it without belittling McCain or the Republicans. Certainly, they’re capable of that and had some moments where they got a bit silly, so I’m not saying that the Democrats were paragons of virtue or anything.

The Dems just stayed away from the kind of rhetoric featured in the speeches given last night by Romney, Giuliani, and Palin. Romney set out to vilify entire groups of people, for example insinuating that Washington was liberal (that’ll be news to George W Bush and the filibusterin’ 49 R’s in the Senate) and that east coast elites mocked them (even though he is an east coast elite).

Palin, though, was the worst of the lot. Her speech, more than the others, was filled with the sort of lies that cannot be ignored. They’re not the typical campaign exaggerations but the kind of things you grew up learning as lying. I don’t have the time to really list them all out, but here are two links to folks that do. First, Hilzoy at the Washington Monthly goes through the big ones I noticed last night. Obama’s campaign released a far more detailed (and picky) set of fact checks last night as well. Hilzoy hits on the issue I think are most important, so I’d start there.

One final thing: this party has run Washington for over 8 years. They’ve had unilateral control over Congress and the White House and a friendly Supreme Court for most of that time, too. I can’t believe that they’re trying to run on the “Washington is not working” theme at the convention. Bill Clinton and Obama both hit on this last week. What we’ve seen over the last 7+ years is the result of Republican supply-side economics meeting reality. It’s the Republican policy platform for the last few decades and they finally got a chance to implement it. It’s why this country is where it is. Think about where fuel standards would be if Democrats were in Congress. Median incomes would be a real focus rather than top line corporate profits. The tax cut in 2001 would’ve at the very least given the same percentage reduction to everyone instead of knocking an extra few points off the top bracket, etc., etc., etc.