[patriciaruth]

My ideas?

Someone should have drawn a big X over the first twenty minutes. By then most of the undecideds or those who could have been influenced were asleep or tuned out.

Close to the front should have been what he wanted to accomplish and how he proposed to do it. And he should have explained why his proposals would work better to achieve the goals than Democrat ideas. Fred Thompson did this yesterday on the issue of taxes with just a few sentences.

It was far too repetitive. I can say “I love America” a million times and it doesn’t make me qualified to be President.

[Gondring]

I agree with your analysis, patriciaruth.

I know he was trying for the “narrative” of his transformation, but he didn’t pull it off well enough for that to overcome the misorganization of the speech.

[roses of sharon]

I wanted him to take on the ideas of the Democrat Party more.

Stress how growing government makes government work harder, and impossible to control. And that we CANNOT let ourselves be addicted emotional or literally to government help.

I wanted him to teach more, I guess.

But, his personal reasons for running were made very clear, and I very much appreciated his story.

[RedMonqey]

It was far too repetitive.

That's what I tried to say here but some vehemently disagreed and that it should be "flags, guns and patriotism".(I admit, too simplistic)

Nothing wrong with that. That's great for getting out the base out.

But to those undecideds and blue collar democrats searching for something more tangible, the party might have fallen short.

[paudio]

You have a point, and I can see where you're coming from. However, Steve Schmidt is a guy whose strategy is this: stick to one or two points at at time, hammer them until they go to people subconscious before move to next points.

It seems their strategy for the convention is to push this point: 'country first'. This main idea is personified in McCain and Palin. They divided the convention into four themes, originally for four nights: service, reform, prosperity, and peace. Because of Gustav, they seemed to combine reform and prosperity together. The last night was dedicated to peace. That's why John McCain gave such speech.

I'm sure they understand that people want to hear about specific issues such as gas prices, health care, etc. At the same time, the issue of security also in people's mind. They want to frame the debate on security as those who put country first (and have proven records) vs. those who prefer some vague concepts about human rights, international law, and so on, but not necessarily pro-America. They also want to highlight the differences between our candidates and the other guys. Our candidates have reached out to the other isles, theirs have not.

So, I suspect they will start to talk about those issues soon, but not too much during the convention so they didn't dilute the simple points they're making for the past four days: country first. Convention is very important, but it's only part of the whole strategy.