The Palin Aftermath

Now that the dust has settled and all the reviews have come in, it is clear that Sarah Palin had a stellar performance during last night's convention coverage.  Most all political analysts across the board agree that, not only did she do exactly what she needed to do during her presentation, but she did it with an exact precision that would be impossible improve upon. Further adding to the impact of the Palin speech and the ramifications it is sure to have on the dynamics of this presidential campaign, the Nielson ratings have now come in from last night and 37.2 Million viewers across America were introduced to the Republican vice-presidential nominee while giving one of the most highly praised political performances in recent memory.

During FoxNews' analysis of her speech, with a laugh, Chris Wallace had to remind longtime Democratic Party operative and current FoxNews contributor, Howard Wolfson, that the reason he is getting paid by FoxNews is to offer criticism and disagreement directed towards the opposing Republican Party, their candidates, and elected officials.  Wolfson said, “Well, I think Senator Biden’s got to bring his 'A Game' when he comes to this debate. She gave a heck of a speech and what I was particularly impressed with was her ability to stick the knife into Barack Obama with a smile, do it effectively. She was very, very good.”

Of course, over at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann did not appear to shed any tears brought on by her speech, as appeared to occur last week in Denver following Obama's words at Mile High Stadium.  But, that wasn't really to be expected anyway.  There was actually a point though during MSNBC's coverage though, that I was seriously expecting some more sparks to fly between Olbermann and Chris Matthews.  There was a point during the speech deconstruction where Matthews in heaping a surprisingly amount of praise for Palin stated that her presentation had an aura of a "Norma Rae" type of empowerment to it, whereafter Matthews quiped that, perhaps, it was a combination of Norma Rae and "Tracy Flick", as portrayed by Reece Witherspoon in the movie, "Election".  Anyone familiar with that film is aware just how much of a snarky comment that was.  With Matthews and Olberman just a few days removed from some serious on-air friction, I really thought for a second there Matthews was going to mix it up again with his on-air partner, with such a quick, sarcastic retort to the highly analytical and vast amount of praise he had just  devoted to Sarah Palin. 

So, despite such a commanding and poised performance to which she is being credited, it still doesn't look like some in the media are prepared to give up on the pettiness and cheap shots.  And that may just play into the Republican ticket's favor.  It's not really certain how much that "us versus the media" factor can play into the success of a presidential campaign.  It didn't end up working for George H.W. Bush in 1992, but some say it was affective for Richard Nixon in 1968.  It's unclear this early how the media's handling of Governor Palin is going to end up playing out in the longrun. 

Though, we do have an early indication from Rasmussen that seems to indicate that the American voter is not taking the actions of the media in a positive manner, at all.

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah
Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them
more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) also believe the GOP vice presidential nominee has better experience to be president of the United States than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Wow.  51% of American voters not only think that our major news media is being unfair to Sarah Palin; they actually believe that they are essentially trying to hurt Sarah Palin.  That seems to be a pretty clear indication that the perception is pretty strong about what we already know about the liberal press.  

As occurred last night, it was to the advantage of McCain-Palin to go into last night from the position of underdog.  It surely seemed to draw the crowds to watch what was to be said in reaction to the events of the last week.  If the media doesn't get their acts together and start acting like legitimate journalists, those numbers tuning in could equally relate to the numbers that take to the polls in November by way of a backlash to their clearly unfair actions we've seen to date.

***

Update: From StopTheACLU we have a bit of number crunching of the Nielson ratings that have been reported from last night.

* The Sara Palin speech generated 37.2 million viewers, just a 1.1
million viewers short of Barak Obama’s record-breaking speech on Day 4
of the Democratic Convention. The Palin speech was carried on only six
networks while the Obama speech was carried on ten (including BET, TV
One, Univision and Telemundo).

* Palin attracted a large female audience (19.5 million women, or 4.9 million more than Day 3 of the Democratic Convention).

* Ratings for viewers 55+ (25.2) continue to be about ten times higher than for teens (2.2)

* Day 3 for the GOP attracted more Hispanic viewers (1.4 million)
than Day 3 of the Democratic Convention (1.2 million), even though
Univision and Telemundo did not carry the speech.

 Very interesting stuff, indeed.