What a week......

Let's start with last Friday. I prepared myself for a weekend of media types gushing over Obama's acceptance speech. I gritted my teeth waiting for McCain to announce Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as his V.P. It wasn't going to be a good weekend. On top of all that my son had to evacuate from Baton Rouge. I was stressed.

Then this beautiful thing happened. Like a unexpected present with a big sparkly bow, McCain picked Sarah Palin to be V.P. It was too good to be true.

Suddenly no one was talking about Obama's speech the night before.

The angry buzz you heard came from the left. Like a swarm of hornets they went after Sarah Palin as if she had sprayed their nest. They tried to attack and sting. They repeated false stories saying Palin was a Buchananite, hinting at “Nazi sympathizer.” They claimed she cut funding for pregnant teens. They said she was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party which wanted succession for the U.S. But the most disgusting smear was that somehow her Down Syndrome baby, Trig Palin , was really her daughter’s. All lies, but that didn't stop most of the leftwing sites on the net from repeating them over and over. Even the MSM (MSNBC being the most egregious) jumped on the gossip bandwagon and then had the nerve to question whether Sarah could be V.P. and be a good mother at the same time. Finally, and the most repugnant, was the attacks on her 17 year old daughter who was pregnant.

Never before had the media gone after the children of candidates like this. It made all of us out here in middle America sick. Then came what we like to call......backlash.

Because the left didn't know who they were dealing with. This was a woman who took on the corruption in her own party. She stood up to big oil and special interests. This was a fighter, and the left never saw her coming.

While they were snarling and pounding the table, Sarah Palin stepped to a podium at the Republican National Convention and cut them all off at the knees. Over 40 million viewers tuned in to see our Vice Presidential nominee. More than tuned in to see Obama's historic Presidential nominee acceptance speech. And certainly more than the 24 million that tuned into Sen. Joe Biden's Vice Presidential acceptance speech. Given that 4 networks that covered Obama didn't even cover the Palin speech, I'd say she had a good day.

Sarah "Barracuda" Palin blew everyone away. Everyone is still talking about her.

Last night McCain gave a moving and telling speech. It told us who was ready to lead. We thought we knew McCain. We have loved him when he was with us and we have been angered when he chose a different path than we would have liked. But we always knew he would be honest with us.

But McCain wasn't as exciting as Obama. Obama was new and different and made everyone stand up and take notice. Obama was like the new pretty girl in school. No one could take their eyes off of him.

But McCain has always known how to draw America's attention back to what is important.

Sarah was his gamechanger.

Because of Sarah, America was able to focus on the man that McCain is when it was time to tell that story this week.

It worked.

"Presidential candidate John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention drew more television viewers than his rival Barack Obama attracted at the Democratic party's event last week, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen Media Research."

Now it's Friday again and I'm feeling no stress. No one in political life has shared my values and my beliefs more than Sarah Palin.

I'm walking on sunshine here.





*Now, on a personal note, I am going to a family wedding this weekend and I intend to celebrate this week there. So don't be looking for me here.

See ya Monday.