When you want to know how much a conservative political candidate frightens the hard left in this country, check out the blog reactions to that candidates’ appearance and speeches. On liberal sites ranging from normally moderate communities like Alas to cesspools of angry moonbattery like Pandagon, the paranoid and often outright delusional posts have been coming fast and furious since the announcement that Alaska governor Sarah Palin will be John McCain’s running mate. It is almost reassuring that the radicals of the left are this worried about Sarah Palin - it demonstrates that they aren’t as tin-eared about political reality as they sometimes appear. They know she is a threat to their agenda, and that she is catching fire with an American populace yearning for leaders they can trust and believe in. Because of that, there is no restraint in their continuing attacks on Governor Palin and her record of genuine accomplishment.

Where liberals cannot get their stories to stick, they revert to simple name-calling and sexist accusations and whispers about the ability of a woman candidate to balance work and family life. No lie is too outrageous; no issue too complex to use to smear the candidate. Now the mainstream media is attempting to use these unfounded attacks and baseless accusations to spin a narrative of Palin as an embattled candidate. Unfortunately for her enemies on the radical left side of the aisle, Sarah Palin isn’t embattled. Embattled implies that your opponent’s blows are having an effect. Palin is under attack - but she’s kicking the crap out of her attackers and showing middle America the steel she is made of.

Governor Palin’s speech tonight was no exception. From a vigorous defense of her competence to govern - leavened with a devastating slam of Senator Obama’s “community organizing” job - to her cutting attacks on Obama’s high-tax, big-government agenda, Palin hit this speech out of the park without a missed note or a single rhetorical fumble. Those obsessed with the centrality of Washington in our nation’s political life often misunderstand something about politics out in the small towns and small states of this country: that periphery is where the really great ones hone their skills. Sarah Palin has spent years developing her political acumen and ability to connect with ordinary Americans - not angling for plum committee assignments in a sclerotic Congress or scheming to get trivial bits of legislation passed with her name on them. She is a pro, and she came to the Republican National Convention with a pro’s approach - but with the heart of a genuine American citizen who loves her country and serves her nation as best she can.

Refreshingly, she chose to take the high road and largely ignore the foolish attacks on her family, on her character, and on her record - attacks made all the more ineffective by the obvious, frothingly partisan rage of the people carrying them out. As a result, her speech was inspiring to the conservative base, reassuringly competent and issue-focused for the voters yet to reach a decision, and dispiriting to the liberal media and liberal establishment who had comforted themselves with the hope that John McCain would be running a staid and status-quo campaign, against which the rhetorical hopefulness and eternal changiness of the Obama campaign would find purchase in the hearts of ordinary Americans. Instead, Palin has made it crystal clear that the McCain-Palin ticket will be running on promises of genuine change - of strengthening America in the world, of developing the energy sources that our nation needs to grow and to prosper, and to shake up the long-moribund culture of tacit corruption and quiet gridlock that has enmeshed Washington for the last twenty years.

Even more frightening to those of our friends on the left who can perceive the course of the future, Sarah Palin has made it clear that she will be a force to be reckoned with, not only in 2008 and in 2012, but for the remainder of the time that Governor Palin chooses to devote to the service of her country - be it four years or forty. Like Ronald Reagan, Palin is a self-motivated person with an agenda born from her own beliefs, not the scripted talking points of a comfortable and cosseted media elite or a stultified political class, but the genuine and heartfelt values that she was raised with and which she has claimed as her own.

Tonight at the XCel Energy Center, America was introduced not just to our next vice-President, but to the person most likely to carry the GOP leadership torch forward for the next decade. It is too early to start talking about President Palin - but it is not too early to start considering what an astonishing and welcome development that President Palin would represent, both for the Republican Party and for the United States of America.