Safety, Prosperity, Peace, and Drill, Baby, Drill: The GOP Convention Is Finally Over.

I’m starting this as McCain is giving his speech — a protester just threw off his opening.

Another protester.

And another one.

Who’s the dumbass who gave these people credentials?  The Republicans can’t even run their own convention, how are we supposed to trust them to run the country?

Strangely, I was not roused by McCain’s speech.  I expected to be typing a vituperative rant during the entire thing, but honestly, he hasn’t said anything that makes me really angry.  A little misrepresentation of Obama’s positions here, a few gratuitous slaps at unions there, but … whatever.  So far, the most annoying thing he’s said is to repeat his party’s ridiculous insistence that we can drill our way to energy independence, leading to another round of “Drill, Baby, Drill” chants from the delegates.

There was some good stuff about how, as a former navy officer from a navy family, he hates war and wants most of all to work for peace.  More about his very impressive personal story, of course, but the rest of the speech was reheated, leftover GOP talking points, not delivered terribly well.

The speech is probably most remarkable for being so incredibly at odds with every other speech at this convention.  The previous speakers have been angry and sarcastic, for the most part, without any realization that their words would be heard by anyone outside their echo chamber in St. Paul.  McCain had a few snarky moments, but was mostly very earnest in cataloging the failures of his own party.

I would like to point out John McCain has been in Congress for 28 years, and his party has been in the White House for eight years — would someone please explain to me how he’s the outsider?  He may have been a maverick eight years ago, and he’s had some skirmishes with President Bush, but let’s not forget about his voting record in the Senate:  90% of votes with the Bush administration.  He’s not an outsider, and when Republicans run against Washington in 2008, they’re running against themselves.

The conventions are finally over — just like Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy say the McCain-Palin campaign is.  Thank goodness.

One final note:  worst of all, Mrs. Unfocused points out that the music in McCain’s video (and Palin’s, too) was ripped off from the theme for Dallas.