RNC's Greatest Hits

I've watched a bunch of the speeches from the RNC this week purely because I'm a masochist political junkie. Granted I'm not the Republicans' target audience but up until Governor Palin spoke, every speech had felt to me like the 10,000th time listening to Lynard Skynard's Greatest Hits on cassette tape. If you listen closely you get a hint of their appeal; Even if Skynard isn't your thing you can sort of see why others might like them. The problem is that by now you've heard the album way too many times and the cassette is worn and never really sounded all that great in the first place and your musical taste has changed a bit over the years. Sure, the folks in attendance in St. Paul still scream and hold up their Bic lighters when they hear the opening bars of Freebird. I think most of us watching from afar, however, just want to hear something else. Anything else.

Guiliani, Romney, Whitman, Fiorina, etc al. each trotted out the Republican greatest hits- small government, low taxes, and a sort of populist moral superiority. The problem is that the Republicans had many years controlling every single branch of the government and failed miserably in actually delivering any of stuff they talk about endlessly. As we sit here with a giant, bloated, corrupt and inefficient government largely of the Republican's making, the right is still trying to sell with a straight face the same stuff they've been yapping about since Goldwater but have failed to deliver. I'm obviously biased in the totally opposite direction but I have to believe that the same old Republican talk has to come off to your average American as being nothing but empty promises.