It seems that media and Obama surrogates' (but I repeat myself) trash-talking and demonizing have lowered expectations of Sarah Palin's speech tonight to the "Can she get out a complete sentence?" level.

My sense is that this will work to her advantage, bigtime.

One person who can't exactly be accused of having a conservative bias had this to say about Palin's Friday performance in Dayton:

That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.

That person would be well-known and usually popular liberal gadfly Camille Paglia in the UK Times Online.

Of course, you can't find Paglia's quote in any major media outlet, even with a search engine:

• A Google News search on "Paglia" during the last 5 days has only 18 results (link may show 94, but there are only 18 as of 6:30 this morning ET), none of which are from major media outlets in the US.
• A separate search at the New York Times shows no relevant results.

What's interesting to remember ahead of Palin's speech tonight is that the network talking heads rained down praise on another Republican woman who spoke at the 1996 convention. Here it is, from the August 15, 1996 issue of the Media Research Center's CyberAlert:

 Finally Find a Republican They Like, But Still Attack Rest Elizabeth Dole: "Masterful"

It took until the third night, but Wednesday evening the networks finally found a Republican they could respect: Elizabeth Dole. However, they still spent yesterday morning and evening disparaging speakers who had criticized President Clinton and questioning the credibility of Jack Kemp for changing his position on affirmative action and immigration.

"Absolutely powerful performance," gushed Dan Rather after Elizabeth Dole finished her reflections on Bob Dole’s life. "It was masterful," agreed Tim Russert on NBC where Tom Brokaw explained: "In the language of this summer, ladies and gentlemen, that was a gold medal performance." ABC’s Peter Jennings pronounced it "an unquestionably brilliant piece of stagecraft by Mrs. Dole."

True, Mrs. Dole confined her talk to an easy topic, her husband and presidential nominee Bob. But you have to remember that the press was ready to pounce on another GOP candidate's wife after Marilyn Quayle's despised (by liberals) 1992 family values-heavy speech. After Liddy's speech, they had to throw away the negatives or look like total cads. 

Given 12 years of decay in decorum, will anyone challenge the negative spinmeisters if, as appears somewhat likely, Palin clearly meets or beats Liddy Dole's performance?

A related entry is at BizzyBlog.com.

—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters