very brief convention wrap up

As a conservative, it's taken me a while to get acclimated to big-tent Republicanism. But I have—and fortunately I proved it here a few weeks back, so that my newfound enthusiasm for Rudolph Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't smell too much of rank opportunism.

Jonah Goldberg's Wednesday column expresses similar thoughts.

Then, of course, there is Zell Miller, who has singlehandedly reduced John Kerry's share of the non-metrosexual white male vote to approximately 0.3%. (Or as Ace sums it: “The Navy just awarded John Kerry his first legitimate Purple Heart.”)

On the President's speech: Domestic part borrrring. He definitely is not a small-government conservative, but if he pulls off the ownership society transformation, I will most certainly forgive him. The Democrats just have no idea how well proposals like Social Security reform play amongst Gen-Xers. I almost pity them. (Not really.)

Last third of the speech: soaring. This is a man who cares deeply about the soldiers and sailors that he sends into harm's way, about the spread of liberty for the oppressed, about the role of the United States as a beacon for the world.

And who understands what is at stake in this clash of civilizations, even if diplomatic realities prevent him from calling it by name.

In response, John Kerry proves once again that he is a petty, petty man.

We all saw the anger and distortion of the Republican Convention. For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as Commander-in-chief. We’ll, here’s my answer. I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.

The Vice President even called me unfit for office last night. I'm guess I'll leave it up to the voters whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of combat duty.

For the Senator this election is about little more than an infatuation with his own heroism and an overweening sense of entitlement.

But it's over, John-boy:

The single and only internal reason that things are now seen to be going badly inside the Kerry campaign is that deep inside the Kerry campaign, in the very core of the candidate himself, the have seen the fiery finger of fate write in glowing and deeply etched letters the single word: LOSER.

That's right — down in the center where the Kerryites are sifting their statistics and spreadsheets and seeding their spin they already know what most of us are just beginning to sense— They've lost and there is nothing, but nothing they can do about it.

Keen noses can smell the defeat starting to sweat off in the campaign corridors. […]

If the Swiftboat story has started the take-down, just wait until people really get moving on Wintersoldier and the Kerry's little jaunts to Paris and his meetings with the Vietnamese. Think it won't come out? Think again. The Bush Campaign doesn't even start until tomorrow. And, hey, it doesn't even have to come out. It just has to be there. Is it there? Why, yes, Virginia it is. “It” is always there. In this case, “it” is the difference between losing the election and losing your previously safe seat in the Senate. And an ex-candidate and ex-Senator does not exactly fit into Teresa Heinz Kerry's internal fantasies about her future, so even that previously secure position is in play.

Never heard of Winter Soldier? Or of Kerry's meetings with a North Vietnamese delegation in Paris while the war was ongoing, and while he was still in the Naval Reserve?

Don't worry: you will. Nemesis, she is a bitch.