Palin just wrapped up her speech at the controversial Tea Party Convention. Reaction on Twitter seems to be overwhelmingly positive. Pundits and liberals have stopped listening and just give a knee-jerk “she’s a crazy, fear-monger, blah, blah, blah.” Palin events are helpful though. I always delete the annoying people on Twitter who trash her.

I have mixed feelings about this speech. It was very policy-focused. Much more than I would have expected. She covered national defense, foreign policy, spending and taxes, Obama’s inability to be a responsible leader, listening to the people, and getting involved in local government. She was speaking to her most ardent fans tonight, and it was a good opportunity to lay out her views if 2012 is in her plans. Judging from her speech, I would say that 2012 is very, very possible. I look forward to reading the transcripts when someone finally posts them on the web.

Everything she said, I agree with. That’s the reason why I’m a fan of Palin. She’s not afraid to be frank and address the issue that actually concern Americans. Some call it populism. I would call it recognizing what average Americans are actually facing. Unless you work for the Democratic party, and your head is completely in the sand, Palin addressed concerns that Obama seems incapable of acknowledging. I’m just tired of the populist charge against Palin and Tea Parties. It shows how great the chasm is between the Beltway and real issues going on. If Washington was in step with the desires of the American people, the Tea Party movement wouldn’t have started last year. It’s painful to live in the Beltway and understand how the sausage is made but still side with the grassroots.

She said many things that I applaud. Namely that no one person is the leader of the Tea Party movement and that no politician is perfect. That can’t be emphasized enough. Was Palin speaking to her own supporters? If you read this blog more than once, you’ll realize that I am a Palin fan. However, she’s made mistakes. I don’t agree with her on everything, nor should I. There will never be a perfect politician. Even Reagan made his supporters mad on occasion. Unfortunately, Palin is attacked so much by the media and liberals, that deserved criticism is not tolerated within the Sarah-sphere. There’s also an element of blind worship that mirrors Obama adoration. Those two factors worry me.

Her delivery seemed off tonight, which annoyed me. Maybe I’m overly critical, but it sounded unpracticed. She stumbled through it and never found a steady rhythm. This was a speech that needed a TelePrompTer for a better delivery. There was not enough repetition in it to be read with notes. Her convention speech last year shows how well she can speak. I don’t think she practiced this. Stumbling and taking breaks to find your notes are signs of bad preparation. This was a policy-focused speech. She needed to keep her eyes on the audience and refrain from looking down, which hurts credibility and perceptions of confidence. Not surprisingly, Matthew Continetti at the Weekly Standard disagrees with me on this.

Sadly, Obama has ruined the use of TelePrompTers for everyone. They were once a good tool for delivering important speeches. Now, using one is seen as a crutch. Had Palin walked out there using a TelemPrompTer, the media would have attacked her with their double-standard of attacking Palin for breathing and blatantly ignoring idiotic mistakes that Obama makes (“corpsmen” comes to mind).

I’m glad Palin charged attendees with running for local office. Tea Party involvement needs to be more than holding up a sign and complaining about taxes. Government will not change unless you get involved. We’re hearing about Tea Party members running for office, but it’s still an exception rather than the rule. There should be so many Tea Party candidates running for local and state offices that it’s no longer news.

Will she run in 2012? I hope that I only have to say this once. The speech tonight points in that direction. However, we have absolutely no idea what the landscape will be like in 2012. I can’t predict the future, nor can anyone else. If by some chance Congress flips in November, it will likely restore balance that the American people seem to like. That puts us in a completely different position going into 2012 than the unified hatred towards Obama and his liberal cronies we see now. Also, voters are choosing Republicans as an alternative to the bad guys, not because they like them. The GOP has given no evidence that they learned any lessons from the Bush Administration and the great defeats 2006 and 2008. Two years of Big Republicanism will hurt anyone running for POTUS with an R after their name. This is Washington’s favorite sport, but I wish presidential speculation would just stop. In 2006, would anyone have predicted that McCain would be the nominee in 2008?

Townhall and RedState also have reactions up.

The emergence of conservative women is invigorating on the right and baffling to the left. A.C. Kleinheider’s piece in the Nashville City Paper would be funny if it didn’t capture the begrudging puzzlement of the larger media as to why the conservative movement suddenly looks so female:

Beyond a steady rightward shift and an increasingly reactionary rhetoric, conservative leadership is taking on another characteristic — it’s becoming more female. Both nationally and in Tennessee, the most beloved and vocal conservative leaders these days seem to be women.

Memo to Kleinheider: conservative women have always been here.  His comments confuse me. Does he not closely follow Tennessee and national politics? The existence of women on the right is hardly new:

Women need to be embraced as leaders — but not out of fear or necessity. It should happen the right way, or else the Right will merely be seen as a bunch of weak-willed reactionary little boys sending their women out to do their fighting for them.

Michele Bachmann was elected before Sarah Palin. Marsha Blackburn’s been involved in Tennessee politics for a long time now. Robin Smith was chairwoman of the TN GOP before Palin was on the scene. In order to have so many women running in 2010 means that women have been working up the ranks of the party and active in their communities for many years. It takes a long time to build up the name recognition, fundraisers and social capital to run for office. I’m surprised that he failed noticed that.

In fact, Republicans and conservatives have seen many of the “first” women across a number of categories. Labels and identity politics are just not as important to us. Just because the media suddenly noticed that women were in the conservative movement, doesn’t mean that we weren’t always there. Most of my political viewpoints come directly from my mother, who became a staunch conservative in the early 80s.  We’ve always been here. Now we’re getting the recognition that we deserve.

Palin is the catalyst not the movement.

Ironically, we owe it to the feminists and liberals in Congress for galvanizing all of the suddenly-visible conservative women that are shocking! Kleinheider.

This movement didn’t start with Sarah Palin nor will it end with her. Palin was the catalyst and should be analyzed, but the media, liberals and bloggers need to look at the bigger picture. Conservative women have always been in the movement, but Sarah Palin was the first woman to resonate with us. Prior to Palin, I always admired Elizabeth Dole. However, she was a DC insider with an Ivy League education. I could admire her (and the struggles she faced at Yale) but couldn’t identify with her. When Palin arrived, we had someone who reflected us.

Had the media and feminists said, “Great. The conservative movement is finally acting on what we’ve been preaching for 30 years,” I doubt that conservative women would now be so vocal. It was the the angry reaction of the feminist movement and the media that attacked Palin,  her family and her education. Suddenly liberals questioned if a woman could work and raise a large family. Her state education was ridiculed and her middle class existence was mocked. Those were the strengths that Palin represented. She was conservative and lived a very different lifestyle from the career politicians and bi-coastal elites, who are constantly telling us how to live.

By mocking Palin and what she represented, the media and feminists were collectively slapping the faces of every conservative woman in the country. This outrage is what motivated the  conservative women’s movement to come together, and what I’ve been writing about for over a year now.

This anger motivated countless numbers of bloggers. My friend, Tabitha Hale,  started her blog directly because of Palin. It led Teri Christoph to start Smart Girl Politics. It motivated a number of women who are now running for office.

Palin wasn’t the only factor though. Conservative women, just like conservative men, are angry at the government and our free-spending Congress. Women are just as involved as men in the Tea Party. The policies and activities of the Bush Administration and now the liberals in power are motivating men and women alike to stand up. Perhaps it’s a combination of our “traditional values” and anger that have caused women to be visible.

My dad told me this week, “I’m just as conservative as your mom, but I don’t have time to go to Tea Parties.” Ironically, the traditional values and roles that conservatives have long defended are what free women up to be active in the Tea Party movement. If Congressman Blackburn noticed that Tea Parties are largely female, it’s because there are more housewives on the right. My mom has always been a conservative activist because she had the time. If women control most of the purchasing power in this country, is it surprising that we’re actively protesting the wasteful actions of our government? Tea Parties are a reflection of the masses of Americans waking up to what Congress is doing, not a sudden pink-wash of the right.

Kleinheider, and others like him, should try to do a little research.  Again, this movement didn’t start with Sarah Palin nor will it end with her. My advice to reporters and academics would be to widen your angle beyond Palin, Bachmann and Blackburn. Palin was the catalyst and deserves to be analyze.  It is shortsighted to say that the conservative movement suddenly turned pink. You’re just now noticing us.

Much of the fault lies with academics. As Ronnee Schreiber notes in her book, Righting Feminism, hardly any academic study has been conducted on conservative women…ever. There was a small amount of research done after the failure of the ERA, but they assauged their failure by concluding conservative women are no different than conservative men. Since the 1980s, they’ve assumed that conservative women view politics indentically to men. Since we’re barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, we vote as our husbands and fathers do. They fail to see that conservative women are independently conservative because that’s the political movement they agree with. Since liberal feminists created the field of gender studies and created cushy jobs for themselves, it makes sense that they wouldn’t research areas that could potentially harm the movement and their sources of income.

To be concluded in Part 2.

Tea Parties are every where these days. They’re even on your TV now.

Next Tuesday, December 2, Tea Party: The Documentary will premiere in DC aptly at the Reagan Center. I plan on attending. Rumor has it that the event is black tie optional, so it looks like another opportunity to pull out a cocktail dress.

The film:

follows the struggles of five grassroots individuals and their transformation from home town rally goers and rally organizers to national activists in the 912 March on Washington. In the process, the film reveals what is at the heart of this nationwide surge of civic engagement – a return to and respect for a Constitutionally limited government, personal responsibility and fiscal restraint at the Federal level.

This week, you can watch a 30 minute sneak peak. A great way to escape family this Thanksgiving or rile up some liberal relatives.