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Editor’s Note: The U.S. news media's consensus was that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin "hit a home run" with her speech at the Republican National Convention, and most journalists were silent about her falsehoods about Barack Obama and herself.

In a rare dissent to the conventional wisdom, former Democratic congressional aide Brent Budowsky believes that the harshness of the Republican convention will back-fire:

My view is directly against the overwhelming majority of cable talkies and pundits in my belief that Sarah Palin's speech, and the Republican Convention as a whole, will be seen as a disaster well before Election Day.

In her nasty and small-minded speech ridiculing Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer, Sarah Palin, in effect, attacked church groups helping jobless workers in what she thought was clever ridicule of Obama.

Incredible — demeaning churches that help the jobless.

This is the convention of ridicule, derision, nastiness and ugliness of a party that has virtually nothing positive to say about itself and has become a virtual hate-fest against Obama in the George Bush, Swift Boat, Karl Rove tradition.

Speaker after speaker, day after day, has been gushing the ugliness and nastiness that Americans are disgusted by. This is not the party of Abraham Lincoln; it is the party of Pat Buchanan. It is not the party of Teddy Roosevelt, it is the party of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and George W. Bush.

I will not predict the polls in the next 48 hours, but I will predict that a week from now, this convention will be seen as a negative and Sarah Palin will be seen as a disaster and her speech spitting venom against Obama will be viewed as much a disaster as her nomination will ultimately be proven.

The vetting of Palin that McCain did not do, and the media have not yet done, will include the fact that John McCain specifically attacked much of Sarah Palin's pork when she was mayor of Wasilla as wasteful spending earmarks.

As the Los Angeles Times has now reported, McCain cites specific Palin pork projects in his indictment of earmark abuse. Obama should raise this issue; the media should report it; perhaps McCain will say he forgot how he personally condemned Sarah Palin’s pork.

Bigger picture, the Republican hate-fest presents a portrait of a party with nothing left to say about itself, nothing left to say about how it will help jobless workers, or how it will strengthen America in the world except angry war talk and demeaning ridicule.

Now the great hope of Republican right-wing theology, which wants to declare a national civil war over abortion, has now demeaned and ridiculed American churches helping jobless workers because Barack Obama cared enough to join them.

How fitting for a party with nothing left to say that they demean churches helping the jobless thinking it is some clever attack on Barack Obama for working with those churches to help those jobless.

Brent Budowsky was an aide to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Rep. Bill Alexander, then the chief deputy whip of the House. A contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service, he can be read in The Hill newspaper, where he is a columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

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