One of The Right’s most common attacks on Obama is that he’s “an empty suit”, that he’s nothing but a flashy showman reading teleprompter speeches to try to con the audience, to trick them into believing he actually has substance.  It’s a completely bogus charge but, given the focus on Palin this weekend as “more ready” than Obama, it’s not a surprise they’d try to make her out to be the superior speaker.  Well, enter Erick Erickson, writer for the conservative megablog Redstate.com:

According to sources close to the McCain campaign, the teleprompter continued scrolling during applause breaks. As a result, half way through the speech, the speech had scrolled significantly from where Governor Palin was in the speech.

[...]

Unfazed, Governor Palin continued, from memory [and relying on her printed text, clearly looking down occasionally at the printed page], to deliver her speech without the teleprompter cued to the appropriate point in her speech.

Contrast this to Barack Obama who, when last his teleprompter malfunctioned, was left stuttering before a crowd unable to advance his speech until the problem was resolved.

If true this narrative would be fairly moving.  From all accounts Palin gave a rousing and viscously partisan acceptance speech that has the base in thralls.  There’s only one problem: according to a reporter on the scene this story’s completely untrue.

Sarah Palin delivered a powerful speech last night, but she did not “wing it.”

[...]

This claim has been picked up on Drudge and could quickly enter into the insta-mythmaking about a speech that need not be embroidered.

Perhaps there were moments where it scrolled slightly past her exact point in the speech. But I was sitting in the press section next to the stage, within easy eyeshot of the Teleprompter. I frequently looked up at the machine, and there was no serious malfunction. A top convention planner confirms this morning that there were no major problems.

So is this a lie or simply sloppy and uncorroborated reporting?  It’s hard to tell for sure, but given the source of the rumor it’s hard not to draw conclusions.  Steve Benen of Washington Monthly asks why The Right would feel a need to add some “mythical flair” to Palin’s speech; the answer should be obvious.

If they fail to brand Palin as more connected to the “common citizen” and better then Obama in every metric they lose.  They already know McCain can’t compete against the Obama/Biden ticket so they’re latching on to the only weapon they have left in their arsenal, Palin. To the GOP Palin is the perfect poster child, a “lipsticked pitbull“.

• ~ She’s a woman, so any attacks against her can (and will) be countered with cries of sexism.
• ~ She’s a rural family woman, so they can claim any attack on her is an attack on the common citizen.
• ~ She’s a governor, even if of one of the lowest population states in the nation.
• ~ She’s rabidly religious, anti-abortion, and a believer in creationism.   Basically… she has zero respect for science even though it’s the entire basis of modern civilization.
• ~ And, whether they want to admit it or not, she’s not afraid to use the powers of government to punish those who have “wronged her”.  To the authoritarian mindset shared by many, but not all, “conservatives” that’s likely a good thing.

Ironically enough this effort might actually be backfiring.  Not only has Gallup’s daily tracking poll shown public support for McCain drop since Palin’s speech, her hyper-conservative positioning may actually hurt McCain’s standing with independent voters.