Rock on, Sarah....

Sarah Palin is a rock star. But that won't matter in the end.

One of my most thoughtful and conservative friends wrote to me, thrilled about her GOP convention speech: "She is a game-changer... That's why the left is apoplectic," he wrote. "She's not just 'the GOP's Obama' -- she's 10 times more real and likable than Obama."

Seems a bit of a stretch. The independent-minded columnist Steve Chapman wrote that Palin's speech was tough but lacking in "qualiities like judgment, wisdom, tolerance and flexibility... To Republicans, Palin certainly looked strong and assertive. To skeptics, she seemed, at times, to be cocky and smug."

In other words, the game has not changed. People are merely projecting their own biases onto this race. So in spite of the celebrity news coverage and barring a major scandal, I feel quite sure that the VP picks will have little to no real impact on this presidential race.