H/T to Heather for the video embed

On the first primetime night of the Republican National Convention, the GOP dispatched Ann Romney to score points with women voters, and lessen some of the damage done by the abortion and rape debate inflamed by recent comments from Senator Todd Akin.

"Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises."

"I'm not sure if men really understand this, but I don't think there's a woman in America who really expects her life to be easy. In our own ways, we all know better!"

"And that's fine. We don't want easy. But these last few years have been harder than they needed to be. It's all the little things — that price at the pump you just can't believe, the grocery bills that just get bigger; all those things that used to be free, like school sports, are now one more bill to pay. It's all the little things that pile up to become big things. And the big things — the good jobs, the chance at college, that home you want to buy, just get harder. Everything has become harder."

Mrs. Romney's personal touch may well sway some women voters, especially if their politics leaned Republican to begin with. The reason her speech may score those crucial women's votes is because she can call attention to any of today's hot button issues without having to address how the Romney-Ryan platform will help or hinder these issues for Americans.

And if her personal anecdotes of growing up in small town America (No mention of that small town being the 4th wealthiest in the nation), meeting and falling in love with her husband at a school dance helped humanize Mitt Romney for anyone, that will just be icing on the cake come November.

"When Mitt and I met and fell in love, we were determined not to let anything stand in the way of our life together. I was an Episcopalian. He was a Mormon."

"We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know? We just didn't care. We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen. Those were very special days."

"Then our first son came along. All at once I'm 22 years old, with a baby and a husband who's going to business school and law school at the same time, and I can tell you, probably like every other girl who finds herself in a new life far from family and friends, with a new baby and a new husband, that it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into."

"That was 42 years ago. Now we have five sons and 18 grandchildren and I'm still in love with that boy I met at a high school dance."

This part of the speech fell flat for me, because I've heard most of it so many times before from other women. Young and in love, living in a basement apartment eating tuna and pasta while using a door propped on sawhorses for either a table or desk, and a fold down ironing board in the kitchen that doubled as a table. I'm wondering now if it's a chapter out of some old romance novel that's been passed around for years and years; "Chapter 3: What Have I Gotten Myself Into?" But an example of hardship? Not so much.

"I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a "storybook marriage." Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer."

"A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage."

What? A "real marriage," is that anything like a "legitimate" marriage? This came across as a slam, but aimed at whom? If your marriage failed it wasn't "real"? People without large families? The Obamas?

"No one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live!"

Mitt Romney in April 2007: [Romney] said the country would be safer by only “a small percentage” and would see “a very insignificant increase in safety” if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” Romney said.

"You can trust Mitt."

Release your income tax returns.