We're about halfway through the prime-time speeches, and a couple of them have stood out. Mike Johnson's warm but measured defense of American conservatism should get shown in PoliSci classes at colleges and universities, for instance. It will not do much good in Academia, but it may resonate later in life.

But to this point of the evening, the best speech by far came from Vivek Ramaswamy. He went a little longer than some of the other speakers, but the former presidential contender made the most of it. The crowd ate up his championing of American exceptionalism as well as the rule of law as the core of American life. "We do not have to be Rome," Ramaswamy declared, "a nation in decline." 

It's well worth capturing and bookmarking. Ramaswamy may not have found his footing in the primary, but if he focuses on these principles with this much passion and clarity, we'll see him succeeding in other races soon enough. 

Update: Let's also include Johnson's speech, which literally just got posted to YouTube. The headline on this is from the first part of the speech, where he promised to get to the bottom of the assassination attempt on Trump and the failures that allowed it to almost succeed. But the rest of the speech is also excellent.