Last night's theme at the Republican National Convention -- Make America Safe Again -- didn't just exist as a slogan. National security and crime got an intense focus last night, especially in relation to border security and the fentanyl plague that has devastated middle America. Nearly every featured speaker, with the possible exception of Speaker Mike Johnson's compelling speech on conservative principles and Vivek Ramaswamy's on American exceptionalism (watch them here), related to the topic of security and the failures of Joe Biden to provide it.

But by far the most compelling voices on these issues came not from elected officials and candidates, but from everyday Americans whose lives have been tragically altered by crime. As the NY Times puts it in review, the stars of the evening were those lost in crime and drug waves, whose family members came to testify to the failures that let them die -- and let those responsible off the hook:

The theme was “Make America Safe Again,” and the stars of the night were not onstage. They were the deceased loved ones of one emotional speaker after another: women, children and police officers, the victims of illegal immigrants, vicious criminals and fentanyl dealers.

Anne Fundner, a mother of four from California, spoke tearfully of the death of her teenage son after a fentanyl “poisoning” that she laid directly at the feet of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Michael Morin told of his sister Rachel, “raped and murdered by a suspected illegal immigrant.” Mr. Biden never called, he said. Madeline Brame, the mother of a New York Army veteran stabbed on the city’s streets, passionately decried being “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” all to cheers.

All three of these speeches had my wife in tears last nigh. Both Fundner and Morin struggled to get through their own emotions to finish their speeches, and the sight of that broke hearts wherever seen. This series of speeches, coming late in the program and after the highly anticipated addresses from Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley (watch them here), stole the show in an emotional sense. 

But the speech that brought the house down came from Madeline Brame. Brame, now a victim's advocate in New York City, had no trouble at all in speaking to the crowd about Alvin Bragg's refusal to prosecute those who killed her son, nor about the responsibility of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their progressive allies in making American cities more unsafe than they had been in decades. Brame offered no rhetorical quarter and took no rhetorical prisoners, and her stemwinder had the entire convention hall on their feet roaring in approval:

As I quipped in our live blog: "Man, can we just have Madeline Brame go on the road with Trump for the next three months?" It could produce a 50-state landslide. Well, 45, at least. 

But don't miss the speeches from Fundner and Morin, either. They may not have reached Brame's rhetorical power, but the emotional impact of their stories should not be overlooked or missed entirely. All three made security and civil peace a personal and compelling issue in this campaign, and Democrats won't have anything to offer to counter it.