The Associated Press has come up with a list of "5 GOP convention speeches to remember."

The leave out 1980 "Rendevous with Destiny" Reagan speech, but include the Gipper's most graceful public moment: when he mounted the stage at the 1976 convention and gave an impassioned plea for party unity. It was impromptu and totally unscripted -- and it couldn't happen today.

Reagan uttered these memorable words:

He says of future Americans: "Will they look back in appreciation and say thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom, who kept us, now a hundred years later, free, who kept our world from nuclear destruction?"

Also included:

Goldwater's 1964 barnburner: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. ... Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

George Bush's "Read my lips" 1988 acceptance speech.

Pat Buchanan's 1992 culture war speech that ignited social conservatives and made them a force in GOP politics to this day.

Sarah Palin's 2008 "hockey mom" speech. There has never been a national debut quite like it. "The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

I would have included Zell Miller's roof raiser as keynoter at the 2004 convention and taken out the Bush speech, which was important only in retrospect. The rest of the speech was mundane.

But Zell Miller's red meat attack on Kerry electrified the crowd, as you can see from the video below: