Ralston and Woodham on Palin
September 7th, 2008 at 8:26 am by David FarrarBill Ralston is not a fan of Sarah Palin. However he may be judging her off incorrect media reports:
She’s an aggressively pro-war, gun-loving fundamentalist Christian, a creationist who is strongly anti-abortion and so vigorously opposed to contraception that she preaches abstinence to teenagers like her pregnant 17-year-old daughter.
I’ve never seen her use the term fundamentalist to describe herself. She has stated she is not opposed to contraception. From Anchorage Daily News:
Palin said last month that no woman should have to choose between her career, education and her child. She is pro-contraception and said she’s a member of a pro-woman but anti-abortion group called Feminists for Life.
Also her comments on creationism are often quoted out of context. From WIkipedia:
While running for Governor of Alaska and asked about the teaching of creationism along with evolution in public school science classes, Palin answered: “Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both”; she further clarified that open debate between the two ideas should not be prohibited if it came up in discussion, but that creationism did not specifically need to be part of the curriculum.
So she specifically said she was not pushing for creationism to be part of the curriculum, just that you should allow discussion on the issue if students bring it up.
This woman is Dick Cheney in drag, although rumours of extra-marital sexual adventures in the hitherto surprisingly accurate tabloid National Inquirer might make her a cross-dressing Bill Clinton.
Rumours that appear to be false yet made mainstream media within hours. While the true rumours about John Edwards were not covered by mainstreammedia for months and months. Someone quipped that the best way Palin could have kept her daughter’s pregnancy out of the media, was to have John Edwards as the father!
Kerre Wodham is more favourably inclined:
Whatever you feel about Republican vee-pee nominee Sarah Palin and her politics, surely you can’t help but feel some sympathy for her as the bloggers and rumourmongers pick through her life and the life of anyone who’s been remotely associated with her, looking for dirt.
She’s had some experience of the muckraking associated with the job, having taken on the Alaskan old boy network when heading the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. …
But if she’s a pin-up girl for conservative Americans then surely her husband, the First Dude, is the prototype for the 21st-century man.
Not only is he an alpha male who hunts, shoots, fishes and is the four time champion of the Iron Dog, the world’s longest snowmobile race, but he’s a stay-at-home dad and man enough to be happy about his wife’s lofty political ambitions.
Every girl needs a First Dude. Todd Palin could prove a trump card for the Republicans. Only in the US could an illegitimate child of mixed race parentage be considered elitist and a moose-hunting, snowmobile-racing oil worker in Alaska the ultimate sensitive new age guy.
Almost everyone I know is saying the US election is far more interesting than the NZ one!
September 7th, 2008 at 8:40 am
The Democrats are lucky Palin’s not running for President with McCain as VP.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Palin, seems she would force her daughters to have a rapist’s child.
Book burning ? wanting the librarian to take some books off the shelves
as said here http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/book-gate-palin-wanted-to-ban-books/
Does the first amendment apply to god botherers ?
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Well Bill Ralston got one thing right in his piece
At least here in New Zealand there is scant difference between the two main parties
Which is one reason why American politics is more interesting than ours I guess
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:14 am
And let’s not forget Palin is a child abuser. After all, she forgot to bring home some milk from the supermarket once.
Palin, and her daughter, have received more MSM scrutiny in 1 week than Obama (friend of terrorist Bill Ayers) has received in 2 years.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:16 am
She is, or has been, a member of the Assembly of God, which is at the kookier end of the born-again spectrum, believing we are in the end time, expecting the rapture, etc.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:29 am
What too many are missing is her essential ordinariness. She ticks all sorts of boxes that the other candidates don’t.
In a nation where 22% of even atheists and 56% of agnostics believe in God or spiritual force her religious beliefs are not unusual, she has five young kids, not unusual in a country which birth rate is close to the highest in the Western world, lives in fly over country where 50% of the population, esp the Republicans do, is sports mad.. nuf said, and has a blue collar husband.
Politically she is unusual, thats all been covered but they also add that her political opponents have two characteristics, they are roadkill and still have the surprised expressions.
Ralston’s attitude fits the media demographic to a tee, liberal and elete in attitude and deep down, always shocked at how simple people really are.. and at how disgusted they are with the political elete.
JC
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:36 am
“… hunts, shoots, fishes and is the four time champion of the Iron Dog, the world’s longest snowmobile race …”
Typical MSM slack research – failure to mention that the First Dude also has a pilot licence and has been the registered owner of a Piper Super Cub two-seat aeroplane.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Ralston is the kind of ignorant knee jerker who obviously does his research through wikipedia and think that all people who believe in god are ” fundamentalist” christians.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 9:43 am
The Sunday Times has a Republican Yank concluding: “In short Palin is an ill-educated, inexperienced hypocrite. The Republicans are trying to sell her to the voters as something she isn’t, and McCain hardly cares what she is. It’s a bad day for my native land. ”
Ralston’s in good company.
Vote:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4692133.ece
September 7th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Some times Ralston seems to have his brains and mouth fully engaged and brings out some good thoughtful stuff, other times he is on full robot mode getting the verb-age stream straight from the 9th floor. This article must be a day when the pills got into his water supply.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 10:02 am
well..there you go..!..eh..?
earlier on this morning i was considering highlighting woodhams’ piece as a (howling) textbook example of superficial/simplistic mainstream media drivel..
(i mean..!..how is it not..?..)
and then..a coupla hours lately…on kiwiblog..
..it is cited as an ‘authority’..
yagottalaff..!..
and when..when..was the last time ralston had anything even vaguely interesting/intelligent/credibly-analytic to say..?
i linked/featured a story this morning where keith olbermann takes the mainstream media to task..
..and what he says about them is encapsulated in these two mainstream offerings..
..that are highlighted/endorsed by farrar..(!)
“..So Media–you lazy ass, dismissive-of-blogs-who-do-your-job-better-than-you, monolith of bias? The onus is on you to set the record straight.”
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:.
September 7th, 2008 at 10:15 am
“In a nation where 22% of even atheists and 56% of agnostics believe in God or spiritual force ….”
Eh!?
:-0
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 10:17 am
“Palin, seems she would force her daughters to have a rapist’s child.”
She also wanted her daughter to marry but got told to f off. So much for “forcing” her daughter to do much of anything, including rooting.
“Book burning ? wanting the librarian to take some books off the shelves”
Now there she was typically efficient. She got Harry Potter books banned.. two years before the first H Potter book came out.
JC
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 10:20 am
The best thing about Sarah Palin is that she has no time for liberal media jerkoffs like Ralston and Woodham. One of the highlights of her speech was when she stated “she was not going to Washington to seek the approval of such types, she was going there to serve the people”.
They can spin all the lies slanders (such as those from the racist above about book banning and the stuff from Ralston on creationism) and muck raking they want. Saran Palin has a higher approval rating than any other Governor in the US and after her speech, is more popular than McCain or Obama or Hllary Clinton.
The thing I find remarkable is that Mrs Palin’s common sense style and her willingness to confront the liberal elite that control the media and attempt to control every facet of our lives is regarded as something radical. Its really just down to earth stuff that George Bush and John Key and Don Brash and so many other politicians should have been practicing long ago. That the liberals have managed to keep politicians cowed for so long is just so difficult to understand. Why have politicians been so frightened to confront their bullshit??
Palin is a wonderfully refreshing change. Her courage and her willingness to unapologetically stand up for what she believes in and fight for it is a stark contrast to the wimpy compliant style of the jelly backs Key and McCain and Bush. She should have come along a decade or two ago. Right now, I’m just grateful that at long last, someone like Palin is here.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Doesn’t it worry ANYONE that McCain took this decision after having only talked to Palin once and without proper vetting? In fact, some of McCain’s comments about Palin (that she sold the Gov’s jet on eBay at a profit, that she had opposed the ‘bridge to nowhere’…) are so wrong it suggests that McCain did not know Palin before he made his gamble.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 10:44 am
have you heard/seen the palin-rap yet..?..(it’s actually quite good..!..)
(psst..!..it’s on that excellent news-site..whoar.co.nz..’always first with best’..so i’m told..)
but i reckon..the big/election-losing scandal yet to be revealed..
..is that john mccain is actually hank hills’ father..(!)
..http://whoar.co.nz/2008/is-john-mccain-hank-hills-dad/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 10:48 am
“Doesn’t it worry ANYONE that McCain took this decision after having only talked to Palin once and without proper vetting?”
Nope, because its all lies distortions and exaggeration and smears. You’re the one Greenjacket who should be worrying. People are sick to death of the left taking this line of attack against anyone who ever has an idea that confronts the dogma of socialism.
I’ve had it up to here with every lie from the left being so enthusiastically promoted by the mainstream media, the very people who should be protecting us from such lies, and I’m sick to death of their subordinate liars like you (Greenjacket) repeating them ad nauseum in the manner of Hitler and Goebbels, whose idea was that if you repeat a lie often enough, in the end it will be accepted as truth.
You’ve flogged the horse to death mate. You can’t compete in the competition of ideas, and your alternative strategy of lies and smears has reached its use by date. Just get out of the way. Your day is over. Palin has put the stake of truth through your heart, and you have no defences left.
BTW Mr. JC, good expose of the “book banning” smear here- (take out the removethis-)
removethis-http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/06/the-bogus-sarah-palin-banned-books-list/
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Palin rumour reference:
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:08 am
“She’s an aggressively pro-war, gun-loving fundamentalist Christian, a creationist who is strongly anti-abortion and so vigorously opposed to contraception that she preaches abstinence to teenagers like her pregnant 17-year-old daughter.”
Ralston simply hasn’t done his research. If he had he would have been able to state fact rather than emotional slogans and his bias would then be revealed. Unprofessional. It’s the kind of thing commenters on blogsites can get away with but journalists should not even consider.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Since the Left talking points will be the same in this thread as in the last Palin one I may as well just insert them here:
Lloydis
And there is that Chomskian pattern again – “I find that astounding”
Crap. Lloyd did not find it astounding at all – it’s been the constant theme of the Left about America – and especially the rubes who vote Republican – for years now. Just another plug to reinforce one of the primary beliefs of the Left – that right-wingers are ignorant peons.
America is a rather large, varied place. You really could spend a lifetime exploring it and enjoying seeing the – ahem – nuances of ordinary people, even if most do speak English. It is that, rather than any great fear or loathing of foreigners, that keep most Americans at home. Few of the Obama and Democrat supporters I know in Chicago have gone overseas and those that have, typically picked the tourist spots of Europe. But naturally the implication (and it’s always an implication) is that they are somehow more aware of the world.
But this sort of soft-bigotry exists within the American Left across a range of issues. It was most clearly put on display by the Obamessiah himself in his little crack about Americans whose only knowledge of French is “merci beaucoup”. The most telling aspect of that video clip were those knowing laughs that Obama elicited from the audience – even as the fans enjoyed their presumed superiority it was not clear how many of them actually spoke French, or any other language for that matter. Certainly Obama does not.
Okay – but even then I can’t assume that the press will form a protective shield around her gaffes the way they have around Obama and his:
- thousands dead in a tornado plea (he was tired),
- The I See Dead People speech (Vet Day, Memorial Day, whatever),
- President of the 57 States quip (he was really tired)
- the Keep Our Tyres Inflated will gain more oil than drilling (it’s been a long campaign)
Very similar to a past GOP VP. What was his name now…..
Oh yeah – that’s the one. Actually that quote comes not from Lloyd but from our primary Left taunter at Kiwiblog – PhilU – still trying to recreate the old days when the pre-You Tube media could lay down a narrative about a right-wing politician and see it stick. Of course nowadays:
Link-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxBX8sz3tO8
Woah! Quite a contrast between Mr “Uh…….uh……..uh……..(my teleprompter broke)” and Palin simply moving on through her speech when confronted with a similar problem.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:30 am
The left cannot compete in the field of ideas. The attacks on Mrs. Palin are just the US/ Democrat version of “Brash met with the Brethren”. Same old same old.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:40 am
“The Queen’s English was
Vote:Good enough for
Jesus Christ
And it’s good enough
For me.”
September 7th, 2008 at 11:41 am
If someone gave her a copy of Atlas Shrugged and she was enlightened enough to drop the religious crap and expouse reason and rights she may indeed be the perfect woman.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Whereas listening to Clinton, Obama and Biden one would never think that there was a Democratic president right through the 90’s when all those fleabite terrorist attacks were steadily ramping up. Nothing to worry about there – the local cops and DA’s will deal with it , or maybe the FBI, or some unit in the CIA. Now if I bite my lower lip and look compassionate can we talk about my wife’s fabulous Health Care Plan.
You would never think that the Dems controlled the House and Senate for almost 4 decades of continuous rule up to 1994 when all those wonderful institutions like the Department of Education were being built up and The War on Poverty was launched by good ol’ LBJ.
You would certainly never think that the Dems have been in control of the House and Senate for the last two years.
By the way, how is that Iraq War Defunding thing going?
What’s that? You mean to tell me that a newly empowered Democratic machine feeling their oats after the 2006 election eyeballed the most unpopular President in history over THE issue of the day – and lost!
Merci
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 11:48 am
“..our primary Left taunter at Kiwiblog – PhilU -..”
(ahem..!..)…i…i’m honoured..)
..and um..!..
the dan quayle thesis is quite widespread..
(have you seen the palin-rap yet.?…
(where she talks about giving him ‘a little push’..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
It an example of how blind the left can be that they continue their hate driven and bigoted attacks on Palin at the same time as they give Obama a complete pass. As so many commentors have already pointed out, Obama has the reality of a questionable past, whereas Palin’s perceived unsuitability for VP is a partisan artifice of lies and smears built by the left’s propaganda machine.
Above, Radvad points out that Mrs. Palin has received more mainstream media scrutiny and more negative reporting in a week than Obama has received in two years. Obama’s mentoring by convicted terrorists and communist party stalwarts has been ignored, while Sarah Palin has been crucified for relatively minor events that worse, haven’t even occurred.
One good thing about this is that it has brought home to any doubters that might still exist how hopelessly ideologically corrupt is today’s mainstream media. They promote partisan lies instead of shining light on them. Traitors to their profession.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
“In a nation where 22% of even atheists and 56% of agnostics believe in God or spiritual force ….”
Eh!?
:-0
http://tinyurl.com/4rxehe
As you can see, 92% of the country comprises mad fundamentalist nutters, which explains why they have about the lowest per capita income in the world, have produced no authors or books, no science and exists on foreign aid.
JC
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Because expecting candidates to acutally front questions about policy and their records as elected officials are for other people. Really, you’re a joke Baiter.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
“a creationist who is …”
Wow its thrown in there like a self explaned insult. Oh no she believes in the Bible ergo she is unfit to be VP.
“who is strongly anti-abortion”
Oh no she respects the unborns right to life, can’t have that anywhere near the Oval Office.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
It is an example of how blind the right can be that they continue their mindless and ignorant defence of Palin.
There was a certain group of conservatives in Britain who in 1938 agreed to permit Germany to invade Czechoslovakia. That Chamberlain’s defence of Hitler came twelve years after Hitler wrote his “What I will do when I am Fuhrer” book seems all the more astounding. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?
Sometimes, the best disguise is being right out in the open.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Lloyd really is a gift:
Not according to the leading example of the Progressive spectrum, The Green Party. They inist that Mr Farrar hosts:
And that particular thread saw almost all the usual Left suspects chiming in like clockwork: Jafapete, PhilU, Paul, Sonic, the Nome, etc, etc. All argued that this was true – and they did so in true Russellian fashion. Which is to say – sadly, with long faces and regretful sighs about the need for a really decent right-wing website. So Lloyd better get with the program before he’s termed an assimilationist, or a capitalist running dog, or a “Rightist” or whatever the hell passes for abuse within the Left nowadays.
Of course what is really going on here is the usual debate framing exercise. If Lloyd has to grease up DPF in order to paint Palin & co as “right-wing extremists” then he’ll do that – for the moment. Once she’s disposed argumentively it will be back to smearing Kiwiblog as “far-right”.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
“There was a certain group of conservatives in Britain ”
Obviously the very plain fact that I was trying to draw a comparison between left media’s vicious attack on Mrs. Palin and its fawning supplication to Obama went right over your head Zippy. (One of those half brained leftists Llew was talking about the other day I presume) Your comment is especially laughable, when it is Obama with his shadowy political past, his links to terrorist groups and Chicago crime and his adulation by the unquestioning masses that is more of a parallel to that socialist Hitler’s rise to power.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Obviously the very plain fact that I was trying to draw a comparison between left media’s vicious attack on Mrs. Palin and its fawning supplication to Obama went right over your head Zippy.
Yeah, go tell it to Jeremiah Wright, Baiter. (Which, speaking of the devil, how about Palin’s own America-hating pastor? Ay, Red?)
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Did you have a bile injection for brekky tom hunter? It’s Sunday. Lighten up.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
“..Of course what is really going on here is the usual debate framing exercise. If Lloyd has to grease up DPF in order to paint Palin & co as “right-wing extremists” then he’ll do that – for the moment. Once she’s disposed argumentively it will be back to smearing Kiwiblog as “far-right”..”
wow..!
(you got us bang to rights there..guv..!..)
your paranoias/conspiracy theories run long and deep..
..and are quite complex..eh..?
..do you spend a lot of time working on them..?
..phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Craig
I would like nothing more than to have an intellectually honest debate about Palin, her strengths and her weaknesses. I quite accept some of the criticisms of her that you (and Frum) have put forward. But here’s the thing – that is not how the Left are playing this game – and they never do – and I’m tired of the Right in NZ, rolling over and taking these sorts of hits when they actually lead to electoral victory for the Left.
Especially the sorts of electoral victories like Labour’s in 2005 – ones that enable them to continue to roll their ideology forward in ways that cannot be rolled back. The price of being able to look yourself in the mirror and say that you did not descend to their level does not, in the end, stack up to the price that NZ has had to pay – and will go on paying – for three years of increasingly cancerous and corrosive behaviour from Labour.
I don’t want to drag this thread too far off topic but what is National going to do should it win this November beyond babysitting the institutions of Labour and the Left. Nursing those things along, tiring all the time and steadily losing votes simply by being in Government and getting blamed for the insanities of those self-same institutions. Until the day comes, one or two election cycles down the road, when a revitalised Labour gets back into power and gets to push forward some more. Ratchet Socialism at its best.
Do you really think the Republicans playing nice is going to work in the face of a media and Democratic party that so absolutely covered for John Edwards for months, and that has pointedly refused to do to Obama what they did to Quayle for gaffes that are least as stupid, if not more so? How many excuses for Wright were made until he finally did a press conference in Washington DC where all his bigotry was unloaded on the very media themselves.
Do you really think that having an “honest” debate about policy will see any reduction in all the terms that have been unloaded here: “mindless”, “ignorant”, “nasty”, “mean-spirited”, yada, yada, yada. The fact is that, for all of Frum’s concern, symbolism does count and the endless repetition of those terms is the best evidence of it.
To see where this exercise in framing the debate has led us let’s take your comment from the other Palin thread:
Take the words “Obama” and “Governor” out of that paragraph and you would be describing Obama himself to a tee – which was undoubtedly part of the idea of selecting Palin. But I’ve yet to see any howls of derisive laughter from the Left about him.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
you obviously spend quite a bit of time on them..eh tom..?
and you mentioned pastors..
here is palins’..
“..Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell..
..questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven..
..charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war “contending for your faith;”..
..and said that Jesus “operated from that position of war mode.”
whoar..!..eh..?
the spiritual advisor of the next but one president of america..eh..?
(you can google him..if you like..)
so…?
i mean..this is all his/their own work..eh..?
with nary a dissembling leftie in sight..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Cheer Up! There is always Fran O’Sullivan:
BEGINS:
Fran O’Sullivan: What John Key can learn from Sarah Palin
“What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?
One is a well-turned-out babe, a spunk and, let’s be frank, a pretty sexy piece of eye candy.
The other kills her own food.
After all the sanctimonious, highly chauvinistic and patronising columns slating the qualifications of the Alaskan Governor to be the Republican’s vice-presidential nominee candidate, the above gag had lethal cut-through, deflating the pomposity of US pundits and editorialists who had written the 44-year-old mom-of-five off well before she electrified the Republican convention with a speech that hit all the conservative touchstones.
Palin’s forthright address to the Republican convention was a glorious respite after weeks of watching the Obama presidential machine wallow in a welter of visionary cliches that boil down to little more than a return to Big Government and hugging US enemies close. Big mistake.
In Palin, the Republicans have their own smiling assassin who adds authenticity to the view that, as a result of the surge, US troops in Iraq have now brought victory in sight. … ”
More at the Herald page. But the opener is the killer joke.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
“Now there she was typically efficient. She got Harry Potter books banned.. two years before the first H Potter book came out.”
Palin did, allegedly, try to ban books and fire her local librarian Mary Ellen Baker. An unindentified blogger invented the list of books that people have circulated. We do not know what books Palin sought to ban.
Since when did “Teach both” equate to “allow discussion on the issue if students bring it up”?
If feel that Palin paints herself unflatteringly as a theocratic demagogue in these, personally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k84m2orSOaM&feature=related
It’s nearly as bad as Iemma’s ‘How God Guides My Rule’ article.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Yes isn’t it interesting. The MSM here sat on the verifiably true story of Edward’s affair and likely love child for 15 months but have been all over any rumour to do with Palin within 15 hours!
As a counterpoint to philu’s regurgitating of the lefty blogs Palin smears, check the methodical debunking and dissecting of said smears at http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/09/06/palin-rumors/ I’ll leave the discerning readers of kiwiblog to decide who is more reliable.
Ralston’s rant encapsulates the feeling of elites here and in NZ.
Palin has shocked them and their fellow travellers on the political left because she is an ordinary person who made a difference and rose up the political ladder through her own efforts and achievements and not via some Ivy League college, well connected political family (or husband) or a corrupt party machine (Illinois) to give her a leg up. Feminists are quite happy for THEIR ideologues to put career before family but drip with self righteous indignation when a conservative woman eschews abortion, has a disgusting large brood and still succeeds in the brutal world of politics. It is almost impossible for cloistered Parnell and Ponsonby types like Ralston to begin to comprehend the mood on the street here in middle America – the word on the lips of everyone I meet is – She’s one of us! In political terms it is pure gold. What Palin achieved in cleaning house in Alaska is everyhting Obama promises and has NEVER delivered. He was handed a golden opportunity to end the reign of the corrupt Democrat Party machine in Illinois when the Cook County Commissioners election in 2004 featured a popular reforming Democrat called Forrest Claypool who had been endorsed by local GOP AND reform minded Dems. Obama’s clout as the winner of the Democrat primary for US Senator could’ve doomed the son of the former corrupt commissioner’s candidacy and boosted the reform oriented Claypool. When Obama had the chance to really bring about change he passed and he endorsed the ‘business as usual’ Daly machine – Palin had no such qualms and dealt to the corruption on the Alaska GOP. The authenticity of her achievements runs rings around the annointed one’s hollow rhetoric. The depth and breath of the smears and the sheer noise and volume of the angry left speaks volumes for the threat they see in Palin.
Socially liberal conservatives like Craig continue to eviscerate Palin and yet his preferred VP candidate (Kay Hutchinson – an enormously likeable and able Senator) would never help McCain to win in the way Palin will.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Here is a site that offers short rebuttals of the rumours about Sarah Palin. It is only a start of course. It looks like a good reference point though. The link is: explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/09/06/palin-rumors/. If this link doesn’t work from the page,type it into Google. My degree is in Pols and History, not Computer Science.
cheers
David Prosser
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
“The depth and breath of the smears and the sheer noise and volume of the angry left speaks volumes for the threat they see in Palin.”
Funny how everyone’s channelling Jeffrey Bell today.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/534rlysq.asp?pg=1
As Joe Klein helpfully points out No actually it’s the economy that’s falling apart…..
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/no_actually_its_that_the_econo.html
Joe Biden will have her measure and he won’t need a teleprompter to do it
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
lloydois
Turns out that Palin didn’t need a teleprompter either. Contrast her polished conclusion to her speech when her teleprompter raced ahead with a teleprompterless Obama who gaffs and umms and aahs his way through. If you are planning on Joe Biden cleaning Palin’s clock in the debate, I think you will be in for the same rude awakening that you and all your fellow lefties got after watching Palin’s VP acceptance speech. Note to Palin haters – watch Palin’s debate with former Alaska Gov Mukowski during the GOP primary – even the left leaning PBS commentators credited that debate for her primary victory. She acquitted herself equally well in the General Election debate against popular former Anchorage Mayor Tony Knowles and went on to her historic win.
Joe Klein is a reporter who was one of the first to jump in the tank for Obama. The economy is a big issue – so is Obama planning to raise taxes. Each US President that did this when the economy was shakey made it worse so bring on that debate. As I recall no Democrat nominee for President has ever won the White House promising to raise all the taxes that Obama promises to raise. Even Bill Clinton had the sense to not promise to raise taxes in 92.
Vote:September 7th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
“..The depth and breath of the smears and the sheer noise and volume of the angry left speaks volumes for the threat they see in Palin..”
i think it’s more a case of terror at the thought of her as president…
“..As a counterpoint to philu’s regurgitating of the lefty blogs Palin smears..”
yep..!..up to about 50 stories/links now..
..i’m sure the place to come to/the one-stop-shop for ‘palin smears’/exposes/reality checks….
enjoy..!
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=palin
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:September 8th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
So Kerre Woodham is the best political commentator we’ve got? Oh boy.
Vote: