The Palin Speech
Off to the US Embassy again today – this time for the McCain speech. But it may be a fizzer compared to the speech of his running mate – Sarah Palin. Look at what the pundits said:
It wasn’t just a home run, said CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at the St Paul, Minnesota, convention – it may have been a grand slam.
“A very auspicious debut,” said NBC’s Tom Brokaw.
It was a “perfect populist pitch”, said Jeff Greenfield of CBS.
“Terrific,” said Mort Kondracke on Fox News Channel.
“A star is born,” said Chris Wallace on Fox, a view echoed by Blitzer and by Anderson Cooper on CNN.
The full speech is here. Also a video of it. Some of my favourite parts:
Todd is a story all by himself.
He’s a lifelong commercial fisherman … a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope … a proud member of the United Steel Workers’ Union … and world champion snow machine racer.
Throw in his Yup’ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.
The Republicans have a working class candidate, or at least candidate’s husband.
Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.
Now that’s a bitch slap, pardon the term.
And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform – not even in the state senate.
That is a great line – authored two memoirs but no major law.
In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.
And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.
Nice.
Her candidacy is still a risky one. At some stage she will be quizzed on national and international issues and will need to be conversant with the issues. But the pundits all agree it was a great speech.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Now we find out why the Left hates her so much: She’s all ethical substance and style.
Curious, I’ve read the transcript, but what am I missing by not viewing the video? How does a short speech take 45mins to present?
September 5th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Her speech was indeed brilliant. It will be great to witness history in the making this November when she becomes the next Vice President of the USA.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Sarah Palin gazzumped the left wing media,the RNC attendees and the people of the USA.
McCain/Palin are the candidates of change, battling the “rot” in Washington.The fact that she was a hockey “mom”, a real person not created by spin doctors, makes her attractive to the once in four year voters who will turn out.
For that very reason look for her to pull votes in Michigan,Pennsylvania,New Mexico and the small states.
The slithery and slimey Obama/Biden ticket will still appeal to the leftists on the eastern and western seaboards but in between I think the tide has shifted.
Go McCain/Palin.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Damn I am starting to hope
McCain wins, he has got the trailer park vote locked up.
Just what the USA needs, a VP wh will go through the books of the nations libraries making
sure that none will have the young wanting sex.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Washington has been dominated by the liberal hegemony for too long. After so many years of rule by coastal elites who think they know better than middle class Americans it’s time for conservatives to say, enough! Finally we can have a truly conservative government and get America out from under the liberal bullshit that is bringing this country to its knees!
September 5th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Her speech was all cock sucking and little substance. She said “change, change, change”, but what the fuck are you actually going to change?
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=184086
[DPF: And that is 30 demerits]
September 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
She lied about Obama’s legislative accomplishments. See http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/obamas_legislative_accomplishments/
Her speech was written by Matthew Scully – a former speechwriter for Bush. The McCain campaign isn’t letting her do interviews. They must not have a lot of confidence in her.
It is sad to see the lying and smearing continue, especially from an extremist like Palin whose claim to fame is being an ex-Mayor of Nowhere, Alaska.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Ha ha….Palin really must have done some damage to Obama the flake given the way that the left are attacking her.
The very worst example I have heard was on Newstalk ZB this morning when that pinko Wendell Nissan launched a savage and personal attack on Ms Palin.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Reb
“Change change change”
Sounds a lot like a Hussein Obama speech to me, have you thought about asking yourself the same question about your hero Obama.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:38 am
At the of the day all these bitter lefties are going to be PWNED by Sarah Palin.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Sorry, folks. If Palin was auditioning to stand in for Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly, she would have aced it. Proved that she’s competent — let alone qualified — to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office in a time of war abroad, and deep economic insecurity at home? Nope.
To write out a reality check, here’s
David Frum, from that well-known “liberal media” outlet National Review Online. The whole post is worth reading, but the real sting is in the tail:
McCain-Palin ‘08: Putting Country Last.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:44 am
“Karl Rove appears bitterly divided on the experience issue”
Heh, Rove’s a hypocritical former spin doctor, fancy that.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Yep Reb, what an insitefull comment, you tell that to her lifelong commercial fisherman … a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope … a proud member of the United Steel Workers’ Union … and world champion snow machine racer, husband.
As for Wendell Nissan, bagging right wing conservitave christian, and getting stuck into a teenage mother, typical intolerant lefty. Just sounded stupid to me. While I am yet to be convinced that she is a good pick for VP apart from being able to pick up votes, I am quite convinced that Obama has little substance and am prepared to see how Palin goes during the campaign.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:45 am
goodgod – it is better on the audio, and much better on the video.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:47 am
And Paul Waugh from the editorially right-leaning Evening Standard
calls bullshit on the “Palin is an American Thatcher” nonsense doing the rounds.
Thou shalt not take the Goddess’ name in vain…
September 5th, 2008 at 8:57 am
and of course..that grab-bag of homlies was the result of palin working for three days with bushes ‘top’ speech-writers..
..and of course the polls have obama cracking 50% support for the first time..(mccain 8 points behind..)
..and as for the medias’ fawning/reaction..
..isn’t it all so redolent/reminiscent of ithe media here’s reactions during keys’ honeymoon period..?
..y’know..!..before the scales fell from everyones’/many eyes..?
..i’m predicting a similar arc for palin..
..phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I’d like to ask the person who have my last two comments negative karma, what exactly did I post (or Frum and Waugh say in the linked posts) that is actually untrue? Or is Sarah Palin — unlike left-wing female politicians — someone who shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny and criticism around here? If McCain really wanted a right-wing woman on the ticket, was Palin seriously the best he could do? Is the gene pool really that shallow, or did he approach others (like Kay Bailey Hutchinson) who told him to get lost?
Admittedly, she’s sure jazzed up “the base” — but she’s eventurally going to have to come out of the hermetically sealed goldfish bowl, and answer some real questions about her record, the serious and credible ethics questions over her head, and whether she actually has any thoughts in her head on immigration, trade issues, relations with China, Russia and the rest of the world. Healthcare and pension reform? Anything?
September 5th, 2008 at 9:13 am
psst..!..craig..!..it might’ve been a lefty..
..y’know..!..the knee-jerk reaction..
i reckon i could post next saturdays’ winning lotto numbers..
..and score a decent hunk of neg-karma..
..phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 9:16 am
I have to admit I’m surprised by how profoundly she’s spooked the horses in the Left’s stable. She’s a populist and an executive, not a foreign policy wonk. Not, actually, any type of wonk. And for the base, that’s a gift from the gods, both ways.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Craig and Phil become unlikely bedmates.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:17 am
There are some pretty sensitive souls round here Craig…
September 5th, 2008 at 9:20 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1lCMH8rlHE
Tells you all you need to know about the stinking pile of hypocrisy that is the Republican Party and their media shills.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
She gave a good speech. We still don’t know much about her. But she passed the first hurdle. And she still has broadly as much experience as Obama, and remember she is running for vice president, whilst he is running for president. Any sticks cast at Palin based on experience will turn out to be boomerangs that come back on Obama for exactly the same reason.
I’m not sure it was a deliberate choice by McCain to get someone who had comparable experience to Obama, and thereby highlight how little experience he has. But it sure as hell has worked out well for the Republicans on a tactical level.
As for how she’ll go in the run up to the election. Nobody knows, despite all the conviction that some on the left like to have. She might be very good, she might be a light weight. And blithering about a speech writer is a bit pointless – unless you’re trying to tell me all the other politicians are writing their own speeches. At least she managed to deliver it well, which is more than you can say for most of them.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Dunno if it was her that “spooked” anyone francis – the Dems would’ve ripped into ANYONE the Republicans picked, although perhaps they might’ve held back a bit on Lieberman. Looks like that National Review guy is far from happy though.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:25 am
First Impressions count and she made a fantastic one.
Last elections only about 52% of eligible Americans voted. I can see tens of millions of good ol boys thinking that this Palin famly might be fun to have around. I think an equal amount of women will be thinking that this lady can make a difference and she doesn’t have Hillary’s baggage. This is a real family and Heartland America will recognize them.
Between Palin and Obama I expect a much larger voter turnout this year. It will be good for the country to have a President elected by more than 26% of voters.
So, is Palin for real? First thoughts are yes, she is, but time will tell. The VP debate just became compulsory viewing. A repeat performance there from Palin and the most interesting US election in memory, just got a whole lot more so.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:33 am
CraigM, you don’t think those “good old boys” thought the same about Bush, and voted accordingly? Women who vote for a vagina really are idiots…
September 5th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Speaking of Rove being divided, there was a very funny item on the Daily Show last night (I’m sure you’ll be able to find it on u tuber or something) which showed Rove and a few others’ 180 turnabouts on key areas like experience. He was extolling Palin’s experience advantage because she had been mayor of Alaska’s second biggest city (pop 9000) but weeks before a clip showed him dissing a Dem VP contender for having little experience, having only been governor of a small state and mayor of a small city (pop 200,000). There were a few others by similar talking heads. Very funny how these guys can rotate opinions so easily.
I don’t know why some get so excited and partisan about the US election – we have no control over it, we can never truly understand the dynamics from the outside peering in. It’s an interesting sideshow but that;s about all. But then I suppose there are passionate Man U supporters in NZ who have never been beyond Sydney, so it is hardly surprising.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.
That was the nastiest line of a surprisingly mean-spirited speech. Obama was a stellar graduate of the Harvard law school. He could have had his pick of corporate law gigs. And instead he went to work with poor folks on the south side of Chicago. Apart from anything else, a good many community organisers are churchgoers: insulting them wasn’t a very dignified thing to do.
The other thing that surprised me was the sheer name of bogus claims she made for herself: the record is quite clear on the fact that she campaigned for the Bridge to Nowhere right up until Congress yanked it, and her comparison of herself with Harry Truman — who spent 10 distinguished years in the Senate before becoming VP — was quite absurd.
But I accept that I’m not the target market, and that that market is, as Frum says, much keener on blunt symbolism than detailed policy positions. She’s now stonewalling the ethics investigation back home, which I’m not sure is a good idea.
I hope someone can get hold of the Wasilla librarian she tried to fire and find out what books Palin wanted to ban. There’d be endless fun in that. Perhaps someone could ask her when she’s actually allowed to do an interview or press conference — although there’s no sign that’ll be soon.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I just can’t believe that the media haven’t jumped on the fact that her unmarried daughter is pregnant at 17, she herself eloped and had their first child only eight months later! (granted, he may have been premature but it seems nicely convenient).
The other thing I find curious is that when Bristol Palin is born, Trig Palin will be an uncle at 10 months! (yes this does happen in some families but that of the potential Vice-President?
I really hope that Americans look beneath the rhetoric at some of the not-so-pleasant facts and consider whether that’s really who they want as a potential President. But the chances of that happening? Slim-to-nill.
Whether they’re prepared to accept it, our lives are shaped by who is in the oval office, and how nice it would be if the rest of the world we got a quarter-weighted vote to have some say in how our lives are run. I can’t think of another international government that has such an affect on the day-to-day lives of people in other countries than that of the United States.
[btw, any West Wing fans here? couldn't help but chuckle when Cindy McCain ended up in a splint because she injured her wrist from too many vigorous handshakes
]
September 5th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Craig, Palin was selected on her strong record and reputation in the same way that Nixon, barely a Senator for a year and a half, was selected by Eisenhower. I seem to recall Nixon doing pretty well afterwards, so I’d suggest you give her the benefit of a doubt, at least for a wee while as the campaign progresses anyway. And despite your veneration of Thatcher, I do wonder whether you would have said similar things about her in 1975 when she was merely a stalking horse for Keith Joseph against Heath?
September 5th, 2008 at 9:47 am
and for those wondering about palins’ record..?
..yep..!..she belongs to that brand of rightwingers who emote/care untill a child is born..
..then are quite happy for them/their mothers..
..to starve in a gutter..
..here is palins’ own/personal contribution to the sufferings of young mothers..
..and their babies..
..(just the usual rightwing bullshit..the same as we get from the posters here..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2008/palin-slashed-funding-for-teen-mothers/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 9:49 am
insider, that is the clip I was referring to! Reb linked it. It was just a hypocrisy clip – showed that Bill O’Reilly guy condemning the parents of Britney Spears’ sister (teen mother), and then 180-ing on Palin’s daughter. Odd.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Craig Ranapia, could you tell me , what experience in foreign policies/relations that Reagan & Clinton had, prior to taking up of the executive office?
Phil U, what is your interest in the US election? Does it matter to you who becomes president of the US? Get this, republican or democrat president, when they need to bomb someone they will go ahead and do it. The fact is, you and your lefty mates will still be anti-US regardless if it is a democrat or republican president, so why bother or take any interest in their election?
September 5th, 2008 at 9:54 am
How typical of Russell Brown to desperately seek a negative in Palins speech, as per normal he considers her REPLY TO THE PERSONAL ATTACKS FROM THE LEFT to be “nasty”
What is it with you lefties Russ?, do you really think the game is played by rules that say your lot are allowed to smear, lie cheat and slander yet your opponents are not allowed to retaliate?
While we are on about bogus claims, do you fancy trying to justify some of the outlandish bullshit espoused by Hussein Obama?
Oh…BTW, have you seen a copy of Obama’s birth certificate yet?
September 5th, 2008 at 9:56 am
One other thing… did anyone hear the corker from a Fox News guy about Palin’s foreign policy experience?
I quote:
“But the other thing about her, she does know about international relations because she is right up there in Alaska right next door to Russia ”
To which the Jon Stewart later added…. “yeah, by that token she must be friends with Santa Claus”!
You can see the video here…
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/29/doocy-palin-russia/
Stewart’s first take on Palin was fantastic… just search the Daily Show site for Palin, its the first one…
September 5th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Yeah Russell the community organiser was a good way to piss off a lot of poor people too, like one of the media pundits said afterwards. Going for the ‘target market’ was I suppose a way to get all the christian conservatives off their arses who were apparently too despondent to vote for McCain when it looked like he was going to win the nomination, no matter that they didn’t like Obama…
September 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I think the speech was great and did exactly what it needed to: solidify the base. It was a good speech to bring the Republican base together, but the Republican base may not be enough this year with how many new voters the opposition are bringing in (high black turnout etc). I agree with Russell Brown that the community organizers part may actually backfire. Given that Obama’s campaign is very much grassroots based it probably wasn’t a good idea for Republicans to down cry it as useless or worthless. Indeed, it is the reason why Obama’s campaign appears to have been so successful. Those people will be very fired up now. Not to mention people who organise soup kitchens, run after school-programmes, do legal aid etc and have contact with lots of people in communities. I think it will backfore which is a shame because the rest of the speech was really good
September 5th, 2008 at 10:04 am
For a start big bruv you can stop the blatant race baiting implied in your constant calling of Obama “Hussein Obama” before calling on others to stop smearing
I’m assuming you’re too thick to realise Hussein is a semetic name.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Dear Carly, what on earth does the sex life of a candidate’s daughter have to do with their ability to be Vice President?!
Grow up.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:06 am
big bruv, his middle name is Hussein?! Good point. Hard to see piss-takes online though…
September 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
“..Phil U, what is your interest in the US election?..”
hard to comprehend the (whatever) in that question..
..for starters:..wot bush has wrought..?
..when you have ploughed through all that..
..get back to me..
oh..!..and the environmental/’green’-vision/plan thing that obama has for reviving things..?
…whereas mccain is just..’more bush’..
..that obama is not a decrepit war-mongering crone..
..staggering up the path to deaths’ door..
..that biden is not..(my favourite!)..’kirsty alley..before she ate shelly long..’
..and a cartoonish nightmare..
..how’s that..?..for starters..?
..phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 10:15 am
lloydois
Hussein is his name, you seem to have a problem with that for some reason.
And frankly you can take your accusations of racist behaviour and shove them where the sun does not shine, sadly it seems you know that your man Barrack Hussein Obama is a flake and a fraud so you attempt to shut down debate by attacking those who do not share your brainless adulation of the man.
I guess its true when they say that there is nothing nastier than a lefty who is facing the loss of power.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Falafulu Fisi, you have a good wider point – why the hell do people down here give so much of a damn whether the left or right candidate wins in a country far far away? All I can think of is that ‘their’ candidate winning validates their own ideological position, which is a little sad, really. I can understand a like/dislike of foreign policy and trade, but obviously there is so much more to it than that for some people.
edit: well BB seems to think lloydois is losing power if some guy in the US loses the presidential election, so that’s another dimension…
September 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am
BlairM: I’m going to assume you just didn’t finish doing your research, as opposed to pulling that out of your arse. Nixon was in Congress from 1947-1950 (representing California 12th district) before entering the Senate. But I thought the Palin Standard was executive experience — which neither Nixon nor Eisenhower had. But shouldn’t someone have told Palin that McCain doesn’t either. Whoops…
Well, Fisi, let’s apply the Palin Standard again shall we — both Reagan and Clinton had significantly more executive executive experience than Palin’s twenty months. And they’d spoken extensively on foreign affairs — something I’ve yet to see any evidence of on Palin’s part.
Well, I can’t speak for Phil, but it might actually matter to us who a McCain Administration would appoint as the next Ambassador to New Zealand. And any further progress on an FTA with the United States is going to heavily depend on some very delicate political management in Washington (that I’ve little confidence Vice-President Palin could pull off as President of the Senate), and the people the next administration appoints to trade-sensitive State Department posts. It’s very easy to forget that the US – unlike New Zealand – has a whole tier of civil servants that are political appointees.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I also wonder about having a go at Obama for worrying about ‘terrorist’s rights’ – supporter of Guantanamo Bay??
September 5th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Russells notes:
“a good many community organisers are churchgoers: insulting them wasn’t a very dignified thing to do”
wtf? Is that a grasp at straws trying to imply the grass roots moral right will abandon one of their own?
September 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am
BlairM: I’m going to assume you just didn’t finish doing your research, as opposed to pulling that out of your arse. Nixon was in Congress from 1947-1950 (representing California 12th district) before entering the Senate.
I’m not sure how that trumps Palin’s resume.
But I thought the Palin Standard was executive experience — which neither Nixon nor Eisenhower had. But shouldn’t someone have told Palin that McCain doesn’t either.
Well that sounds suspiciously like an argument in favour of Palin – glad to have you come around, Craig! Thought I’m not sure Eisenhower lacked executive experience, what with that whole Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe gig he had in WW2.
D
September 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am
No big bruv I’m just calling you on your race baiting. For what other reason are you doing it?
I don’t see you referring to McCain as “Sidney McCain”
McCain himself has forbidden exactly this repeated use of Obama’s middle name as inappropriate and never to be used at any of his rallies.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Oh, I’m sure the theo-con wingnuts would love to have her top the ticket. Hum… McCain better hire a food taster and be very careful crossing the road from now on.
And I’m never going to “come around” to Palin. If Obama had put up a lightweight aggressively-liberal Governor who had been in record for less than two years, and has serious and credible ethics question over her head that should have come up during a serious search/vetting process, he would be facing howls of derisive laughter here — and deservedly so. (Note, Blair, that I’m not talking about Trig or Bristol Palin — she’s not standing for high public office and he’s a fucking infant — though the right’s reaction certainly throws in stark relief a thick strain of moralistic hypocrisy in the Republican/religious right.)
And I know reality doesn’t have any place in the current GOP, but Palin’s flat out lied about her record — she was for the “Bridge to Nowhere” until she was against it, to coin a phrase. She’s lobbied for pork, and expects the world to believe she’s fiscally strict kosher. And wouldn’t it be in her best interest to stop stonewalling over the Trooper-gate investigation and prove that she isn’t just another power-abusing Bill Clinton in one of Hillary’s old pant suits.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Were the dickless wonders in the National Party watching I wonder? Sarah Palin- more balls and brains than all of them put together.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Join the Labour Party Craig. Its confused liberal’s like you who have white anted the National Party and emasculated the opposition to socialism/ Labour. Palin would run over whining pseudo liberals like you like a freight train would flatten a hedgehog. Your time is over. Get the fuck out of the road.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:59 am
You hate her for one reason Craig, and that’s that she is religious (and doesn’t buy into the special rights liberal homosexual political paradigm). All the rest is just bullshit and bigotry.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Can’t wait for Craig’s response….This is like being at the Roman games. Oh the anticip-p-p-p-p-p-ation
September 5th, 2008 at 11:09 am
“flat out lied about her record”
Is that what Red was rebutting?
September 5th, 2008 at 11:11 am
“You hate her for one reason Craig, and that’s that she is religious…”
I wish people would stop equating “religious” with anti-gay, on BOTH sides of the argument.
I agree with PaulL, the selection of Palin, someone with equivalent experience to Obama, means that the two are going to be the natural comparison. I love it just for the brilliant political play. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that a more interesting debate would be between Obama and Palin, followed by Biden vs McCain and only then Obama McCain.
Obama isn’t going to be running against another Presidential candidate, he will be running against the opposite VP!
September 5th, 2008 at 11:17 am
After pondering this decision for a few days, and ignoring the moronic stories the news media have fixated on (you know, pregnant daughter, etc) I mourn the lost opportunity of a McCain/Lieberman presidency.
McCain/Lieberman, with the US delegate to the UN… Fred F**king Thompson.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:21 am
“Is that what Red was rebutting?”
Whatever the refreshingly up front Sarah Palin says it ain’t murky meaningless waffle. Its Obama who is the dissembler, the deceiver, the charlatan, the liar and the danger. Obama and his media shills. The biggest threat to Liberty and democracy to surface in a long time. No time to deal with lies and smears about Sarah. The reality is that the US is in danger of being taken over by anti-liberty European style communists posing as centrists, and if they succeed in their mission, and win the power they seek, they will destroy everything that ever made the US the country where more people want to go than any other. The assault on Sarah Palin is merely the same old Bolshevism, designed to destroy her in the eyes of the useful idiots, those voters too stupid to know how they’re being manipulated. New Zealand is full of the same brain dead morons.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:21 am
“..# Redbaiter (3497) Add karma Subtract karma +0 Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Were the dickless wonders in the National Party watching I wonder? Sarah Palin- more balls and brains than all of them put together..”
once again we agree..redbaiter..
..and as always..
..for different reasons..
..given my assesment of both palins’ testicles..and brain..
..as both being small..
..eh..?
..phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Sheesh, it’s like the 1980s all over again. Palin being compared to Thatcher, Rb may as well be calling Craig a “wet”…I’m getting flashbacks here.
On the subject of names, if I may inject a slight tangent, it looks like we either get a President Barry to go with PM Kev across the ditch (if so should David Cameron start calling himself ‘Dave’, or will Milliband beat him to it?) or we get a woman VP who has called her kids ‘Track’, ‘Trig’, ‘Bristol’ (wtf?), ‘Willow’ and ‘Piper’. I really don’t know which is the more worrying proposition.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Interesting analysis from “Spengler” at Asia Times Online:
“…..McCain doesn’t have a tenth of Obama’s synaptic fire-power, but he is a nasty old sailor who knows when to come about for a broadside. Given Obama’s defensive, even wimpy selection of a running-mate, McCain’s choice was obvious. He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card. The Democratic order of battle was to tie McCain to the Bush administration and attack McCain by attacking Bush. With Palin on the ticket, McCain has re-emerged as the maverick he really is.
The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn’t any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president.
McCain has certified his authenticity for the voters. He’s now the outsider, the reformer, the maverick, the war hero running next to the Alaskan amazon with a union steelworker spouse. Obama, who styled himself an agent of change, took his image for granted, and attempted to ensure himself victory by doing the cautious thing. He is trapped in a losing position, and there is nothing he can do to get out of it……
“……. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama … Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama’s father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals.
By all rights, the Democrats should win this election. They will lose, I predict, because of the flawed character of their candidate……”
September 5th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Insider: Sorry to disappoint, but I’m in troll detox. This is Master Baiter’s standard m.o. to change the subject when he’s got nothing to say — make shit up then trot out the same old abuse I’ve heard a hundred times before. Best to ignore him.
Any coherent and rational person who’d like to argue with what I’ve actually said is welcome.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
From: A STAR IS BORN
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the The New York Post on September 4, 2008
PALIN: NEW KIND OF WOMAN POL
ST. PAUL
“With sass and wit, sarcasm and sincerity, courage and strength, Sarah Palin last night showed us a new model of female politician.
Her family stories were genuine and real. Her commitment to special-needs children was moving. Her contempt for special interests was obvious.
And her putdowns of Barack Obama’s rhetoric and her praise of John McCain’s character and achievements were welcome and well delivered.
Many women look bad when they attack their opponents, too often seeming strident and shrill. But Palin was funny and irreverant, with a biting wit and a joy of combat that was exhilarating to watch.
Sometimes she reminded us of the hockey mom she is. Other times, she was an American Margaret Thatcher – mobilizing humor and biting satire to mock the opposition.
Where Hillary Clinton has but two speeds – full forward and stop – Palin displayed a range of rhetoric, emotion and language that sometimes evoked moving patriotism, at other times hilarious irony – and, frequently, a strong dose of common sense.
If her style in attacking and mocking her opponent was Thatcher-esque, her range of rhetorical style was Rooseveltian. She is, in fact, one of the best public speakers in our politics today.
Now the Democrats are stuck in a trap. They’ve demeaned, patronized and smeared a woman who’s well on her way to becoming very, very popular. Her speech will create legions of fans; the Democratic smears of the last few days will create, for Obama, legions of enemies.
This man who dedicated two years to stopping a woman from being president now has to answer for spending two months stopping one from becoming vice president – a task he hopes to accomplish using women’s votes.
Remember: The swing vote in this election are single moms. Just as the soccer moms dominated in 1996 and security moms in 2004, now unmarried women, mostly with children, will determine the outcome of the 2008 race. And they’re finding in Sarah Palin an advocate whose life isn’t far different from their own and whose priorities mirror theirs’.
As withering in her contempt for the country-club elites of the Republican establishment as for the pandering of the Democrats, Palin stands in stark contrast to the inherited elitism of the Bushes, the Romneys and the Kennedys. She’s a woman of the people.
Was this a Republican attacking big oil? Was it the nominee for vice president of a major party who laced into earmarks and lobbyists and PACs? Yes it was…………..”
September 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
From Politico (on the “mean” spirit of her speech): “Palin’s speech was a jackhammer of partisan shots and sarcastic digs. That is the traditional role of vice presidential nominees. But she performed that role with a smile and folksy humor, coming off like a younger, Republican version of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards.” Yes, that Ann Richards of the “silver foot in his mouth” speech. Good article, worth reading: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13162.html
September 5th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Whatever the refreshingly up front Sarah Palin says it ain’t murky meaningless waffle.
Except when she’s being kept away from the media and saying nothing at all about her record, actual policy or anything else. Up front my arse.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:43 am
>>or we get a woman VP who has called her kids ‘Track’, ‘Trig’, ‘Bristol’ (wtf?), ‘Willow’ and ‘Piper’.
Actually if I knew nothing about her other than her kids names I would think she was a hippy
September 5th, 2008 at 11:47 am
The fact that so many on the so called right in NZ seek the favour of their leftist friends by joining them in their vicious assault on Sarah Palin, (the same people ready to give Obama a pass on every murky detail of his past, and who covered up for the allegations of rape and molestation against Bill Clinton), is what makes many people just get up and leave this country to sink in its own progressive shit.
The fight my friends is between Conservatism and Progressivism, and if you can’t make that delineation, and fight on that basis, you’re just fucking the dog. You either stop the slide or you continue shoving NZ over the precipice. Your choice.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Vicious assault my arse. You’re a bad fucking parody of a pussie whipped conservative dipstick. Thank god I don’t know anyone in NZ who measures up to your lofty standards Redbaiter.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
“Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
Amen
September 5th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
In Master Baiter’s world, any examination of the record and (non-existent) policy positions of the woman who wants to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office — the head of state of the largest economy and most powerful nation on Earth – is a “vicious assault”? Harden up you little mallowpuffs.
Sorry for sounding like Baiter, folks, but why doesn’t Red fuck off over to Chris “Trotsky” Trotter’s place? He’s equated long overdue media scrutiny of Winston Peters’ fiscal shenanigans to being gang raped. You two useful idiots are made for each other.
I’ll say the same thing to the Palin Fan Club I used to say to the Clintonistas. She’s got a vagina and a viable uterus. So what?
September 5th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Craig Ranapia said…
Reagan and Clinton had significantly more executive executive experience than Palin’s twenty months. And they’d spoken extensively on foreign affairs — something I’ve yet to see any evidence of on Palin’s part.
Craig, your statement is a generalization, be specific, about the achievements in foreign policies by Reagan & Clinton while they were both governors, something like, California governor Reagan signed a trade agreement with Taiwan or governor Clinton agreed with South Korea to deploy patriot missiles there to guard against a North’s potential future attack. See, I don’t know what a governor’s job is, so you have to give a specific example of this so called experienced in terms of foreign policies that you’re talking about. Would it matter if a governor has 2 years and one of that has 10 years experience?
Bush senior attacked Clinton for his inexperience in foreign policies during his campaign for the white-house and what happened? He was only a one term president even though he was vastly experienced compared to Clinton. Experience is over-emphasized thus overlooking the fact that what matters is ideologies. You can have an experience socialist and still he/she is a socialist and that is a fact.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Phil U said…
..for starters:..wot bush has wrought..?
If Obama wins, you’re not going to be pro-American all of a sudden are you? As I stated before, democrat or republican president, you will still be anti-US. I take it that you were pro-US during the Clinton years at the white house, correct? I thought not. Perhaps you were one of those anti-US demonstrators on Queen St in the late 1990s, when Clinton ordered the US military to bomb Serbia/Kosovo during that conflict. If you were pro-US during the Clinton presidency, then I can understand your support for Obama, but if you weren’t, then you’re a hypocrite, ie, pretend to prefer Obama over McCain, in fact you actually oppose anything that the US does, regardless if it is McCain or Obama who occupy the Oval Office.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Whatever the refreshingly up front Sarah Palin says it ain’t murky meaningless waffle.
How about “I’ll be an advocate for parents of special needs children”?
She has __nothing__ there. Under her governorship, special-needs support has actually fallen slightly. And the McCain campaign doesn’t even have a policy: the closest McCain has got was endorsing the mercury-in-vaccines-causes-autism lunatics in a speech.
So let’s look at Obama’s offering. He has a thoughtful and nuanced strategy building on existing projects:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/disabilities/
Put together with the help of the people it will actually affect:
http://asansouthwestohio.blogspot.com/2008/01/obama-disability-policy-conference-call.html
As is the case in a range of policy areas, they’ve really put the work in.
And the McCain-Palin camp? Meh.
I know there’s a thriving market for bullshit, but it really is bullshit.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Susan Estrich, the first female president of Harvard Law Review and former campaign manager for presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, (in other words a raving leftist) told Fox News on Wednesday that she knows of no attack on a political candidate that comes close to the assault on Sarah Palin.
Palin has been blamed for everything from giving her child Down’s syndrome, to causing Hurricane Gustav. A blog known as the Nutroots made this allegation: “Hurricane Gustav is the fault of John McCain’s VP pick Sarah Palin. Extremist conservatives like Sarah Palin have ignored environmental warnings about coastal erosion, climate change and the importance of mangroves and have tried to stop the progress that would halt unnatural hurricane events like this.”
Palin is without a milligram of doubt the most popular governor in the United States, enjoying a steady approval rating of more than 80 percent. She’s the executive of a major energy state. Alaska is the largest state geographically, more than 2.5 times the size of Texas. Sure, it’s small in terms of population. But so is Arkansas, the state that elected Bill Clinton.
Palin rose to prominence by taking on a corrupt establishment, not playing by its rules. Barack Obama, (and let’s not forget he’s the damned head of his ticket) rose to a relatively low level of power through Chicago’s notoriously corrupt political machine. Has he ever uttered any word against that machine?
Palin manages a $11 billion budget. More than former Arkansas Gov. Clinton, or Mike Huckabee. Obama has never managed public finance. Instead, he has a short political career centered mostly on speaking and writing. Palin is the executive in charge of 15,000 state employees. Obama has employed a handful of government employees in a Senate office. Same with McCain and Obama’s running mate Joseph Biden. Palin has dealt with union disputes, lawsuits, oil leases, major infrastructure projects, and hundreds of other routine issues any governor must process daily.
There’s virtually no limit to the filth one can find if one wants to hold one’s nose and wallow in the leftist blog sewer. Example- , “Palin found out the fetus had Down syndrome, and still popped it out. Am I suppose to respect her for that? I don’t.”
or-
“I am not saying that being old gets you a retarded baby but it certainly doesn’t help.”
or
“I reckon I’ve got a great name for a new band- “Sarah Palin’s Retarded Baby.”
Countless other anti-Palin blog entries are too vile to mention. Sarah Palin just keeps giving. Every minute of every hour, she exposes the stench of the hateful leftist assault machine to mainstream America. Palin Derangement Syndrome is making those who suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome look sane.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Redbaiter said: “Its confused liberal’s like you who have white anted the National Party and emasculated the opposition to socialism/ Labour.”
Anyone who is unaware that plurals (as in “liberals”) don’t have an apostrophe doesn’t deserve to be debated with. Were you home schooled, ‘baiter?
September 5th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
LOL. Well it looks like this time around it’s the Governor causing a disturbance in Jerusalem while the community organiser continues to wash his hands.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Sorry, Fisi, I’m not going to chase the shifting goal posts. Can YOU point me to even a substantive speech Palin has made for any foreign affairs question? Agree with them or not, both Reagan and Clinton spoke extensively on policy question for years before being nominated for President.
In March this year, here’s what Palin had to say to __Alaska Business Monthly__ about the surge:
Think about it. “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news…” But she supported it, becuase who really needs to know those tiresome details about a central feature of winning the war in Iraq. Flaky.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
She got her 1st passport in 2007. The only time she’s left the country was an official visit to troops in Kuwait and Germany with a stopover in Ireland.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/31/cindy-palin-russia/
These people expect us to take them seriously!
September 5th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
She got her 1st passport in 2007. The only time she’s left the country was an official visit to troops in Kuwait and Germany with a stopover in Ireland.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/31/cindy-palin-russia/
This is a real doozy.
“STEPHANOPOULOS: But she has no national security experience
McCAIN: You know, the experience that she comes from is what she’s done in government, and remember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. It’s not as if she doesn’t understand what’s at stake here.”
These people expect us to take them seriously!
September 5th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
letterman did one of his audience polls..on palin
..a very light smattering of applause was about it..
..he then riffed on mccain dying..
..and a president palin..
..and welcomed her as the new dan quayle..
..phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I live across the road from a Police station. Does that mean I’m now an expert in law and order policy? But somehow, I think Putin and his pet finger-puppet have larger priorities than laying siege to Wasilla any time soon.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
“These people expect us to take them seriously!”
Who the hell is “us”..?? I know you liberals like to imagine yourselves as messiahs addressing the flock, but I hope you’re not presuming to speak for me you shallow embarrasing meathead.
Only the left could be so stupid as to criticise the smart and savvy Palin’s lack of experience for the VP role at the same time as they nominate a stuttering slow witted dimbulb with even less experience for the highest office in the land. Oh yeah, all of your pathetic liberal TV talk show hosts (Oprah, Letterman etc) like him too, so I guess that’s as much endorsement as he would ever need in leftist la la land.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Anyone with half a brain?
Of course not.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
“Palin is without a milligram of doubt the most popular governor in the United States, enjoying a steady approval rating of more than 80 percent.”
Not quite true. While Palin does enjoy high approval ratings, the wake of troopergate, as well as reports of a managing style that makes Helen Clark seem like the world’s best boss, have had quite an impact on Palins approval ratings. A Rasmussen poll from just a few months ago has her in the mid 60’s. Still a high number but not as amazing as is being touted be her campaign people.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_senate_elections/alaska/election_2008_alaska_senate
Palin’s speech I thought was good, and I can see why people like Redbaiter like it. It was aimed at winning the base, and firing them up. The Republicans know how to win an election by appealing to the base, as they did in 2000 and 2004.
However, things have changed a lot. Of the three party identifications (Democrat, Republican and Independent) this Gallup poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/104494/Democrats-Significant-Identification-Image-Advantage.aspx) from earlier in the year shows that Republicans are now the smallest group. If McCain wants to beat Obama he needs to be able to win Independents AND Republicans. Focus Groups I’ve read of Independent Voters seem to be cold on the far right and sarcastic tone of Palin’s speech. See below
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/michigan-indepe.html.
One independent voter says the only reason they think Palin is on the ticket is because Hillary wasn’t on Obama’s (Of course The Washington Post reports that the only reason she is there is because McCain’s pick of Lieberman was vetoed by the party’s right wing.)
In a year when the Republican Base is the smallest it’s been in a long time, Palin’s slanted, left bashing, rabid rhetoric risks turning off the group McCain needs to win the election.
McCain is already polling at around 90% of the Republican base, he doesn’t need to be winning those voters, he needs to be focused on independents. Hopefully his speech tonight will do so, because if he follows the tone Palin set, there’s going to be a lot of happy faces in Chicago.
Even worse for Palin’s credibility is the fact that her speech was so full of errors that even the AP had to go spin busting:
http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080904/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_fact_check
Look of some of the errors/lies in there and it’s hard to defend Palin as anything other than yet another politician. With the Republican’s message of the week being trying to out change Obama, that’s yet another negative.
Still, I have a lot of faith in McCain and his campaign people to be able to get this back on track, they just need to get on message better, and ditch the focus on the wingnuts.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
llew
“Anyone with half a brain?”
A perfect description of Labour and Democrat voters.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
hey bruv,
what do you think the left would call McCain if his middle name was Adolf? heh
September 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Big Bruv,
Heh! That’ll teach me. But I guess if you actually believe this:
Half a brain would be twice as much as you’re used to.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
With most polls having Obama & McCain at about even with Obama perhaps the slight favourite it is interesting to look at the now 19% undecided vote. The latest figures I have seen suggest that of the undecided cohort 38% would prefer advice tendered by McCain c/w 13% for that of Obama with 27% declining to answer and 18% don’t knows.
Couple that with the clearly feral reaction by the Lefties to the Palin speech which suggests she hit a nerve (who remembers the Biden speech and doesn’t that say heaps) and you might be forgiven for thinking that the Obama ticket could be in for rocky times ahead.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
llew
Are you really suggesting that McCain is wrong when he says that Alaska is close to Russia?….perhaps you might want to take a gander at an Atlas.
Meanwhile the left go into orgasmic adulation mode because some flake stands up and says “change”
The only thing Obama “changes” is his stance on issues depending on his audience, he is a flake and a fraud, I cannot wait for the man to release some policy so we can see just how hopeless the man is.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
You’d have to think that if she was such a disastrous choice, the Dems would STFU & let them campaign to oblivion.
I thought she did quite well, but my shields go up when I hear she supports teaching creationism in schools.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
“Big Bruv, Heh! That’ll teach me. ”
I doubt it. Anyone capable of such a foolish blunder is probably beyond teaching. I’d guess you would have reached the peak of your mental development some time ago llew. With only half a brain, (as you pointed out) it comes a lot earlier for leftists.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
No. You seem to be shedding braincells by the minute BB. Maybe one eigth of a brain. You voted NZ first right?
Are you really suggesting that living in Alaska makes all Alaskans experts on Russia? Or is this some magical property of Palins alone?
September 5th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
So you believe it too RB? You’re not really the person to be lecturing on foolish blunders & teaching.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
*nnnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaawwwwwww*
that was the sound of llew’s point going over bruv’s head.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
It shows just how desperate the Republicans are that they make a point of Alaska being close to Russia, and that this somehow means that Palin has foreign policy experience. It is irrelevant, much like the other things they have been saying for the last few years. She is a moose hunting right-wing bigot, and it is a shame her daughter didn’t take more notice of all the preaching her mother has been doing on abstinence and family values. It is often those who preach family values that are the largest hypocrites, as the Republicans have shown us these last few years. How many affairs has Newt Gingrich had? And Rudy Guliani? And what about Mark Foley? And that guy who likes bathrooms in airports?
September 5th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
llew
Can you actually reply to a post without abuse or is that the natural reaction of somebody who votes Labour and therefore has “half a brain”
Now come on, tell me what that big country just to the left of Alaska is if it is not Russia.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
“my shields go up when I hear she supports teaching creationism in schools”
Yeah Llew, you’re just the kind of sponge brained liberal who would so willingly suck up every smear the left can come up with. Don’t you people ever think that you might be dealing with a clever and well co-ordinated campaign of lies and propaganda. Not ever? Not once? The thought doesn’t ever enter your feeble (half) brains?? Its just another lie Llew, among the thousands that the left have put out there for gullible morons like you to repeat. Just political children, that’s all you are. Manipulated like sheep. Having the vote. What a joke.
————————————
In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms: “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.” She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum.
Members of the state school board, which sets minimum requirements, are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature. “I won’t have religion as a litmus test, or anybody’s personal opinion on evolution or creationism,” Palin said. Palin has occasionally discussed her lifelong Christian faith during the governor’s race but said teaching creationism is nothing she has campaigned about or even given much thought to.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Even worse for Palin’s credibility is the fact that her speech was so full of errors that even the AP had to go spin busting:
ROTFL. Yeah, because the AP is normally so sympathetic to right wing politicians. Sure. Actually I read the spinbust – I think they have a point with the Bridge to Nowhere, but hell, even Ron Paul fights hard for earmarks for his district, that doesn’t make him a hypocrite for wanting to stop them. So long as they’re dishing out cash, why should someone else have it?
Haydenmunro suggests the Republicans need to soften themselves a bit. I’d argue the opposite. The Republicans that have deregistered are actually “the base”, not centrists. Palin has won those people over, and the centre (unlike other countries) are best swayed by the hardline mom-and-apple-pie arguments that the GOP do so well.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
big bruv it was Cindy not John who made the comment. The point was she has so little interest in the world that she’d never been beyond the States or Canada in her entire adult life until last year. I find that astounding. An eerie similarity with another intellectually incurious individual who has left his mark on the country.
And the fact that she can mock without embarrassment “the permanent political establishment in Washington” when the Republicans have been running the show, both Congress and the White House for the last 8 years just makes you realise how much a part of the reality based community she’s not.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
“Or is this some magical property of Palins alone?”
She’s the Governer you blind verbally incontinent fuckwit. Commander of the National Guard and privy to discussion on all kinds of security issues, national and international, and Alaska’s geographical location is a lot difference to Arkansas where your good mate Billy Boy Clinton came from.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
WTF – she expresses support for the President and Secretary of State and proclaims a desire to have more information (all “those tiresome details” – troop safety, withdrawl strategy) to which the Govenor of Alaska is not normally privy. In other words she does not offer a definitive opinion on something she admits to knowing nothing about and asks for more detail.
There must be a new definition of the term flakey, because up till now I’d thought a flake was someone offering a banal opinion on subjects they know nothing about.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Yes. I’m sorry about the NZ 1st crack.
But not for calling you… slow, to be diplomatic.
Now, read what I said very slowly, and look up comprehension in the dictionary. Do you really think that living in Alaska makes you an expert on Russia? That’s what McCain said & the suggestion is ludicrous.
Think hard. Ring a friend if you like, or read Radar’s post for a hint.
Oh, and not that it matters, I’m not a labour voter. You shouldn’t make baseless assumptions, ity makes you look stupid.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
“read Radar’s post for a hint.”
What? The one about the apostrophe or the other equally worthless diversion? Completely pointless, like almost every one of his worthless infantile utterances.
“That’s what McCain said & the suggestion is ludicrous.”
That isn’t what he said you hopeless meathead. He was implying that national security is a much greater issue for the Governor of Alaska than for the Governors of less vulnerable states.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
LOL. Chill out dude.
And yeah, it does cross my mind that everything we hear from both sides should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. You haven’t heard me smear her at all, in fact quite the opposite, but I do have questions. You seem to have a problem with that.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Stop it, my sides are aching. Irony overload.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Y’all might like this:
http://www.publicaddress.net/system/topic,1325,hard_news_go_us.sm?p=68006#post68006
September 5th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
“I do have questions. You seem to have a problem with that.”
The leftists’ age old strategy is to put a bunch of lies out there as talking points, get their media agents to propogate them, and then the same old gullible fools watching TV One and TV3 will repeat them until they become accepted as fact. Even you Llew, with the half brain you admit to, should know by now not to just blithely accept and repeat Democrat propaganda like some gape jawed impressionable idiot. Its almost always lies, and its happening with Sarah Palin to an unprecedented degree as the left grow more and more desperate. They see the power they regard as their natural entitlement slipping away, and it drives them completely crazy.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
With regard to the silly comments on Alaska being near Russia, I find it a bit odd that some commentators can take the musings of a politician’s trophy wife as the official party line, but can’t take Palin seriously.
And the fact that she can mock without embarrassment “the permanent political establishment in Washington” when the Republicans have been running the show, both Congress and the White House for the last 8 years just makes you realise how much a part of the reality based community she’s not.
Actually, the GOP has only controlled both Houses for two of those eight years, and in the last two years has controlled neither chamber. I’m not sure she was referring to just the Democrats either.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
And I’d say none of the above. How about starting with the basics and putting up competent candidates? Sorry, if Palin is as good as it gets, then the Republicans deserve to lose and lose big. How big — no keys to the White House for at least eight years when Democrats having a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate (and the kind of House majority they used to have a couple of generations back). That might actually give the GOP a chance to return to being one that can balance a budget and get rid of the addiction to pork, knows the Constitution as well as the Bible (even those inconvenient bits that don’t play well in the Bible Belt), and has some relationship with reality.
Still, it’s been delightful watching some of you folks drool like a horny teenager with a saucy magazine hidden under the matress.
McCain-Palin: Putting Country Last.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
They’re like, not even in power.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Yeah, I took Big Bruv’s word that it was McCain who said that.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Craig Ranapia, who are your preferred US Candidates? Just to help us see the angle from which you are criticising Sarah Palin. Is she not libertarian enough for you or something? I didn’t think you were an Obamessiah Lefty.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Falafulu Fisi, good comments.
And Redbaiter, keeping the good fight going.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
“Fecund in command” – Mark Steyn
“As National Review’s in-house demography bore, I’ve been struck this last week by the left’s fierce hostility to Sarah Palin’s fecundity. One gentleman – well, okay, maybe not a “gentleman” but certainly an impeccably sensitive progressive new male – wrote to me from Shelton, Washington:
This abortion prohibitionist hag won’t cut it among women with brains.And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.
Each to her own, Mister Sensitive. You can be a 44-year old mother of five expecting her first grandchild and serving as Governor of Alaska. Or you can be, like Martha Stewart’s daughter Alexis, a 43-year old single “career woman” hosting a satellite radio show and spending $28,000 a month on “intracytoplasmic sperm injection” in hopes of becoming pregnant. Every woman has the “right to choose” her own path through life, but it’s a lazy assumption to take for granted that most Americans find Sarah Palin’s choices as freakish as our metropolitan elites do.
What was it the feminists used to say? “You can have it all.” Sarah Palin is a mom, and the first female governor of her state. But the enforcers at the National Organization of Women dismiss her as “more a conservative man than she is a woman”.
Golly. These days, NOW seems to have as narrow and proscriptive a view of what women are permitted to be as any old 1950s sitcom dad…..”
09/04 12:12 PM
September 5th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
“Metrocon alert” – Mark Steyn
“……..I would caution our pal David Frum to ease up on this kind of analysis:
The Palin choice will intensify GOP support among downscale white voters – while adding to the GOP’s difficulties among more educated white voters.
You’d be surprised how crowded it is down at the “downscale” end.”
09/04 12:20 PM
September 5th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
“How about starting with the basics and putting up competent candidates? Sorry, if Palin is as good as it gets, then the Republicans deserve to lose and lose big. How big — no keys to the White House for at least eight years when Democrats having a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate (and the kind of House majority they used to have a couple of generations back). That might actually give the GOP a chance to return to being one that can balance a budget and get rid of the addiction to pork, knows the Constitution as well as the Bible (even those inconvenient bits that don’t play well in the Bible Belt), and has some relationship with reality.
Craig, by that logic your beloved National Party should be out of power for another generation. Frankly if the Nats adhered to even half of McCain’s platform, you’d probably cream yourself with delight.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
“Credit where it’s due” – Mark Steyn
“I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin – whoops, I mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin – as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz, half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn’t worked since he was an extra in Deliverance.
How’s that narrative holding up, geniuses? Almost as good as your “devoted husband John Edwards” routine?
I trust even now Maureen Dowd is working on a hilarious new column mocking proposed names for the Governor’s first grandchild. Perhaps Richard Cohen can just take the week off and they can rerun his insightful analysis comparing the Palin nomination to Caligula making his horse a consul. Whereas we sophisticates all know that if McCain were as smart as Obama he’d have nominated a dead horse to be his consul. No, wait…”
09/04 08:17 AM
September 5th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
MELANIE PHILLIPS:
“The more savage the left are about someone, the more you can be sure that they feel profoundly threatened by that person. Their vicious reaction to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential candidate is deeply revealing — but about themselves rather than her. They have hurled smears, contempt, condescension, ridicule and every other rhetorical missile her way. You can get a sense of the stuff being spread about her from this rebuttal by the McCain camp to this story in the New York Times, which appears to have plucked rumours circulating about Mrs Palin and published them without a qualm. (How anyone continues to take the NYT seriously beats me.)
Why do the left feel so threatened by Sarah Palin? Clearly, they see her place on the McCain ticket as a major threat to Obama and thus know they have to destroy her. The more venomous their onslaught, therefore, the greater the compliment they are paying her. But just why does she present such a danger to the Obama campaign?
On one level it’s obvious enough: she presses many of Obama’s own buttons, being young, fresh, attractive, embodying active opposition to machine politics (you surely can’t get much further away from the Beltway than Alaska) and with a compelling and poignant personal history; and she is also a woman and a mother and a successful politician, thus potentially exciting and attracting female voters. She therefore embodies youth, dynamism, change, excitement and hope – the very qualities identified with Obama and which the Democrats assumed would present such a cruel comparison with McCain.
As for her most obvious drawback — her lack of political experience — the Obama camp cannot use that against her without it boomeranging straight back. Their instant jibe that the neophyte Mrs Palin would be ‘merely a heartbeat away from the presidency’ loses its bite somewhat given that Obama, with even less experience than her, will not be a heartbeat away from becoming the President: he will be the President.
But there’s a deeper reason for the foaming vituperation of the left at Mrs Palin’s candidacy. It is the same reason that they lash out at all those who are not on the left: their profound lack of confidence in their own belief system. At some subterranean level, they know they are wrong and that they cannot defend their own position. Which they simply cannot bear. This is because the left is always correct, everyone else is a conservative and therefore if they are wrong about anything they will also be — a conservative! They’d rather pull out all their fingernails. Which is why they are so vicious: instead of reasoned argument with their opponents they resort to demonisation, intimidating and browbeating any opposition or dissent to shut them up altogether.
Central to this aggressive defensiveness is their feverish characterisation of all dissent as conservatism, of conservatism as evil, fossilised, stupid and selfish, and all conservatives as hateful, decaying, cretinous and corrupt. The idea that a conservative may be an attractive, youthful, smart and principled, funky grizzly bear-hunting beauty queen doubling up as Elliot Ness doesn’t just rip apart the Democrats’ electoral strategy but the core belief of the left that they are uniquely good and everyone else is universally bad.
But they have made a bad mistake with Sarah Palin, and not just because she seems to have something of Obama’s own great assets – a high level of articulacy and political adroitness. It is because in spreading the appalling lie that she was not the mother but the grandmother of her own Down’s Syndrome baby, and then claiming that she was a lousy choice because her 17 year-old schoolgirl daughter Bristol is pregnant (thus proving the ‘grandmother’ charge to be a grotesque smear), they will have sickened many decent people — not just because of the smear, but also because of the implication that it would have been better for Bristol to have had an abortion.
But Bristol is to marry the father of her unborn child; Sarah Palin and her husband have declared their unwavering support and love for their daughter; and whenever the decision was reached that Bristol would marry the baby’s father, the fact is that for many people that is an entirely proper response to a behavioural lapse by two people that creates a third individual to whom a duty of responsibility is owed. Indeed, the Christian, socially conservative constituency to whom McCain judged Palin would appeal are precisely the kind of people who would seek to respond to individual failings with just such a mixture of personal compassion — ‘everyone is frail and many families experience such problems’ — and responsibility to an unborn child.
What the left see as a killer revelation, therefore, will be seen instead by this important constituency as a significant plus; and if they are not very careful indeed (and Obama appears to have well grasped this danger) the Democrats will be seen as amoral and heartless creeps who prefer dead foetuses to live babies, who condemn personal duty and responsibility and who will even stoop to using a Down’s Syndrome child to produce a baseless and vicious smear……”
September 5th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
“SPENGLER” at Asia Times Online:
“………On television, Obama’s spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats. The professionals I sat with were Hillary Clinton people, to be sure, and had reason to sulk, for an Obama victory might do them little good in any event.
The Democrats were watching the brightest and most articulate presidential candidate they have fielded since John F Kennedy snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And this was before John McCain, in a maneuver worthy of Admiral Chester Nimitz at the Battle of Midway, turned tables on the Democrats’ strategy with the choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Speaking to Obama supporters on the periphery of the big event, I was startled by the rapturous devotion elicited by the junior senator from Illinois. He is no symbol for identity politics, no sacrifice on the altar of white guilt, but the most gifted persuader of individuals that I have encountered in any country’s politics, as well as a powerful orator on the grand stage. This is not a crowd phenomenon nor a fad, but the response of hundreds of people to an individual…….
“……Gandalf’s warnings about the irresistible voice of the wizard Saruman in J R R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings come to mind. If these battle-hardened veterans of America’s wars fell so easily under the spell of Obama’s voice, who can withstand it? Obama’s persuasive powers, though, are strongest when channeled through the empathy of his interlocutor. Everyone believes that Obama feels his pain, shares his dream, and will fight his fight and heal his ills. But that is everyone as an individual. Add all the individuals up into a campaign platform, and it turns into three-quarters of an hour worth of promises that echo all the ghosts of conventions past.
Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain’s choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain’s selection was a statement of strength. America’s voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.
That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama’s prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.
Biden, who won 3% of the popular vote in the Democratic presidential primary in his home state of Delaware, and 1% or less in every other contest he entered, is ballot-box poison. Obama evidently chose him to assuage critics who point to his lack of foreign policy credentials. That was a deadly error, for by appearing to concede the critics’ claim that he knows little about foreign policy, Obama raised questions about whether he is qualified to be president in the first place……..”
HMMMMMMMMMM………………
September 5th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Great stuff Phil, and thanks too for the encouragement.
(BTW Don’t worry about panty waisted Cwaigy- he’s obviously Palinophobic.)
September 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
MORE from “Spengler”
“…….Curiously, Obama ignored the rising stars of his own party, offering the prime time speaking slots to familiar faces, including Senator Edward Kennedy and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as his own wife, the first prospective First Lady to take the keynote spot in the history of American party conventions.
McCain doesn’t have a tenth of Obama’s synaptic fire-power, but he is a nasty old sailor who knows when to come about for a broadside. Given Obama’s defensive, even wimpy selection of a running-mate, McCain’s choice was obvious. He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card. The Democratic order of battle was to tie McCain to the Bush administration and attack McCain by attacking Bush. With Palin on the ticket, McCain has re-emerged as the maverick he really is.
The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn’t any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president.
McCain has certified his authenticity for the voters. He’s now the outsider, the reformer, the maverick, the war hero running next to the Alaskan amazon with a union steelworker spouse. Obama, who styled himself an agent of change, took his image for granted, and attempted to ensure himself victory by doing the cautious thing. He is trapped in a losing position, and there is nothing he can do to get out of it.
Obama, in short, is long on brains and short on guts. A Shibboleth of American politics holds that different tactics are required to win the party primaries as opposed to the general election, that is, by pandering to fringe groups with disproportionate influence in the primaries. But Obama did not compromise himself with extreme positions. He did not have to, for younger voters who greeted him with near-religious fervor did not require that he take any position other than his promise to change everything……
“…….Obama’s failure of nerve at the cusp of his success is consistent with my profile of the candidate, in which I predicted that he would self-destruct. It’s happening faster than I expected. As I wrote last February:
It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama … Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama’s father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals.
By all rights, the Democrats should win this election. They will lose, I predict, because of the flawed character of their candidate.”
Chew on that, Obamessiah Lefties……..
September 5th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
PhilBest:
What part of inexperienced, incompetent and has repeatedly lied about her gubanatorial record (and that’s before we get started on the serious and credible allegations regarding abuse of power to pursue a personal vendetta) don’t you understand?
I see a lot of mad boy-crushes going down here, but little effort to convince me that she’s fit for the job. Now, that obviously doesn’t matter to the likes of Mr. Steyn and “Spengler”. I wonder if it will matter very much when (to be blunt) the novelty value of Palin’s twat wears off and she’s actually got to face some hard questions — just as it did for Hills.
And something else, Phil, I genuinely take women in politics seriously. They can cry “sexist” all they like, but I’ve got one standard for them — the same one I apply to men. They can measure up or fuck off. Palin is no Reagan. No Teddy Roosevelt. No Truman. And definitely not fit to be in the same room as Thatcher unless she’s carrying a tea tray.
End of story.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
ffs best..!
why the fuck can’t you post a paragraph..and a link..
..your copy and pasting is going over the top..
..and never your own words..
eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 5th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
And a serious question, chaps — if Palin was an uber-liberal with an equally thin record, serious ethics allegations against her and a pregnant unmarried daughter and Obama’s veep pick you wouldn’t be in any way critical? Or does party hackery trump any standards at all?
September 5th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Krugmans good today on the politics of resentment that fuel the Republicans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/opinion/05krugman.html?hp
“the Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right, which has always been much bigger, much more influential and much angrier than its counterpart on the other side.
One of the key insights in “Nixonland,” the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon’s political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates’ resentment against the Franklins, the school’s elite social club. There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.
And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Enjoy doing the left’s propaganda for them don’t you Craig. Pimping for the liars and scandal mongers. Smearing a good woman and mother.
No matter what other ideas Sarah Palin might bring to the table, for you its all trumped by the fact that she is a Christian and also reluctant to embrace your pathetic homosexual political agenda. Disgusting to witness such deceitful puffery.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
That good old ‘homosexual political agenda.’ I get a woody every time redbaiter starts frothing.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
“my shields go up when I hear she supports teaching creationism in schools”
Yeah Llew, you’re just the kind of sponge brained liberal who would so willingly suck up every smear the left can come up with. Don’t you people ever think that you might be dealing with a clever and well co-ordinated campaign of lies and propaganda. Not ever? Not once? The thought doesn’t ever enter your feeble (half) brains?? Its just another lie Llew, among the thousands that the left have put out there for gullible morons like you to repeat. Just political children, that’s all you are. Manipulated like sheep. Having the vote. What a joke”
Actually Redbaiter, again what your saying isn’t quite true. While your quote is ccorrect, on other occasions Palin has CLEARLY advocated teaching creationism along side Evolution.
” In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, the soon-to-be governor of Alaska said of evolution and creation education, “Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.”
It’s pretty hard to think she meant anything other than “I am a proponent of teaching both” when she said “I am a proponent of teaching both”.
So which seems more likely, a horribly complex lefty conspiracy to slander Palin, or that she said she was a proponent of teaching both, and it was reported as such?
Not EVERY issue has to be about the “communists” being out to get you.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Craig
My my – a well worked up social liberal who happens to vote National. Give us your preferred ticket and then tell us how that ticket would beat Obama/Biden. Of course Palin lies about her record as Govenor of Alaska so much that she has the highest gubernatorial approval rating in the country – but I guess you’d argue that the hayseeds and trailor trash of Wasilla would believe anything.
Lloydois
How many more overseas trips (before his publicity tour of Europe and the Middle East) has Obama done compared to Palin? Of that’s right – he went to school in Indonesia – that must be where he gets his foreign policy credentials from. In truth – bugger all and so your point is?
philu
You cite the CBS poll that HAD Obama up by 8 – now wiped to 42 each and that’s BEFORE you factor the strong inherent Dem bias in the poll sample. She didn’t slash the funding for abstinence education – only the AP would describe a decision to only INCREASE the funding by $3.9m versus the originally planned (but never finalised) $5m increase.
Palin has the left crapping in their pants. In one fell swoop her speech left egg all over the faces of the chattering classes. The response from the left has been as feeble as it has been ineffective. Obama foreign policy spokesman retired Major Gen Paul Eaton today was desperately trying to defend Obama’s rebuttal to Palin’s jabs about his lack of experience wherein he proffered that running his campaign for President as proof of his experience. Think about that … here we have a major candidate for higher office touting the very campaign for that office as being a key reason for being suitable for that office. After avoiding Bill O’Reilly for almost 2 years, Obama rushes on his show to proclaim his undying love and support for the surge that for over a year he has mocked, derided, opposed and voted to defund. Hmmm
I go back to previous posts. What has Obama run? The Harvard Law Review and the radical Annenberg Challenge. And how does that compare to a State with 24,000 employees, an $11billion budget and a major international gas pipeline deal.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
“Not EVERY issue has to be about the “communists” being out to get you.”
Oh no, not another tired old pseudo liberal reactionary who ignores the existence of leftist groups like Socialist International and Global Peace and Justice and a thousand other such organisations and their stated aims and objectives and their Gramascian strategies and who claims the left are just an unorganised and fragmented force like the bunch of muddle heads who attempt to oppose the monolithic totalitarian global political force of leftism.
BtW, I know very well of the discussion you referenced. Like you I found it on some half witted commie site somewhere, where it was being used to underpin the smears of the left, and without the paragraphs I quoted above of course that actually relate to that quote and qualify what Palin really meant.
What was the question exactly? I would like to see the actual questions she was responding to. There’s not one allegation I’ve read from the left to date about Palin that hasn’t been a mixture of half truths and outright lies. Leftists are habitual liars. Another example of their duplicity is when they made so much of George Bush stating “major hostilities are over and” wherein they cut off the rest of his speech and put a full stop after the word “over” that was not in the actual text of the speech but completely altered the context of what Bush was saying.
The left only exist by means of deceit. Self deceit and the gross deceit they inflict upon the rest of the country where ever they have power. You only have to look at the Klark government to see the truth of that. They will continue to inflict that deceit as long as you are prepared to allow them to.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Sorry – very tired – should read “..only the AP would describe a decision to only INCREASE the funding by $3.9m versus the originally planned (but never finalised) $5m increase as slashing”
September 5th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
It is simply not true that he hasn’t authored any major law. What about the Lugar-Obama bill on nonproliferation, and an ethics reform package that the Washington Post called “the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet.” See:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014545.php
September 5th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I did actually hear a Republican at the convention say after her speech: “With Russia on one side and Canada on the other, who says she doesn’t have international experience!?”
Snort. Snort.
Why do these people keep perpetuating stereotypes of Americans? It does their country such a disservice.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
This whole idea that Obama has never ‘run’ anything and lacks executive experience is so silly. He’s been tried and tested where it counts in the heat of the American political maelstrom over an extended period of time and come up trumps. He’s taken on the most formidable Democrat political machine and beaten it.
David Frum had a much quoted post on this.
“Can we conservatives please stop kidding ourselves about Barack Obama’s “qualifications”? Yes, if I had been a Democratic donor back in 2006, I’d sure worry about whether Barack Obama had what it took to be president. That was before he took on the toughest political operation in America, before he beat Bill and Hillary Clinton, before he won 18 million primary votes.
Obama’s nomination was not handed to him. He fought hard for it and won against the odds. “Qualifications” predict achievement. Once you have achieved, it doesn’t matter what your qualifications are. Who cares whether the guy who built a big company from nothing didn’t have much of a resume when he started? But if you are applying to run a big company built by somebody else, the resume matters …
The worst mistake in any fight is to under-estimate your opponent’s abilities. Look what happened to the people who under-estimated Reagan. If conservatives are to have any hope in the coming weeks, we should wake up to the fact that we face in Barack Obama a formidable man, who appeals to something important and deep in the American electorate. He’s not a superman, he has vulnerabilities, he can be beaten.
But he won’t be beaten until we who are trying to beat him understand why and how he has come so far,”- David Frum, NRO.
James Fallows lays out the challenges for Palin.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/my_prediction_about_sarah_pali.php
“it is almost impossible to imagine how grueling the process of running for national office is. Everybody gets exhausted. The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble.
Let’s assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning he has behind him, and Joe Biden’s even longer toughening-up process, she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed an international issue, there’s no evidence of it in internet-land.
The smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues she will be forced to address. This is long before she gets to a debate with Biden; it’s what the press is going to start out looking for.
So the prediction is: unavoidable gaffes. The challenge for the McCain-Palin campaign is to find some way to defuse them ahead of time, since Socrates, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz reincarnated would themselves make errors in her situation. And the challenge for Democrats is to lead people to think, What if she were in charge?, without being bullies about it.”
Hilzoy has an excellent post on the ‘executive experience’ issue.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/08/executive-exper.html
September 5th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Go the Maverick and the Moosehunter.
(Itty bitty gripe: how can a mom who gets a buzz out of gunning down fellow creatures in their prime call herself ‘pro-life’? But hey, I don’t want to be picky.)
Sarah Palin does appear to be a rare combination of substance and style. I sat transfixed through some of the rousing curtain-raiser speeches by Romney, Huckabee, Giuliani and others, but I thought Palin’s was just brilliant.
To bag her for not writing it herself is a pretty low blow. I assure you politicians don’t tend to read speeches that they haven’t invested in heavily, both emotionally and literally.
The trick as a speechwriter is to think like the candidate. It’s not to have the candidate talk like you.
Sure, some of their words start out as yours. But once the speech has gone through several stages of drafting, usually involving quite a bit of editing by the politician, the end result should come out of their mouth sounding true to character.
I’ve sometimes felt that George W. Bush’s words were too clever to have come out of that brain. But last night, Sarah Palin came across as entirely genuine, whether the words were all hers or not.
That indicates a scriptwriter and candidate working in harmony.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Careful, Llloyd, you know what they say about folks who are always frothing about the homosexual agenda. They’ve got one of their own — and Baiter might get the wrong idea about your response to his charms.
Well, KIA, I’ve said more than once if McCain really wanted a woman on the ticket who was acceptably right-wing, what was wrong with Kay Bailey Hutchinson? That is, apart from actually knowing her arse from her elbow about how Capitol Hill works, and (perhaps this was her real problem) being a little too independent and smart for her own good? I certainly think Hutchinson is savvy enough that she would tell the kind of blatant, easily busted lie like the one Palin told about not supporting the “Bridge to Nowhere”; claiming that she’s fiscally kosher, when she hired a Washington lobbyist to go chasing pork, and is currently facing (and stonewalling) an ethics investigation into serious and credible allegations that she abused her powers to prosecute a family vendetta – and fired people who wouldn’t play ball.
You folks have the luxury of closing your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending inconvenient facts are just “leftist smears”. You can dismiss legitimate comparisons of Palin’s own statements about her own record in public office with reality as “sexist” and a “savage assault”. But, thank God, you’re not actually running for public office in the real world.
Palin is. And she’s not experienced enough, or competent, to be Vice President of the United States. And in my view, if this is the first taste of McCain’s leadership qualities, I don’t want him to win. Obama can’t possibly be any worse.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Leadership is judgement and guts. You can buy (advisors with) experience.
The only experience a leader needs is experience in exercising good judgement and guts. If they can do it in a state capital, they can do it in the nation’s capital.
September 6th, 2008 at 3:59 am
CHANGE IS COMING!
September 6th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Sheer panic from the left over the appointment of Sarah Palin as the next Vice President of the US.
What fun.
It’s true that these rabid lefties hate the US and live to be Anti-American. They don’t exactly have the best interests of the US at heart. Luck for the US they can’t vote and their opinions mean nothing to the eventual outcome of a John McCain victory in November. At least we’ll be able to rub that fact in their faces just before New Zealand goes to the polls and votes another John into power. Hels is going to literally meltdown on stage when she accepts defeat. The bitterness on display will be legend.
I wonder if these Lefties realise if Obama wins that Hillary’s aspirations go on hold for another eight years, too long for another serious attempt at the White House.
To sum up the two contenders:
McCain: Hero
Obama: Wannabe
September 6th, 2008 at 5:08 am
Craig
Kay Hutchinson is pro-choice and given McCain’s borderline conservative credentials on some (but not all issues) it became pretty apparent a pro-choice candidate on the ticket would not fly. Hutchinson is a likeable and able legislator but she would not have brought the energy and excitement that Palin has. The RNCC got $10 million in ONE DAY after Palin’s speech – cant see that happening with Hutchinson plus there would be the grumpy soc cons who’d sit out the race. Frum is out on a limb – he and Krauthammer (who I respect enormously) are the only prominent conservative commentators who are quite negative on the impact of Palin. McCain’s people thoroughly investigated the trooper gate allegations. The cop at the centre of this affair was a low life slime and had committed numerous fireable offences (including the tazering of his 11 year old step son). The person Palin fired sat on this incompetance for years in full knowledge and protected him. Palin was cleaning out corruption across the board and this was but one of many. When you clean up the old boys network you make many enemies – some who will smear Palin to a willing and waiting MSM. The worse that could be said about her role in the “Bridge to Nowhere” is she flip flopped (something Obama has turned into an art form). That bridge was a monument to Sen Stevens long standing corruption and Palin new it and changed her mind and good on her.
Lloydois
You make it sound like Obama is the only person who’se ever won a Primary. Bill Clinton fought long and hard as did Dukakis both against excellent quality competition (eg Mario Cuomo Gov of NY). Can you imagine had either of them gone to the people and stated that one of their MAIN qualifications for office was that they beat their opponents in the primary. Both had substantial records as governors to bring to the table. Beating Hillary was more about mastering the arcane rules of the Democrat Primary and so to the extent that Obama learned to finesse multiple caucus wins then that was an achievement. But to make that the centre stage of his prior experience is laughable. Even all the bills he sponsored in the IL Senate, almost all were handed to him on a platter by his mentor Alice Palmer and the Senate President Emil Jones after other more experienced legislators did the groundwork – there are still a number of able Senators in Springfield resentful of the way their boss used his power to take their bill from them and ‘give’ it to Obama to polish his resume. Name one piece of substantial federal legislation that Obama initiated and was the primary sponsor of – not that he just voted for. The ethics legislation he finally voted for was watered down by his party after he told John McCain he’d work across the isle with him. Obama reneged on that promise and went with the party line and the withering letter McCain sent to him after he broke his promised still stands as one of the most pointed public rebukes in that chamber.
September 6th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I’m sure once Sarah Palin is installed as the Vice President of the US that people like Russell Brown will take a cold hard look at the new reality on the ground and realise what a silly boy he has been.
In the mean time he might like to chill with a nice bit of music and have a think about what is important in life:
Russell Brown gonna drop the pressure
Besides, he’ll be looking for a new paid job after November and that’s going to be difficult when the money taps from the state are turned off. Nice.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:10 am
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=184093
Stewart nails it as usual. What a joke these people are. Because there’s no way they can run on the Republican record they are reduced to reframing the race as the same old culture war. Listening to McCain and Palin you would think it was the Democrats who had occupied the White House for the last 8 years.
Arianna knows the score.
“Given that 82 percent of voters believe we are heading in the wrong direction, it’s a logical position to take. But for the American people to buy into the notion that McCain, who has raced to Bush’s side on tax cuts, on offshore drilling — even on torture — is this campaign’s agent of change, it’s going to require an incredible suspension of disbelief. Or a serious case of amnesia.
And this is clearly McCain’s campaign strategy: inducing amnesia about the past and confusion about the future, attempting to hoodwink the American people about what he has become. Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. As a major distraction. In the effort to divert attention from the matter at hand — McCain’s embrace of all things Bush — Palin is the perfect storm.
Americans love the outsider plucked from obscurity. And Palin provides bucketfuls of the new and exciting. As long as voters and the media are caught up in the latest installment of As Sarah Turns or the Alaska version of All My Children, they aren’t paying attention to the lack of solutions McCain is offering to the serious crises that face us.
Forget worrying about the economy or health care or the housing crisis — think about how many people live in Wasilla, whether Bristol and Levi will live happily ever after, and if Sarah and her “First Dude” really want Alaska to secede from the union.
This is why the McCain campaign wants Palin front and center — did you notice how much time McCain spent during the speech praising Palin and how quickly the celebratory post-speech music shifted from “Raisin’ McCain” to “Barracuda”?
And it’s why Democrats need to ignore Palin, and keep the focus on reminding voters about the stark contrast between an Obama and a McCain administration. It’s tempting to prime the Palin attack pump. But Obama and the Democrats do so at their own peril.
John McCain wants to distance himself from Bush, cloud the huge policy differences between him and Obama, and hope his compelling life story carries the day. Obama’s job is to make sure he doesn’t get away with it. Forgetting Sarah Palin is a good place to start.”
September 6th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Haha my comments clearly weren’t well received! BlairM as Jon Stewart so aptly put it… the problem is this… Palin has made it clear that the decision as to what to do with the pregnancy was Bristol’s to make and hers alone… yet as a result of her hard-line anti-abortion stance, under her rules other families faced with the same choice would have the decision taken out of their hands and instead made for them by the government.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:55 am
lloydois
Your man isn’t listening to Ariana – retreating in the polls and freaked out by Palinmania, he spent precious time on the campaign trail in defence mode justifying the work of community organisers. Well bring on the scrutiny of his time as a community organiser PLEASE – then all the work he did for ACORN (a grass roots community group convicted of voter registration fraud in mutiple states mutiple times) will come under scrutiny. We’d all love to shine some disinfecting sunlight on the work of Chicago ‘community organisers’ and the work they do within the notoriously corrupt Chicago Democrat machine. An interesting footnote from Obama’s time in the IL Senate – he could’ve used his capital to back a reformist Democrat for Cook County Commissioner (Forrest Claypool) but he plumped for the son of former corrupt Commissioner John Stronger. So when Obama actually was in a position to practice what he preached he stuck with politics as usual while Palin cleaned up shop in Alaska – who is the real reform candidate.
Palin has real pulling power – she’s getting huge crowds to rallies with McCain. It is difficult for NZers to fathom the feeling on the street in America – EVERYONE is talking about Palin – even people who I know who couldn’t give a toss about politics. I know quite a few McCain hating GOP activists who have just donated the max and are raving about the ticket. My liberla friends trot out the talking points but concede she is a big problem for Obama – they all say Obama is falling into a trap of comparing himself to her. Its a trap we’re all enjoying.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:59 am
for those palin-completists..
(or those starved of palin-oxygen by our mainstream media..)
and of course..for those tiring/tired of the obsessive copy/pasting of a local..
..and the regurgitated rightwing ‘talking points’ from kia..
..rebuttals/relief is at hand..
as of this moment i have forty palin stories/links..
..i have become a ‘palin-resource’..in my own right..
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=palin
phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 6th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Newsflash- Palin’s cat scratched bark off rare tree.
Newsflash- Why Palin’s husband DUI is worse than Obama’s cocaine use
Newflash- Obama still more experienced than Sarah Palin’s preganant daughter.
Newsflash- Sarah Palin’s dog caught disturbing neigbour’s trash.
Newsflash- Obama and Media agree on “don’t ask don’t tell” policy
Newsflash- NY Times run more negative front page stories on Sarah Palin in one week than on Obama in two years.
Polling makes Sarah Palin more popular than Barack Obama, John McCain or Hillary Clinton. That’s why the left hate her. She breaks through the puffery and pomposity and arrogance that the left use as a shield, and exposes them for the obsessive and compulsive liars they always have been.
She exposes the mainstream left as having far too much influence over our lives in proportion to the number of people who really sympathize with their ideology. She’s not intimidated by their political correctness or their media propagandists, and she confronts them, and speaking clearly and using simple uncomplicated language, she beats them down.
Sarah Palin is brave and truthful. That’s why the left hate her, because they know, BRAVERY AND TRUTH ARE ALL IT TAKES TO DEFEAT THEM..!!!! Be like Sarah. Don’t be cowed by the screaming yelling bullying left. Be brave and speak the truth loudly and with conviction. The left have no effective defence to that simple strategy.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
The only screaming, yelling and bullying I’m seeing round here is you redbaiter. The quintessential angry, resentful, red state republican.
You sure as hell don’t sound like a Kiwi redbaiter. A far cry from the inclusive, thoughtful conservatism of the esteemed Mr Farrar.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am
And kiwi in america for sure everyone’s talking about Palin, my Ameican friends surely are but not in a supportive way. This ABCnews poll highlights what could be a problem for her.
http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Story?id=5725793&page=3
VOTE IMPACT — As noted, predisposed partisans on each side are more apt to react favorably to Palin and Biden. On Palin, conservatives by a 34-point margin say her addition to the ticket makes them more likely rather than less likely to support McCain; among Republicans it’s a 37-point positive margin, and among white evangelicals, 32 points. These are all heavily pro-McCain groups in the first place, but these numbers may reflect an enthusiasm — somewhat lacking in his campaign — that could impact their turnout.
At the same time, the story in the ideological center is different: Among moderates, Biden registers as a net 15-point positive for Obama. In the same group, Palin shows no effect on support for McCain.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:59 am
“The only screaming, yelling and bullying I’m seeing round here is you redbaiter. The quintessential angry, resentful, red state republican.”
Quintessential?? Pfft, you half educated dipstick. That just proves how deranged and out of touch with reality leftists like you are doesn’t it? Because all you’ve ever got from me is words on a computer screen from one singular person, that you can read at your own discretion. Only a sad mentally disturbed leftist cretin could categorise this as “quinteessential screaming yelling” and especially “bullying” which has as its main identifying component the state of affairs where the victim is powerless or cannot escape his/ her tormentor and said tormentors are often a group or association of people. Guess what dipshit. Don’t like Redbaiter, DON”T READ MY MESSAGES.
The truth of course is not that you don’t want to read Redbaiter’s messages yourself, but that you don’t want other people to read them. Just like you don’t want them to hear Sarah Palin’s message. Anti freedom of expression totalitarian swine.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Quite an interesting thread – I see Lloyd has finally made it over from No Minister and all those comments on Gordon King’s site all those years ago. So let’s see what we’ve got here:
First up from Radar
Irony?
What?
Irony????
Then Russell Brown:
Russell’s message – Right-wingers are nasty, mean,….and, and….., mean, nasty…
Gee, never heard that before. Must remember to reinforce that every chance I get. Must forget what Cullen and Clark have said about various groups over the years –like Clark’s comments on Shipley’s raising of her kids – because I worship at their alter.
By the way – I love the use of the word “surprisingly” – very Chomskian in it’s implication that the critic rises somewhat above blatant partisanship and ideologically with a balanced and fair-minded view.
Russell’s message – I only vote for dignified candidates, and I critique my own side about this sort of thing all the time when they talk about “chinless scarf wearers”, “feral inbreds” and mean-spirited people in our society – like, you know, right-wingers.
WHAT? The guy who dropped the A-Bomb on all those kids and did all those things against Communists that the New Left have spent decades decrying. Hmmmm!
Of course if Truman were running for anything nowadays I would think his connections with “Boss Tom” Prendergast’s political machine would be of great interest to the media. Actually you would think that such things would still be of interest – but apparently only for small town mayors and out-of-the-way states like Alaska – and if you’re a Republican.
Ah, again with the policy.
Lovely, huge chunks of juicy policy. The dream is alive. Larger programmes, with larger government departments fed by ever larger tax-funded budgets – all carefully thought out by sound, rational and nuanced planners. Think big government and you think nuance. What have you righties got to offer against that? Huh? Huh?
This phenomena was pointed out years ago by Mike Royko in his biography of another Chicago machine politician, mayor William Dalley. Dalley would produce an endless stream of “policy ideas” that involved all of the above, as well as enriching capitalist cronies and entrenching his political power. When called on it his response was invariably to ask the critics what plans they had. The idea that actually doing nothing in those areas would have better all round was not considered.
Funnily enough the title of that book was Boss. Seems appropriate in the now.
September 6th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Carlyp – if you can dig up any initiatives Palin has made to restrict abortion in Alaska (as they have done in South Dakota), your views may be justified, but otherwise it is not relevant. Abortion is the responsibility of State, not Federal governments and Palin would actually have less power over it if elected than she does now as Alaskan Governor! It may be that judges appointed by Palin or McCain reverse Roe v Wade, but that will not affect the legality of abortion in America unless State legislatures decide to ban it themselves afterwards. So her daughter’s love life is not relevant, not least because she is not married yet and the marriage has been stated as her decision. The idea that one’s opinion on abortion gives others a free pass to pass judgement on one’s family life is bullshit, and actually not consistent with any pro-choice message.
September 6th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
One of the problems we have in this country in a much worse way than the USA, is that the various strands that are opposed to Socialism can’t find enough common ground to actually mount a coherent counterattack. We have a whole lot of “Labour Lite” types who actually are so anxious to appease the PC paradigm that they just join in with the socialists kneejerk smearing of christian fundamentalists, libertarians, and patriotic nationalists; while the christian fundamentalists attack everyone else, the libertarians attack everyone else, and the patriotic nationalists attack everyone else.
What has worked in the USA, and William F. Buckley is credited with achieving a lot to this end, is that the various non-Socialist groups realised that if they did not find the common ground on which they could agree, none of them were going to get ANY of their preferred principles of government enacted or upheld. I suggest that, for example, the libertarians need to give up their emphasis on “gay rights” and free love and the like if they want to have a cooee of a chance to get ECONOMIC freedoms and the rollback of Nanny State interference, with the co-operation of the Christian fundamentalists. The patriotic nationalists need to give up their emphasis on bashing immigrants and imports, and instead concentrate on defending our culture and institutions at the root, where they are under attack, and fighting privilege on whatever basis the socialists might be advancing it, class or race or “victimhood”. The Christian fundamentalists and patriotic nationalists will have to swallow their distaste for free-market liberalism if they want to have a cooee of a chance of defending our traditional culture in the education institutions and getting to bring up their own kids.
And the “Labour Lite” types are going to have to either get a spine, or just join Labour – there will be less difference between them and Labour than them and an invigorated “Right” in NZ. The kind of thing I mean would involve ACT and the Libertarianz and the Family Party and the Kiwi Party and the base of the Nats. Look, if you think this is unworkable, we will get nowhere. Look at all the stuff Labour has pushed through that is far from the mainstream, because their traditional “worker” base stuck with them regardless of the fact that Labour had been hijacked by narrow interests – just because they perceive that there will be even worse undermining of their more basic interests if the other side got into power. But on the fragmented “Right”, we have a whole lot of different groups who want everything, and each of them ends up not only not getting much, but not getting the thing that matters the most to them.
September 6th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
PhilBest:
The difference between America and here is that the Republican Party platform is still vastly distinct from the Democrat one. There is almost no difference between National and Labour here.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:37 am
For want of a better place to comment on this… have you heard that Texas might be disenfranchised? Bad enough Michigan & Florida in the primaries… but Texas in the general?! Perhaps we need Peter Williams up there to deal with the electoral law!
Turns out both the Dems & Republicans failed to file their papers listing both the president & vice presidential candidates by Aug 26 and thus legally cannot be included on the ballot (never mind that this was the day before Obama was officially nominated at the convention and Palin was still Snow White at that time). The Liberal candidate seems set on doing all he can to keep it that way… http://www.bobbarr2008.com/press/press-releases/122/obama-mccain-fail-to-qualify-for-texas-ballot/ & see his letter http://www.bobbarr2008.com/files/lettertosos.pdf and the certification papers http://www.bobbarr2008.com/files/dqcertification.pdf
This NY Times blog has some ideas about what the upshot might be… http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/disenfranchise-texas/. In the unlikely event that the law is upheld, it would be a postive for Obama.
Incidentially, the certification papers list Obama & Biden’s full home addresses… interesting to see they haven’t been blurred out on Google Maps! (haven’t checked Earth)