With thanks to MSNBC:
McCain running mate speaks as someone unconcerned with public opinion
Is the public not going to be voting in November? Or are our votes not going to count? What do they know?
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in her first real introduction to the American people as Sen. John McCain’s running mate, struck back Wednesday night at news organizations and a “Washington elite” that have raised questions about her qualifications to be vice president.
Ah, we should know not to ask such questions of a candidate for public office, especially the second-highest office in the Executive Branch, potentially second only to an elderly man not in perfect health.
As Palin accepted the vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., her experience — she has been mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, and has served as Alaska’s governor for less than two years — was front and center in voters’ minds. Palin’s personal life has also become a topic of discussion after she revealed that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant.
Alaska, a state I love, but with fewer people than many cities and counties. Also, “she revealed”: I don’t recall anyone asking if she was pregnant now.
Palin acknowledged that she had not been in politics for long, calling herself “just your average hockey mom [who] signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better.”
Sounds to me like the right stuff to lead the strongest nation on earth!
But in a speech that connected strongly with delegates who interrupted her numerous times with standing ovations, she dismissed critics of her background as snobs who looked down on ordinary Americans and their concerns.
Guess what, dear, you’re not an ordinary American. And I’ve already pointed out how the Obama “elitist” attack has racist undertones, overtones, or both. Anyway, alot the Repugs have done for ordinary Americans and their concerns these last 28 years, with real wages falling, homelessness up, hunger up, malnutrition up, lack of health insurance up, insufficient health insurance up, sacrificing their children and spouses in senseless wars abroad from Grenada to Iraq and soon possibly Iran and Georgia, agriculture going to the corporations, small towns dying, etc etc etc. Then again, “Republicans Against Snobs”: Maybe this *is* a ticket of change and reform and mavericks!!!
“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment,” Palin said. “And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.
But as a Republican, you ARE a member of the elite. But that’s not why you’re unqualified, but because you make Dan Quayle look like a Rhodes Scholar of vast experience. It’s not your fault; if you had his privileges all your life, you probably would’ve made more of them than he did.
“But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion,” she said. “I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”
First of all, that “little” is immature and girlish; that’s OK, you’re a girl, a young woman by Washington standards, even if you are about to become a grandmom; come back in a few years when you get some game and stop saying things like “little news flash.” More importantly, if the people of this country don’t want you, will you be forced upon us by election fraud? Who would Jesus cheat?
The campaign said Palin co-wrote her address with Matthew Scully, who has written for McCain and previously for President Bush. The Obama campaign picked up on that fact in its brief response, which it released during the roll call of the states that was making McCain’s nomination official.
“The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush’s speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years,” the campaign said in a statement.
“If Governor Palin and John McCain want to define ‘change’ as voting with George Bush 90 percent of the time, that’s their choice, but we don’t think the American people are ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.”
As Senator Bob Casey said, “That’s not a maverick, that’s a sidekick!”
“Since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves,” Palin said. “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”
IIUC, not many, not in Wasilla anyway! But then, a White girl in Alaska wouldn’t know about the need for community organizing; she should ask her Yup’ik Eskimo grandmother-in-law about it. Now there’s a small town!
“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,” she said, alluding to an early gaffe by Obama during the primary campaign, when he suggested that working-class Americans tended to “cling to religion and guns” in tough times.
No gaffe. I suspect he learned it from the recent scientific research of sociologists Andrew Greeley – an Obama friend – and Michael Hout, as in their recent book The Truth about Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe. Anyway, I’m not sure Obama was putting down small-towners when he said it; I originally read it as profoundly sympathetic, considering the lip-service they’re used to from the GOP. G&H believe that if Democrats restored their former alliance with rural and small-town America, offering them a positive reason to vote for them again, and not just a negative reason not to vote for the Repugs — It really is ‘the rural and small-town economy, stupid’ — they’d come back.
“Here’s how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. 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. …
“There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, in places where winning means survival and defeat means death, and that man is John McCain.”
McCain, change? Doesn’t McCain-Feingold seem to have been well-designed to keep letting soft campaign money through, rather than stopping it as claimed? (Sorry, Russ, it’s the truth, and you know it.) Has he changed anything else? He talks change now, but where’s he been for the last three decades there in Washington? Talk about “permanent Washington elite”! And what the ill-advised Vietnam War has to do with change, I don’t know. It’s tragic McCain had to spend those years as a POW, with all that torture and deprivation of basic rights and counsel – conditions he feels compelled to inflict on others today – for a big mistake and political opportunism, just like our men and women around the world these last 28 years, thrown into the meat grinder by politicians without a clue, cynical politicians out only for their own reflected glory, no matter the human cost. Real change wouldn’t be continuing The Wars of the House of Bush and Saud for another 8-16 years, for literally trillions of dollars our great-grandchildren will be paying-off, but ending the madness now. But then, you “haven’t thought much about the Iraq War.”
“From the inside, no family ever seems typical,” she said. “That’s how it is with us. Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys.”
But at the same time that the campaign was pressuring reporters to stop asking about her children, Palin invoked her family several times in explaining why she was proud to run on the same ticket with McCain.
That’s the thing: “Most other families” aren’t trying to tell others how to be, especially while not succeeding in living up to it themselves – a tough standard – but neither ratcheting back the rhetoric as ‘older and wiser’ or having learned a little humility in ‘the school of hard knocks.’ Hopefully you will in future decades. Speaking for myself, I’m surprised at how smart I’ve gotten versus how smart I thought I was 20 years ago … or even three!!!
Palin praised the senator as “a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight.”
“Within sight” of LSD trippers, maybe….
“Sometimes, even the greatest joys bring challenge, and children with special needs inspire a special love,” Palin said.
“To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters,” she said. “I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.’’
I read somewhere that both she and McCain cut special ed funding. I thought it was on Huffington Post, but their search function seems on the fritz just now. But with friends like that….
Even before McCain’s plane landed at noon, his campaign struck back heatedly at persistent questions about Palin, declaring that “this nonsense is over.”
Temper, temper, Senator…. If you didn’t want questions, you shouldn’t have nominated such a “questionable” candidate.
Levi Johnston, the boyfriend of Palin’s pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, got a pat on the shoulder, as well as a handshake. McCain told Bristol Palin that he was sorry for what she was going through because of the “intrusion of the media,” Steve Schmidt, a senior campaign adviser, told NBC News.
Yes, “the media” invited in by mom and her new friend from Washington. Anyway, McCain repeatedly rubbed Levi’s upper arm. What’s that about? Wait, is he the one – McCain – who doesn’t know what to do with his hands? You’d think after three decades in the limelight….
Referring to forum last month at which both candidates fielded questions from Rick Warren, a prominent evangelical leader, Romney said:
“And at Saddleback, after Barack Obama dodged and ducked every direct question, John McCain hit the nail on the head: Radical Islam is evil, and he will defeat it. Republicans prefer straight talk to politically correct talk.”
I would’ve thought not Establishing a religion would include not using taxpayer dollars or soldiers to “defeat” a religion either. But as they say, the First Amendment is just an amendment…. As for Obama’s alleged performance there, I don’t make a habit of keeping up on Evangelicals, so I couldn’t say. I’ve got my own fish to fry(!)….
Huckabee, meanwhile, cast doubt on Obama’s {alleged*} lack of experience and judgment in foreign policy, saying: “Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give madmen the benefit of the doubt. If he’s wrong just once, we will pay a heavy price.”
I don’t see Obama saying that. I see Obama saying that unless Huckabee wants a draft … or a nuclear holocaust … maybe a little in-person “reading the Riot Act” to Ahmadinejad et al. might bring the message home to them. A little thing we used to call international relations, before Reagan and others decided speaking loudly and carrying a big stick was better than the other thing. Though the rest of the planet thinks we’re the madmen….
Giuliani, meanwhile, took on the burden of answering the controversies over Palin’s background….
Oh, that’s rich. I guess his job was to make her situation look normal!
Saying Palin had more “executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined,” Giuliani said, “I’m sorry if Barack Obama thinks her hometown isn’t cosmopolitian enough.”
Earlier, Giuliani, in an interview with NBC’s TODAY show, called reporting on Palin’s daughter “indecent and disgusting.”
“Everything’s that come out is almost silly,” Giuliani said. “The whole thing with her daughter is just absurd.”
And Rudy has more “executive experience” than she, so why isn’t he on the ticket?!! Because the “base” thinks he’s a flaming liberal! (Ask Blacks in New York about that.) And yes, exposing Bristol’s issues was absurd – but that seems the order of the day for these Republicans…. They think little of a young woman “in trouble,” and always have. Levi has shown more manliness in his little finger by joining her in the maelstrom than McCain in all his years in Hanoi. Because McCain can always run on his “prisonership,” as he does constantly, but what can Mr. Johnston do other than what he’s doing?
Romney said Americans would enjoy “expanded opportunity … when taxes are lowered and when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance.”
And Giuliani promised that McCain would “lower taxes so our economy can grow.”
“He will reduce government spending to strengthen our dollar,” Giuliani said. “He will expand free trade so we can be even more competitive.”
Sounds like trickle-down, “voodoo economics” to me – as a man named Bush once called it! And folks like us are tired of being trickled on!!! In any case, why isn’t their man Bush II doing all this? The fact is, he’s lowered the taxes of the rich and Big Business, and promoted free-not-fair trade, but not the affordable, portable health insurance, the economic growth, or the stronger dollar. He has brought us six-dollar gas, unbridled corruption, denial of Global Warming, the housing crisis, offshoring, the “loud sucking sound south,” arsenic and mercury in our water (I hope not in Alaska, for those babies’ sake), regulatory malfeasance / misfeasance / nonfeasance, “lost” Indian billions, lies and coverups, war profiteering, election fraud and divisiveness and partisanship, etc etc etc. And McCain’s been right there with him 90 percent of the time, his arms wrapped around him, his lips right on him. “That’s not a maverick, that’s a sidekick!”
(*–So much for the “liberal media” myth!)
