This one is pretty bad. The McCain campaign and GOP activists who are starved for someone to add excitement to this campaign have been touting Sarah Palin as a “reformer.” In her speech introducing herself to America, she bragged about being against the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” the ultimate example of government waste and earmark abuse.
Well, it turns out that she was actually FOR the bridge to nowhere back in 2006 when she was running for governor. The Anchorage Daily News has the details:
When John McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, her reputation as a tough-minded budget-cutter was front and center.
“I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,” Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan’s Gravina Island bridge.
But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.
The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them “nowhere.” They’re still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin’s subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects — and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines.
“I think that’s when the campaign for national office began,” said Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone — because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.
This stinks. I’m sure she’s done some good things in Alaska, but this makes her look like the poster child of cynical politics and political opportunism. Alaska is notorious for living off of money from the federal government because they have slimeballs like Senator Ted Stevens funneling money to the state. Sarah Palin was happy to get that money, and she was happy to make the bridge a campaign issue when she needed to get elected governor.
Now she’s trying to claim the opposite position while ruuning for national office, AND she’s using it as an example of her “integrity.”
It’s galling that she would do this, but it’s amazing that she thought she could make this ridiculous claim without getting called on it.
One reason I’m surprised by the pick of Sarah Palin relates to the ethics issues she’s been facing in Alaska. TPM and other news organizations have been reporting on this issue.
As mentioned earlier, Gov. Palin is embroiled in her own trooper-gate scandal up in Alaska. In short, she’s accused of using her pull as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. The brother-in-law is embroiled in an ugly divorce and custody with Palin’s sister. And after his boss wouldn’t fire the brother-in-law, she fired the boss. Palin originally insisted there was nothing to the story. More recently, she was forced to admit the one of her top deputies had pushed to get the guy fired.
This might not end up as a big story, but it could be a huge distraction for the McCain campaign.
I know Democrats are trying to paint Sarah Palin as Dan Quayle with a pony tail, but so far she passed her first test.
McCain intoduced her at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, and Sarah Palin was very comfortable and well-spoken on stage. She didn’t have that “deer in the headlights” look that Dan Quayle made famous back in 1988.
I still think she is a very risky choice, and it remains to be seen how she handles the scrutiny and tough questions on the issues, but she has charisma and she’s very good in front of a crowd.
So far, we’re seeing a nice bounce out of the Democratic convention. The Gallup tracking poll jumped from even to 6 points yesterday, and then moved to 8 points today. This covers three days of the convention but still doesn’t factor in Barack Obama’s speech from last night.
The spectacle from last night was huge, so we’ll see if that further increases the bounce.
We’ll see how the McCain pick of Sarah Palin works out, but the timing was brilliant, as the McCain campaign will blunt the impact of Obama’s speech.
It was a deeply substantive speech, full of policy detail, full of people other than the candidate, centered overwhelmingly on domestic economic anxiety. It was a liberal speech, more unabashedly, unashamedly liberal than any Democratic acceptance speech since the great era of American liberalism. But it made the case for that liberalism - in the context of the decline of the American dream, and the rise of cynicism and the collapse of cultural unity. His ability to portray that liberalism as a patriotic, unifying, ennobling tradition makes him the most lethal and remarkable Democratic figure since John F Kennedy.
What he didn’t do was give an airy, abstract, dreamy confection of rhetoric. The McCain campaign set Obama up as a celebrity airhead, a Paris Hilton of wealth and elitism. And he let them portray him that way, and let them over-reach, and let them punch him again and again … and then he turned around and destroyed them. If the Rove Republicans thought they were playing with a patsy, they just got a reality check.
The talking heads on MSNBC are bringing up a good point - by referencing McCain’s temperment, Barack Obama has indicated he will not hold back if McCain continues his patriotism attacks.
It’s well known that many Senators who have served with John McCain, including Republicans, are terrified at the thought of John McCain as president. The concerns rest with whether he is too unstable or volatile to be commander-in-chief.
For anyone paying attention, it should not be a surprise that Obama went right after McCain tonight. Expect this to continue.
With one word, Barack Obama summed up the appropriate response to the last eight years under George W. Bush.
It was an historic speech. Some have quibbled that the Democrats were not tough enough on Bush, Cheney and McCain during this convention. Barack Obama took it upon himself to deliver the toughest punch.
For all the bluster from Republicans, the images from the stadium are incredible. They’re expecting over 80,000 people, as poeple are still in line thirty minutes before Obama is scheduled to speak.
Meanwhile, John McCain’s campaign is having trouble getting 10,000 people to attend his event tomorrow in Dayton to introduce his VP.
No wonder the Republicans are trying so hard to distract everyone with idiotic talking points like the stage in the stadium.
At what point do they start to look pathetic and desperate?
As pointed out by Josh Marshall, John Kerry’s speech might have been the best one of the convention. The “brain trust” at MSNBC didn’t show most of it, so I caught it on CNN but didn’t get to see the whole thing. Later, MSNBC replayed parts of it, though they didn’t even have a camera covering Obama’s uncle who Kerry singled out in the crowd.
Kerry rips into McCain and the GOP, mocking them for some of the pathetic personal attacks we’ve seen so far despite McCain’s claim that he would run a respectful campaign.
The media is raising the question of whether the Democrats have been tough enough so far. Biden had some tough language, but his delivery could have been much better. Both Clintons were great and they also took good shots at McCain, but they were focused more on unifying the party than ripping McCain.
I suspect Al Gore will be the guy to rip McCain to shreds tomorrow night. Gore has nothing but contempt for the current administration, and he will gladly link McCain to Bush’s failed presidency.
Obama needs to be tough as well. I have no doubt he’ll rise to the occasion given his history with speeches. He needs to show some passion, and he needs to draw very clear distinctions with McCain.
Joe Biden took some good shots at McCain, and overall the speech was pretty good. Frankly I was hoping for a little more. He’s just not as polished as the Clintons, and he could have drawn better distinctions. That said, he introduced some powerful themes about John McCain’s lack of judgement on national security. The delivery could have been better, but he made some strong points.
The best part of the speech was his authenticity and sincerity. Biden is a regular Joe with an inspiring family story, and that came across in the speech. He demonstrated how deeply he cares about the issues at hand.
Having Obama join him onstage was a great idea. Obama and Biden look very comfortable together.
Hillary did it last night. Bill did it tonight. Another great speech in support of Barack Obama. One step at a time, the party is becoming unified.
It was a great night of redemption for Bill Clinton. After a tough primary campaign where he made some mistakes, the crowd was with him from the start, giving him a huge ovation.
In a dramatic moment at the Democratic convention, Hilarry Clinton appeared on the floor during the roll call to move that Barack Obama be nominated by acclamation.
I always said she would do what was needed at the convention. She did more than anyone could have expected. Great job.
Under George W. Bush we’ve wasted billions of dollars on a war in Iraq, while we’ve ignore our economy and infrastructure at home. The world is moving forward, but we’re going backwards.
Tom Friedman went to China during the Olympics, and he was struck by incredible progress made by the Chinese in such a short period of time. Meanwhile, we’re asleep at the switch.
The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.
Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?
Yes, if you drive an hour out of Beijing, you meet the vast dirt-poor third world of China. But here’s what’s new: The rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer. And, I repeat, they did not get all this by discovering oil. They got it by digging inside themselves.
I realize the differences: We were attacked on 9/11; they were not. We have real enemies; theirs are small and mostly domestic. We had to respond to 9/11 at least by eliminating the Al Qaeda base in Afghanistan and investing in tighter homeland security. They could avoid foreign entanglements. Trying to build democracy in Iraq, though, which I supported, was a war of choice and is unlikely to ever produce anything equal to its huge price tag.
But the first rule of holes is that when you’re in one, stop digging. When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America.
We need to finish our business in Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible, which is why it is a travesty that the Iraqi Parliament has gone on vacation while 130,000 U.S. troops are standing guard. We can no longer afford to postpone our nation-building while Iraqis squabble over whether to do theirs.
A lot of people are now advising Barack Obama to get dirty with John McCain. Sure, fight fire with fire. That’s necessary, but it is not sufficient.
Obama got this far because many voters projected onto him that he could be the leader of an American renewal. They know we need nation-building at home now — not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Georgia, but in America. Obama cannot lose that theme.
He cannot let Republicans make this election about who is tough enough to stand up to Russia or bin Laden. It has to be about who is strong enough, focused enough, creative enough and unifying enough to get Americans to rebuild America. The next president can have all the foreign affairs experience in the world, but it will be useless, utterly useless, if we, as a country, are weak.
OBAMA/BIDEN CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCES ‘ON THE ROAD TO CHANGE’ BATTLEGROUND STATE BUS TOUR — Tour Through PA, OH, and MI will be First Joint Bus Tour For Democratic Nominees — Today, the Obama campaign announced that United States Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden will kick off a battleground state tour dubbed “On the Road to Change” following the Democratic National Convention. Senator Obama, Senator Joe Biden, Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden will depart Denver Friday for Pennsylvania, the first stop on the bus tour. The “On the Road to Change” tour will make stops in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, and will mark Obama and Biden’s first campaign tour as the Democratic nominees. Obama and Biden will meet with voters to discuss America’s economic challenges and the Obama/Biden blueprint for change.
I was hoping they would do something like this. They need to lock up Pennslyvania, and they need to work hard to keep Michigan and flip Ohio. Biden was picked to help Obama with blue-collar voters, and this joint trip will help re-introduce Obama to those voters.
John McCain says the economy is fundamentally sound. John McCain doesn’t think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis. John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. And in 2008, he still thinks it’s okay when women don’t earn equal pay for equal work.
With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart.
Their convention coverage is just pathetic, as they like hearing their own pundits talk endlessly about the Clinton drama instead of actually airing the speeches.
Montana governor Brian Schweitzer is giving a pretty good speech ripping McCain on his energy proposals. CNN is showing it. MSNBC has Andrea Mitchell conducting an interview and saying that none of the speakers are going after McCain.
