Obviously, it’s time to move beyond Sarah Palin, but she keeps inserting herself in the news by agreeing to do all the interviews that she should have done when she was a candidate for high office.
The results have not been impressive. She’s incapable of giving logical answers to most substantive questions, and she throws out more cliches than any politician in recent memory. That’s quite an accomplishment.
I was watching a panel of Republican governors today on C-Span, and it’s striking how impressive governors like Mark Sanford and Tim Pawlenty can be when discussing the future of the GOP. Sarah Palin just doesn’t measure up.
It’s fun watching Republicans argue about the future of their party, but they will not make much progress as long as many in the base remain fixated with Sarah Palin.
Some of the polls have tightened a little, but most are holding steady and we have some outliers showing a huge lead for Obama. The state polls also look great.
Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has finally started to talk about the economy, but they can’t even get that right.
If McCain had not opposed the Bush tax cuts in the past, and if he was proposing a flat tax, he might have some credibility on this idiotic charges of “socialism.” One wonders whether he really is senile. Also, when you add in the economic genius of Sarah Palin (she must have shaken hands with Mitt Romney), your argument looks even more ridiculous, given that Sarah Palin raised taxes on the oil companies in Alaska in order to redistribute the tax dollars to all Alaskans in the form of a check.
Of course, she’s too stupid to understand the irony here, and McCain has no trouble repeating any charge trumped up by his idiotic advisors. So, they continue to stomp around the country calling Obama names and revealing themselves as utter fools.
This campaign is a disgrace. Many conservatives have already come to that conclusion. Others are so blinded by their own idiology that they drink up the silly name-calling, hoping for a dramatic comeback. Fortunately, their numbers seem to be shrinking.
So much for small-town Sarah! This news story is hilarious.
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.
Politico asked the McCain campaign for comment, explicitly noting the $150,000 in expenses for department store shopping and makeup consultation that were incurred immediately after Palin’s announcement. Pre-September reports do not include similar costs.
One could argue that this is “shocking” in light of our economic crisis, but it shouldn’t be surprise. Sarah Palin has always been a prop in this campaign. We now know that she’s totally unqualified to be president. Not because she has little experience, but rather that she doesn’t appear to have the requisite intellect.
The fact that the campaign wanted to dress her up makes sense. Her job was to look and sound good - to recite the campaigns attack lines with a smile.
Of course, the strategy fell apart when she couldn’t handle simple interview questions without a scripted response.
The disclosure of these ridiculous expenditures just puts an exclamation point on the most absurd VP choice in history - even worse than Admiral Stockdale.
Welcome to Sarah Palin’s world. Fortunately, Americans aren’t in the mood this year to buy her bullshit. The situation we face is just too serious, and she’s not a serious candidate.
Many conservative intellectuals are jumping ship, and Alaskans are getting sick of her as well. The Anchorage Daily News published an editorial today about her response to the troopergate report.
Sarah Palin’s reaction to the Legislature’s Troopergate report is an embarrassment to Alaskans and the nation.
She claims the report “vindicates” her. She said that the investigation found “no unlawful or unethical activity on my part.”
Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian.
Page 8, Finding Number One of the report says: “I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.”
In plain English, she did something “unlawful.” She broke the state ethics law.
Perhaps Gov. Palin has been too busy to actually read the Troopergate report. Perhaps she is relying on briefings from McCain campaign spinmeisters.
Because if she had actually read it, she couldn’t claim “vindication” with a straight face.
Palin asserted that the report found “there was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired.”
In fact, the report concluded that “impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.”
Palin’s response is the kind of political “big lie” that George Orwell warned against. War is peace. Black is white. Up is down.
More conservatives are speaking out about Sarah Palin. David Brooks thinks she’s not qualified, and he doesn’t pull any punches.
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn’t think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
The conservative movement used to pride itself on ideas. With Sarah Palin, those days are over.
Despite Sarah Palin’s horrific performance in interviews, and her simplistic answers in the debate, many conservatives are still defending her.
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting theory explaining this phenomenon.
What I think has happened to some otherwise very brilliant and perceptive people is that they have become so hostile to “liberal pundits” or “Hollywood liberals”, that their reactions are really reactions not to Palin herself but to those criticizing her and the selection of her. These people are anti-anti-Palin and if forced to be pro-Palin, they’d have a very hard time explaining it. Actually, Camille is pro-Obama, so she doesn’t have to go that far. But just because liberals are annoying and Hollywood liberals make you want to vomit doesn’t mean Palin is qualified to be vice-president. Look: Tim Robbins is about the only person who could make me support McCain. But I’m not stupid enough to let my loathing of idiotic Hollywood liberals affect my judgment of this farce of a veep candidate.
I don’t think Palin is dumb; she is just proudly ignorant, a cynical opportunist and a pathological liar.
This makes sense. In the heat of a campaign, people get very emotional about supporting their own side. It makes it very difficult to acknowledge the obvious - that Sarah Palin is a joke of a candidate. Perhaps when the election is over many conservatives will sober up and acknowledge this as well. On the other hand, some are talking about Sarah Palin in 2012. Of course this is silly. She would never survive a protracted primary season. But this is the best thing that could happen to the Democrats, though it might not be the best thing for the country. If the GOP loses this year, they will need to rebuild the party, and they’ll need to do it with qualified candidates who can enunciate a governing philosophy for our times from the conservative perspective. Sarah Palin cannot do this.
Regardless of who is in power, we need a robust party in opposition to keep the ruling party honest. The Democrats didn’t live up to this responsibility in the run-up to the Iraq War.
We knew it was coming, but now that John McCain is plummeting in the polls, we’re seeing a renewed attack on Barack Obama and his “associations.”
It’s amazing that in these tough times John McCain is unable to engage in a principled debate on the economy. Commentators on this blog have put up conservative arguments, yet McCain seems to be completely unable to offer a coherent argument as to why he is the better choice when it comes to the economy. Sarah Palin can barely utter a coherent sentence at all. Instead, McCain sends out Palin to make personal attacks on Barack Obama. The strategy is clear - change the subject and hope that the fickle electorate will turn on Obama.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Obama has been calm and steady thoughout this crisis while McCain has acted like a desperate fool. It also doesn’t help that these disgraceful attacks will now give the press an excuse to look at John McCain’s past and Sarah Palin’s past. They each have their own questionable associations, and we will be hearing more about them.
We’re also seeing the fruits of McCain’s ugly campaign, as taunts like “kill him” and “sit down boy” come from their frenzied audiences. I guess this is what happens when you whip up fear and hatred.
Further, these allegations are not brought up in news conferences or in interviews, where McCain or Palin would be forced to answer tough questions about their allegations or about their own records. Palin has yet to conduct a single news conference. Yesterday, the press was also prevented from speaking with Palin supporters at a campaign event. Unbelievable.
Conservatives need to look in the mirror. Is this what you want from your candidates? Is winning at all costs worth it? Can you defend candidates who can’t even enunciate or defend conservative principles?
If this doesn’t work, this will be a fitting end to the Reagan conservative movement. By embracing a mediocre intellect like Sarah Palin, following the disaster of the George W. Bush presidency, conservatives will have proven that identity politics, cronyism and the politics of personal destruction have replaced conservative principles as the driving force of the movement. In many ways, today’s conservatives are the mirror opposite of Ronald Reagan, who relied on ideas and a sunny optimism to lead our country.
Rich Lowry of the National Review is being mocked for this statement about Sarah Palin following the VP debate.
Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
Sarah Palin avoided a debate meltdown, and in that respect tonight was a positive evening for her. Biden, however, also avoided making gaffes, and he consistently made the case against John McCain.
That said, she lost the debate on points. It was obvious she was constantly referring to note cards for her talking points, and she blatantly avoided answering numerous questions. She landed some good punches, but she was unable to counter Biden’s most effective attacks against McCain, while Biden always had a response when she tried to attack Obama.
Her folksy manner seemed contrived, while Biden had the most compelling and authentic moment of the evening when he spoke about raising his two sons following the death of his wife and daughter. In that moment he took away her only potential advantage - her connection to average Americans.
Overall, this debate does not look like the game-changer that McCain needed given Obama’s current lead. Palin stopped the bleeding, but the initial polls have Biden winning the debate. She also made it clear that we shouldn’t hold our breath regarding future media interviews or news conferences for Sarah Palin.
It’s stunning that a candidate for high office can’t speak intelligently about the Supreme Court. In this clip, she can’t name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with.
It’s not necessary for a candidate to be able to recite the names of decisions. It is important, however, for a candidate to have a working knowledge of the issues that have faced the courts over the years. As a social conservative, she could have easily cited decisions regarding prayer in schools or affirmative action that have offended conservatives.
Instead, she rambled through a bunch of general statements that were barely more coherent than her statements regarding Russia and foreign policy.
Again, she’s not remotely qualifed for the Vice Presidency. It has nothing to do with her gender or her politics. She just can’t carry on a meaningful discussion of national issues. She has not held a single press conference, where reporters are usually much tougher than Katie Couric.
Experience and readiness are not confined to the bullet points on one’s resume. The ability to be engaged in the issues of our time is crucial. She fails this test spectacularly, and even conservatives are starting to take note.
John McCain does not have the temperment to be President, and he has selected a running mate who is not qualified to be Vice President.
John McCain’s latest stunt is to suggest postponing tomorrow night’s debate so that he and Obama can deal with the financial crisis. Last week he said the fundamentals of our economy were strong. Now he’s acting the the roof is falling, and Sarah Palin has apparently concluded that we face another Great Depression without this bailout.
Meanwhile, it looks like the McCain campaign might try to use this as an excuse to scuttle the VP debate.
McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.
Have we reached the point of absurdity yet? Can anyone defend John McCain and Sarah Palin with a straight face?
Do we really want someone this extreme in the White House? ABC reports how Sarah Palin asked the librarian at a city council meeting what she would do if Palin asked her to remove certain books from the library’s collection. The librarian made it clear she would not remove any books. Several months later Palin fired her, but then reinstated her after an uproar in the town.
She’s quite a reformer! Sarah Palin’s earmarks rank up there with some of the stranger ones we’ve seen.
According to Alaska’s 2009 catalog of earmark requests the state’s sea life are in great need of federal money. As Politico points out, Palin’s office requested $2 million in federal monies to study crab mating habits; $494,900 for the recreational halibut harvest and $3.2 million for seal genetics research.
Again, this stuff is very routine, but on a daily basis they are repeating the lie that she is a “reformer” when it comes to earmarks. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
If you voted for George W. Bush, and now realize his campaign promises were mostly BS, how can you believe the BS coming from this campaign, which is being run by the same people?
This campaign is no different from a campaign for low-fat potato chips. The marketer hypes up lower fat content, and gullible consumers think they’re eating health food. Then they look in the mirror and wonder why they’re still fat.
Look in the mirror, and ask yourself if you’re buying their bullshit.
