McCain’s lucky he’s not out there alone. Reviewing his dismal speech last night seems almost mean. That’s how flat it was, right up until the end. It’s always good to have a rousing finish. Michael Gerson was particularly brutal.

“The policy was the problem, the policy in the speech was rather typical for a Republican, pretty disappointing. It didn’t do a lot of outreach to moderates and independents on the issues that they care about. It talked about issues like drilling and school choice, which was really speaking to the converted. I think that was a missed opportunity. Many Americans needed to hear from this speech something they’ve never heard from Republicans before and in reality a lot of the policy they’ve heard from Republicans before.”

Frankly, as bad as McCain is at speaking, they should have thrown it out and done anything but what they did. It didn’t reach any independents, talk about anything new, or offer anything innovative.

However, Sarah Palin made her party proud this week in a
speech that delivered her to star status. It took twenty-four years to catch
up, but the Republican Party finally nominated someone nationally who isn’t
a white guy. Congratulations on joining the 20th century.

She just
should have delivered it without the condescension, sarcasm and snide. Then
there was the small town vs. civic pride, which always seems to raise
that divide when Republicans are involved. Palin mocking Obama’s community
organizing activist roots. Does Sarah have a clue what
community organizers do in cities across this country? Especially in inner
city neighborhoods, whose people can’t survive without them? That was just the
beginning of Sarah’s snidely smackdowns.

Then there was the, well, let’s just call it cutting hyperbole. The AP began
compiling what is likely
to be a long list:

PALIN: “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.” FACT: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

But there was good news too. Republican elites can relax, while the conservative
base basks in the babe who takes the senior out of the senator. McCain’s hail
Mary Palin can deliver a speech. No, strike that. She can deliver two speeches.
The beginning was a brisk tour of things surrounding her life, which unfolded
quickly. Then came the other part of the speech, which was concocted by some
Bush speechwriter for some unknown vice presidential nominee who would stand
in and deliver. She sounded like Patrick J. Buchanan in a dress.. er
skirt. Great for the rank and file, which needed a shot and got it. Not so good
for everyone else. Especially voters who sent a message during the primary season
that they’re not exactly in the mood for partisan sarcasm, even when delivered
with a smile.

Now for the bad news. It’s no wonder Sarah targeted the press, because since
McCain sprung her on the public we’ve been scurrying for facts. Oh, and digging
up the truth, even as the McCain campaign plans on hiding Sarah from any
hard interview scrutiny. Because the facts don’t help Mrs. Palin, which is likely
why she stayed away from them, offering some easily rebutted rhetoric.

Reformer is just a label Palin picked up for political purposes. McCain
targeted Sarah Palin’s “objectionable” earmarks long before he
ever tapped her for veep.

“So while Sen. McCain was going after cutting earmarks in Washington,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, “Gov. Palin was going after getting earmarks.”

Palin even boasted about her earmarks, saying “We
did well!!!” Oh, and “FYI This does not include our nearly
one million Dollars from the Feds for our Airport Paving Project,”
Sarah
continued.

On another note, as McClatchy
reported last Friday, trying to prove she can handle the job of presidency,
Palin pushed her National Guard leadership role. It was pure fantasy, which
was driven home by Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell who is in charge out there:

“Can you tell me one decision that she made as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard?” CNN journalist Campbell Brown asked Monday while interviewing McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds. “Just one?” Bounds couldn’t, because Palin has never personally ordered the state guard to do anything. …the governor has no command authority overseas or anywhere in the United States other than Alaska, said Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, the service commander of the Alaska National Guard.

Then there’s that “Bridge to Nowhere” fabrication, which she offered
up again this week, but was first hoisted
on an unsuspecting public last Friday:

“I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that bridge to nowhere,” Palin said Friday in Ohio, using the critics’ dismissive name of the project. “‘If our state wanted a bridge,’ I said, ‘we’d build it ourselves.’”

Not quite.

While running for governor in 2006, though, Palin backed federal funding for the infamous bridge, which McCain helped make a symbol of pork barrel excess.

Palin might just redefine “reformer.”

But none of this matters to Republicans. They have their Republican Red Bull,
as Rev. Richard Land said. They’ve also got Sarah Palin religion.

It remains to be seen whether the throwback snidely sarcasm of Sarah’s speech
will reach beyond the Republican base, which is the only way McCain
can win. The good news on that front is that Palin is very attractive and can
perform with the best of them and she’s becoming a political rock star the GOP
hasn’t had in a very long time. She’ll draw thousands across the country. She’s
now the one everyone will want to see.

This post originally published for PJM.

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BY TAYLOR MARSH

Credit where it is due. Sarah Palin was good last night. The speech was uneven, but she was not. The base has religion. Republicans have their star. McCain’s got new life. Never mind that Palin’s speech was filled with falsehoods, with McCain’s team conjuring up kerfuffles to keep control of their convention tale.

I never for one minute believed the nonsense swirling, with Republicans trying to make Sarah Palin out to be a victim. The McCain camp was doing something very simple. Take a real issue during the primary season, which lasted months and months and was proven through independent studies, then use that model to manufacture a media scandal that doesn’t exist. If there’s a woman, there must be sexism.

Using the Hillary model for foundation, this evolved into attacks by the McCain camp on the media, which has coddled McCain for decades, including chastising all of us for questioning some of Palin’s actions regarding her family. Some bought in to that baloney, falling for the Republican trap, keeping their distance from the family story unfolding. You have to understand how the GOP works to really get what was going on. Keeping everyone at bay while they rolled the image out. This AP analysis nails it:

Huh? The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone — so we can use them as we see fit. –

That was only part of the story. Next came Sarah Palin’s mocking, sour, snidely speech, which had plenty of red meat, but even more outright fantasy bordering on premeditated falsehoods. The AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn knocks it out.

Bridge to Nowhere?

PALIN: “I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere.” THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a “bridge to nowhere.”

Obama’s record?

PALIN: “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.” THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

There’s a lot more where this came from too.

As for the McCain team’s claim that Palin is the commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. She’s never issued a single order to them.

Then there’s “troopergate,” which seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.

McCain’s team wants to keep the soccer mom image intact, while utilizing the traditional vice presidential role for the first time through a woman, who if you question will automatically bring cries of “sexism.” Having it both ways, especially with the media, is John McCain’s stock and trade. It’s obviously part of his plan to win, which is not out of the realm of possibility.

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BY TAYLOR MARSH

via Emily’s List

The… er, rantings analysis of Peggy Noonan.

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing — who is really one of them and who is not — and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy. She could become a transformative political presence. So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

In an interview with the Washington Times today, one of the things I pointed out was that Palin could have spared everyone all this drama. She obviously knew her daughter was going through a rough time, so the compassionate and selfless thing to do was to put her daughter first. Palin didn’t. Ambition exceeded her own daughter’s needs and privacy. That is Sarah Palin, which should give all Democrats pause. This isn’t a woman who came to this party to fail. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

But hearing people like Rush and Sean Hannity pontificate about what feminism means is beyond hilarious. Like these two Neanderthal wingnuts would know anything about women. Rush has been divorced three times, never had children, and to my knowledge rarely skips golf on Sunday to go to church. As for Hannity, the way he rails against Democratic women, but comes to the aid of a right-wing conservative, reveals his convenient conservatism. But as for feminism, fughettaboutit.

As for Sarah Palin and her own crowd, you know you’re in trouble when Dr. Laura is aghast at your inexperience, as well as your priorities.

For me, the truth is that feminism was never about the fantasy Rush and Hannity are pushing, “having it all.” Feminism was about having the same choices as men, and being able to choose what suits your life and soul journey best. “All of the above” was never meant to be one of those choices. Ask many modern women the price they’ve paid for trying it. Certainly, you can make this decision, but someone is going to suffer, likely many will suffer due to it. So it’s absolutely just that Palin’s priorities and decisions are being scrutinized.

Tonight’s the biggest moment in Sarah Palin’s life. It’s also the biggest opportunity the Republican Party has had since George W. Bush ambled in to town sitting backwards on a mule. The hall will be energized. Anyone underestimating what Sarah Palin can do for John McCain but also for the Republican Party, starting tonight, better strap themselves in.

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BY TAYLOR MARSH

Let’s hear it for secession:

And while McCain’s motto — as seen in a new TV ad — is “Country First,” the AIP’s motto is the exact opposite — “Alaska First — Alaska Always.” Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time. “We are a state’s rights party,” says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has “a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law.” … …The McCain-Palin campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I’ll bet.

Boy, McCain sure knows how to vet ‘em. Drip. Drip. Drip.

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BY TAYLOR MARSH

Legally, Palin should absolutely have a lawyer, and it doesn’t mean anything regarding guilt. Any person in Palin’s situation would do the exact same thing. However, politically, the perception problems are horrific. However, none of this has stopped the wingnuts from giving money by the millions to McCain-Palin. The far flung fundies are ecstatic, which was the purpose of the pick, along with blunting Obama’s amazing performance on Thursday.

Also, according to MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell, McCain and his team are more deeply vetting Palin now.

“… There are reports that there are Republican lawyers right now up in Alaska doing a deeper vet on Sarah Palin, despite their claims that she was fully — that everything about her background was fully known…” – Andrea Mitchell

Seems like McCain and his team are finally getting the message that while Palin is a boon to his base, he could lose everyone else in the process. Obviously, Palin was a last minute pick and though McCain’s team knew the broad strokes of some of the issues swirling around her, they didn’t get into the fine print. Heck of a job, Johnnie.

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BY TAYLOR MARSH

Experience? Who needs it?

Marc Ambinder
lays some of it out. She just doesn’t live up to her marketing.

This year, the intense secrecy with which McCain advisor A.B. Culvahouse completed his vetting of Sarah Palin preserved the surprise. And ultimately, McCain aides say they’re sure that the rewards will be worth the risks. But as the Palin pick turns 72 hours old, McCain’s campaign is learning as much about her from the media and from Democrats as they are from what minimal political preparation they had. … They’ve bragged that Palin opposed the famous “Bridge to Nowhere,” only to learn that Palin supported the project and even told residents of Ketchikan that they weren’t “nowhere” to her. After the national outcry, she decided to spend the funds allocated to the bridge for something else. Actually, maybe it’s more fair to say that coincident with the national outcry, she changed her mind. The story shows her political judgment, but it is not a reformer’s credential. …

…and so it goes, on and one. McCain’s first big decision was done haphazardly,
without preparation, so now he’ll have to deal with the surprises, which unrolling
fast a furiously. Many
questions left unanswered.

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