I’m finally tuning into the RNC. I’m watching it on Fox to get the full effect. I caught Meg Whitman’s speech. She’s the former head of eBay and is now hoping to follow in the long tradition of billionaires buying elected office in this country.
Actually, I can’t take anymore of O’Reilly, so I have switched over to America’s Top Model where they are having a Rock the Vote fashion shoot. One of the models didn’t know what the word "bureaucracy" meant.
This convention has a much different vibe than the DNC. First of all, there is a huge number of empty seats in the hall. It looks really bad on TV. On Fox, Hannity was downplaying the importance of conventions. Viewership must be low. The camera keeps panning to really old dudes. The Palin family are the few young people there.
Palin did a good job with the delivery. She has a sense of humor about her, which it is a huge plus. Her hockey mom stuff played very well with the crowd. She asked the crowd what the difference was between a pitbull and a hockey mom. The answer. Lipstick. OK, I laughed. They loved that she said she was a supporter of families of special needs kids. What would she do for us? That I’m not quite sure about. I would like IDEA to be fully funded, but maybe she just meant that Piper would babysit for us.
She really harped on the small town thing. They must really see that as a gap in Obama’s armor.
We’ve heard a lot about the torture of McCain, but a little too much. And then she said that Obama was too concerned with reading Iraqi prisoners their rights. Weird.
Domestic policy is going to be a huge weakness for them. They’ve got nothing there. She said that Washington was all about taxing and spending and deficit. And what president did that? Oh, the president that you are pretending doesn’t exist. Oh, yeah that guy.
Alaska doesn’t have a deficit. It’s true. But that’s not because she sold a plane on eBay, but because the state is swimming in oil money.
I love the guy in the audience who was holding up a sign that said, "Drill Now."
She does have a very cute family. Even the hockey dude with the shotgun to his head.
Apt. 11d 
She’s doing a darn good job with the speech. The “little ol’ me” persona lets her get away with attacks that others couldn’t do.
And gosh it was cute when Piper couldn’t tell whether she should be waving or not.
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But how many people in America truly want “little ol’ me” to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, especially with old man McCain.
Not Peggy Noonan, that’s for sure! What a delicious on-air gaffe.
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Did you catch this gem? I’m not going to call Huckabee an idiot–that would be cruel. I’m sure he was just a littl confused:
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Mike Huckabee made the claim that Palin got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.
For the record, Joe Biden got 79,754 total votes in the Democratic primaries.
As of the 2000 census, the population of Wasilla was 5,469. It has been reported at currently more than 9,000.
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I still don’t understand the people who haven’t made their mind up yet, and for whom this could be useful information (I’m not watching, and know I couldn’t take it if I were). The panning to the old white dudes always gets to me.
But, where is Dave? I *need* to hear what he’s thinking. Then I might understand. I’m starting to get the swing voters a bit better now, ’cause I understand that some of them, at least, are those with different issue weighting matrices.
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It was interesting to see her do the typical attack-dog VP thing right out of the gate – against both Obama and the media. I think it was a saavy choice on the part of the speechwriters and/or Palin herself. It didn’t make me like her, but I was never on the fence anyway.
There’s a great article on Salon about the “liberal media” charge, and also some history about her experience as mayor – some strange reports about how she fired the librarian and the police chief because they weren’t supportive enough, right off the bat. She won the election something like 600-400.
I grew up in a town about the size of Wasilla, and my mom said the other day: “She’s like Tony Kenyon!” (the mayor of the town. I changed the name to protect him). He was just sort of a *guy*, you know – he thought he was important, but he was just the mayor of this dinky town, not particularly sharp or capable, and he really did not have a lot to do.
The Salon article is at: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/03/halperin/
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OK, call me an elitist, but her delivery was terrible. It lacked fluidity. The cadences were all wrong. She emphasized the wrong words in certain sentences. It was painful to listen to. If I spoke like that in any lecture I gave, I would be, and should be, fired. It is true that she read the words off the teleprompter without screwing them up but it was obvious that that was all she was doing. There was little naturalness in her speech – save, perhaps, when she blew a kiss to the other POW. It was too obvious that the words were not her own. Compare just the speaking style to Romney, who I only saw a brief glimpse of (for the record: I despise Romney). His delivery is much smoother, more polished. But that is what they are going for here: more G. W. Bush anti-elitist, anti-intellectual, eloquence is for those Massachusetts liberals “authenticity.”
End of rant…
And on policy, it is all BS. Republicans have never done the right thing on disability policy, and there is no reason to believe that they will if McCain is elected.
One last thing. I was uncomfortable with the deployment of Trig. I don’t think any four month old baby should be used as a political prop like that. Am I wrong on that?
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RC, I’m fairly certain that Huckabee was just using exaggeration to make a joke. Somebody had to try to joke about something besides plagiarism and long-windedness. Also, Biden may have gotten votes in primaries, but he had already withdrawn before the first primary was held.
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Well, if they are going to use a four month old baby as a political prop, they should at least support his neck better. All that baby tossing was making me very, very nervous.
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They need a prop for the prop?
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“OK, call me an elitist, but her delivery was terrible. It lacked fluidity. The cadences were all wrong. She emphasized the wrong words in certain sentences. It was painful to listen to.”
Ahh, but we are all elitists, no? At least in Palin’s world. That conflation of intelligence and eloquence with elitism and anti-intellectual ideology with being in touch is exactly what I hate most about the Bush administration. Palin seems to be targeted at that same wing of the party. They have succeeded in destroying any admiration I had for her pretty soundly (but, I think that admiration was misplaced).
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“They need a prop for the prop?”
Maybe it wasn’t really Trig, but a body double doll? That would explain floppy necked baby tossing.
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I heard the speech, rather than watched it. I was struck with the same things that Sam was about delivery. Emphasis in the wrong place, some backtracking.
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Little known fact about Trig Palin: Originally, the name they had planned (far in advance) for their fourth child was Al-jabr, but of course Sept 11 changed all of that. (If they had ever been liberal, it would have made them mad as hell about Chappaquiddick, too.) And somehow Infinitesimal Calculus Palin just didn’t have the same ring.
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Well, I like to think of myself as an elitist, but I liked the delivery, precisely because it was “terrible”. Here voice is pitched too high because she hasn’t been taught that how to lower it, her arms do funny things because she hasn’t been taught how to stop them — basically, she hasn’t had the kind of job which needs that kind of training. But at least she hasn’t had that kind of training.
She implied, when talking about McCain’s imprisonment, that she doesn’t know that America lost that war, and she implied (as did several others) that she doesn’t know that America has already lost the war in Iraq, no matter what happens now. But she’s rumoured to be a global warming fantasist, so its not so surprising that she’s a fantasist about war too.
I found the whole evening jolly encouraging. As Laura says hey have nothing to say about domestic policy, and on foreign policy their main selling point seems to be that John McCain spent lots of time in a Vietnamese prison. Its not out of the question that American voters will support them on that ground alone, but if they do, well, what can you do?
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MH: I didn’t actually see Huckabee, and you could well be right about humor through exaggeration. Still, I think there is a strong desire to make this Wasilla business seem like more than it was. It is difficult to convey how little that town is and how little it would mean to have “actual repsonsiblties” running it. As it turns out, the way she exercised her actual responsiblities was to bully those who disagreed with her and try to get a librarian fired!
And good point Harry B. Bottom line: they have no message other than a negative one about Obama and the story about Mccain’s POW experience. They are offering nothing besides flag waving and the bizarre claim about “change” — since they have never said what the change would encounter and they certainly don’t want to talk about why we would need any change right now.
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I got a report from my dad that he thought Palin’s delivery was absolutely fantastic. (and my dad is a liberal leftie, too). What this reminds me is that we should never ever discount the appeal of the other side, based on our world view.
I started out kind of respecting Palin, identifying with her as a mother, and a woman in a man’s world, and presumed that her politics might be kind of like Megan McArdle. I disagree with Megan a lot of the time, but I don’t think her world view is fundamentally from mine. I’ve discovered that I was wrong about Palin in every way — she’s not a mother I can identify with, she’s not an independent thinking libertarian. The idea that asking how to ban books would be one’s first act as a mayor makes me ill. But, there are other people out there who identify with that, and we should never underestimate them.
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And, listening to tidbits on the radio of her speech, I saw another scenario that’s going to play out. She’s cast herself as the mocker, who will say anything, even truly mean stuff. Unlike a white man, she’ll be able to get away with that about Obama, from the persona of a “girl”. Biden, then, will be working under his Mama’s rule that he’s not allowed to hit a girl, while she’s taking big swings at him.
I can only rest my hopes on how well the Obama campaign has played the political game, and hope that they will give Biden a means to do battle. But it won’t be easy.
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Her delivery was bad? Have you all so quickly forgotten Hillary?
She didn’t fire the small town librarian. Facts–easy to check.
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Following up on bj’s comment, I think that Biden has everything to lose in his debate against her–even though she knows nothing and holds no policy positions…if he comes off as harsh, he’ll get killed in the media. She’ll benefit from the double-standard and the old rules of not hitting the girl. She’s a wonderful way to negate his advantage in that area for sure.
As I watched, however, I wonder…if this mayoral experience is so good, and being governor…why should I vote for McCain? He doesn’t have that either does he? He’s just a thirty year veteran of DC and party politics now. Hmmm…
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I thought her delivery was pretty good for a novice–she’s barely used a teleprompter before. She stirred up the crowd, but I don’t know if she does anything more than secure the base. If you like creationism, you’ll like Sarah Palin. Although some of the base might not like it, my super-Republican grandmother is voting for Obama because she doesn’t think Palin is qualified and McCain is too old and sick (skin cancer).
She and McCain both have good biographies, but a good biographical narrative only gets you so far–just ask John Kerrey. There was no mention of policy or ideas because they can’t win any of those arguments. I still have enough residual faith in my fellow citizens to believe that a pure culture war campaign is not going to win it this year. Don’t prove me wrong America!
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Not on topic, but babies with Downs Syndrome have floppy tone. It makes me squirm a little to see that become the subject of casual laughs. But then again, I didn’t see the lack of neck support, either, because there was no way I was going to sit through that speech.
I think it was brilliant to make Palin the vicious attack dog of the campaign, because BJ is right: Biden cannot possibly hit back as well as he should.
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All babies need their necks supported, Jody.
And, yes, Biden is going to have to be super careful when he debates her. I think they should just ignore her and move on to McCain.
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