All right, folks, I am reporting live from Minneapolis! Today’s mainly about organization, but tomorrow the event kicks off in earnest, and I’ll be updating the blog regularly from the Xcel Energy Center. Stay tuned!
Monthly Archive for August, 2008
WOW! Talk about a surprise! I went to bed last night convinced that the ticket was McCain-Pawlenty, and while I would have been satisfied with that, this is just so much more electrifying! I’ll write again after the speech, but I am enthusiastically behind this ticket! McCain-Palin in ‘08!
Update: Good words from Kathleen Parker at National Review.
One thing that some people have been expressing concern over is how she’ll fare in the debate against Biden. I’m honestly not worried about it. I think that Biden will let his mouth run away from him, as it is wont to do, and he’ll come off as bullying.
Update: Waiting for the speech. Here’s another thought: this is a Silent Majority Pick. College students and radical activists might sneer at Palin, but your average middle-class mom and dad are going to look at this quite differently. And lest we forget, college students and radical activists don’t decide elections.
Update: Palin is making her speech now, and she is handling herself magnificently. It’s an introduction more than anything else at this point, defining her as a reformer and a normal American. But unlike Obama, she’s the real deal.
There’s something else striking about her speech, though. My dad and I were talking last night, and he mentioned that in his lifetime there have been only two politicians that when giving speeches sounded like they were just talking to America – Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Palin does not sound like she’s giving a speech. She sounds like she’s talking. She comes across as incredibly down to earth – a citizen (and a mother) first, and a politician second.
Update: Say, you know who no one is talking about today? Barack Obama. It is a testament to the McCain campaign’s brilliant design that the day after Obama gave his historic speech, it’s John McCain that controls the news cycle.
Update: The Left’s line of attack on Palin is that she’s too inexperienced to be one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Sarah Palin has held executive office in Alaska for two years. Barack Obama has been in the United States Senate for four, two of which have been spent running for office.
In her two years as governor, Palin has developed a reputation for challenging corruption and fighting pork. She got rid of Alaska’s private jet and killed the fabled “Bridge-to-Nowhere,” ousted the corrupt Republican Party chair in that state and currently has a 90% approval rating. In his four years in the Senate, Barack Obama has given some nice speeches. And… that’s about it. Not only is being an executive more difficult than being one of a hundred legislators, but Palin has accomplished far more in her two years as governor than Obama has in his entire political career.
Obama wants to say that his number two has foreign policy experience, while Palin does not. But our number one, John McCain, has foreign policy experience, which the Democratic nominee is sorely lacking himself. Does Obama really want to make experience the center of his attack on Palin? Because I think that’s a fight that Republicans are ready to have.
Update: Here’s something else that I saw on Hugh Hewitt’s blog that struck me as interesting. Obama wants to criticize Palin for a lack of experience in foreign relations. But Palin has worked closely with Canada for the whole of her term as governor. Not exactly Iraq, to be sure, but it’s certainly more experience in international relations than Obama can claim.
Final Update: I went to bed last night convinced that McCain had settled on Tim Pawlenty. I was woken up this morning by a telephone call from my dad saying that Pawlenty had denied his being picked. Over the course of the next couple of hours, as it became clear that Sarah Palin had been chosen, I began to feel more energized than I have at any point in this campaign cycle. And when she took the stage in Dayton, I couldn’t help but get a little emotional.
Democrats will spend the next few weeks trying to cut her down. Expect to hear some nasty things said about her. Radical feminists will accuse her of not being a real role model for women. Radical pro-choicers will say that she should have aborted her youngest child, who was born with Down Syndrome. (Don’t believe me? They’ve already started.) The media will question her ability to lead and her qualifications for the vice presidency, while applauding a less qualified man who wants to be president and seems to resent his having to pick a vice president at all. Obama himself will, of course, try to have it both ways. He’ll try to appear courteous for fear of offending Hillary voters, but he’ll also try to marginalize Palin and her accomplishments – forgetting, of course, that his own list of accomplishments couldn’t fill a Post-It note.
Expect tirade after tirade from the likes of Olbermann and Matthews. Expect sneering pieces about how a middle class citizen-governor can’t handle Washington. Expect stories making her out to be a hick with no place in the high-stakes world of politics.
And expect Sarah Palin to smile politely before tearing these smears apart.
For the first time since we settled on our nominee, Republicans are energized. McCain raised $3 million today after the Palin announcement. Obama’s legendary speech from last night has been booted from the headlines. And for the first time, people are starting to realize that we could win this thing.
I can’t think of a better way to go into the convention.
Expect a bump. It was, as always, well delivered, but the substance of the speech was ludicrous. Obama fundamentally does not understand the way this country works.
This is a man who thinks that unions are the manifestation of the American dream. This is a man who thinks that America’s greatest trait is that we are supposedly “our brother’s keeper.” And yet he feels that he is equipped to lecture us on individual responsibility? Obama’s entire political philosophy is based on the subjugation of individual responsibility to state responsibility.
Maybe some undecideds will be swayed. Maybe not. I don’t think that this will matter as much as the debates, when America will be forced to watch the two candidates side by side. We’ll see how people react then.
Over the next couple of days you can expect gushing from the media, but once again, I can’t think of a single line that will be remembered for more than a week.
I’ve got a hold of a full copy of the text. Here are a few excerpts.
***
“This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.”
Aren’t we all one illness away from disaster, regardless of age, financial security, and any other outside factors?
***
“We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.”
Obama is operating under the false assumption that it is the government’s responsibility to monitor and protect citizens financial situations, and never questions the reasons why people slide into poverty, nor does he ask them to take any responsibility in the situation.
***
“It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.”
Obama fundamentally doesn’t understand the way businesses work. He just assumes that they are all run by deceivers.
***
“Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime – by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less – because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.”
Obama’s own advisers have already said that he can’t pull this off without raising taxes on the middle class – something he’s pledged not to do.
***
“The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.
So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.”
First part is nice, but just recycles what he said four years ago. The second is whiny and defensive, something that a high school student would say if he was trying to get testy with a rival – if this were the 1950s.
***
Does not mention MLK by name, but CLOSES HIS SPEECH WITH HIS WORDS! “We cannot walk alone [...] And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
***
He’ll deliver it well, and the media will eat it up. He’s more negative than I thought. He plays the class warfare card repeatedly. And there is no memorable line, no one things that sums up the speech. There is no “New Frontier,” no “Rendezvous with Destiny,” nothing. The content of this speech will be forgotten by Monday.
Obama’s greatest enemy tonight is his own ego. By making the speech on the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, he is inviting the comparison. There’s no way he’ll let the evening pass without mentioning that he is the culmination of Dr. King’s speech. This might strike some viewers as presumptuous; at any rate, it won’t help with the growing perception that Obama’s candidacy is less about his positions and more about him.
Expect soaring rhetoric and vague policy. After scanning some excerpts that the campaign released ahead of time, I noticed that Obama now says he supports cutting capital gains taxes for some businesses. That’s a bit of a change from earlier this spring, when Charlie Gibson school him on the subject during the final debate of the Democratic primaries. Don’t be shocked if more contradictions like this pop up – after all that’s what happens when you try to be all things to all people.
Also expect him to try to maintain a positive tone. Remember, in his mind this is all about him, and I think he’s more likely to talk himself up than talk McCain down. That’s not because he’s got any aspirations to maintain a positive tone in the campaign; it’s just because he won’t even be thinking of McCain, as he’ll be too busy basking in the adoration of his screaming fans.
Lastly, expect a speech that makes people feel good for about two days and then fades from all memory. It’ll be Berlin or the Philadelphia Race speech all over again; people will fall all over themselves praising it, but when it’s all said and done, there won’t be one line that people remember unless they’re mocking it.
BRILLIANT. One of the best political ads I’ve ever seen. The only problem is that it’s a little long for television. Maybe cut out the Chris Dodd bits, and then start airing it everywhere!
Barack Obama styles himself as the 21st century Jack Kennedy.
- Jack Kennedy was a war hero.
- Jack Kennedy was a congressman for six years and a senator for six years.
- Jack Kennedy was a tax-cutter.
- Jack Kennedy was a foreign policy hawk.
And heck, I don’t even really like Kennedy!
As I said in my last Twitter post, I am predicting that Tim Pawlenty will be named as John McCain’s running mate this Friday. Although he doesn’t have Mitt Romney’s business acumen or name value, Pawlenty has a few of things going for him that will ensure him the number two spot on the Republican ticket.
First and most important, McCain likes him. Don’t underestimate that. McCain is a man who places a lot of value on loyalty and friendship. Pawlenty stood by McCain when his campaign collapsed last summer, and McCain will remember that.
Second, Obama has a lead of about 4.5% in the Real Clear Politics average of Minnesota polls, but it’s a fragile lead built on an outlier poll by Minnesota Public Radio that put Obama up by ten. If we factor out that poll Obama’s lead is closer to 2.6%. Pawlenty, the popular two-term Minnesota governor, coming out on stage next week in Minneapolis as the vice presidential nominee could well put the state in the McCain column, and if Obama doesn’t win Minnesota, he’ll be hard-pressed to make up those electoral votes elsewhere.
Third, Pawlenty has a vision for the future of the Republican Party. He sees Republicans becoming the party of small businessmen and the middle class, what he calls the “Sam’s Club Republicans.” He’s trying to connect with this neglected class of voters in the country and build a winning coalition, and that’s admirable. Some seem content to try and follow the Democrats template of building the Party on the back of interest groups (call it the Mike Huckabee plan), while others hope that the old Reagan coalition will hold together out of nostalgia, but very few people are trying to build a winning majority for the future. That’s where Pawlenty comes in, and he’ll bring a bit of vision with him to the ticket.
It’s possible that McCain may bite the bullet and pick Mitt Romney, who brings with him some impressive strengths. But I think Romney has something different in his future. I think that after Mike Duncan steps down, Romeny will take over as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and I can’t think of a better man to do that job. But when it comes to the vice presidency, I think that it’s Pawlenty’s time, and I think McCain thinks so too.
First: it was a very good speech. From an objective standpoint, it was well-written and well-delivered, and she had the crowd in the palm of her hand.
Second: she said she supported Obama, but she never got to why beyond the fact that he was the Democratic nominee. She never talked about his character or his substance. It was a hollow endorsement, and the speech was designed more to boost her than boost him.
Third: I would guess that many Democrats in that arena tonight, when the speech had ended and everyone was filing out, got a chill and suddenly thought, “Oh lord, we nominated the wrong candidate.”
