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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Sarah Palin's Speech

...was nothing short of totally awesome in its awesomely total awesomeness.

Some random thoughts:

If I were a board member of a media company like the NY Times, the Tribune Company or one of those, I'd have been frightened last night. Some of the lines that got the most response attacked their companies. Even assuming the worst poll numbers, 44% of the nation supports John McCain and seems to be rabidly anti-MSM. Something is terribly wrong here and only a great fool would claim that the problem was with the customers.

Rudy's and Sarah's speeches have been writing themselves over the last 6 months. Cocooned inside of a loving media and immersed in a bubble of his own sycophants, Barack Obama just kept dishing out the ammunition to his enemies, never knowing he was doing so. One of my favorite lines from Sarah's speech was that Obama talked one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco. That was devastating.

There were many devastating lines in the speech. I mean a ton of them. Unlike Obama's speech which relied on an economic crisis that doesn't exist and turns logic into an M C Esher drawing about McCain's position on Iraq, those devastating lines were just Obama's own words with some very simple analysis. For example, when asked to compare their relative experience, Barack Obama condescendingly referred to Sarah Palin's term as a small town mayor and completely ignored her role as Governor of Alaska. That was like leaning into a left hook. Sarah blew him out of the water with this line:
(S)ince our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.
There's not much you can do to respond to that.

The MSM is probably going to need to pack more underwear when it covers Sarah Palin events because they must have been changing them every ten minutes in the MSNBC booth last night. Eleanor Clift, one of the MSM harpies, said about Sarah Palin's nomination, “If the media reaction is anything, it’s been literally laughter in many places across newsrooms.” One by one the MSM's positions on Sarah Palin are going to be overrun. Last night we saw she can hit back hard. As I understand it, the McCain campaign has an ad coming out today or tomorrow which compares Governor Palin's experience to Senator Obama's. That position will be blown away. Falling back to "she can't handle press interviews" will be the next one to fall. They'll finally retreat to "Biden will best her in the debate because of his foreign policy experience," but that one won't last long, either. Senator Biden was a pessimist on the Cold War, voted against the liberation of Kuwait, wanted to break Iraq into three countries, suggested we give $100M to Iran after 9/11...

Yes, Senator Biden has foreign policy experience. And Ryan Leaf has experience as an NFL QB.

What I saw last night was the complete destruction of the Obama campaign's master strategy. Their response to Sarah's speech was that it was written by someone who had worked for George Bush. When John McCain chose Sarah Palin he went on the offensive loaded down with tons of ammunition supplied by Obama himself. Trying to tie McCain to Bush after last night is just not going to work. They're going to have to completely recraft their message and their campaign plan because it all blew up on them last night.

And did you notice the nuclear option was never used? There was no mention of Rev. Wright.

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:18 AM

    Incidentally, there is something I've been wondering about (I don't believe it has happened in a previous election):

    What happens if a party's nominee drops out of the race (due to illness, death, personal reasons, whatever), but they do it *after* the convention? Does their VP nominee then step up as the presidential nominee? Or do the party bosses have a fast meeting and pick somebody, who may (or may not) be the VP nominee?

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  2. My favorite line was about using 'change' to bolster your career vs. using your career to bring about real change.

    I thought she was brilliant, "Reaganesque," she not only delivers it, but believes it and lives it. There was as much in the nuance, unsaid as in the speech itself.

    Absolutely amazing.

    Can she hold the line in the coming weeks under intense fire. I hope so.

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  3. I'll be linking this post this afternoon.

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  4. Anonymous1:52 PM

    37,244,000 watched Sarah Barracuda dismember the opposition (including the Obama Press Gang).

    The sleazy tactics of the journosphere just blew back in their faces.

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  5. Anonymous2:17 PM

    I am so sick and tired of hearing Obama folks trash this mother and woman. They are going to get a rude awakening from suburban working moms, hockey/soccer moms, rural areas and blue collar all around. I was a Hillary supporter and now a Palin supporter. The Dems, Palousi and Dean missed the boat entirely. Just because you nominate a black man does not equate to being qualified to be president. Hillary was by far the most qualified candidate. Since they trashed her and used the worse tactics ever — claiming not to trash her to her face while coaching their supporters to trash her and call them racist behind their back was truly ugly!!! (Obama played the race card - Not Clinton). As Palin so well noted in her speech “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.” Namely trashing rural people for believing in guns and religion will blow up in their face!!!. I can’t wait to watch the Deaneacs and Obama freaks go down — Big time…

    Heidi

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  6. Heidi,

    Well said. As a member of the Feline Theocracy, I can happily say with logic like that, I hope you come back here again and again.

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  7. She also helps McCain re-brand the party as the party of reform and small government. The Republicans rightly got themselves trounced in 2006 while the polls showed they had pulled ahead of the dems as "the party of big government." I think the public is overall quite rational. If they are consigned to big government hell by both parties, then they want the party who is competent at it. Now, McCain has a chance to change that perception with a corruption fighting governor. Further, the reform message works well with the small government message because with less goodies to hand out, there is generally less corruption.

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  8. Tim - I would think that if a party's presidential candidate dropped out for some reason at this late date, it would be up to the party chairman and their rules to come up with a successor.

    Rose, I thought she was Reaganesque, too and for the same reason. She wasn't getting a fair hearing in the press so she went right over their heads and talked directly to the American people.

    Thanks for the link, Justin!

    Heidi, my fiancee is a dyed in the wool Hillary supporter. She will not be voting for Obama because she doesn't trust him. Thanks for the comment and I agree with the Ohioan - please come back!

    b-daddy - as usual, you're about 8 hours or more ahead of me. I just posted a similar thought to yours.

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  9. Gotta love that woman! Her speech was definitely awesome.

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