So, Attacking Palin Makes Sense? UPDATED
By Larry Johnson on September 6, 2008 at 6:41 PM in Current Affairs
Let me state at the outset that I like Sarah Palin because she has shown the ability to take on entrenched interests–the Republican Party of Alaska and the Oil and Gas Industry. Her social conservatism is irrelevant to me. Why? Because she has demonstrated that her priority is fixing government waste and abuse rather than focusing her energies on bedroom or pecker politics. We have had eight years of a Republican frat boy President, a Skull and Bones kind of dude, who talked a good game but when it came to acting on behalf of the people of this country he punted and did a fair share of pandering to special interests. Nor am I arguing that Republicans should be in control of the Congress. Candidly, Republicans and Democrats have both been awful on this front.
Sarah Palin’s vagina and ovaries are not relevant factors to whether she is qualified or not to be President in the event McCain falls over like Fred Sanford. Similarly Barack Obama’s skin color is neither a qualifying or disqualifying factor. The issue is simple–of all the people involved in this Presidential campaign who has actually taken on and defeated special interests? John McCain, at least on campaign finance and immigration, has shown a willingness to fight his party’s entrenched specials interests. And Palin’s record is clear. Can you cite just one example of Obama or Biden doing the same? This is an honest request. While Obama portrays himself as “Mr. Change” he is only good at changing his mind on things he said he once believed (e.g., fisa, public financing of elections, withdrawal timetable for Iraq, etc.) How about Biden? Does his backing of Clarence Thomas count as “taking on entrenched interests?”
So check out these competing views. Let’s start with the Democratic side of the ledger. Did you see this?
Bonnie Fuller at Huffington Post published a piece with the title, Sarah Palin Dissed John and Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, the Original George W. and the Rest of the Founding Fathers! You have got to be shitting me. I thought this was a joke at first. Surely she was writing tongue in cheek? Nope. Bonnie states:
It’s amazing what a group of highly motivated community organizers did over 230 years ago. So what’s so bad about a presidential nominee today starting his activist career this way? And hey Sarah, isn’t the PTA one of the most effective community organizations in the country? Isn’t that where you got your start?
And now to touch on a theme that has been a biggie in this election — it certainly appears that the Founding Fathers didn’t have a whole lot of “experience” in running a country before they took on the task of launching and then governing the newly-born America. This should give comfort to both Governor Palin and Senator Obama, each of whom has come under some pretty heavy fire for their lack of longterm “executive” experience.
Then there’s the battle over which candidate is more “typical” or “relatable.” Sarah Palin wants us electorate to feel chummy with her because she’s a small-town hockey mom. She mentioned the term “small town” four times in her vice-presidential acceptance speech the other night.The only problem is that she doesn’t seemed to notice but most Americans today do not live in small towns anymore. We live in cities, there are no corn fields in our back yards and that trend shows no signs of reversing.
When I suggested to one of my more “progressive” (i.e., ultra liberal) friends that the Dems were making a mistake attack Palin instead of going after her on the issues, especially given her broad popularity in Alaska, he wrote:
Funny, I’m hearing the exact opposite.
Sounds like 78% is pretty good as I’m sure she has only one way to go…… down.
Sorry LJ, I’m not buying it. Neither is Hillary. In the end, neither will the majority of Americans. The number of Dem’s registering to vote is overwhelming, Palin is of little consequence now, just a show to shore of the religious loony right and the rush lambast crowd.
This country is so moving on… The reign of lies, deceit pushed by these clowns is oh so over.
Maddow nails it….
My friend is referring to Maddow on Countdown where she accuses the Republicans of lying about Barack but fails to surface a single example of such lies. (You can see the video clip here.) For example, the Republicans are lying, says Maddow, when they say Obama has not penned a single piece of major legislation. Okay, name the legislation? . . . .waiting . . . . waiting Oh, and doing something for the Republic of the Congo does not count. Republicans are also lying per Rachel about Barack’s plan to raise taxes. Well, the fact of the matter is that Obama is only going to raise taxes on Americans who most folks consider rich. But that’s not lying.
What about reaching across the aisle? Well, when it comes to lying it looks like that turd hangs around Barack’s neck. Barack had promised John McCain help in sponsoring legislation on lobbying reform. And who flip flopped? You got it–Barack Obama. According to McCain’s letter:
Dear Senator Obama:
I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.
You can read the rest here. And Obama lied his ass off to Rick Warren a month ago when he claimed:
WELL, I’LL GIVE YOU AN EXAMPLE THAT IN FACT I WORKED WITH JOHN MCCAIN ON AND THAT WAS THE ISSUE OF CAMPAIGN ETHICS REFORM AND FINANCE REFORM. THAT WASN’T PROBABLY IN MY INTEREST OR HIS FOR THAT MATTER BECAUSE THE TRUTH WAS BOTH DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS OR OF LIKE THE STATUS QUO AND I WAS NEW TO THE SENATE AND IT DIDN’T NECESSARILY ENGENDER A LOT OF POPULARITY WHEN I STARTED SAYING YOU KNOW WE’RE GOING TO ELIMINATE MEALS AND GIFTS FROM CORPORATE LOBBYISTS.
So what are my Republican friends saying. Specifically I asked my friend about the status of the “whitey” tape. He shared the following:
I will tell you exactly what they are waiting for. You may not like the
answer, but here it is.The McCain bunch are, if nothing else, cool, calculating customers. Something happened over the last week that they were not expecting, and that something indicates that they need to go against their emotional and combative instincts, steel themselves and bring their unemotional objectivity to bear. That’s why an attack hasn’t started yet, at least an attack in earnest. The IDB article that I sent you was obviously a plant from oppo research to a very select target, but stuff like this is all that is going to happen until they see which way the indicators are going. That won’t happen until next Tuesday or Wed at the earliest.
This week’s convention caught even the most true believing of Repub operatives totally by surprise. They were not expecting Sarah to have the effect that she apparently has had across not only Republicans, but across a broad swath of independents. Their internals are telling them that she is, by far, the most popular individual on either ticket across the board. It is further telling them that there is considerable backlash among both independent men and women to the attacks against Sarah that have been mounted by the MSM as well as Obama and his surrogates. Every time they attack Sarah, they are in effect losing support in a demographic where they desperately need support.
They were not expecting last night’s speech to have the effect that it had as McCain is generally considered to be a poor platform speaker. I listened to his speech on XM as I was driving up the coast and then stopped for a cup of coffee at a McDonald’s about 70 miles south of my house in the heart of a very liberal university town whose four year student population has been used as a tool by Democrats to dominate the county government for decades. The McDonald’s had McCain on a widescreen TV, and he was just finishing his speech with the story of how he had been transformed from a swaggering Naval Aviator who cared only for himself into a man who was dedicated to his country and his fellow citizens after the North Vietnamese broke him in interrogation. The entire McDonald’s–liberal students, older workers just getting off of the late shift, McDonald’s staff, and assorted other customers–were riveted in front of the TV with tears streaming down their faces. This is a place where have of the hamburger and French fry preparers hardly speak English, and where half of the student customers were wearing Obama buttons as the balled their eyes out. The dominating visual that I take from that crowd was a young female student uncontrollably raining tears on her Obama campaign button as she listened to McCain. If I could have figured out a way to shoot that on my cellphone, I would be winning YouTube prizes right now.
Overnight internal polling now shows McCain ahead of Obama, but still well within the margin of error. The normal practice is not to believe the polling until it has run for three nights after the defining event, in this case, last night.
But there is another defining event that is going to occur Monday, Tuesday and Wed of next week, and that is O”Reilly’s one on one with Obama. Repubs have the tape, and O’Reilly wiped the floor with Obama. He comes off as petulant, whiny, and inexperienced, blaming every one else for “not listening to what I said” whenever he changed his position. O”Reilly was civil, but he made the guy look like what he is: not ready for President.
With the nation appearing to love Sarah, and now kind of by inclusion McCain, and hating people who attack them, it would be counterproductive to launch an attack campaign until they get the polling that will not be available until at least Tuesday, at the earliest, to see which way the wind is really blowing. If this shows a bounce for McCain of better than or equal to Obama, even if it is still within the margin of error, they will re-evaluate and wait for the effect of O”Reilly’s show (remember, O’Reilly has the largest audience by far for that type of show). If they get a bounce off of O’Reilly, then they will re-evaluate again.
They do have some incredible oppo dirt on Obama and Michelle. Depending on how things are going at the end of next week, if it looks like attacking might gain them support, they will start rolling some of this stuff out so that it can be used in sound bites by the candidate in the debates on an audience that has already been factually prepped with background data by the ads. The feeling is that if Obama can be provoked to melt down in a mano a mano debate, which is his weakest format, that will probably be the ball game.
Here is the feeling of one contact of mine. “We have seen the worst that they can throw at us and appear to have withstood it relatively unscathed. We have a whole arsenal to throw at Obama, and they don’t have a clue to what we may or may not have. All they know is that they have a bottomless pit of revelations to worry about.”
I think that pretty much sums it up.
So, there you have the latest as I know it.
UPDATE: Thanks to one of our commenters, another smear debunked, courtesy of Michelle Malkin I think.
Palin Derangement Syndrome strikes again.
This time it’s hysterical librarians and their readers on the Internet disseminating a bogus list of books Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly banned in 1996. Looks like some of these library people failed reading comprehension. Take a look at the list below and you’ll find books Gov. Palin supposedly tried to ban…that hadn’t even been published yet. Example: The Harry Potter books, the first of which wasn’t published until 1998.
The smear merchants who continue to circulate the list also failed to do a simple Google search, which would have showed them that the bogus Sarah Palin Banned Book List is almost an exact copy-and-paste reproduction of a generic list of “Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States” that has been floating around the Internet for years. STACLU notes that the official Obama campaign website is also perpetuating the fraud. And it’s spread to craigslist, where some unhinged user is posting images likening Palin to Hitler. Here it is again.
The person who first spread the Palin smear is identified as “Andrew Aucoin,” a commenter on the blog of librarian Jessamyn West. West has done the right thing in keeping the bogus comment up and pointing out in her main post that “there appears to be no truth to the claim made by the commenter, and no further documentation or support for this has turned up.”
These rumors are going to continue backfiring.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
