More Palin, more of the time
I’ve noticed that Sarah Palin brings out certain words and phrases in people reacting to her.
Within a few days of her nomination, the word electrifying” kept appearing in articles about her effect on the Republican Party.
After her speech last night, I kept hearing she was “a natural.” And this not just from commentators on the Right, but even those on the liberal side.
One of the favorite memes of detractors last night—or subtle, would-be detractors—was that “someone wrote her speech for her.” Well, duh! I hadn’t heard of many politicians writing their own speeches these days; Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address they’re not (although even he cribbed his structure from Pericles’ Funeral Oration).
The strange compulsion to point this particular fact out for Palin is another example of sexism, and of pundits believing their own previous hype of Palin as stupid beauty queen slash soccer mom and feeling the need to scramble to try to explain how she could somehow have come up with an impressive performance such as last night’s.
Obama’s campaign, to its noncredit (and I assume Obama’s fingerprints were on this), had the gall to mention as it’s first response that not only was Palin’s speech written for her (!!!!!), but it was written by a former speechwriter of President Bush. This fact means, of course, that not only is McCain the same as Bush only shorter and older, but Palin is Bush in drag. Perhaps Palin would have been better received had she siphoned off one of Obama’s speechwriters?
My favorite (sarcasm here) criticism of Palin’s speech was that it was “shrill.” This came from Harry Reid’s press secretary. Palin was many things—among them, highly critical of Reid, who richly deserved it—but “shrill” she was not.
As for the speech, it turns out that Palin not only gracefully surmounted the challenge of delivering it under incredible personal and professional pressure, making the whole thing look easy, but she managed to do so while wrestling with a teleprompter that didn’t account for audience reaction and kept scrolling past the point where she had paused for applause, forcing her to recite bits of her speech from memory.
I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed. I’d go with the pundits who declare her a natural.
Oh yes! She sort of sprung from nowhere and was immediately attacked. She defended herself very well and established herself as having experience and expertise with energy and governmental efficiency. Having a handicapped child herself, she exuded tremendous credibility when she stated she would be a strong advocate for the disabled. On top of that, she has a decent speaking voice and is pleasant to look at and is visibly vibrant. The Dems should feel very threatened by her, she is the real deal – I think they are reeling a bit.
On the “she didn’t write her own speech” line, surely Biden was drummed out of the primaries about 20 years ago for plaigarizing a Neil Kinnock speech (the then British Labour Party leader).
Palin was a lousy mayor who took a town with $0 debt in 1996 and left it $22 million in the hole in 2002, mostly from the hockey rink/sports complex she shoved down their throats which never became the money generator she promised it would. Another white elephant from another white elephant.
Even with the stable Clinton economy during most of her mayoral tenure and Jack Abramoff’s crony she hired to lobby Washington to help her now indicted buddy Ted Stevens ring up $27 million in federal pork for tiny Wasilla (pop. 5000 when she entered office) she still managed to leave the town swimming in debt.
She was so heavy handed the town’s folk forced her to hire an administrator to handle day to day operations or face a recall.
As governor she is borrowing from Alaska’s future while she wants to give away today’s Alaskan windfall oil tax bonanza and the huge surpluses they’ve generated in bread and circuses tax giveaways. Alaska gets 89% of it’s operating budget from taxing oil coming out of the ground just like Arab kingdoms and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. They have no state income or sales tax up there. Instead of using that windfall to pay for all the profligate spending her Republican legislature keep sending her she’s issuing bonds to pay for it all which Alaskans and US taxpayers will have to pay off in future years while she takes credit for tax “rebates” while she’s governor.
Her fiscal policy is a disaster in the making which won’t hit til she’s left the governor’s office. She’d be a disaster as Vice President especially to a President who despite his grevious wounds and type A personality is already past the age his father and grandfather died of sudden heart attacks.
She can put on all the lipstick she wants but her political record is for the dogs.
P.S. The teleprompter broke story is a lie. Don’t you ever get tired of being lied to?
BTW three of those pork projects Palin got her pals to fund in Wasilla out of our pockets even made McCain’s own wasteful spending list.
markg: we dont care.
go away.
P.S. The teleprompter broke story is a lie. Don’t you ever get tired of being lied to?
I’m getting tired of it already by reading your stuff.
Hey, Obama can’t even talk without the teleprompter. Gotta keep him scripted. Really makes you wonder why he never bothered to learn that skill. It comes in handy for a politician. As for her speech being scripted, I recognized a number of bits from her speech on Friday. I believe we are hearing parts of her normal stump speech, which I seriously doubt was scripted by any of the regular script writers. I believe she is capable of writing her own material. That will be proven out during the debates.
And my, isn’t it interesting how the Obama fans are out trying to dampen the enthusiasm? Guess they figure that only they are allowed to be excited about this election. Too bad!
markg8:
Could you supply a link to the data on the town’s budget during SP’s tenure? By link, I mean one associated with the actual town government, not some left wing blog. If so, I’ll look at the data objectively.
According to SP, Alaska is now running a surplus. Why the need for bonds? Again, can you show the data where you are right and the governor of that state is wrong?
I will be surprised if I get a response from our friend mark. I suspect that this was a hit and run posting, and our friend has moved on to other blogs after compiling a list from Google.
Markg8: Never said the teleprompter broke. I said it had a scrolling problem. I was relying on this, which gives the least extreme version of the story. There’s little question there was some sort of teleprompter scroll problem. The only controversy is how severe it was.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – the left is coming over here and trying to convince us to vote for the conservative person and then goes on trying to convince us that only they are. They are playing a con game and have – for the first time since the Contract with America – been called on it.
Palin *is* that instead of pretending to be. I don’t know if that idea hasn’t sunk in yet, if they believe she must be a *really really* good liar, or if they truly believe if they repeat it enough it will someone how magically be true (especially if they use the word “crony” all the time – that seems a particular favorite).
Go on, convince us that politicians who push for high taxes and high spending should not be voted for – please, shout it to the sky. It didn’t work well with Reagan nor did it work with the Contract with America and it isn’t going to work here. Your MUCH better off attacking things that differentiate her from your side.
Neo,
Markg8 is going all over the blogosphere posting essentially the same post to numerous blogs. It’s probable his post would have criticized you regarding the teleprompter story even if you hadn’t mentioned it. He’s either a paid Obama shill or an eager amateur (who’s just trying to help).
If you think that millions square miles of tundra with a tiny population could ever fund anything from income tax, you are crazy. We have the same problem in Russia, only on bigger scale. All these subarctic regions exist only due federal spending. But they return it in oil and natural gas revenues. No alternative policy is viable in these climate zones.