Month: September 2008

Via Nate Silver.

A reader writes:

Every now and then, my lifelong Republican evangelical Christian calls me with his take on politics. He usually fancies himself an independent, but obviously is not, until tonight. His words to me, verbatim: "I’m sick. I’m done with em [the Republicans]. They can’t think we’re that stupid."

We’ll see. The pundit reaction is as I expected, but the speech more partisan and more about revving up cultural divides than I had anticipated. I think it will help enthuse the Christianist base. But I didn’t see tonight as offering any substantive policy reason to vote for McCain. In the end, people are interested in issues, aren’t they? And drilling for oil and "victory" in Iraq do not seem to me to move the ball forward.

JPod:

In terms of impact I would say this speech is easily the equal of Obama’s in 2004.

Kathleen Parker:

There’s time to hash out the details, but one can’t help but be excited by the reception of a woman vice presidential candidate. Just as we all felt proud when Barack Obama became the first African-American presidential candidate.

K-Lo:

Methinks McCain has no evangelical worries anymore.

Jim Lindgren:

Geraldine Ferraro was never like this. After a middling start of her speech, Sarah Palin hit her stride. Palin’s speech so far is MILES better than Biden’s — and will probably be better than McCain’s.

Josh Marshall:

I’ve seen political events that I totally got and others that I thought I got but was totally wrong. So who knows? But take this as a sign that the McCain campaign has abandoned an effort to compete for swing voters and go back to the base energizing strategy that worked for President Bush in 2004. The numbers make that look like a tough proposition. But I think a few months from now, everyone will agree this was a mistake.

Jay Carney:

…two things are clear after Sarah Palin made her do-or-die debut before 20-plus million people tonight. She is amazingly self-confident. And she knows how to nail a speech.

James Joyner:

…even with a 72-year-old at the head of the ticket, the vice president will be an afterthought for most voters. After tonight, though, it’s looking like, at the very least, she won’t be a drag.

Franklin Foer:

Welcome back to Nixonland. To their credit, they were disrespectful and angry with humor, albeit a sophomoric humor. (Giuliani would have done a splendid job at a Dean Martin roast.)  But it’s clear where they are headed. They will respond to the Democrats’ economic populism with cultural populism. Where Obama talked about “One America,” they will run in the polarizing mode of Rove and Atwater. In an election where they don’t have much of an economic case, this was their best card to play. I have a sinking feeling that it will work and we’re in for an ugly eight weeks.

Eve Fairbanks:

Number of exclamation points in Romney’s prepared remarks: Seventeen. Number of exclamation points in Huckabee’s and Giuliani’s combined: Zero.

Ezra Klein:

You gotta give it to him: Rudy Giuliani is very effective. He’s got mockery down. Huckabee has too light a touch, and too many peculiar stories about veterans stealing desks from small children.

JPod:

Rudy’s speech was one of the great pieces of ripsnorting partisan rhetoric of our time — it’s the sort of thing that makes one understand why people fall in love with politics.

Noam Scheiber:

I don’t see how making media-bashing the centerpiece of your convention expands your coalition. It just sounds bitter, defensive, and more than a little conspiratorial. Tom DeLay’s triumphalism notwithstanding, it’s hard to believe you’d choose to do this if you weren’t backed into it.

The one moment that stays with me tonight, oddly enough, was not Palin’s speech. It was a line from Giuliani, a New York mayor with a young second third wife and gay friends, mocking a "cosmopolitan" who was brought up by a single mother. It was that Barack Obama’s rise could "only happen in America." And it was designed to mock him, the first African-American candidate for the presidency of the United States.

I won’t forget that.

11.10 pm. Reality television has become our politics.

11.06 pm. Both Huckabee and Palin have used the t-word. Of course, they are not criminally liable, as Bush is.

11.05 pm. Every time the camera pans to McCain’s mother, she seems mortified. I don’t really blame her. Can you imagine what she was thinking as a tiny special needs baby is passed from person to person for the cable news.

11.03 pm. However admirable it is to be a mayor, is it really necessary to drip contempt for people who work as community organizers? It seems to me that Palin doesn’t quite have the stature to be putting down someone who has won millions of people’s votes. This is a much more partisan speech than I was expecting.

11.00 pm Styrofoam pillars; and self-designed seals. And her lip curls.

10.58 pm. Now it’s about big government – which Republicans have exploded in size. But no one can notice the actual record of the GOP in growing government and increasing debt. That would be too much accountability.

10.56 pm. Obama wants to reduce American power and prevent energy production. The mockery of Obama from Palin is striking. I don’t recall anyone mocking McCain at the DNC.

10.53 pm. Drill, baby, drill! I may be just revealing that I’m out of touch, but I don’t see why laying pipelines is now a core rallying cry of American conservatism.

10.50 pm. I have to say that the affect is of someone running for high school president.

10.49 pm. Piper is poking Trig in the eye!

10.48 pm. Ethics reform is her first policy proposal.

10.47 pm. She has this weird tick of scrunching up her face to make a forceful point. Kinda Tracy Flicky.

10.44 pm. Palin echoes Giuliani’s attack on "cosmopolitan" elites. All the buzzwords are there. Elite. Elite. Elite. This is a culture war speech – and she is becoming a symbol of red America. This is what they have to do top win: divide and polarize again.  We are half way through, by the way, and we have not heard a single policy proposal. But we have heard contempt for someone who works as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago.

10.40 pm. We’ve just seen a picture of a seven year old cradling and stroking the hair of a Down Syndrome infant. This, apparently, is relevant to deciding who should be the next vice-president of the United States.

10.39 pm. I’m just slack-jawed that, so far, the entire speech has been basically about her family. She seems as if she just won a reality show and is introducing her folks. And they have passed the baby now to four different people – including another child. Slack-jawed.

(Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.)

Did I just see Cindy holding Trig? I mean: can we have it one way or the other? Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the spotlight. Brandishing a child with Down Syndrome as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him.

(Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.)

They’ve leaked, of course. And they’re not pretty:

"This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he’s been promoted," said a Feb. 7, 2007, e-mail sent from Palin’s personal Yahoo account and written to give Monegan permission to speak on a violent-crime bill before the state legislature…

"He’s still bragging about it in my hometown and after another cop confessed to witnessing the [moose] kill, the trooper was ‘investigated’ for over a year and merely given a slap on the wrist," the e-mail said. "Though he’s out there arresting people today for the same crime!"

"He threatened to kill his estranged wife’s parent, refused to be transferred to rural Alaska and continued to disparage Natives in words and tone, he continues to harass and intimidate his ex. — even after being slapped with a restraining order that was lifted when his supervisors intervened," the e-mail said. "He threatens to always be able to come out on top because he’s ‘got the badge’, etc. etc. etc.)"

The key point, however, is that Palin clearly wasn’t straightforward in addressing the matter:

Palin has said previously that she discussed Wooten with Monegan only in the context of security concerns for the family. Monegan has said that Palin never directly told him to fire Wooten but that the message was clearly conveyed through repeated messages from Palin, her husband and three members of her Cabinet.

"To allege that I, or any member of my family . . . directed disciplinary action be taken against any employee of the Department of Public Safety, is, quite simply, outrageous," Palin said in a statement in mid-July after Monegan’s dismissal.

In August, Palin acknowledged that "pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it."

He looks chubbier! And less gaunt. It was his usual schtick and I have to say I find it very enjoyable. I can’t dislike the man. He seems genuine to me, and he was the first Republican to have a modicum of grace toward Obama’s achievements. As an objective matter, the way in which almost all the Republicans have expressed contempt for their opponent does not strike me as very effective. It makes them look small and ungenerous. Better surely to take the tack that he is a gifted young man, not yet ready for the White House. And that might have had real traction … until the Palin pick, when it turned into comic self-contradiction.

Insofar as we have heard any actual policy detail at this convention – and we have heard almost none – Huckabee seemed to present the Obama critique of the past eight years. But, again, trying to find any actual coherence in all this is surely a mug’s game at this point. I mean, this GOP is apparently in favor of small government, despite growing government at a faster pace than any period since the 1930s. When you point out this contradiction to them, they just open and shut their eyes and repeat the talking points.

Oh, and pop cultural references to Madonna stopped having any meaning for anyone under 50 about ten years ago. Just to let you know.

Peggy Noonan explains:

In the truncated version of the conversation, on the Web, it appears I am saying the McCain campaign is over. I did not say it, and do not think it.

A largely content-free speech that went out on a limb, defending patriotism, attacking liberals, vowing to defeat evil and defend the family. I was somewhat surprised to hear that the GOP is about cutting spending, and restraining government, and that liberals have been in charge for the last quarter of a century – but, hey, this is the Republican Convention. Reality is what they say it is.