Month: September 2008

"Forget about Trooper-gate and creationism. Forget about the truly low, cynical people who think that being the target of "liberal ridicule" necessarily means you’re qualified to lead the country. Forget about moose-hunting and pipelines. You simply can’t be a credible VP nominee and have no idea what the Bush doctrine is. Watch this clip. And then think about the people who say Andrew has lost his mind over Palin’s nomination. I admit, for a while I wondered why he was going so hard. Now I know. And now I know who, truly, must be out their minds," – Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Schwenkler is in a tizzy because I used Gibson’s "task that is from God" remark. Here’s the LA Times:

Gibson went on to take a second part of her comments out of context. Palin had asked the group to pray “that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

But Gibson dropped her reference to praying — and instead quoted Palin as saying the war was God’s plan. He asked if she believed the country was sending her son on a task from God.

She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That’s all you need to know.

"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I’ve been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time," – Senator John McCain, October, 2007.

This is how you conduct an interview. This interview just destroyed McCain’s candidacy.

No serious, alert candidate could be caught in an obvious untruth like this:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday running mate Sarah Palin has never asked for money for lawmakers’ pet projects as Alaska governor when in fact she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year.

There are two possibilities. 1. He’s lying, regardless of the consequences. 2. He really hasn’t been briefed or cannot retain the briefing or is simply in denial about the facts. Are his staff telling him? Are they afraid because they didn’t vet the candidate and are now allowing him to say things about her in public that are debunkable by one Google search? Even the Fournier-controlled AP cannot deny it:

"When pressed about Palin’s record of requesting and accepting such money for Alaska, McCain ignored the record and said: "Not as governor she didn’t."

If I had to guess, I have enough residual shreds of fondness for the old McCain to believe 2. You can draw whatever conclusions you may.

Here she is last year:

"I’m not a doom and gloom environmentalist like Al Gore blaming the changes in our climate on human activity."

Here she is this morning:

"I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change."

Was she lying then or lying now?

Or is she just desperately saying whatever gets her through the next news cycle and hoping we don’t have Google? I mean: seriously. She is in meltdown.

And one more thing: do you think the McCain campagn, running on the surge and for urgent action on climate change ever knew that she was once against the surge and denied that humans had any impact on the climate? Did no one vet her at all?

Ezra Klein doesn’t approve.

Crowley counters Arianna. He’s right. Now is the time for calm and coolness.

Frum’s analysis:

Those who wish to believe in her will continue to believe in her. As for the rest – well it’s a 6 in 7 chance that McCain makes it to the end of his first term. That’s pretty good!

This Palin farce has really revealed who among conservatives is still sane. Frum and Brookhiser are sane. Krauthammer and Kristol: not so much.

It’s a common metaphor for her in this interview. Here is how she described her decision to accept the vice-presidential nomination:

I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.

So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.

And here she is on invading Pakistan:

In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the only people who have trained themselves not to blink when talking to anyone are self-trained pathological liars. We know she has lied multiple times in the past two weeks. In fact, the lies keep on coming. But what else has she lied about, I wonder?