Category: Awards

"I always listen to Mark Levin while making Friday night dinner … Funnily enough, he has explained just what it is community organizers do. Advocating, for instance, for affordable housing for the poor — the poor who traditionally rent, because they are bad loan risks. The day that reasoning by banks was junked as "racist," was the day this crisis became a possibility.," – Lisa Schiffren, NRO.

Karen Tumulty accuses McCain of playing the race card with this new ad:

This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.

For once, I agree with Goldfarb.

"[S]ome argue instead (or alternatively) that Sarah Palin’s credentials are adequate. These arguments are mostly laughable. We are told that she was a courageous whistle-blower. But whistling-blowing isn’t evidence of leadership skill, administrative ability, or familiarity with vital policy issues. We are told that Palin challenged an incumbent governor and called him out for his corruption. But mounting an insurgent’s campaign for governor isn’t evidence of fitness for the presidency either. We are told that she is responsible for her state’s national guard and visited its troops in Iraq. How this amounts to foreign policy or national security experience, or otherwise qualifies Palin for national office, is unclear.

What’s clear is that if Democrats made these sorts of arguments on behalf of a candidate for national office, conservative commentators would excoriate them for it," – Paul Mirengoff, Powerline.

Read his whole post. It’s a good sign of what conservatives actually serious about national security might say.

Not every conservative has lost his mind:

I don’t think academic credentials matter at all in the presidency. (Unlike eg the Supreme Court or the Federal Reserve.) I even believe that there is rapidly diminishing marginal utility for IQ. Clinton was surely smarter than FDR, Nixon smarter than Reagan, Adams smarter than Washington. We are talking about a particular set of decision-making skills – and there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that Palin possesses them. Worse, from my point of view, is the assumption that because she is a conservative Christian that she therefore has intelligent conservative views on every other subject, from what to do with Fannie Mae to what to do about Iran. That’s a greater leap of faith than I can make.

But, David, you gotta have faith, faith, faith. That’s all conservatism is now about!

"Perhaps I’m focusing on an irrelevant issue, but the presence, or non-presence, of [Levi] Johnston on the stage tonight strikes me as important.  It’s one thing for delegates to be understanding and compassionate about the fix these two teenagers have gotten themselves into.  It’s another to actually celebrate it.  And, given what we’ve learned in the last few days, if Johnston is up on stage with his girlfriend and the Palin family, and Republicans are wildly cheering, it will certainly look like they are celebrating this situation…

I don’t usually engage in these scenarios, but I’ll do it here.  If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families," – Byron York.

"That’s the way it has felt all year long—pretty much every Republican primary event I went too felt less jazzed and was less crowded than the Democratic events," – Rich Lowry, observing the GOP convention.

"Can we conservatives please stop kidding ourselves about Barack Obama’s "qualifications"? Yes, if I had been a Democratic donor back in 2006, I’d sure worry about whether Barack Obama had what it took to be president. That was before he took on the toughest political operation in America, before he beat Bill and Hillary Clinton, before he won 18 million primary votes.

Obama’s nomination was not handed to him. He fought hard for it and won against the odds. "Qualifications" predict achievement. Once you have achieved, it doesn’t matter what your qualifications are. Who cares whether the guy who built a big company from nothing didn’t have much of a resume when he started? But if you are applying to run a big company built by somebody else, the resume matters …

The worst mistake in any fight is to under-estimate your opponent’s abilities. Look what happened to the people who under-estimated Reagan. If conservatives are to have any hope in the coming weeks, we should wake up to the fact that we face in Barack Obama a formidable man, who appeals to something important and deep in the American electorate. He’s not a superman, he has vulnerabilities, he can be beaten. But he won’t be beaten until we who are trying to beat him understand why and how he has come so far,"- David Frum, NRO.

"Washington Republicans have hardly kept themselves free of race- and gender-based decision making: one can think of many cabinet members and judicial nominations made on these grounds. But now they’ve gone all the way and introduced irrelevant chromosome considerations into the presidential race—the most important political choice in the land. And they have lost any standing to criticize Democrats for playing the race and gender cards," – Heather Mac Donald.

"Palin will also be assigned to pacify conservatives. On the evidence of the numerous emails reprinted here, that will be easily done. Reader after reader said that the base was now energized. You would have thought the base was energized by being in a war. If not, perhaps we need a new base," – Rick Brookhiser.

He’s discovering that the actual people in the Republican base are much less interested in national security than in religious orthodoxy. Who knew? The only relevant criterion for the Christianists is that Palin is a pro-life evangelical. What other criterion should they have? This isn’t about governing; it’s about believing.