Speches: Rudy Palin "The war has begun"

Kicking it back to Keith after the Rudy interview, a crestfallen Mitchell [of MSNBC] said, "The war has begun." Indeed.

I thought Rudy and Palin were quite funny. Even when they were mocking Obama, they were smiling and having fun. Which may make the Dem's even angrier, if they don't like being mocked.

It looks good. Palin concentrated on showing what she is really like, instead of what the media tried to make her.

She also used her and McCain's life stories to contrast with what Obama has (and has not) done. It was a clear line between actions and rhetoric.

Here's Glen Reyold's initial thoughts.

The Worst Olberman could say about Palin's speech: "People who like this sort of thing will find this... the sort of thing they like."



I was struck by this part after the the speech.

McCain: "Don't you think we made the right choice for the next vice president of the united states? And what a beautiful family?"
While Bristol and who I' think was her fiance were there.
Oh, he's a cunning old bear.

Obama camp, Mainstream Media. Ball's in your court. Do you double down and keep trying to destroy her or do you move on and try something else?

I'll post a recorded version of her speech when I find it.

Update: The Obama camp, and its supporters in the MSM have come up with a talking point against Palin's speech (in addition to it being "alarmingly" strong). Someone else wrote it.

Lorie Byrd has more

Obama's response -- the speech was written by George Bush's speech writer. Wow. How lame is that? Almost as lame as the reaction from a Kos diarist -- liar, student council speech delivery, etc. Republicans acknowledged the quality of both Hillary and Obama's speeches. We disagree with what they said, but we are smart enough to know they made good speeches.

That's right. The MSM harp on Palin for using a speechwriter. Do they actually think Obama doesn't use one? Or do they simply hold Palin to that much higher of a standard.

Palin Death-pool

Many people have been fretting and worrying on when Palin will drop out of the race.


You may ask who just wants her to go away.

Anne Althouse goes to look.

Here's a hint, it's not the right. They love her.

But yeah, so, obviously Green wants us to think that the Republicans upset about Sarah Palin. But who is pushing the Eagleton meme? Who wants her out?

You know, I remember the McGovern campaign. I was a big supporter of McGovern's, and I hated Nixon, as did all of my friends. And the scenario then was completely different from what you are seeing now. We were never excited about Eagleton in the first place. We just wanted McGovern to win. Eagleton didn't infuse new energy into the McGovern campaign or jazz up am important subset of voters. He was just some boring Senator that got slotted in. And then he brought nothing but trouble and distraction as the news came out that he'd been hospitalized for depression 3 times and had receive electroshock treatments. It wasn't just that there were a couple of old political controversies or a family member was less than perfect. We were getting significant new information about his brain, the brain that we might need to rely on to make presidential decisions. It was simply not acceptable, especially since he'd also withheld this information from McGovern, which showed some really poor character.

The Palin candidacy has virtually nothing in common with the Eagleton scenario, and the people who are saying it does are displaying their desperation. Obviously -- I'm not the first to say this -- if you want McCain to lose and you think she's so terrible, you should be happy to see Palin as the VP nominee. It will help defeat McCain.

So... people that would never vote for McCain don't like her... yeah that's really compelling to McCain to drop her.

Why are they so angry?

Peggy Noonan on Palin: “A real and present danger to the American left”

More on exactly why the media is so angry. Short answer? McCain tricked them and they are angry about it.

In fact, the Democratic frontrunners all had less time in elective office than Sarah Palin. Democrats seem to forget that they nominated John Edwards as VP in 2004 after only three years in public office at all, most of it spent — like Barack Obama — running for President. Where were E.J. Dionne, Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, and the rest of the commentariat when John Kerry made that pick? They were too busy singing hosannas to the Democratic ticket to worry about experience then, it seems.

What had Edwards ever done that indicated he should be a heartbeat away from the Presidency? At least Sarah Palin has executive experience, which most people will understand as more applicable to the Presidency than a year of legislative experience. She has worked with a legislature, run an executive branch of government, and managed to do it successfully enough to have approval ratings in the 80s.

The outrage has little to do with experience, and almost everything to do with being outfoxed by McCain. The media expected a staid, boring, safe white man that they could pigeonhole. Instead, they got a dynamic, successful, smart conservative “hockey mom” with a record of reform that Barack Obama cannot match and that is the antithesis of Joe Biden. They got knocked out of their lane, and now they have to figure out how to explain how they could possibly have overlooked Palin in their calculations. Presto! They overlooked her because she’s so inexperienced!

Victor Davis Hanson adds in.

First, there is the annoited's notion that the noble ends justify the slimy means, that whether the issue is abortion or affirmative action or any other hot-button social gospel, the supposed interests of the many override the common decency that should be afforded the few.

We are supposed to think that given one's cosmic sense of fairness and caring, the white knight always is afforded a little human leeway in slaying dragons in the here and now. To save the utopian vision of "two nations" John Edwards, presidential candidate, hundreds in the media passed on verifiable stories of his adultery, the financial support of his mistress, and his blatantly untrue assertions in public press conferences; by the same token to stop "one nation" Palin, the private life of a 17-year old girl must not only be aired, but distorted and in some cases invented.

Second, as in the case of a Palin or Thomas, there is the notion that the slandered deserve it as interloppers—unauthentic women or minorities due to their conservative views, who piggyback on the hard work of feminists and those in the race/identity politics movement. They purportedly do not show enough appreciation and deference to the pioneers who suffered so much to give us abortion on demand, quotas in hiring, etc. and as ingrates thus get what they deserve. For talking-head feminists that a Sally Quin, Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton—unlike Sarah Palin—had a well-connected, influential male around to energize her career is of no concern—except perhaps to make the animus against the outsider upstart even greater.

Tonight Palin gives her speech to the convention. We'll see how she does.

Pajamas TV

Pajamas Media has started a beta of a TV video feature. It can be seen here.

It's worth giving a watch for some more intelligent and coherent commentary.

Again On Palin and Obama.

Victor Davis Hanson on what Palin means to the Dems and why they're attacking her so forcefully.

Read it all, but in short, they're scared. They have no idea what she is and how to substantially deal with her.

Michele Catalano has some thoughts on the latest avenue of attack.

Privacy? Don't bet on it. This is a whole fresh pile of mud for the left to start slinging. They'll attack Palin's family values stance, talk about how Palin teaches abstinence, and start trotting out the hypocrisy meme. Except this is not Palin who is the unmarried, pregnant teen. It's her daughter. It's not particularly shocking when a teenager does something against the parents' teachings, is it? If we were to call out every parent who taught abstinence from sex, smoking, drugs, or drinking then had a kid indulge in any (or all) of those, we'd be here all day.

The fact is, the left is all about privacy in the matters of the womb. Were they to stay true to their colors, this mantra of theirs would seem to preclude them from judging Bristol's pregnancy and her choice to keep her child, right? It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The Kos kids and their blog followers have already made one attempt to ruin this girl's life. Now that they have a story with actual truth behind it, we'll have to sit back and see how far they run with a teenager's identity.

Let me make it clear: there are many things I don't like about Sarah Palin. We are ideologically opposed on numerous issues. Her stance on creationism and her pro-life zealousness are just two examples. Two big ones. There's the fact that McCain chose Palin for VP after meeting her only once; I'd like to think that more thought goes into the process than the need to find a conservative woman for your ticket. I'm naive like that. But the last two days of mudslinging against Palin have been so extreme, they have transformed her into an almost sympathetic figure in my eyes. More important, the barbs thrown at her have made me look upon liberals with a level of contempt I have not felt since, well, 2004.

If I'm rushing to the defense of a woman whose core ideologies I oppose, then something pretty bad must be going on. And that something smells like a pungent mixture of hypocrisy and desperation.

One does not need to agree with someone's politics to find false charges and smears against them and their family to be despicable. In fact, if the target's politics are a factor in whether or not they deserve your sympathy... well doesn't that just say what kind of person you are?

What's really interesting here is the prying into Palin's personal womb space. I thought that was off limits? Isn't that part and parcel of the whole lefty oath that "one should never invade the sanctity of a woman's womb or what she does with it"? Now somehow it's okay to question one woman's uterine activity.

James S. Robbins has some notes.

It's interesting that Barack Obama is publicly making the argument that he has more political experience than Sarah Palin. Why does the top of the Dem ticket feel the need to run against the bottom of the GOP ticket? It diminishes him. And by stressing experience as a metric, isn't Obama setting himself up for the inevitable losing battle of his time in office versus John McCain's? Anyway wasn't this election all about "change?" Didn't Hillary lose the nomination by stressing experience? They must really feel threatened by Ms. Palin.

Jonathan Adler points that the experience issue is not just Palin and Obama. He looks at Dean, Edwards, and the latter Bush.



Obama keeps pushing the "Former Small Town Mayor" theme.
That'll turn on him.
It's like saying Obama has no federal experience because he's merely a former Illinois State Legislator.

Ace of Spades has some more thoughts on the avenue of attack being made by a Former community Organizer.

I do love the insinuation that running for president somehow qualifies him to be president. If that's the case, then he's perhaps the best-qualified candidate ever, because running for president is basically all he's done since entering national politics.

It's really quite revealing that Obama is forced to ignore the office Palin currently holds in order to make the case he's more experienced.

There's also the delicious irony of the Presidential Candidate trying to favorably compare himself (and failing) to the opposition's vice presidential pick.

We now know far more about Sarah Palin in just four days than we've learned about Barack Obama in 17 months. That is just sad. It's a pathetic reflection of the mainstream media's unwillingness to do their jobs for fear of finding stories that would hurt the candidate so many of them openly desire to win.

And shows that Obama has not be vetted. Giving lots of speeches in the media eye does not count, especially if the media plays along and refuses to ask tough questions.

Of all the churches in Chicago, why did Obama chose a church that espouses Black Liberation Theology? The doctrine was conceived by James Cone, based upon the rhetoric of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and the civil rights movement. It is a radical religion primarily based upon the oppression of blacks by whites. How can Barack Obama make the claim that he is a post-racial candidate, when his entire religious focal point was one of bitter victimization?

Barack Obama knew Bill Ayers was a terrorist when they first met. Barack Obama knew that Bernadine Dohrn was a terrorist when they met, and probably knew she was a fan of Charles Manson's murderous cult as well. He still chose to work with Ayers in numerous groups in leadership positions, and the relationship was close enough for Obama to start his his political career with a fundraiser at Ayers' and Dohrn's home.

What makes it all the more fascinating is that Barack Obama will not refute his 21-year relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernie Dohrn. Barack Obama threw his own grandmother under the bus without a thought, portraying her as a racist for short-term political sympathy.

He tossed his friend and mentor Jeremiah Wright under the bus when it became politically advantageous for him to do so, then his church and congregation, and he hasn't looked back. Father Michael Fleger, the radical priest who advocated lynching a gun store owner, was also a friend of many years (at least 22) tossed aside by Obama without a look back.

But Barack Obama won't refute his relationship with American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernie Dorhn. He refutes what they did, but makes a point of not assailing who they are or what they believe. Of all the people in his life that have popped up during this campaign, Barack Obama has shown more loyalty to these two terrorists that he has shown anyone else, including his own pastor, church, and grandmother.

This has to make the McCain/Palin camp smile.

The far left is now starting to fantasize that Palin will just go away.
It's amazing how much she scares them.



I've said before that Obama has kept himself above the Bristol Palin and related smears. Now Biden chimes in.

I sincerely hope that Obama's supporters take the same line as the campaign they desire to help has.
But I doubt it, some of these guys are too rabid to realize how repugnant this is or even pragmatic enough to realize that it will simply hurt Obama.

Obama's worst enemy.

Glen Reynolds and others have noted that Obama's worst enemy are his die-hard supporters.

Obama has personally said he'll avoid the Palin pregnancy issue. Which is both very smart politically and a decent thing to do.

If only his supporters had that level of class.

All they're doing is hurting Obama.

Palin's eldest daughter pregnant.

Not much to say in it myself.

Anne Althouse has comments

And Hotair has more.

Go to the links for more information.

Technically having a teenage pregnant out of wedlock is a non-issue. Obama's mother was a teenager and married when six months pregnant.

The worst this could effect Palin are the Evangelicals... if one did not understand how Evangelicals work. They think a baby is a blessing, while others think a baby is punishment.

Bristol is 17, engaged and is going to keep the baby, so it's about the tamest teenage out of wed-lock pregnancy possible.

It is interesting to note that the loudest and most "prudish" cries against Palin are coming from the Left, and from people that wouldn't be voting for McCain/Palin anyway.