McCain and his Pitbull
04 September 2008 2:00 am by Taylor Marsh
BY TAYLOR MARSH
Credit where it is due. Sarah Palin was good last night. The speech was uneven, but she was not. The base has religion. Republicans have their star. McCain’s got new life. Never mind that Palin’s speech was filled with falsehoods, with McCain’s team conjuring up kerfuffles to keep control of their convention tale.
I never for one minute believed the nonsense swirling, with Republicans trying to make Sarah Palin out to be a victim. The McCain camp was doing something very simple. Take a real issue during the primary season, which lasted months and months and was proven through independent studies, then use that model to manufacture a media scandal that doesn’t exist. If there’s a woman, there must be sexism.
Using the Hillary model for foundation, this evolved into attacks by the McCain camp on the media, which has coddled McCain for decades, including chastising all of us for questioning some of Palin’s actions regarding her family. Some bought in to that baloney, falling for the Republican trap, keeping their distance from the family story unfolding. You have to understand how the GOP works to really get what was going on. Keeping everyone at bay while they rolled the image out. This AP analysis nails it:
Huh? The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone — so we can use them as we see fit. –
That was only part of the story. Next came Sarah Palin’s mocking, sour, snidely speech, which had plenty of red meat, but even more outright fantasy bordering on premeditated falsehoods. The AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn knocks it out.
Bridge to Nowhere?
PALIN: “I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere.”
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a “bridge to nowhere.”
Obama’s record?
PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.”
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
There’s a lot more where this came from too.
As for the McCain team’s claim that Palin is the commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. She’s never issued a single order to them.
Then there’s “troopergate,” which seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.
McCain’s team wants to keep the soccer mom image intact, while utilizing the traditional vice presidential role for the first time through a woman, who if you question will automatically bring cries of “sexism.” Having it both ways, especially with the media, is John McCain’s stock and trade. It’s obviously part of his plan to win, which is not out of the realm of possibility.
