Sarah Palin

by

The last word from Sarah Palin? – Don’t count on it.

If I recall my history correctly President Nixson once said before he became President “you won’t have Dick Nixson to kick around anymore” or words to that effect.  Is Sarah Palin trying to emulate him?  Is she planning a comeback?  Before her suprise announcement yesterday, I was researching the Palin (Todd and Sarah) connection to the Alaska Independence Party prompted by the reported Vanity Fair/CBS quotes from emails.  Back in October 2008, before the election, I wrote a piece about Bill Ayres and Todd Palin in which I quoted some members of the AIP.  It was clear back then, and it is clearer now that the Palins were invoved with the AIP for a number of years.

I guess I was not the only one because Andrew Sullivan wrote about her lies yesterday in his Atlantic magazine blog.  During the campaign, the Todd Palin-AIP connection was surfacing and Sarah Palin evidently was trying to do damage control by claiming Todd just meant to register “independent”.  Sullivan writes about McCain campaign official, Steve Schmidt’s response

To his eternal credit, Schmidt fired back

“Secession. It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country

We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this.”

And then there is the Los Angeles Times column from September 2008 by Rosa Brooks

It’s untrue that Palin has no foreign policy experience, anyway. In fact, she appears to have seriously flirted with the idea of trying to turn Alaska into a foreign country. How many vice presidential candidates can put that on their resumes?

Over the years, Palin has actively courted the Alaska Independence Party, or AIP, an organization that supports Alaskan secession from the U.S. To be clear, we’re not necessarily talking about friendly secession either: As the AIP’s founder, Joe Vogler, told an interviewer in 1991: “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. … And I won’t be buried under their damn flag.”

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. could learn from this man.

The McCain campaign denies that Palin ever joined the AIP. But while it is in dispute whether she attended its 1994 convention, she did visit the 2000 one and addressed AIP conventions in 2006 and 2008. Her husband, Todd, was a registered AIP member from 1995 to 2002, and the AIP leadership certainly considers her one of their own.

Video footage shows AIP Vice Chairman Dexter Clark describing Palin at the 2007 North American Secessionist Convention as an “AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a nonpartisan job. But you get along to go along. She eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that.” (No need to. The Alaska Legislature’s ethics investigators are on the case.) Apparently with Palin in mind, Clark then went on to urge AIP members to “infiltrate” the major parties.

So if Sarah Palin wants to be President, she will have to not only make all this go away, she will also have to overcome the idea that she is a quitter. 

 Sarah Palin

All political commentators (including me) will miss her if her incomprehensible resignation speech is her last public word.  As Gail Collins wrote in her New York Times column today

Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too.

“And a problem in our country today is apathy,” she said on Friday as she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time … to BUILD UP.”

Basically, the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she’s not a quitter. Or a deceased salmon.

…

Palin was the subject of a devastating article in this month’s Vanity Fair by Todd Purdum, who wrote that McCain campaign aides found it almost impossible to get Palin to prepare for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. And there is no sign, Purdum reported, that Palin has made any attempt to bone up on the issues so that next time around, she could run as a candidate who actually had some grasp of the intricacies of foreign and domestic policy.

So if she’s starting to run, it will be as the same reporter-avoiding, generalization-spouting underachiever that she was last time around.

Now we know she not only doesn’t have the concentration to read a policy paper, she can’t focus long enough to finish the job she was hired to do.

by

Nine days and counting

There are all kinds of crazy things out there at this stage of the campaign including this video made by kids in a town in Japan named Obama.  According to my atlas, Obama is a town on the Western coast of Honshu.  The closest large city appears to be Kyoto.  If anyone else is more familar with Japanese geography, they should correct me.  At any rate, there is this video I found on Ben Smith’s blog on Politico.com of a bunch of kids singing the praises of Obama – both the town and the candidate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRB2wFhXIPs

And then there is a very scary Sarah Palin telling Brian Williams in their interview with John McCain that Bill Ayres is definitely a terrorists, but maybe people who bomb abortion clinics aren’t.  Video clip here.  John McCain is seen sitting next to her like an indulgent father with a daughter he can’t really control.  He has to be appalled. http://www.alternet.org/election08/104590/palin%3A_%27i_don%27t_know%27_if_abortion_clinic_bombers_are_terrorists/

The Guardian  has the English analysis of the election this morning.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/26/uselections2008-republicans    With the lead, Republicans Fear Long Exile, Paul Harris writes,

In America’s conservative heartland the talk now is not just of a win for Obama. With the Democrats poised for gains in the Senate and the House, moderate Republicans fear a wipeout that would leave their party in the grip of evangelicals increasingly out of touch with the public. Could the country be on the brink of change as deep as that ushered in by Reagan?

Barack Obama is holding on to his lead.  I haven’t seen the Sunday numbers, but yesterday no swing state polls were slipping to McCain.  I was watching the Nevada rallies on CNN late yesterday afternoon.  I noticed that the McCain shots seemed to to tight on the platform and candidate while the cameras pulled back at the Obama rally to show the huge crowd.  I’m not sure what to make of this.  Is this supposed to help McCain by making it appear that he has lots of people there?  Or help Obama by showing his crowds?

“I feel like we got a righteous wind at our backs here,” Obama told 35,000 people in Leesburg on Wednesday, a noteworthy crowd in a state that Democrats have not won since 1964. “But we’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to struggle. We’re going to have to fight” until the polls close.

The night before, Obama’s wife, Michelle, warned supporters in Miami to ignore all the predictions of an easy win.

“We can take nothing for granted,” she said. “My view is that Barack Obama is the underdog and will continue to be the underdog until he’s sitting in the Oval Office. We have to act like he’s 20 points behind.”   [quotes from the Boston Sunday Globe]

by

Rachel Maddow deconstructs Palin and other thoughts on the election.

Watching this segment on the VP Debate is well worth anyone’s 7 minutes.  Maddow skillfully looks at the quotes Sarah Palin attibuted to others (and throws in one John McCain quote from the first Presidential debate).  Maddow has found the quote from Ronald Reagan for example and puts it into context playing the actual quote.   Palin’s nice speech about losing freedom with the Reagan quote turns out to be Reagan speaking against Medicaid.  Did the McCain Camp really think that no one would figure it out?  And the McCain quote from the first Presidential debate in which he said that Eisenhower left a note offering to resign if the invasion of Normandy failed – not true.  And there is more. Check out this impressive job by Maddow. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/

This morning’s Boston Globe has an op-ed by Ellen Goodman reminding us that the Supreme Court, which opens for the new session on Monday is at stake in the election:

In the cold world of actuarial tables, the next president is certain to have one choice and probably more. Candidates for retirement are Stevens, the 75-year-old Ruth Ginsburg, and the homesick David Souter. That’s three of the four moderate and liberal justices on a bench that has made an art of 5-4 decisions.

You do the math. If Obama is elected, the court will stay pretty much the way it is. If McCain is elected, Katy bar the door.

McCain, who plays a maverick on TV, promised the court to the right wing. He told the women of “The View”: “I want people who interpret the Constitution of the United States the way our founding fathers envisioned for them to do so.” This prompted Whoopi Goldberg to ask if she should worry about being returned to slavery.

 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/04/supreme_court_at_stake/

I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry about a return to slavery, but we do have to worry about women’s right to choice and more executive power grabs with Supreme Court approval.

A lot of the Electoral College Maps have Obama at 264 – just 6 votes away.  So he needs one more large state like Virginia or Ohio or Florida or Wisconsin – all states in which he is trending higher.  On the other hand, McCain now needs all the toss-up states in order to win.

by

Morning After Reflections on the VP Debate

I’m had about five and a half hours of sleep and when I woke up, it came to me:  Sarah Palin is like one of those yappy, little dogs with lots of energy that look cute.  Ok, Palin is shrewed, but she, unlike that little dog, is really, really scary.  This is a woman who wants to have more power than Dick Cheney.  From the nonrelease of her tax returns to what appear to be abuses of power both as Mayor and Governor (think Troopergate and the Wasilla Librarian), she would be another Dick Cheney.  Even Kit Bond, a Republican, appeared a little startled last night when asked about her statement about wanting more power.  I hope that the Obama campaign takes that and does an ad contrasting her to Cheney – currently one of the most, if not the most unpopular figures in American politics. 

Dana Milbank has an interesting piece in the Washington Post  this morning.  After discussing her need to show that she could answer questions following her horribly funny Katie Couric interviews, Milbank writes,

On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a confidence-builder. Palin, in her 90 minutes on the stage Thursday night, left the firm impression that she is indeed ready to lead the nation — with an unnerving mixture of platitudes and cute, folksy phrases that poured from her lips even when they bore no relation to the questions asked.

“Let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation,” she proposed when asked about the mortgage crisis.

“I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said when asked about the federal bailout plan.

“Let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation,” she proposed when asked about the mortgage crisis.

“I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said when asked about the federal bailout plan.

Biden grew frustrated. “If you notice, Gwen, the governor did not answer the question.”

Replied Sarah Six-Pack: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/02/AR2008100204250.html?hpid=topnews

Pretty scary.

In the New York Times, Adam Nagourney observies:

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. “But this alone won’t change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states.”

Short of a complete bravura performance that would have been tough for even the most experienced national politician to turn in — or a devastating error by the mistake-prone Mr. Biden, who instead turned in an impressively sharp performance — there might have been little Ms. Palin could have done to help Mr. McCain. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/us/politics/03assess.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Of course, these are two Eastern papers who don’t understand drilling in Alaska.

So I run off to work with two polls.  The Newsvine unscientific poll on MSNBC has Biden winning the debate by 78.2% and InTrade odds are Obama to win the election at 65 to 33.8 for McCain.

by

The VP Debate – some initial thoughts

Exactly an hour into the debate, Joe Biden began an answer by saying, “Facts matter, Gwen.”

To him, maybe. To Sarah Palin, maybe not. The pattern, so far, has been one of Biden presenting facts and Palin countering with… saying stuff. Sometimes she throws in a fact, but mostly she seems to be offering a string of approximate policy positions, encomiums to the American spirit, disputed interpretations of Barack Obama’s record and anecdotes from Alaska.

She has a certain charm, but I wonder how viewers are reacting to the way she just declines to answer the question at hand and pivots to more solid ground. I had forgotten how effective Biden can be in these debates. So far, he hasn’t been patronizing or insulting. In terms of working-class street cred, Palin is in a league – or a universe – of her own. (Don’t ya think?) But Biden holds his own.

I confess, though, I don’t know what anybody is making of this. I don’t even know what I’m making of it. This is the strangest debate I’ve ever seen. It seems like an interplanetary exchange, with poor Gwen Ifill trying to keep the Enterprise from falling into the wormhole.

That was Gene Robinson in the Washington Post

Pat Buchanan has just dismissed Sarah Palin’s saying she wanted to expand the role of the Vice President.  I agree with Joe Biden that given the example of Dick Chaney – we need to be very frightened.  I’m with Rachel Maddow who thought that Palin was not very coherent and made a couple of mistakes.