Palin not Flailin’

Palin not Flailin’

She passes her first major test- the GOP convention

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://zeppcommentaries.com/
9/03/08

I came in on the Republican convention just in time to catch Rudy
Giuliani give his speech. It was supposed to be 15 minutes long, and it
went 30, which effectively pushed the end of Sarah Palin’s speech out of
primetime.

I eyed my watch at about minute 25, and wondered if they were trying to
shunt Palin out of the public eye without being obtrusive about it, or
this was just classic Rudy, deep-sixing an ally for the sake of a little
self promotion.

Behind Rudy, a gigantic screen which cost far more than the styrofoam
Greek columns at the Democratic convention at the Denver stadium showed
an endlessly looping shot of the New York City skyline, seen from near
the statue of Liberty. When the camera focused on Rudy, as it usually
did, the effect was that he was back-dropped by swirling brown water.
With Rudy, that isn’t an entirely inappropriate visual.

He gave the image the constituent solids, playing to the red-meat
audience with mockery and scorn of all things Democratic, and basically
claiming that Republicans had won Iraq, saved the economy, made life a
tax free paradise for the poor, and managed to so without having ever
heard of George W. Bush.

I found out later that the audience was shaking its collective head and
trying to recover from a speech from former candidate Mike Huckabee that
was, from what I’ve read, almost entirely incoherent. Something about
having to wash himself with rocks and not showering because it hurt too
much. So Rudy came out, tossing lots of raw meat and vitriol to the
crowd, and they loved it. They adored it. They chanted “USA! USA! USA!”
while Rudy sneered at the effete middle class community organizer
(apparently, in Republican eyes, a bad thing) who dared to compete
against the poor little rich boy from the Naval Academy with the seven
homes and the trophy wife.

Rudy finally shut up and left the stage, and they wasted no time in
getting Sarah Palin up there, rather than allow the standard ten minutes
of loud adoration that conventions typically give raucous speakers.

Republican doubts ran high. Peggy Noonan, one of the biggest
cheerleaders for the GOP in the once-proud American press, blurted out
some home truths over a live mike while talking to Chuck Todd; Noonan
said “it’s over” for the GOP. Todd had asked her, “Iis she really the
most qualified woman they could have turned to?” Noonan reportedly
replied, “The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me,
political bullshit about narratives and youthfulness and the picture.
Every time Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and
it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.”

The first thing you need to know if you didn’t see it is that she gave a
hell of a speech. I doubt she wrote much of it, but after eight years of
a mumbling moron in the White House, she could at least DELIVER it, and
that she did. Given how she was suddenly thrust into the limelight, and
the huge amount of controversy surrounding her, it was a moment where it
would have been understandable if she was nervous, or flubbed a line or
two.

She didn’t, and that’s something the Democrats will have to reckon with.
She’s at least as good at public speaking as Hillary Clinton, and maybe
as good as Barack Obama.

Well, we’ve all been wondering what possessed John McCain to select her.
Maybe tonight we got an answer.

One of the great things about being a Republican is that you never have
to worry about logic, or consistency. So she was able to get away with
lauding her administrative experience while deriding Obama as a
“community organizer” (something akin to a communist cell in Republican
eyes) and pretending that community organizers don’t organize and manage
things. She played the poor little townie who the rich liberal elites
sneered at, and then praised McCain for being an insider and an elite.

She pointed out that she had more administrative experience than Obama
and Biden combined, but she could have said just as easily, using the
same criteria, that she had more administrative experience than Obama,
Biden, and MCCAIN combined. Apparently administrative experience is very
important for a job like vice president, which doesn’t require any, but
not necessary for being president, provided that you’re a Republican. In
a somewhat baffling segue, she argued that she was an outsider, and thus
had the experience to lead in Washington.

I note that George Bush did have administrative experience. At least on
paper. So did Ronald Reagan.

One of the strangest moments in her speech came when she said that
McCain was the only one running who had really fought for his country.
In a prison cell? Very weird.

She had enough sense to avoid the really nasty culture wars stuff, and
stayed away from topics such as abortion, creationism, and mixing church
and state. But she was playing that card nonetheless, part of a largely
successful effort to stir up the fundies and get them to vote for McCain.

I have to wonder what McCain thinks of that in his private moments. He
gained his reputation of being a maverick by standing up to the
religious right, and now, in order to run for president, he is
completely in thrall to them and obviously had to accept one of theirs
as a running mate. What must he think about after he kills the bedroom
light?

Another strange moment was when Palin said, “This was the spirit that
brought me to the governor’s office when I took on the old politics as
usual in Juneau, when I stood up to the special interests, and the
lobbyists, and the Big Oil companies, and the good-old boys. Suddenly, I
realized that sudden and relentless reform never sits well with
entrenched interests and power-brokers. That’s why true reform is so
hard to achieve.” The hall suddenly went absolutely silent. To the
red-meat conservatives there, Palin remained a largely unknown quality,
and this was the sort of language the enemy used against them.

Still, there is one message in tonight’s proceedings that the Democrats
would be well advised to heed: Sarah Palin, whatever her foibles and
failings, is not George W. Bush or Dan Quayle. She is not a moron. The
Republicans have figured out that America is fed up with morons, and
want leaders who can be trusted to walk and chew gum at the same time.
She can fight, and she will be a hatchetman for the GOP, and she’ll be
good at it.

For those reasons, the Dems need to treat her with caution. She may not
convince many independents or blue dog Democrats to vote Republican, but
she can stir up the base. She can demagogue, and she can hit those notes
of aggrieved victims with lots of money that Republicans can do so well.

And it’s a base that has cost America dearly.