I am one very pumped up foot soldier in the battle for November 4. Sarah Palin is the Democrats' worst nightmare - a strong and feminine woman who has a full family life and - unique to either ticket - a strong executive resume.
I was simply blown away by her speech Wednesday night. She was comfortable on the stage, paced herself well, let the crowd into her speech and in turn reacted to the crowd. She was forceful but not angry. Warm and funny, biting and believable. Say goodbye to the Dan Quayle comparisons.
Sarah Palin proved Wednesday night that she is that hockey mom whose only difference from a pit bull is, in one of her best lines of the night, "lipstick."
Alaska's governor puts the lie to the Democrats' long conceit that they are the party of women. She made it clear that the Democrats are only the party of some women, the party for whom Down's syndrome son Trig, whom she held onstage after her speech, would be a "choice."
Someone whose life Barack Obama could not determine when it began without moving up a pay grade.
With her 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy, a Down's syndrome baby, a son deploying to Iraq on September 11 (note the date), a fisherman/oil roughneck husband, this is a hard-working family that has made tough life decisions of their own and have only become stronger as a result.
This is a public servant who has blown the whistle on corruption in her own party - do not tell me that Barack Obama could find none in Chicago nor in the Illinois legislature. This is someone who, as Rudy Giuliani said in his excellent speech, cannot get away with voting "present" as Obama did 180 times in the Illinois legislature.
That is why this line has such resonance: said the next vice president of the U.S., "the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of discovery."
And this: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."
This Wednesday night, the Democrat(ic) ticket suddenly became very stale, very establishment, very amateurish. Tiresome, actually.
My wife was very impressed as well and she is not all that political. She thinks Palin looks like a cross between Tina Fey and Sally Fields. Blaskas for the Hot Chick!
People power v. statism
Republican commentator Alex Castellanos on CNN Wednesday night nailed it: The Democrats last week in Denver said the country was broken and Washington will fix it. The Republicans in St. Paul this week are saying Washington is broken and America will fix it.
Tell me truly, which has more music?
That is what bugs the Democrats about Sarah Palin. John Nichols' head is exploding. How else could he write on the very day of Sarah Palin's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination:
Yet the Republican Party of today is dramatically more white, more male and more resistant to diversity - often angrily so - than its Democratic opposition.
The Far Left simply cannot grok the reality of real life. That is why Barack Obama ascribes allegiance to guns and God as the sole province of "bitter" middle America. Sarah Palin, godly and gun-bearing, won't let him forget it.
Bristol's baby
But here what the libs do not, cannot, understand about Bristol Palin's baby, which is everything:
- The mother will not abort it.
- The father will do the right thing and be a husband and a father. (Did you notice him standing by her side?)
- The family will coalesce around the young family and that, as a result,
- The newborn will not grow up to wild in the streets or do crack cocaine.
- That conservatives believe in family and responsibility, yes, even when there are "mistakes."
- That this is the essence of the pro-life movement - support for life, opposition to the culture of death.
Can "community organizer" Barack Obama write a more compelling narrative? Maybe in his next book.
The Divine Miss Noonan
Peggy Noonan is being "slimed" by an open microphone on MSNBC, in which she is heard disparaging the choice of Sarah Palin. Here is her exegesis:
In the truncated version of the conversation, on the Web, it appears I am saying the McCain campaign is over. I did not say it, and do not think it. In fact, at an on-the-record press symposium on the campaign on Monday, when all of those on the panel were pressed to predict who would win, I said that I didn't know, but that we just might find "This IS a country for old men." That is, McCain may well win. I do not think the campaign is over, I do not think this is settled, and did not suggest, back to the Todd-Murphy conversation, that "It's over."
Instead, the divine Miss Peggy nails the allure of Sarah Palin, and why she quickens this aging Baby Boomer's pulse:
She is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not - and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy. [Open Mic Nite at MSNBC]
Bonus material:
- For that matter, Nichols, how is it that the Republican party, about to nominate a man who believes in global warming, who wants to curb campaign spending (both of which I, an admitted conservative, disagree with), who invites the Democrats vice presidential nominee of 2000 to speak in prime time is...
The most militantly conservative Republican National Convention in the history of the republic.
Of course, in Denver, Nichols was capable of writing that the Dems were "swooning" over Jim Leach. Jim Leach? Does even Mrs. Leach swoon? John was actually able to write, two weeks ago, that John McCain was not a world leader.
- Now I know what all the fuss is about with Keith Olbermann. He is awful. Midway through Tuesday night's convention coverage on MSNBC he asked (I paraphrase) whether the Republicans would be so excited about Sarah Palin if they realized that she captured $27 million in "earmarks" for the City of Wasilla.
Olbermann, you slut. That money paid for Wasilla's sewage treatment plant - good for the environment, good for public health. It's the rare sewage treatment plant that doesn't get some federal money.
- That's why I turned to CNN. They actually carried most of the videos as well as the speeches.
- This does not originate with me, but some poster to a national forum notes that Sarah Palin with two years as governor, in her early 40s, an avid hunter and environmentalist, and service on a major commission, resembles another Republican vice presidential candidate - one Theodore Roosevelt in 1900. (Hers was the Alaskan oil and gas conservation commission, his was the Police NYC Commission.)
- Everyone is worried about how many homes John McCain owns. Probably none but his Missus owns quite a few. Now that we learn that Sarah Palin's husband Todd is part Eskimo, I got to ask: how many igloos do the Palins own?
- Memorex? For all of Barack's rhetorical brilliance, I cannot for the life of me remember a single line, a single "trope" (I know, that's a liberal word) from his acceptance speech last week in Denver. While I can still remember Hillary's "No way, no McCain." Or Joe Lieberman's: "God only made one John McCain" (on the Dems' attempts to conflate him with an unpopular incumbent).
