The Republican National Convention
Sarah Palin Showcases Wit, Makes Play for Small-Town Voters at RNC
By Courtney Lowery, 9-03-08
Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin brought her wit, her solidarity with small-town America and plenty of barbs for Sen. Barack Obama when she took the stage tonight at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
Palin, who herself has been absent from the public eye since John McCain first announced her as his running mate, came out swinging, taking shots at the media, her critics and most of all, Obama, while touting her work on reform and energy in Alaska and stumping for McCain.
But, as the New York Times’ David Brooks said on the PBS broadcast, she did it “in a cheer way.”
One part of her speech that played well with the group was her response to criticisms about her lack of experience, particularly those aimed at her time as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, pop. 10,000.
“Since our opponents in this election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves...” she said, turning it into a dig at Obama. “I guess a small-town mayor is kind of like a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities.”
She certainly used the opportunity to showcase her small-town roots, introducing her family, her fisherman and steel-working husband and using a good chunk of her speech to talk directly to the working class, a perceived weak spot in the Obama/Biden camp. She touted growing up with the people “who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars” and she made several direct statements to farmers, factory workers and small-business owners.
And, she took aim at Obama’s now infamous “bitter” reference, saying, “… in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they’re listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”
She talked about her start in politics as a PTA member and “hockey mom” (which got much applause) and cited her work with ethics reform and spending vetos during her two years as Governor (she says she saved taxpayers “nearly half a billion dollars in vetos"). She also, oddly, made a point of saying she turned away congressional pork ("I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere.") even though news reports have detailed numerous requests for earmarks under her administration.
On energy, she cited about her work with the Alaska pipeline and the need to drill for new energy now while also exploring nucear, clean coal and renewables. “We need American energy brought to you by American ingenuity,” she said.
Palin also positioned herself as a political outsider and used that as a way to rail against the press, saying, “Here’s a little news flash for those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion, I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.”
The crowd was visibly electrified by her speech. She was poised and funny (joking about what Obama’s plan would be “when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot..."). Her timing was spot on, she took time to call out members of the audience and afterward, John McCain joined her and her family to say, “Don’t you think we made the right choice for the next Vice President of the United States?”
(Note: These are just some of the highlights from the speech—some of the speech is on the video embedded above and here is a link to the full transcript.)
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In the spirit of Sun Tzu, I watched trying to imagine how my friends and family would view her.
I initially thought that her humor and folksiness were really powerful. Sounded like a neighbor. It scared me, really did a little, because I really think the campaign is going to shield her from any real interviews or scruitiny right up to the election, and all the american people are going to hear are speeches written for her by Bush's former speechwriter, just like this one was.
Then she started attacking, and attacking, and attacking some more.
About ten minutes in, I realized that she did sound like a neighbor...that neighbor who comes by at 9 AM on Saturday morning complaining that your grass is a half inch too tall and calls the cops when your sister visiting from out of town takes "her" parking spot out on the street.
1) The complete, childish mocking of "community organizer." Funny thing, no matter how you vote, "community organizers" do a lot of great work in this country and everyone knows it and appreciates it. Heck, isn't being on the PTA (where Palin got her start) really part of the "community organizer" family? How about delivering meals to the elderly? How about taking part in a big brothers/big sisters program? How about looking to clean up your neighborhood from crime, drugs, pollution? How about working as a tutor in your local school? Will the GOP faithful mock these examples of "community organizing?"
Last time I checked, "community organizers" (no matter how they vote) work day and night for little, if any, pay to make their communities better. So because Obama finished collage and instead of going to work for a big DC law firm he came back home to Chicago and helped working people who were down on their luck recover from steel plant closings and economic turmoil we should be mocking him and all "community organizers?" Seems pretty childish to me. I wonder how this played outside the walls of the GOP convention, especially with all those TV viewers who actually know the great and meaningful things that community organizers do for our communities and country.
2) The very general energy policy talk, by both Rudy and Gov Palin, (including mentioning how we can't drill our way out of the problem) was followed by the male-dominated chant, "Drill Baby Drill...Drill Baby Drill...." Enough said.
While these might have been the biggest energy moments of the night for those who attended the convention, I seriously doubt that these moments played nearly as well across the country.
"You start out in 1954 by saying, "N*gger, n*gger, n*gger." By 1968 you can't say "n*gger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."
When you read it, keep in mind the mocking, childish behavior from the GOP faithful last night over "community organizer." I mean, being the director of a successful, faith-based program that provides south-side Chicago residents job training and college prep tutoring, while helping to ensure tenants' rights just smacks of elitism, doesn't it?
This is from Wikipedia:
"Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side.
During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute."
This is the lesson of small towns Palin should have emphasized. Instead she spent her time insulting millions of community organizers across the country. Many small towns, like mine, would not survive without community organizing by individuals who receive little or no payment for their work. A former mayor of a small town should know that.
Ben - Stevensville, Montana
The Democrats trot out their rockstar; the Republicans fire back with a beauty queen/sportscaster. A black male presidential candidate versus a white woman vice-presidential candidate! Historic! McCain and Biden, whoever they are, are irrelevant to this race. Substance is also irrelevant. It's American Idol for President; the battle of the beautiful people: Sidney Poitier vs. Annie Oakley. Hold onto your seats, folks. It's going to be a wild, free-for-all between now and November.
At least these two speak English, and speak it well. A welcome change from the Current Occupant.
One thing's for sure; she's an excellent fit with the current Republican leadership. During the recent elections, she violated state law by "taking off her governor hat" and coming out against a clean water initiative on the ballot.
Rules? Laws?
They apply to someone else.
While this media portrayal of the pretty face of radical right-wing doublespeak is standard fare, it demonstrates the inanity of our presidential selection process. Such coverage, fatally lacking in meaningful circumspection, is precisely how Palin got to be Governor of this great state-- abject failure of journalists to reveal the underlying stories of what it takes to rise to the top of a ballot.
Stenographic reportage of appearances allow journalists to avoid the sticky details of holy and unholy contradictions begging for the light of day. How will Palin address Global Warming if she refuses to acknowledge overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities are pushing us to irreversible tipping points?
How will her failures of logic play around refusing to connect her actions with inevitable consequences, such as what happened to her own daughter in the wake of abstinence-only sex education? What about Palin's budget knife cutting programs to help teen age mothers who don't have a mom running for VP?
How is it that some journalists don't touch the social ramifications of Palin's predilection to ban library books or factor Palin's hypocrisies of anti-corruption platforms with Senator Ted Stevens' endorsements, along with accepting money from the same oil company that admitted to bribing Stevens?
The hypocrisies are too many to list here and something tells me we'll have to find the journalistic curiosity for meaningful truths elsewhere.
She's an evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in global warming or evolution. She opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. She opposes sex education and supports abstinence-until-marriage education. She has voted against funding for teen mothers. She has tried to ban books from her library. She supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She wants to build nuclear power plants. She has opposed adding polar bears to the Endangered Species List. She has opposed protecting endangered Beluga whales. She is under investigation for firing a public official who refused to fire her ex-brother-in-law.
She may be pretty and personable, but her record is ugly.
You forgot that before she had a child with Down's Syndrome, she slashed the Alaska budget for educating "special needs" children.
Last night she said she was a "friend" to parents with special needs children.
With friends like her who needs enemies?
I listen to both sides, and one side is praising her and the other not. She may not be a lawyer (causing this old man to do a cartwheel across the living room when I heard it was she who was picked), and she may not have an Ivy League Baccalaureate degree, but she has been a mayor (the executive job in a town or city) and she is the elected Governor of Alaska (the executive of a state), so when it is said that she does not have the "experience" of a legislator, only the experience of an executive for an executive job, I want to use the words of former Texas Governor, the late Ann Richards, who said to a Democrat Nominating Convention, "THAT DOG DON'T HUNT!!!!"
How well that now applies to the left as they attempt to diminish Sarah Palin, who by the way, was featured in a full page ad for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute in my National Fisherman magazine that came in the mail yesterday. A not very glamorous photo of her holding a sockeye, while dressed in a sweat bandana, ball cap, Grundens, layered sweat shirts, and gloveless. No dilettante pol there. Just a wife who is working alongside her family to put the beans on the table.
The tough part of all this is that she is so fresh, so real, and so not jaded by years of mud salvos across the aisles. Her dog hunts.
We all honor and appreciate those who serve our country in the military, but the Republican elites seem to think that the military is the ONLY honorable way to serve the nation and community. They are completely ignorant of the fact that millions of our fellow Americans are fighting day in and day out to make their communities a better place—a struggle made all the more daunting BECAUSE OF the last 8 catastrophic years of Republican party rule.
Palin's first budget (2008) for SESA was $3,156,000. It is the same for 2009.
Bear bait, I've only had 2 years of calculus, so perhaps there is some high-level mathematics that you use to call a $5,000,000 cut a 300% increase?
Here are my sources, they are the AK budgets:
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/omb/07_OMB/budget/EED/comp2735.pdf
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/omb/08_OMB/budget/EED/comp2735.pdf
I get a little testy with all the "budget cuts" which all to often is a description of a budget raise that is not what was first proposed, hence the "budget was cut."
But you laid out facts. Thank you.
Damn...you read into those things, and it gets more confusing...
Over the past eight years we have seen more money wasted by government, and by people that call themselves conservatives. Just think what half a trillion spent in Iraq would have done for AMERICA. Shored up collapsing infrastructure, guarded our borders, helped our FRIENDS and NEIGHBORS. R's are not conservative, they cut taxes and deficit spend and they absolutely have an agenda. D's have not been much better. The current legislature has the lowest approval rating of any session. Lower than GW... and that is really saying something.
I am afraid of McCain having a 1 in 3 chance of dying in the next 4 years (actuarial table calcs), giving Palin a 1 in 3 chance of being president. Palin's views are antithetical to my centrist "keep government out of my life" views. All other strengths and weaknesses aside, her RECORD does not reflect smaller and less wasteful government. Or lower taxes. Or getting government out of any business--corporate or individual.
After watching both the DNC and RNC rock concert fans over the past two weeks... I have come to some conclusions. We already knew that politicians will say anything to get elected. Don't we realize it every election cycle?? Don't we deserve so much better?
Obama's list is long. Too long. The R's? Please. Like they have not had the past 8 years to express their conservative views? Where has that gotten America? Let's see-- more money spent than at any other point in history, more Constitutional rights subverted, less respect from Americans for our government, less international respect, less transparency in government. What change are they presenting? What I heard last night was the same things they said in 2000 and 2004.
We are so lost as Americans. We are whining children, who want everything now, cannot prioritize, and believe everything anyone tells us. I used to think it mattered who was elected, now I could care less. I don't think it even matters. We will continue to be lost. And, yet, the sheeple are cheering!
The do nothing D's lost me in the past two years. I would rather they stand up for the principles they said they represented and lost on those principles during congressional votes, then roll over to political pressure. At least THAT would have kept me interested. The whole crowd of phony Republicans from Bush to McCain and so called "Project for the New American Century" neocons lost me long ago.
That is what this extended political season and the last two weeks have done to me. Not energized. Worn down. To the point of rambling on...about nothing.
2007: Special Education Service Agency (SESA) - $2,072.3
2008: Special Education Service Agency (SESA) - $2,054.6
So she cut funding for special needs students by 1%. Still not much of friend to special ed if you ask me.