Jack Kelly, via Real Clear Politics, invokes the words of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto to describe what he sees as the terrible, terrible mistake the left has made. Yamamoto said those words (”I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”) after he launched the “successful” attack on Pearl Harbor that led to Japan’s crushing defeat. Kelly sees much the same thing happening with the Democrat’s and the media’s (redundant) unleashing of a torrent of sewage on Sarah Palin and her family.
With good reason. With a smile on her face, Ms. Palin sliced and diced Barack Obama with the skill she dresses a moose she just shot. There were a host of good lines which I’m sure we’ll see in McCain commercials in the near future. But ultimately the most effective may be this one: “In small towns, we don’t know quite what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.”
What gives this line its power is that Sarah Palin is definitely part of the “we” — the small town, blue-collar Americans who will decide this election.
Only once in modern times has a vice presidential candidate swung an election. Lyndon Johnson brought Texas and Alabama to John F. Kennedy in 1960, states that otherwise would have been suspicious of a Catholic liberal from New England. I think Sarah Palin will be the second. She has changed the nature of this race in ways ominous for Mr. Obama.
First, this race is no longer between a candidate who advocates change and the status quo, as Democrats would like to frame it. It’s between two different visions of change, and between a ticket that’s actually delivered reform, and a ticket that just talks about it. The argument that John McCain represents a third term for George W. Bush was strained to start with. It’s ludicrous now.
The left and the media (Yeah, I know, same thing) still do not get it. They have been carping - endlessly - that Sarah Palin will not make herself available for a media “interview”. They have been steadily, steadily, making sure that when she does agree that more people will watch her. I have little doubt that people who tune in to the first Palin interview - which is going to take place - will be very impressed by her.
They have, yet again, set their own trap. Well, thank heavens they are consistent in that cluelessness of their’s. The smarter folks on the left realized that Palin was a real, honest threat - the less astute have kept up their self-snaring stupidity.
I saw this earlier, but have only had a bit of time to post today. Now the item is right up there at or near the top of the heap over at Memeorandum. Is this just a convention bounce or the first sign that Obama’s “friends“ have done serious damage to the Democrat’s nominee? Time will, of course, tell. Longtime readers know that I am not a fan of snapshot polls. But if the trend shows that Obama is fading there might be an outbreak of hysteria on the left that an elephant tranquilizer wouldn’t dent.
PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update shows John McCain moving ahead of Barack Obama, 48% to 45%, when registered voters are asked for whom they would vote if the presidential election were held today.
We’ll see. I will not go all giddy here and pronounce doom for Obama’s campaign. But I think there is a strong indication that the left has - yet again - badly overplayed their hand. The depraved, vicious attacks on Sarah Palin have not gone over well with the electorate.
AllahPundit is his usual sober self about all this. His post is a warning about becoming overconfident.
Libby Spencer, bless her conspiracy-theory laden heart, thinks the left fell into a trap - a “Rovian trap”, as she puts it. I’ll send you over there if you want to read it. Was there a trap in the Palin nomination? Yes, but it is not what Libby charges. Rather, it was giving the left all the rope they needed to fashion their very own snare. Shrewd on McCain’s part - you bet. All he had to do was let the left show itself to the electorate. When the facade cracked, the venom leaked out. The trap is one they manufactured for themselves.
Even though the Obama campaign most assuredly does not get it and has been leading or encouraging attacks on Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, to her credit, does get it. The press tried to get her to hit at Palin - Clinton flat refused to rise to the bait.
Appearing at a labor rally and stumping for congressional candidates in New York, Sen. Hillary Clinton uttered her most popular line from the recent Democratic National Convention in Denver: “No Way. No how. No McCain.” This time she added, “No Palin.”
But despite some soft lobs by media with her, that’s as far as the female candidate who got closer to a major party’s top nomination than any other in American history would go in criticizing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the first female top-ticket member in Republican Party history.
She’s behaving considerably better than the Democrat’s nominee and his staff.
A scathing analysis of the venomous, unhinged attacks on Sarah Palin and her family by the American left and the American media (yeah, I know that’s redundant), appears in The Guardian today. Nick Cohen neatly dissects the response of the left to the choice of Palin by John McCain. The result is well worth reading in its entirety. Here’s just one small excerpt:
But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor’s office.
On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter’s. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.
Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.
As Cohen puts it, the public relations facade cracked and the venom poured forth. A veritable tidal wave of venom, in fact. Vicious attacks on minor children, smears, lies, complete fabrications - the works.
There are going to be a lot of voters who recoil in disgust at the tactics of those who Barack Obama chose as allies. Perhaps it will be, indeed, the candidate’s friends who cost him the election.
Do read the rest.
Politics | Gaius Sunday, 7 September , 2008 | 
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