A Terrible Resolve
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.
By Bleepless, September 7, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
Her statement was not entirely frank. Small-town people — and a lot of us others — know just what to think of sneering snobs such as Obama.
By martian, September 8, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
The problem for the Democrats is that they spent so much time running against George Bush, who isn’t even running, now they don’t know how to run against anyone who ISN’T George Bush - so they have to make the people they ARE running against into someone they Do know how to run against. All of the Democratic candidates spent the entire primary season complaining about George Bush and his policies, to the point where you would have thought he WAS running. Unfortunately, they now face two candidates that are distinctly different from Bush and theyn don’t know how to deal with it.