Politics
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- hallelujah0
"Yesterday I called up a friend from my days in Kansas City, just to catch up. His wife's family lives in rural Missouri, and they are all rabid Republicans. They are low-income folks, hate everything liberal (at least as far as they define "liberal"), hate the gays, hate the blacks, you get the picture. In other words, they are those small-town, working-class, white voters who are supposed to be John McCain's bread and butter. They are the type of voters who, according to all those teevee pundits, are supposed to love, love, love Sarah Palin because she's real and "one of them." Gosh darnit.
So in the phone conversation yesterday, our talk eventually turned to politics, as it usually does. My friend told me that his wife's family all gathered together to watch the VP debate on Thursday (we're talking a dozen or so people). Then he paused.
I knew that pause. Usually my friend pauses like that right before he's about to tell me something he knows I'm not going to like. So I braced myself.
"What did they think?" I eventually asked him to break the silence.
"They hated her," my friend responded.
My fellow kossacks, I almost spit out my coffee!
"What didn't they like?" I asked in utter amazement.
"Everything. They hated everything about her."
It turns out that they really, really, really, really did not like the fact that Palin flat out did not answer many of the questions. They found that to be outrageous. After all, the entire reason they were watching the debate was to see her answer questions, doggone it.
They also did not like all her attempts to be folksy. To them it just came off as, um, I think the word they used was "phony." In fact, the candidate who seemed to them to be real and more like them was not Sarah Palin but Joe Biden.
The women, in particularly, did not like Palin's flirty, winky act. That went over like a lead balloon. And both the men and the women did not like her "Can I Call You Joe" schtick. They found that to be disrespectful to Senator Biden.
Many of the people in this family probably can't bring themselves to vote for Obama, according to my friend. But after Thursday night's debate, a lot of them have decided that they can't vote for McCain either. So they just might sit this one out.
You can let the pundits like Peggy "Famous Person" Noonan go on and on about how Sarah Palin "killed" in the debate. But based on everything I'm hearing and seeing from "real" voters, including this truly shocking news I got out of small-town Missouri yesterday, the only thing that Sarah Palin "killed" on Thursday night was John McCain's election chances."
- I love it. I'm fine with these guys sitting it out. I'll buy them the chair to sit in.monkeyshine
- TheBlueOne0
I concur...nearly every normal person I talk to and all the polls I see (except Drudge's) seem to state that Palin failed miserably. Yet I've just spent the last hour and half watching these morons on Sunday morning TV say what a great performance she did (Yes George Will and David Brooks I am looking at you).
I've come to realize that all these pundits are just fucking flakes. They have had nothing rooted in reality for the last eight years...makes you wonder if they are working an agenda or they really are that fucking stupid...of course they like Palin, because she mirrors them their prime beliefs about themselves - ambitious, ignorant and an odd belief that they have anything in common with the "man on the street"...
- assholes like brooks are so condescending toward the "average american" that they can't fathom what a genuine appeal to them would behallelujah
- appeal to them would behallelujah
- but that's republicanism... using people as disposable fodder for the guns and factories that make them richhallelujah
- ********0
Republicans are like parasites, they feed off their host and they just will not go away!
- ********0
I am having a huge party after the election and all of you are invited. If things go bad I will see you in the streets during the riots.
- I will see you camphallelujah
- in camphallelujah
- can you imagine if they steal the election again?hallelujah
- this country will go apeshithallelujah
- i can't even begin to imagine what will go down.********
- monkeyshine0
To Peggy Noonan's credit, I just watched her on Meet the Press and, while she said Palin "killed" as a TV personality who can deliver lines that appeal to the base and perhaps neutralize her as an issue for McCain, she did not bring it in terms of substance and that was disconcerting for Noonan.
I am thinking that sending pitbull Palin out to say nasty things about Obama is going to make things worse. I've spoken with many people who lean conservative who felt that the debate showed her as a mean spirited, spiteful person.
- Can we reassess "pitbull" to "attack poodle"?TheBlueOne
- ha! no, more like attack yorkiemonkeyshine
- Watching MTP I got the feeling that Noonan has been hearing, "wtf is wrong with you?" all week.blaw
- monkeyshine0
..and also, am I reaching to think that there are racial overtones here:
"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."
- robotron3k0
from Maureen Dowd, NYT, comments on Palin's talent for word scrambling make her sound like Yoda:
"Sometimes, her sentences have a Yoda-like — “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not” — splendor. When she was asked by Couric if she’d ever negotiated with the Russians, the governor replied that when Putin “rears his head” he is headed for Alaska. Then she uttered yet another sentence that defies diagramming: “It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there.”
- ukit0
http://www.breitbart.com/article…
AP Article:
By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
Her reference to Obama's relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.
"It's a giant changing of the subject," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist. "The problem is the messenger. If you want to start throwing fire bombs, you don't send out the fluffy bunny to do it. I think people don't take Sarah Palin seriously."
- ...and wasn't she and her creepy redneck of a husband involved in the succession movement???monkeyshine
- Yea, what's the difference again...except that one of them is...ukit
- hallelujah0
hehe
- ukit0
Amazing...just amazing. If Obama said this it would sink his campaign.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/arc…
John McCain being interviewed by Mother Jones magazine in the Nov/Dec 1998 issue (emphasis added) ...
MJ: You not only have had combat experience in Vietnam, but you were also a prisoner of war. When you look at terrorism right now, with people like Osama bin Laden, do you have any reservations about watching strikes like that?
John McCain: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before. And where there is a parallel with Vietnam is: What's plan B? What do we do next? We sent our troops into Vietnam to protect the bases. Lyndon Johnson said, Only to protect the bases. Next thing you know.... Well, we've declared to the terrorists that we're going to strike them wherever they live. That's fine. But what's next? That's where there might be some comparison.
- IRNlun60
Rovian predictions...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico…- Rove isn't a scholr, he's a player. Take whatever he says with the knowledge that he knows his statements will game the outcomeTheBlueOne
- ..or attempt to the game the outocmeTheBlueOne
- either that or he's trying to position himself for a job in the event the dems win. :)monkeyshine
- I take this as a way of convincing conservatives that the race is closer than it seems.IRNlun6
- hallelujah0
I'm finding it increasingly nauseating to watch McCain's seething anger as he tried to speak through clenched teeth
- trieshallelujah
- I know...get the man some tooth whitener...I hope that Obama makes him so mad he starts spitting and frothing on stage.monkeyshine
- TheBlueOne0
I've always said beware of Palin's ambitions. She might be a provincial know-nothing when it come to national politics, but she got the nickname "barracuda" by being loyal to two things her self-interest and her love of power, underestimate her at your peril:
- ukit0
I think she has already been established as a fringe player...she is well liked among the 30% or so that still think Bush is doing a good job. Let's say McCain loses. The country is already getting more Democratic and open minded with the younger generation coming up and 4 years from now it will be even more that way. I don't believe it will be easy for someone to get elected 4, or 8 years from now who thinks abortion is not OK in the case of rape, or who believes that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time.
- I'm just saying don't expect her to disappear from the stage if she loses...TheBlueOne
- Hopefully being tied to a horrendous campaign will do her in...DCDesigns
- gentleman0
with voting not too far in the future..
is it too late to bring Clinton back?
i liked Clinton
- Yes, it's too lateukit
- that ship has sailedTheBlueOne
- he's turned into a gape-mouthed hillbillyhallelujah
- gentleman0
i meant Bill Clinton
not his bewildering wife...
- Oh you didn't mean her bewildering husband?tommyo
- oh no...you DID mean her bewildering husband. I don't get the nostalgia. Billy Clint was garbage.tommyo
- i love bill clinton_salisae_
- So did the beneficiaries of his 12th hour pardons, as well as the subprime mortgage ind. They loooove him. http://ibdeditorial.…tommyo
