I’m skimming over toward wikipedia for a quick flash on the background of James Westbrook Pegler , where it is noted:

Interest in Pegler was revived when Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted him in her acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity”, she said, a Pegler quote that also appeared in the book “Right From the Beginning” by Pat Buchanan. Rather than acknowledging Pegler by name, Palin merely cites ‘a writer’.^[4] The speech was written by Matthew Scully, a senior speech writer for George W. Bush.^[5]

Following the Palin acceptance speech New York Times columnist Frank Rich elucidated the political significance of quoting Pegler. Mr. Rich noted that “Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese”, he called them) were all likely Communists.”^[6] He pointed out that Palin’s use of a quote from “once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler” was intended to send a subtle but unmistakable signal to far right wing supporters. ^[7]

Also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expressed outrage about Palin’s quoting of Pegler in her speech. ^[8] Referring to Pegler as a “Fascist writer” and an “avowed racist”, he reminded readers of the fact that, when Senator Kennedy considered running for president in 1965, Pegler had expressed hope that ‘some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.’^[9][10]

I don’t know about “sending messages”, almost code-like, but this is a little reminiscent of when George W Bush made a reference to IF Stone by way of arguring against the — um — Agnew’s nattering nabobs of negativity regarding progressing with Reconstructing Europe post World War II — or, fighting the Insurgency post Iraq War.  To best encapsulate what a reference to Stone would mean to a certain generation and ilk of Conservative Warrior, and what frame of mind one would be sending in referencing Stone: to this day your Robert Novak believes that IF Stone was a tool of the Soviet government.  Now, considering the plucking up of Pegler from the fading memories of our public discourse, I have to wonder if it was the same speech writer.

Moving on to the talk function, I see this argument was advanced.:

Cleraly posted before the addition of the reference to Scully in the piece.  I do wonder how it is we come to a point where anyone can brush aside statements made by a politician when they come out of their mouths, and this argument does not argure well for Sarah Palin.  Particularly in light of the odd brief against the ghost-writer and the defense you see when you google for it pointing out that every politician has speech writers.

So, Al Qaeda bombed the United States Embassy in Yemen, a nation which I am pretty sure I can find on the map but am even more sure that more than nine out of ten Americans would not be able to find on the map. Al Qaeda was previously last seen with Usama Bin Laden videos blasting the Great Zionist Government of Iran, which should serve as a mental note for us all that they are working on a different frame than us.

This brings to mind the thought I had sometime after 9/11, which is that al Qaeda can get a good strike in America once every eight years — 1993, 2001 — at the dawn of a new Administration. Now, the last two times they hit the World Trade Center. That, of course, is gone with nothing built up as of yet. Which makes me wonder, since the landmark of their fascination is gone, what are they going to strike in 2009?

John McCain chimed in to say that “Our economy, I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”  Panic setting in as the United States government (past our clueless elected officials, George Bush and Harry “don’t know what to do” Reid included) has started nationalizing the unprofitable and unproductive sectors of the economy like a Bizarro Hugo Chavez, John McCain since had to re-invent his definitions to meet the changed reality, to escape Herbert Hoover-ville, and to greet a rhetorical pandering absurdity.:

“Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world.  My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong.  No one can match an American worker.”

Yes.  McCain’s opponent may disagree, believing that the American worker sucks tremendous eggs, but not “Country First” John McCain and Sarah Palin.  Seriously, this is a parody of a Politicial Pander, and a Parody of a Political Strawman Argument.  I gather its sheer bull-headedness cannot possibly be met with anything but derision, right?  Right?

There is a manner in which I grudgingly, albeit almost accidentally, defend some items out of the McCain campaign repetoire.  A “mental recession” is never quite accurate, but there tends to be a lagging “psychological” impact which prolongs the troubles, fear of stepping out from the (relatively) long dark shadow we appear to be entering.  Being snake-bitten can do that to us.

Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt told CBS News: “She thought it was quite funny, [SNL appearance by Tina Fey.] particularly because she once dressed up as Tina Fey for Halloween.”

I, um, don’t believe her.  There was a reason that the initial pop cultural psyche pulse to the Sarah Palin introduction onto the national political scene was, “OH MY GOD!  Saturday Night Live HAS to bring back Tina Fey!”  Which was probably the first thought that popped into the mind of Lorne Michaels and Tina Fey.  The basic problem is that Tina Fey an amp up a couple of traits to better cariacture Sarah Palin enough to evoke her, while I fail to see how Sarah Palin can do the same thing for Tina Fey, and make a clear evocation of someone who is at, any rate, not at top of mind awareness.

As an aside, take a note of the first post-articleblip sentence from the Weekly Standard found over here.

I tend to rotate about in reading comments sections of various middling blogs.  Right now I am in the habit of reading the Comments to blog posts at The American Prospect magazine.  It is a strange world, this realm, and whenever I do grasp some of the basic tenets of rules — El Viaje’s troll baiting seems reasonable enough for what his hobby dictates — I find myself puzzled by another critter, which is, for what is worth, not anything out of the ordinary but still puzzling nonetheless.  Such is this comment:

The unbelievably intense and vicious smear campaign designed to degrade and destroy McCain and Palin demonstrates how terrified the Left has become. The Leftist propaganda machine, cruel and ideologically squalid, is firing on all cylinders, from Barky’s despicable campaign cabal itself, on through the 527s he just unleashed (breaking yet another solemn but ultimately worthless promise), to the quasi-official Obamarama organs the NYT, WaPo, nearly all lesser papers under the sun, as well as the networks, and on down to the likes of Us magazine, Lindsay Lohan, and Louie Farrakhan.

Our democracy, our society, our civilization, our humanity, and even our physical survival are under grave threat by the hegemonic forces of the totalitarian Leftist Establishment.

Just as America’s economic system is in urgent need of extensive cleaning and rebuilding, so too is our entire public culture, plagued as it is by destructive forces that will stop at nothing, nothing at all, to spread their hateful lies with the intention of keeping us all enslaved under their lash.

Expect the next move by the Left to be physical violence against those who dare disagree with their totalitarian ideological claims. These “progressive” forces of intellectual, spiritual, and moral bankruptcy have only one option left—cold-blooded murder—to save their absurd, rotten fantasies from utter destruction in the cold and clear light of reality.

Many decent, humane, and courageous people will become martyrs to the false gods of Leftist rage once again, just as 100 million or more have perished over the last century at the hands of Leftist murderers. You can attempt to slay us, Leftie cutthroats, and you may well succeed, but you can never make us bow down to you or swallow your nihilistic ideological evil. With our dying breaths, we will laugh you to scorn.

Posted by: Future Martyr of Leftist Bloodlust | September 16, 2008 1:43 AM

Amusing, I suppose?

“The most important election since the last one and until the next one.”  Often that is about what it comes down to, even when the results are significant.  The two Bush elections fall into this category.  I can understand the first Bush election as a hazed vote for an unholy combination of his two predecessors and a cast of Reasonable, albeit Sexless, Respectables, which he at any rate lost in the popular vote and in Florida.  I can explain the re-election as a stalling at just about 50 percent of a falling 90 percent September 12 “Demanded” approval rating, stalled by rehashing some Vietnam War era battles against the “Not Bush” candidate, and tapping the cultural battleground against gay marriage.  It may sound like “Sour Grapes” in the true Aesopean definition of the term — Rationalization that the grapes you did not get are probably sour anyways — but as I surveyed the landscape following Bush’s re-election, I saw the imminent future for the Bush Administration as popularly about to run aground, with a disasterous 2006 mid-term election.

Looking at the traditional years which get to be defined as “Realignment” elections — 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, and the either/and/or twins of 1968 and 1980, and I will toss in the significant election of 1876, and pushing aside the issue of which political party is entreated with having the “upper hand”, I think three categories fit their meaning — above the “most important since the last one and until the next one.”  Foundational, Fundamental, Existential.  The categories might be a bit interchangable and blur around a bit, but they seem good at explaining some stakes.  The elections of Jefferson and Jackson were “foundational” and defined the political traditions by which the United States political system has engaged itself.  [Including, I suppose, the full frontal Genocide of the Native American.]  America faced an existential threat in 1860 and 1932, and the fact that we still have a reasonably identifiable nation testifies to why Lincoln and Roosevelt sit at the top of the floating “Presidential Rankings”.  1896 and 1968 , I guess 1968 as re-affirmed in 1980 with a significant mutation, are left as matters where Americans set a course against a backdrop of rapid cultural changes.  Depending on when you ask me, I will stick the conclusion agreement to the 1876 election as either Fundamental or rather bleakly Foundational — the conclusion of Reconstruction and the cementation of the Disenfranchisement of black Americans from civic and social life through Jim Crowe and Segregation.

I gather that the current election fits somewhere beyond a matter of one set of players over the other and short of a question as to whether that question of whether the United States will continue to exist.    But I do get the feeling if we continue to be misgoverned as we have been, and if we continue under the framework of policy options proferred over the past few decades, that might just be around the corner — Alan Greenspan’s “Once in a Century” explanation of the Wall Street drop failed to be curbed as the nation wallows in cultural debris, as well that series of international issues not taken seriously and a failure to find our new role in the World against an unsettling World back-drop, as well never seriously proceeding to transition to a post-petrol energy source and economy.  It is all very disturbing, isn’t it?

But beyond the matter of ceasing to dig a hole, what this election portends is this relentless insulting of our senses.  The McCain / Palin campaign is a post-modern affair, and an assault on the nation’s Intellect — It is Them Against those Paying Attention’s Lying Eyes.   The foundation of the campaign is a Lie — and they have bluntly stated that it doesn’t much matter that it is–, and when called on it, they brandish an assault of “Elitism” against them.  “Elitism” has been defined down.  The question at stake for this nation does appear to be a sort of “Are We Idiots?” or “Do we have the attention spans of Gnats?”, which as the basis of an election is a bit disconcerting.  The up-shot?  Maybe I’ll get to that later.  I don’t want to depress myself right now.

I remember these as being Days of a rough slug for the John Kerry campaign in 2004, and a look back on this blog from four years’ ago reveals some examination of clear structural difficulties that Kerry had — point one:  there was no Democratic Party in Ohio in 2004 — Bush was escorted around the state by a slew of statewide elected Republicans; Kerry was escorted by former Astronaut and Senator John Glenn.   The good news for Obama here:  In the Great Mid-term shake-up of 2006, Ohio was one of the definite epicenters.  This cannot be discounted, and the difference between a “ground game” of out-of-state liberal interest groups versus a “ground game” of neighbors also cannot be under-estimated.

So we Take note of this day in 2004 — Kerry:  238; Bush: 291.  Now, compare it with this, the ebb of the Obama campaign:  Obama: 268; McCain: 270 (270 is the magic number).  (HERE).  I do not entirely like the method of this thing — the most recent poll number is always used for a state, no matter its clear and obvious “outlier” status, no matter it be a poll released by one of the parties of a “fly by night variety”.  (DFM research had a poll which showed Obama winning North Dakota’s 3 votes, somewhat improbably.  Rasmussen came in with one that showed McCain easily winning them.  Rasmussen is well known; I don’t know what DFM is.)  Also, statistically insignificant margin of error poll results from different polls result in quasi-drastically different results:  look back a few days and you will see:  Obama: 281, McCain: 230, Ties: 27.  But, nonetheless, as I recall from watching the graph in 2004, it does provide a general sense of what is going on in the horse-race.

And we are down to much the same group of states that we were down to in 2000 and 2004, with the addition of Indiana.  And… that’s about it.

When people say “literally”, as in “Governement Officials are Literally in Bed with the Energy and Oil Industries”, it usually means “Figuratively but… HARDCORE FIGURATIVELY.” But, apparently, somewhere in pursuing Cocaine, Crystal Meth, and having some very wild parties, the literal bed sharing has taken place here.  Who knew the Department of the Interior was so … so… so… wild?  THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR!!!  That’s like the Audio – Visual Club of the Federal Government.

Well, now we know how the government works.  So often these metaphors pass through a prism out of a past where its literal meaning was intact.  We have come full circle here.  Though, it might be more interesting, perhaps less corrupt even, if we just legally sanction this as the way the nation goes about its business.

Why do I get the feeling that there was a conversation in the Obama / Biden campaign strategium which went like this?:

“We’re getting killed in the Blogosphere for not fighting back.”
“They don’t know what they’re talking about.  But we better throw them a bone right now.  It’s important to have them continued to be energized and willing to donate time and money.  AD COPY!”

John McCain.  He came to Washington in 1982.  And never learned how to e-mail.

What else would explain an advertisement, billed in our post-modernist campaign coverage with a memo that alerts to a new “hard hitting campaign”, about McCain’s Computer Illiteracy?  It is a point, a somewhat important point, which is in of itself not a problem, but is indicative of a bigger problem with McCain — one that is lost in the narrow topic which is discussed by a narrow audience.  This is micro-segmentation, and does nobody much good in Ohio.

So I think it’s a bit of a mis-step, and let it be a denouement for an icy patch to Obama / Biden’s campaign in a race whose “Fundamentals” still suggest they should win, and in a better position than Kerry was in 2004 at this moment, and frankly than McCain is right now.

There is something I suspect about Sarah Palin which needs to be stated.  She is the Republican version of Barack Obama, or a pronounced version of every “Thin Man” charge lobbed at Obama — does Robert Ebert’s editorial here remind you of a certain advertisement?  Obama’s announcement of a run for the White House had a pronounced immediate shake up of the Democratic Primary race, but then seemed a flash in the pan as his poll numbers dissipated shortly thereafter as his inital “novelty” wore off.  But then the voters leaned against him through a long primary process and some substance, as well as warts, come through.  Is that about to happen when Palin’s initial novelty value wears out?  She, and her cultural cache, is the one holding up the McCain campaign right now.  Her great substance is that she has the ability to see Russia from Alaska.

I have more trust in the strategists of the Obama campaign than I do in the aggregate strategy session of the “Blogosphere”.  For that matter, I would trust the much maligned Bob Shrum over “some guy(s)/gal(s) with a free blogspot account”.  And the Dukak– well, no, let’s not go crazy.  Al Gore’s campaign was better than anyone remembers — and he had to navigate sheer trivial theater review.  John Kerry’s was terrible, but the one odd thing about that was the upshot of a good campaign was a mere extra couple of points — it is staggering how narrow the bottow – top levels are with these elections.

As the new Obama ad and the top of my blog entry here suggests, there is something off with the feedback loop.  Maybe there is simply nothing much to say about the campaign itself (never mind the semi-circular logic comparing a Campaign with the mayorship of a tiny town), and it be best to pour over the respective records of Mr. McCain, Obama, Biden and Mrs. Palin with nary a thought on the current drifts of Horse Racery.