Was there some kind of high profile speech yesterday?
The first thing I saw from the RNC Convention yesterday was a Black Railroad Operator from Texas, railing against “Identity Politics“, which is the big boogey-boo of black Republicans. This was a bit fascinating, as the whole Republican Convention has devolved into this great celebration of Identity Politics — Rural Americana, or a peculiar vision thereof. Mike Huckabee let everyone know that the first time he used soap was when he entered college — where, as we’ve learned earlier he cooked squirrels in popcorn poppers. That was a lesson to attack the image of the “Country Club Republican”. I doubt many Republicans of any income bracket can identify with not having soap, but this certainly showed the Liberal Eastern Elites. As did the story about those cruel soldiers taking school-children’s desks away to prove them a lesson, which begged the question — why wasn’t that teacher reprimended for wasting tax dollars?
Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani paraded against the North-Eastern Elites — the former governor of Massachusetts and the former mayor of New York City, who failed to take this line of attack when they were running for office in those places. They shouted promises to Take America Back (from eight years of a Republican administration, and a Supreme Court Romney managed to claim as “liberal”?), and Giuliani managed a few plugs for 9/11, and reminded us all that “We are all Georgians” (frankly, no.). I guess we can say that the energy level had picked up from Tuesday — and that day’s awe-inspiring Fred Thompson and Joseph Lieberman speeches and George H W Bush Tribute video.
Earlier in the day, Peggy Noonan had referenced, thinking she was off mic, the Sarah Palin selection as “political bullshit”, a conversation I’ve seen bandied about with unconvincing apologias. It will be interesting to see, when the politics of the moment passes, how many “professional Republicans” privately hold that opinion. We are sludging through this debris — cue Karl Rove‘s slam of Obama’s potential selection of Tim Kaine  (they know a few things in the 105th largest city in America that those elitists in the 104 larger cities don’t know, I tell you…)– and note to the Dems: slice these two items together NOW and relase as an ad, at the very least stuck on campaign website and on youtube, to be disseminated and ad naseum discussed by the media. I note that the National Review found the same NY Times editorial regarding Ferraro as I did — which I only obliquely referenced but provided my answer (there are more experienced women in politics in 2008 than there was in 1984) — though I can also add that the editorial would have been a response to opinions expressed by such sources as the National Review… these things will boomerange on everyone.
As for Sarah Palin’s speech… it was whatever the Hell it was. The basic outline of the speech was already written for “Unnamed Vice-Presidential candidate”, and I will say that she fit in the biographical spots herself, and probably sharpened some of the specific jabs at Obama. What had been a good Obama Convention poll bounce which blurred into a Palin poll ker-plunk has been stalled for the moment — which is the way this is supposed to work. Mentioning the “Hockey Mom” and “PTA” experience, I had to wonder, though: Do the people want that? (I have a vague image of that country song and movie as roughly where this arena of “PTA Politics” heads us into.) I suppose if you want to play the home game, you can categorically edge the “PTA” and compare that part of her career with Obama’s “Community Organizing” (the mayorship then gets compared with the tenure in the Illinois state Senate, and you move on to Senate versus Governor). The attacks on “Community Organizing”, complete with a sort of “Rural versus Urban” theme gives us a bit of a racial subtext that is more than a little disconcerting. Will she find her way onto Meet the Press, never mind the McCain attack on the “Liberal Media” as a reason she won’t get her fair shake so stuff it — and is it just as well for the Obama Campaign if not? Some message trampling has occured here – “Harry Reid — leader of the ‘Do Nothing Senate’ — said ‘I can’t stand John McCain” — a partisan attack which folds away what made McCain a popular politician this past decade, and which also, incidentally, sheds away a large part of a recent Charles Krauthammer editorial. A typical Palin fan these days, I guess, is writing letters to the editor such as:
Liberals are really running scared when you publish two critical letters for every supportive letter. Any woman who can govern the [geographically] largest state in the Union, raise five kids, and keep a real he-man husband happy (???) has to something special.
In the end, the campaign will wind its way to the end, and Sarah Palin will be an automatic top tier Republican candidate for 2012 — though, I don’t know if that is “hers to lose”.  Obama and Joseph Biden have a candidate to defeat, named John McCain, and another candidate to deflate, name of Sarah Palin — they exist, and they need to be tactically defeated. I think, at the end of the day, Sarah Palin is not going to pass the smell test for the American people, but that’s a matter that simply put cannot be taken for granted, and there will be ample opportunity to press it into a further attack on the main man: John McCain.  But overall I must say that there is nothing like a Republican Convention to convince me that I am a Democrat, just as there is nothing like Rush Limbaugh to convince me that Hillary Clinton is a’okay.