Hits And Misses

The Sadly, No! boys take on Miss Alaska, emphasis by moi.

Couple things:

- How can Palin not overshadow McCain in the days after this convention? What does it say when the leader on your ticket is in the No. 2 slot? This ticket is ‘Palin and McCain’ — that’s how it should be referred to by Dems.

- She still has to prove herself facing tough questions, during press interviews and during the Biden debate. It’s one thing for the hockey mom to read teleprompter-driven applause lines with an empty net, another to perform on the fly with Biden coming at her.

- They overplayed the ‘community organizer’ slam. The party that wants to shrink government says service outside of government is worthless? The only service worth anything is as an agent of the state? The Dems need to start talking up community work, church work, charity work, volunteering to coach youth sports, etc. Palin and McCain say Little League coaches and scout leaders and food drive volunteers aren’t doing anything useful?

- Her weaselly obfuscation on Obama’s tax plan was transparent. Mom & pop gas station owners and family farmers: ‘How are you — how are you going to be better off if our opponent raises your taxes adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?’ … cheap. Cheaply played, easily countered, easily seen through by even those famous ‘low-information’ voters. Obama wants to raise taxes on people with bank accounts the size of a small country’s GNP, and cut everybody else’s.

- The emphasis on the veto was a good one for Palin-McCain. A lot of voters like the idea of a mixed government that obstructs itself, which is absolutely what we get if Palin-McCain goes to the White House. On the other hand, in reality a lot of voters hate both this White House and this Congress because neither is getting shit done due to just that sort of obstruction. And I have absolutely no idea how to sell ’single party power’ to voters. Maybe just leave this one alone.

- She straight up lied about the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’.

- The foreign policy and war comments were just noise. ‘Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.’ 2004 called, it wants its fear-mongering back.

- The McCain tribute was nicely done. He’s a genuine hero. But it’s hard to escape the message that McCain’s greatness lies well in the past, not the future. That he should be honored for past deeds but that his second wind is trying to catch its second wind for what lies in the days ahead.

- Message: Drill. It’s all they’ve got. It’s every plank of the Palin-McCain policy platform. Everything else is soft narrative — some mighty attractive soft narrative dressing for the base, like ‘experience’, ‘heartland values’, ‘mom’, ‘maverickness’ and ‘war hero’ — but soft narrative all the same. No health care talk. No mortgage crisis talk. No kitchen table economics talk. No paying for college talk. No global leadership talk. No national greatness talk. The absence of all that stuff starts to become apparent again once the shine of Palin’s star turn starts to wear off.

- The Obama bashing. Good red meat for the RNC crowd. People who never planned to vote for Obama love it. Could even be appealing to some swing voters who want an excuse to not vote for him. But how well does it play to many for this unknown, second banana selectee to burst on the scene and immediately start slamming a guy who worked his ass off in the national spotlight for more than a year to EARN his spot on the top of his ticket? We’ll see.

End of the day, Palin’s good news for the Repubs. She should not be underestimated going forward. Obama’s still going to win, quite handily.

And of course Aristophanes is right, when all you've got in your entire arsenal is "Drill, Terrah and Liberal!" without offering any real solutions for the problems at hand...you'll lose.

This isn't 2004. You would think 2006 would have taught the GOP some lessons. The only thing they learned is MOAR DRILL TERRAH SCARY BLACK MAN.