GOP Convention thread

[DeeJayH]

Originally Posted by Lerxst

What? There have been like two people who have been critical of her thusfar, maybe three. I just wasn't impressed. No substance, funny voice, nervous sounding at times...underwhelming comes to mind. I realize I'm the minority. But I'm right.

in this single thread

i am going by the trend, which needs to be updated here:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/us-ele...ount-time.html

[talloulou]

Originally Posted by Captain America

I gotta say, last night's RNC was a sleeper. But tonight's ROCKED!

I totally agree.

I'm really out of my normal comfort zone this election. I don't know what the hell is going on. Normally, in any election, I read all about the candidates, come to a conclusion and then all the campaigning normally just affirms my original choice. It's not that I'm normally closed minded but I know what I want and what I like and so there's not much deviating from my oriiginal "pick" so to speak. This election I don't know if I'm coming or going. Last night I threw the tv remote in frustration and decided I was done. I'd had enough. Now, after tonight I'm back.

It's insanity. I don't like it. Hopefully the debates will put it all in a more decisive perspective because this uncertainty feeling isn't one I enjoy. I know some folks who never make up their minds till the last minute. I never understood them before. Now I do. The whole thing has me feeling very uncomfortable.

[Hatuey]

Overall a good speech. Palin did what she needed to do to consolidate her base. However her attacks on Obama fooled nobody. Where Obama and Biden took their moments in front of the crowds to wipe out any doubt about who they were politically and where they stood on issues, Palin took her opportunity to repeat the talking points we've heard since she was chosen VP. That she's a hockey mom from a small insignificant town in a state known for pork spending that Palin herself supported. Where she could have chosen to clear up the situation regarding the bridge to nowhere, silence her moral critics(see Bristol Palin) and lay out the plan McCain actually has she spent half the time speaking about how highly she thought of McCain while still leaving anybody who watched it completely oblivious as to whom she actually is. In the words of Jallman 'Well at least she spoke purrty'.

[WI Crippler]

I should also mention there was a camera shot(on C-Span) of Palins little girl, licking her hand and wetting down, or "fixing" the downs syndrome baby's hair. My wife thought that was the cutest thing. I thought it was kind of gross.

[talloulou]

Originally Posted by Hatuey

Overall a good speech. Palin did what she needed to do to consolidate her base. However her attacks on Obama fooled nobody. Where Obama and Biden took their moments in front of the crowds to wipe out any doubt about who they were politically and where they stood on issues, Palin took her opportunity to repeat the talking points we've heard since she was chosen VP. That she's a hockey mom from a small insignificant town in a state known for pork spending that Palin herself supported. Where she could have chosen to clear up the situation regarding the bridge to nowhere, silence her moral critics(see Bristol Palin) and lay out the plan McCain actually has she spent half the time speaking about how highly she thought of McCain while still leaving anybody who watched it completely oblivious as to whom she actually is. In the words of Jallman 'Well at least she spoke purrty'.

Least there were no moose jokes. Thank God, or should I say gawd.

[Sir Loin]

Originally Posted by Hatuey

Overall a good speech. Palin did what she needed to do to consolidate her base. However her attacks on Obama fooled nobody. Where Obama and Biden took their moments in front of the crowds to wipe out any doubt about who they were politically and where they stood on issues, Palin took her opportunity to repeat the talking points we've heard since she was chosen VP. That she's a hockey mom from a small insignificant town in a state known for pork spending that Palin herself supported. Where she could have chosen to clear up the situation regarding the bridge to nowhere, silence her moral critics(see Bristol Palin) and lay out the plan McCain actually has she spent half the time speaking about how highly she thought of McCain while still leaving anybody who watched it completely oblivious as to whom she actually is. In the words of Jallman 'Well at least she spoke purrty'.

Yeah, she should have taken time out of her RNC acceptance speech to address allegations about her and the media attacks on her minor daughter. That truly would have been a first and truly stupid.

[RightinNYC]

Originally Posted by Hatuey

Palin took her opportunity to repeat the talking points we've heard since she was chosen VP. That she's a hockey mom from a small insignificant town in a state known for pork spending that Palin herself supported.

You mean the talking points that you've heard because you've spend the past week reading every article on earth that mentions her in a negative light. The majority of the other 25 million people watching her speech probably didn't know much about any of the things you talked about, so to them, this was a great first introduction.

As the resilient Peggy Noonan so eloquently puts it:

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent -- we're on one now, in Minneapolis -- where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren't there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication, and judge by the rules of Chevy Chase and Greenwich, of Cleveland Park and McLean, of Bronxville and Manhattan.

And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack.

But we also forget it.

And when you forget you're a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin's daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who'd judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something's wrong with us, that man's a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. "This just in – there's a lot of sinning going on out there" is not a headline they'd understand to be news.

So the media's going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they're not going to do it because it's not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren't immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as "Republican loyalty" and "talking points." But that's not what it will be.

Another Bubblehead blind spot. I'm bumping into a lot of critics who do not buy the legitimacy of small town mayorship (Palin had two terms in Wasilla, Alaska, population 9,000 or so) and executive as opposed to legislative experience. But executives, even of small towns, run something. There are 262 cities in this country with a population of 100,000 or more. But there are close to a hundred thousand small towns with ten thousand people or less. "You do the math," the conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway told me. "We are a nation of Wasillas, not Chicagos."

[Zyphlin]

Originally Posted by WI Crippler

My personal thoughts on Palins speech tonight, is that is was what it needed to be. She needed to introduce herself to America, and play up her qualification which she smartly contrasted against Obama, rather than Biden. I think she accomplished that goal.

One thing it did accomplish that not even I really expected. My wife, has zero interest in politics. She would rather watch crappy E! News, and Ghost Hunters, than any kind of news/information channel. She was glued to the seat watching Palin speak. After hearing her speak, she said "Thats the kind of woman I can vote for" My wife is excited by the prospect of Palin in the White House, and said she'd vote for McCain because of that woman(she also mentioned that I had better ).
Now I mentioned that my wife is not politically savvy or informed. Thats why I like to bounce things off her from time to time, because that is representative of most of America, rather than the informed and hardened view of politicos like ourselves. Her reaction to Palin(stayed for entire speech and wants her to be president, yes president) vs. Obama( left the room after 2 minutes, and called him arrogant) tells me McCain/Palin has the attention of women who are not otherwise inclined to care about who wins.
Still, its a long way to go, and Palin has alot to prove. But I think she did what she needed to do tonight.

My girlfriend has been the same really. She can't stand Bush, but is not big on Obama. She's said she has heard a few things about Obama and looked at some things (not from me) that she doesn't like to much and that he just seems full of himself and arrogant. She was kind of excited, and more surprised, with the pick of a women as VP. She actually thought I was talking about the democrats at first.

She was at work during Palin's speech, but seemed to like the little she was replayed. When there was talk about apprehension to attack her because she's a women on CNN, she kind of laughed and said yeah right, that'll make them go at her early thinking she'll fold. I told her about how there's numerous people, including women, in the media saying she is being a bad mother by having 5 children, one pregnant and one with downs, and running for vice president. She scoffed, and without any urging went "Like they'd be saying that if she was male", and commented how its funny they say women can do anything a man can do but then say that kind of stuff.

Originally Posted by WI Crippler

I should also mention there was a camera shot(on C-Span) of Palins little girl, licking her hand and wetting down, or "fixing" the downs syndrome baby's hair. My wife thought that was the cutest thing. I thought it was kind of gross.

LOL, mine had the same kind of reaction.

[1069]

Well, I didn't watch it, but from what I'm reading she did nothing that impressed any of the major news media all that much. She talked about being a small town housewife and being elected mayor of Wassilla or whatever, in an election where her votes numbered in the hundreds, and then being governor of Alaska, a state with half the population of Manhattan, for a couple of months.
She sucked McCain's shriveled old weenie for awhile, and then got down to the business of bashing Obama.
From what i've read, most commentators found her abrasive and shrill. The words "pit bull", "bull dog" and "attack dog" kept cropping up.
I heard she was harping on how she has more "executive experience" (the rather disingenuous idea behind this being that president is a leadership role, and being mayor of Crapsplat, Alaska is also a leadership role) than either Obama or Bidin. The idiocy behind this argument is that by that yardstick, she has more "executive" experience than McCain, as well.
She revealed nothing about the extent of her knowledge- or, more likely, lack of it- about national and foreign affairs.
The media predicts she will be shielded from interviews in coming weeks to disguise this lack of knowledge. She will give a select few interviews with sympathetic, far-right talk show hosts, if anything. America will grumble about her lack of interviews and public disclosures of her stances; the McCain team will respond to this by pointing out the half-dozen "interviews" she has done, with Hannity and Colmes and their ilk.
She will suck badly in the VP debates... but not as badly as we expect, because by October our collective expectations of her will be positively comical, and she will have had at least a little time to be tutored and brought up to speed by then.

I do not perceive Palin or for that matter Mccain as serious contenders.
I believe Obama's presidency is assured.

[Zyphlin]

Well, thanks for that in deapth, useful, ever so insightful comments regarding what you saw of some media pundits and your own biases and prejudices against her and evil ole small town america.

Extremely useful.

Thanks