August 29, 2008

8/29: Rightroots Rejoice Over Palin

As expected, the news that John McCain had selected a running mate (AK Gov. Sarah Palin) knocked Barack Obama's acceptance speech out of the media spotlight. Simply put, conservative bloggers were thrilled by the pick. Unlike some of the other rumored VP candidates such as CT Sen. Joe Lieberman and ex-PA Gov. Tom Ridge, Palin is admired by both social conservatives and fiscal conservatives in the blogosphere. Furthermore, many righty bloggers believe that a McCain/Palin ticket creates significant political "headaches" for Barack Obama by co-opting his "change" message and by attracting some of Hillary Clinton's former supporters to the GOP.

A few conservative bloggers expressed reservations about Palin's lack of experience, but they are definitely in the minority. Most conservative bloggers are ecstatic about the pick.

In other news, Obama's acceptance speech drew praise from liberal bloggers and criticism from conservative bloggers. The netroots loved Obama's sharply-worded attacks on John McCain and are relieved that Obama is getting more aggressive. Daily Kos' mcjoan writes:

"As a highly partisan Dem who has been wishing and hoping and waiting for Obama to do what we in the blogosphere have been asking for for so long from our Dem leadership -- draw a sharp contrast with the Republicans and bring the fight to them -- I'm a satisfied customer tonight."

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, are portraying Obama's speech as cliched, ultra-partisan, and lacking in specifics.

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES: It's Palin!

Most conservative bloggers are thrilled that McCain has chosen Palin as his running mate:

• The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini: "Outstanding pick."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "An extraordinary choice. Pro-life conservatives across the country have to be thrilled with John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as the GOP nominee for Veep. Reformers have to be thrilled. Inside-baseball analysts have to be thrilled."
• NRO's Andy McCarthy: "Well done, Sen. McCain. [...] Gov. Palin is just a superb, superb pick -- and so deftly handled."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "A year ago, few would have predicted a Republican ticket that including maverick John McCain AND an attractive female conservative governor who has stood up to the Republicans in her state? [...] If you had to imagine a ticket that could possibly defeat Obama, you couldn't have scripted it any better than this..."
• NRO's Mark Levin: "A terrific choice. Palin is by all accounts a principled conservative and government reformer who can contribute mightily to the decision-making that occurs in the White House. She has more executive experience in her two years as governor than Obama, [Joe] Biden, and McCain combined. She is a mother of five in what appears to be a loving and functioning family. And she is someone Republicans, conservatives, and others can rally behind in the future. From a purely tactical aspect, Palin would knock the legs out from under Obama's monopoly hold on 'change.' And attacks on her 'inexperience' will only highlight one of Obama's greatest vulnerabilities -- and he's at the top of the Democrat ticket. And because Hillary Clinton spent months telling women voters that they are being dissed by Obama, some percentage of women who normally would not vote for McCain will take a second look if Palin's on the ticket. There is no question that a Palin selection would cause the Obama camp headaches."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "What an unbelievable head fake by McCain, perfectly executed to build suspense and knock The One off the front page this morning. Mind-blowing. [...] I'm woozy."
• NRO's David Freddoso: "She is everything Obama is not. A real reformer who took on her own party's corrupt establishment and won, defeating an incumbent governor, 80-20. Don't forget that she's also a mother who chose life for her Down Syndrome baby -- we can probably guess where she'd fall on the Born-Alive act. If this is the future of the GOP, they're in good shape."
• NRO's Jonathan Adler: "I've been very lukewarm on McCain, but I'll be very excited if [Palin]'s on the ticket. She [is] the sort of principled, limited-government conservative that's been in very short supply in Washington, D.C. of late, so she's just what the party needs."

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES II: Ferraro Redux?

A few conservative bloggers expressed reservations about the pick:

• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "I'm worried about Palin. I'm afraid she may be the Geraldine Ferraro of 2008. If she really is the nominee, will it come across as a desperation move, a Hail Mary, as [Walter] Mondale's choice of Ferraro did in 1984? I'm afraid so. Her experience just doesn't justify a place on the ticket. If McCain really wanted to go radical, [LA Gov.] Bobby Jindal was the far sounder choice -- but maybe Jindal turned him down, on the theory that he needs to do his job as Governor of Louisiana before trying to go national. [...] The most important thing McCain has going for him in this race is the perception that he is the serious candidate. Choosing a running mate who will be widely perceived as unqualified would go a long way toward squandering that advantage."
• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru lists the "cons" of McCain's pick: "Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain's decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain's age raised the stakes on this issue. [...] Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man? Compatibility. It doesn't seem as though McCain knows Palin well. Do we have much reason to think they would work well together? Debates. Maybe, as Jonah [Goldberg] said the other day, Biden will look like a bully going up against her -- and maybe she'll shine. But I can think of a lot of other picks who would have been lower-risk."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "I really don't think someone with only 2 years of relevant experience (She was elected governor of Alaska in 2006) should be the Vice-President. I also think her selection would undercut McCain's 'not ready to lead' attacks on Obama although, in all fairness, I think someone who has been a governor for 2 years is more qualified to be President than someone who has been a senator for 4 years. The bottom line, however, is that neither of them is really qualified."

On the left side of the blogosphere, Markos Moulitsas ridicules McCain's pick: "The Sarah (Quayle) Palin pick is an abandonment of the 'Obama is not ready to lead' attack lines. Those are dead, and to be honest, while that line didn't work for Hillary and it had limited traction for McCain, it still had some traction. That attack line is gone. (Quayle) Palin is also a an ideologue, on choice, on the environment, on energy -- all the way down the line. This an ideological pick in an election where self-identified Republicans are a dying breed and Democratic self-identification is skyrocketing. McCain has abandoned any notion of playing for the center. He's looking to shore up his right flank and hoping that the Evangelical Right can somehow drag McCain over the line."

OBAMA: The Kossacks Approve

The Daily Kos front-page bloggers loved Obama's speech -- particularly its aggressive defense of liberal principles:

• Moulitsas: "When was the last time we saw a speech like tonight's -- a full-throated defense of progressive principles, devoid of mushy 'centrist' crap? It didn't avoid the tough social issues like abortion, guns, or gay marriage. It wasn't apologetic. Unlike Bill Clinton's and Biden's, it didn't unnecessarily praise John McCain. It drew sharp distinctions between Democrats and Republicans. It came from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. To be honest, this is the speech -- aggressive and unabashedly populist -- I expected Biden to give. I couldn't be more pleased to have gotten it instead from the standard bearer himself."
• mcjoan: "As a highly partisan Dem who has been wishing and hoping and waiting for Obama to do what we in the blogosphere have been asking for for so long from our Dem leadership -- draw a sharp contrast with the Republicans and bring the fight to them -- I'm a satisfied customer tonight. Barack Obama left behind some of the more squishy 'post-partisan' rhetoric and did what he had to do -- define McCain as Bush's third term. 'Eight is enough' might be a slightly cheesy tag line, but it works. You'll remember it and you'll say 'Yeah, eight IS enough,' and we can't afford Republican rule any more. This was the speech from someone who is ready to roll up his sleeves and get in the fight. Good show."
• Daily Kos' georgia10: "What I especially like about this speech is that it's a defense of liberalism, a full-throated rebuttal to the notion that government is bad and irreparably broken. The speech itself is stunning in how it wraps policy details around piercing rhetoric."
• Daily Kos' brownsox: "I have never seen Barack Obama give a better speech. I have never seen anyone give a better political speech."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Grand slam doesn't even describe this speech. Obama is kicking ass...mostly John McCain's ass."

OBAMA II: A Home Run

Other liberal bloggers also loved Obama's speech:

• Oliver Willis: "Our next president spoke tonight."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "That was a helluva speech, wasn't it? Damn. [...] The setting was perfect, the stage was perfect, Obama's cadences were perfect, and it was just about as good a political rallying cry as I've ever heard. John McCain looks very, very small right about now."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "I thought this was a very strong speech. About exactly what was needed. [...] He made the case for himself; he laid out clear policy goals; and he aggressively set forth the stakes of the campaign. He made the case against John McCain while not attacking his character -- which makes a clear contrast with McCain's aggressively personal, denigrating campaign strategy."
• BooMan: "[Obama] has probably given better speeches before, but never a better political speech. He's never blended so many parts into a seamless whole like this before. He gave red-meat at the beginning, and post-partisan inspiration at the end. He blasted McCain's record and judgment and then challenged us all not to question each other's character. He was personal, bringing his family and life experience into his policy discussion, but then he said this election is all about us. And, yet, none of this seemed to be contradictory or discordant. It was a masterpiece."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "It's tricky to go on the offensive while maintaining an optimistic and inspirational tone, but that's precisely what made Obama's speech so effective. He didn't just take the fight to McCain, he eviscerated McCain, his worldview, his party, and his record. Obama took McCain's claims and debunked them. He took McCain's talking points, and mocked them. Remember the questions about Obama's toughness? His willingness to mix it up? Neither do I. The speech was also strikingly self-aware. Obama knew exactly what detractors have been saying, and the areas of doubt for voters -- Does he have a clear agenda? Is he more talk than substance? Celebrity? Taxes? -- and methodically, almost surgically, made his case."
• The Huffington Post's Jacob Heilbrunn: "No, Barack Obama did not land a knockout blow tonight. But he showed that he fully understands that the best defense is a good offense. After weeks of absorbing punishment from John McCain, Obama went on the attack. Obama's decision to target McCain so closely was a risky strategy, but it paid off. The contrast with past Democratic candidates such as John Kerry and Michael Dukakis could not have been starker. Obama showed that he does not conform to the image of the Democrat as wussbag by directly assailing McCain's foreign policy credentials -- specifically, his claim that he would 'follow' Osama bin Laden to the 'gates of hell.' But why just follow? As Obama made clear, he needs to be taken out."

Open Left's Chris Bowers had one quibble: "Much of the end of the speech sounded defensive. From finding common ground, to defending patriotism, to decrying character attacks, to not being the typical candidate -- I didn't feel comfortable during that part of the speech. Answering attackers when the night is entirely focused on you both accepts the premise of their attacks and gives them free air time. [I] wish there had been quite a bit less of that."

OBAMA III: What Happened To The Old Obama?

Unsurprisingly, most conservative bloggers did not like Obama's speech:

• RedState's Directors: "This was not an uplifting, unifying, post-partisan speech. It was a typical Democrat speech, an act of attack to disguise a record thinner than that of any president. It was an act of religious prayer for the believers, not evangelism to the nonbelievers. When he declared he would engage in specifics, he continued to offer even more promises without explanation of how or why -- just that here was the thing wrong, and in electing him president, that alone would correct the wrong."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Obama made the same mistake that plagued the entire Democratic convention; he ran against George Bush. He railed about the previous eight years, which certainly is de rigeur for the party out of the White House, but failed to present any clear idea of what different policies he would apply. He did almost nothing to present any specific, positive plan for the American people beyond the sloganeering to which Obama has bitterly clung while his polling has dropped by double digits this summer."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "A lot of people are emailing me to say that they have made their first McCain donation tonight. Maybe McCain shouldn't speak next week and replay [Obama's speech] instead?"
• McCarthy: "LAME. This is a very weak candidate."
• Hinderaker: "Was there a single sentence in Obama's speech that could not have come from Jimmy Carter?"
• Goldberg: "I think his shots at McCain were ill-advised. Who the hell is Obama to try to out-hawk McCain on Bin Laden? Please. Not plausible. What is Obama talking about when he tries to suggest there are more Republicans for Obama than there are Democrats for McCain? C'mon. The Clintonian false-choice b.s. was particularly grating (gay marriage: punt! Gay hospital visitation, hooray! AK-47S boo, 2nd amendment, wahoo!)."
• Hawkins: "The expectations for the speech were sky high and quite frankly, Obama didn't meet them. [...] It was definitely too long and he tried to do too many things in it without successfully accomplishing any of them. He attacked Bush weakly, attacked McCain weakly, talked about unity, gave a shallow run through of some of his policies, and trotted out a lot of tired, socialist rhetoric."
• AmSpec Blog's Jeremy Lott: "There was no innovative thinking in last night's speech. All of the problems of American boiled down to the fact that the government just hasn't spent enough, regulated enough, or mandated enough."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "This was an angry speech as these things go, and (like Joe Biden's) a dishonest one. If the McCain campaign wanted to provoke Obama, it succeeded. The political environment may be such that independent voters will have no problem with Obama's stridency, the kind typically associated with VP nominee. But if they are that upset, Obama need not have given a speech."

A few conservative bloggers thought the speech was effective, although they were critical of its content:

• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I don't think it was as impressive as his 2004 convention speech, but it was serviceable and tough. It's going to come down to what the threshold question of this election is: If it hinges on whether people want to definitively turn the page on the Bush years, Obama knows how to make that argument and it's one Republicans will lose. If the electorate expects something from the candidates' resume to prove they can deliver on the change they promise, the Democrats have shown they can't really make that case. That's the Republicans' one opening."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "A very good, very eloquent, very powerful case for a cause I do not believe in. It was delivered well, The atmospherics were impressive, if more than a little bit imperial. But at the end of the day, we have to decide whether we are going to buy into a political ideology merely because it is dressed up in eloquent words."

MEDIA CRITICISM: Obama Gets No Love From The AP

Liberal bloggers are slamming the Associated Press (again) after Charles Babington wrote an analysis piece accusing Obama of offering few specifics in his speech:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The Associated Press decides to double down in its attacks on Barack Obama. Here's the headline from Charles Babington's 'analysis' of Obama's speech tonight: Analysis: Obama spares details, keeps up attacks. Amazingly, it actually gets worse, reading almost exactly like Republican talking points (and in fact parroting that exact spin). [...] It is not until after the lede that Babington admits that 35-minute speeches are rarely chock full of details -- particularly those that are enthralling to a crowd. (By the way, it is also below the lede that Babington admits that the Obama speech did actually include specifics.) [...] What a true journalist would do would be to analyze the speech without using the crutch of opposition talking points, without resorting to the easiest 'he said, she said' type of stenography. But apparently this is no longer the policy of the Associated Press under Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier -- a man, by the way, who spent months in talks with the McCain campaign about possibly accepting a senior level position. No, what we get out of Fournier's AP is pure and unadulterated talking points that are as non-germane as they are simply incorrect."
• TAPPED's Sam Boyd: "To summarize: Obama's critics say he doesn't talk about details. He gave a speech in which he mentioned some details but didn't get to others ('He said he would "cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families," but did not say how' -- does the guy want a bracket-by-bracket breakdown?). [...] The entire 'analysis' is completely nonsensical, but seems designed to leave a casual reader with an impression that Obama lacked substance. It admits he provided details, but then ignores its own admission. And, of course, this is only the latest in a long series of egregiously biased pieces of 'analysis' form the AP."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "As part of the AP's continuing descent into absurdity they covered Barack Obama's speech with this long, editorializing-heavy whine about an alleged lack of specifics. This in particular is bizarre: He said he would 'cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families,' but did not say how. How? His staff would have to work with the staffs of the relevant members of congress on writing a bill. Then the bill needs to get out of committee, pass the House and the Senate, maybe go through a conference committee process and then be signed into law. What does [Babington] mean how?"

Moulitsas: "Babington wrote [this] piece before Obama's speech was finished. Obama's speech ended just shy of 11 p.m. ET. Babington's attack piece was posted at: Aug 28, 11:26 PM EDT. The piece is 603 words. So we are to believe, that Babington watched the speech, gave it due consideration, wrote it, turned it in, had it go through editing, had it go through copyediting, and had it posted online -- all in 26 minutes?"

Liberal bloggers were pleased that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann slammed Babington an hour after Obama finished his speech: "Olbermann was outraged that the AP's Babington had written, in his analysis of the speech, just off the wire, that Obama had tried nothing new and that his speech was lacking in specifics. He read the first few paragraphs on the air, lamented that it would be printed in hundred of newspapers on Friday, and concluded, 'It is analysis that strikes me as having born no resemblance to the speech you and I just watched. None whatsoever. And for it to be distributed by the lone national news organization in terms of wire copy to newspapers around the country and web sites is a remarkable failure of that news organization. Charles Babington, find a new line of work.'"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Taking Character Out Of The Equation

TAPPED's Mark Schmitt is concerned about the Dems' chosen line of attack against McCain, but he sees a potential upside:

"The [Dems'] strategy against McCain...will one day seem either brilliant or stupid. Where the Republicans went directly at Kerry's character, and will do the same with Obama, the Democrats have decided to accept McCain's character as a given -- 'served this country honorably.' Even Kerry, whose speech was the toughest and most specific critique of McCain, drew the line between 'Senator McCain' -- still an honorable man -- and 'candidate McCain.' [...] Plainly, the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign have made the judgment, probably well-informed by polling, that McCain's wholly undeserved reputation for integrity, independence and personal decency is so firmly established that it's not worth the effort and money to dismantle it.

That requires a very nuanced message, separating 'Senator McCain' from the conservative Republican agenda that [he] has no choice but to accept as its candidate. If it works, it's briliant because it is the strategy that Greg Anrig has been urging for months: a full and unhesitating critique of conservatism as an ideology that has now been put to the test and failed absolutely."

LEST WE FORGET: Cheney To Speak At Republican Convention From Section 109, Row 56, Seat 3

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney's office announced today that he will speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, offering farewell wishes and personal observations about John McCain to anyone in the vicinity of his seat in the upper balcony. 'The vice president has prepared a number of remarks to mutter angrily during Sen. Tom Coburn's speech,' Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said. 'We cannot divulge the specifics of his address at this time, although I imagine it will begin shortly after he spots Lieberman.' Although no advance copy of the speech has been provided, Cheney is expected to cover a variety of hot-button issues, including the war in Iraq, Barack Obama, the conflict in Georgia, the idiots they have speaking at these things, legroom, the workers at the concession stand, the heat in this frigging place, and President Bush's tie.

Cheney may also indulge his surrounding audience by engaging in a brief but loud debate with his wife on the issue of why he had to come in the first place and delivering an inspiring set of closing remarks to convention security on the benefits of fucking yourself."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at August 29, 2008 12:46 PM