Re: Well, let's discuss some of these points - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 10/02/2010 09:29:23 AM
The difference in my mind between Obama reading a teleprompter for a whole speech and Palin needing her hand to remind her she wants to cut taxes is that there's a lot more detail in the former, and it's easy to forget stuff. "Cut taxes, drill ANWAR and Go, America!" is simple enough I only had to check her notes once, and I haven't been campaigning on them for two years straight.
This is, of course, a totally flaweed analogy and I tihnk you know it, Palin uses paper or prompter for speeches too, there's a reason to employ speechwriters, and of course one normally has a lot of back and forth with them. they tend to be one of the few people who can pretty much tromp into POTUS's office without an appointment. Nobody expects anyone to remember word for word a speech, nor is delivering one the least bit disingenious. No reasonable person expects someone not to put talking points, note, etc on notecards, and to point out that she had it on her hand is instead of a card is beyond silly. Why would you espect her to remember to bring up those points? One's ability to remember to do something like that isn't really based on intelligence. I'm a notorious digressor, my memory is fine, but I tend to wander off topic, scrawling my major points on my hand as a reminder seems pretty justified. Why did Palin do it? What were they specifically reminding her off? Don't know, but let's at least pretend she deserves benefit of the doubt and Occam's Razor.
I agree it's a horrible analogy, and that was my point: Obamas use of a teleprompter has been raised several times as an excuse (which is a bit like saying it would be OK for the Allies to do medical experiments on captured Nazis because they did it, too) but it's apples and grapefruit. No Republican worth their salt should, IMHO, need a reminder they want to cut taxes.
I don't consider Palin a foreign policy expert for the same reason I didn't consider Bush one: They'd never had cause to look at it much until they ran for national office. I don't consider Obama a foreign policy expert for a similar reason, not so much that he's never been to the US Senate as that he didn't even finish his first term before running for President. His extensive personal travel abroad mitigates that a little, just as having Bush 41 for a dad did for Bush 43, but not enough. If you want to parse it that much, fine: Palin isn't necessarily stupid, but a disproportionate number of things she says are (like claiming live within 1000 miles of the Bering Strait made her knowledgeable about foreign policy; that was far more plausible when Bush said it about Mexico. )
Come, come, we know why she said that, it wasn't an ideal comment but she was pointing out that she lives near the border of Russia, not our ally canada or non-threatening mexico, but the country that for most of her life, and most of most voters lives, was our worst enemy. Need I remind you that Alaska and that area would have been where a lot of the battles would have happened, or that they are where a lot of our strikes would have originated from? Grow up in an area like that and it's likely to be something you take an interest in, let's apply benefit of the doubt and Occam's Razor again, comment translates as 'I've spent a big chunk of my life living very close to the border of our worst enemy, and as governor, I do in fact have to keep up on all the posts, installations, and forces that are or have been psotioned there to deal with the Soviets and now the Russians.' An ideal statement? Well, obviously not, but honestly it's as legit as Obama's living in Indonesia or visiting Kenya as a source of foriegn policy experience... which is to say not much, except it might have sparked a broader interest. She was not claiming expertise because she lived near Russia. She was saying her background was not that of a distant governor as implied but one from a state that is no more isolated from the world stage than Virginia or Maryland.
Yes, we know exactly why she said it: Because her foreign policy experience is non-existent and it was the best she could do to refute that argument. I sincerely doubt NORAD regularly briefs the Governor of Alaska on what's they're doing in the state. Thank you for playing, Sarah, we have some lovely parting gifts for you....
It's not about the issues; there have been plenty of staunch conservatives in the Republican Party who were far more knowledgeable, experienced and articulate than the ones embraced by the fundie right. Huckabee and Bob Dole are good examples, but you didn't see the people they represented flock to their banner because instead of stuttering a mumbled response to tough questions then waving an American flag they actually knew their stuff.
Not a huge Huckabee fan, but the only reason I didn't vote for Dole was I wasn't old enough. Nice example though, it was impossible to portray Dole as an idiot, so instead they pounded on him for his age and his tendency to refer to himself as 'Bob Dole' and implied he was senile. Another shining moment in liberal open-mindedness. Palin wasn't embraced by the fundie right, she was embraced by the populist right, this is no specific fundie right with a unified idealogy. The rest of us were just happy McCain picked a solid conservative who actually had some governing experience and crowd appeal. Which I'd point out 'relatively inexperienced but charismatic' may be a bad qualifier for VP but not something anyone on the left should really be lecturing us about considering POTUS.
I think you'll be hard pressed to find many hardcore Palin supporters who don't also self-identify as "evangelical Christians" (a term I detest because it is, or should be, redundant; does that mean they're the only Christians who accept the Great Commission?) They're out there, but not the majority, and she knows it, too, hence the Pro Life, anti-sex ed appeals that became so embarrassing when her daughter got pregnant in HS and the father tried to become a centerfold. Of course, if one decides Palin, Obama or anyone can do no wrong it really doesn't matter what they do; we can lionize her for opposing corrupt government spending and ignore her pleas for federal pork as mayor of Wasilla, siccing the states executive branch on her ex-brother-in-law and billing the taxpayers for her daughters travel with her to a national governors meeting (and don't tell me she just couldn't find a sitter; Todd and the other kids stayed in Alaska. )
I seldom agreed with Bob Dole, but I always respected him, a lot more than his wife, in fact, but then, he didn't pull crap like that.
Believed their own hype enough they didn't need a cheat sheet to remember what it was.
It's not a cheat sheet, you keep saying that, all it shows is that you lack any objectivity on the matter. You simply can not acknowledge that she might have just wanted reminders to stay on point and those were her points. It's like RT said, this whole things speaks way more about her detractors characters than hers.
I question her commitment to a core issue she has trouble remembering.
I doubt you'll see Mike Huckabee turning up at a rally for a Republican Governor who tried to force every school girl in the state to take the (less than a year old) HPV vaccine, then shoved toll roads paid for in full by bond initiatives down the states throat, but that's what Palin was doing before she made the tea party where this video was shot. Perry's not even going to get renominated (which is actually bad, because Hutchison is a lot more like Huckabee than Palin when it comes to qualifications) but evidently he and the former Governor of Alaska don't realize that yet.
Kind of batting out of left field there, and I don't normally consider a vaccine known to prevent cervical cancer a bad thing. I also don't tend to think of toll roads and bonds as areas of public policy that tend to automatically reflect badly on someone's character, did you maybe want to list some specifics there? I'm not even sure if you are talking about Texas or Alaska.
I dunno, you seemed to divine "Texas" easily enough.
Tolls on roads built by bonds are an issue mainly because people opposed to high taxation NORMALLY view it as a "double tax" (as Sen. Hutchison calls the toll roads, just one reason she'll mop the floor with Perry. ) Heck, the guy tried to put a toll on I-35 until Kay informed him that the feds weren't really cool with that (so Perry tried to buy back Texas' interest in the road just to toll it; I have mental images of Ft. Hood tanks going through toll booths.... ) The biggest problem I, personally, have with the HPV vaccine is that 1) vaccine manufacturers can't seem to find a preservative that isn't a known carcinogen (or worse) but won't just manufacture preservative free vaccines with shorter shelf lives, 2) the thing had only been on the market about six months and 3) as with the toll roads owned by a private Spanish firm, one of Perrys senior aides just happened to take a position with the company benefiting about that time. However, the hue and cry from the religious right was exactly what you'd expect: Teenagers won't have sex if no one tells them about it, but if you give them the vaccine they'll sell themselves on street corners. That conflict was to be expected; what was more noteworthy was that a supposedly far right Governor, heir to Bush and routinely stating his "family values" creds, totally betrayed his base on the issue. Again, Kay will mop the floor with Perry in the primary, and if you want an example of everything Palin claims to be, look there.It's not that no one takes the far right seriously, it's that the constituency keeps ignoring candidates like Dole and Huckabee for gaffe machines like Quayle, Bush 43 and Palin. "Unfit for Command" indeed.... 
We didn't ignore Dole, we nominated him for president and he lost. Huckabee's a good man but honestly I prefered Romney over him, and Huckabee would have been trashed at that time (maybe not in 2012) because of his being clergy. You know there are factions on the left that would have screamed non stop about how his nomination showed the right was trying to cram Jesus and rednecks down people's throats. We got McCain, we ran him, he lost. BE honest though, the GOP contestants were almost all vastly more experienced than the DEM candidates, what, I think only Richardson had much actual executive experience. You ran a pack of senators, the most experienced of which were gaffe-machine-biden and scandal ridden Dodd, and senator really isn't a good direct move to POTUS. After them, your remaining nominees all had equal or lesser experience to our vice-presidential nominee. You guys must have at least a dozen center-left governors you could have ran, where the heck were they? Bush Jr. was perfectly qualified to be POTUS and Quayle was no more a gaffe machine than Biden.
Huckabee didn't have any more liabilities as a member of the religious right than Palin does, and mitigated them somewhat because when he talks about "compassionate conservatism" his record shows it's more than talk. The same people on the left who would've screamed about Huckabee would scream about Palin in 2012, with the difference being Huckabee has repeatedly shown himself far more capable. But, hey, I'm on your side, man: I WANT the Republicans to nominate her in 2012. Bringing up Romney is just another good reason why; Romneycare is a disaster that Obama's inexplicably trying to take national, and he managed to do a complete 180 on abortion (proudly stating during his gubernatorial run that his wife donated to NARAL) and gun control between running for Governor of liberal MA and the time he sought the GOP Presidential nomination. The man stands for nothing save himself and Wall Street. If we're lucky; people worried about Huckabee as a Baptist minister should be at least as worried about Romneys MUCH closer relationship with the LDS upper echelons.
Senator is an excellent move to POTUS; without exception every US President has come from either a Governors mansion or the US Senate. There are pros and cons to both; Governors usually have more executive experience, but Senators have more national and international experience because they routinely deal with issues Governors never have to face (e.g. when Putin rears his head to say, "If you want to build a missile defense you have to back out of the ABM treaty first" or, y'know, DECLARING WAR!) Saying all the GOP candidates were more experienced than the Democratic ones works, provided you think Romney and Huckabee had more experience than Hillary Clinton and Mike Gravel (who spent 12 years in the Senate alone. ) Also, Biden had been in the Senate for nearly a decade before Dodd was elected to it. So, yes, except for Biden, Dodd, Clinton, Gravel and Richardson all the Republicans had more experience. Of course, the only Democratic primary contenders left then are Obama, Edwards and Kucinich.