Palin's Night v. Palin's Reality

Sarah Palin is going to have a great night. Everyone knows that, yes? She'll have a home-field advantage, won't have to answer any questions, and has spoken in front of crowds of this size in the past week. She has personal charisma and everyone in the audience will be rooting for her. The entire night will be defined on her terms, and the media is aching to deem her a success after a turbulent week. The media went out on a limb in focusing on personal issues instead of the very serious allegations lodged against her. She has an easy parry for that, and it'll turn them around.

But there will be a lot left unsaid tonight. For instance, how many times will Palin simply not tell the truth in her speech? Already, we've seen her lie multiple times in her introductory speech.

PALIN (8/29/08): I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I've championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we'd build it ourselves [...]

In fact, Palin never “told Congress” a bloomin’ thing about that much-derided bridge or earmark; Congress had removed itself from the matter thirteen months before she took office. But just to establish the fuller record, let’s ask two more obvious questions. When did Palin “champion reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress?” And returning to her alleged defiance of Congress: When did Palin “tell Congress” that “if our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves?”

“If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we'd build it ourselves?” Question: When did Palin say or do something that dimly resembles that? [...]

And no, that isn’t the only howler in Palin’s new stump presentation. In this passage from Friday’s speech, she gives an absurdly bowdlerized account of her vastly heroic work on behalf of Alaska’s tax-payers:

PALIN: Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska.

What a champion of the people! But Palin vastly misstates this heroic tale too. Once again, she has basically lied.

What’s wrong with Palin’s account? She makes it sound like “state revenues” soared because “oil and gas prices went up so dramatically.” But this omits a fundamental part of this story; in fact, state revenues soared because Palin and the Alaska legislature raised taxes on the oil companies!

Whether it's the bridge/earmark nonsense, or casting herself as a reformer despite hiring a lobbyist with ties to Jack Abramoff and Ted Stevens while mayor of Wasilla, and taking money from the same interests that have led Stevens to be indicted, or even claiming that she's visited Ireland when she was actually on a refueling stopover for a half-hour, the official story is riddled with lies. And there are likely to be more tonight. And it's unclear whether or not they'll be reported.

Then there's the extremism, which may come out in the speech in oblique ways, but not nearly in ways that would offend or shock the vast majority of what will prove to be a large viewing public. There's the total rejection of women's reproductive rights (including in the cases of rape of incest) and the slashing of funding for the very teen mothers that she now has in her own family. But there's more. The Alaska Independence Party, of which her husband is a former longtime member, and which she courted as recently as 2002, is the Alaska conduit for the Constitution Party, which has as its goal "to restore American jurisprudence to Biblical common-law functions" (that's a direct quote). And Mrs. Palin has her very own pastor problem:

...just two weeks ago, when Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus [...]

Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.

“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.

Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

Uh, God damn America?

This is the perspective you won't hear tonight, and there certainly won't be any Democrats in the story the way Republicans were all over the DNC. Unfortunately, this is the night when narratives will be cemented, and the media will make their judgment. I hope the Obama campaign has a way to get out the real record.