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.

Sharks Patrol These Waters

When I last left the Internet for a delightful Labor Day barbecue, the questioned raised about Sarah Palin were merely the stuff of blog comment sections and the like. It took what ought to be a private occurrence of the Governor's 17 year-old daughter's pregnancy, but the traditional media has now caught on that this pick is exceedingly strange, and that the only people who knew less about her than the American public were John McCain's Vice Presidential vetting team.

Greg Sargent has a great rundown.

* The news that Palin once backed the Bridge to Nowhere went national.

* It emerged that Palin has links to the bizarro Alaska Independence Party, which harbors the goal of seceding from the union that McCain and Palin seek to lead.

* The news broke that as governor, Palin relied on an earmark system she now opposes. Taken along with the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, this threatens to undercut her reformist image, something that was key to her selection as McCain's Veep candidate.

* The news broke that Palin's 17-year-old daughter became pregnant out of wedlock at a time when the conservative base had finally started rallying behind McCain's candidacy.

* Barely moments after McCain advisers put out word that McCain had known of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, the Anchorage Daily News revealed that Palin's own spokesperson hadn't known about it only two days ago.

* A senior McCain adviser at the Republican convention was forced into the rather embarrassing position of arguing that McCain had known about the pregnancy "last week" -- without saying what day last week he knew about it.

* It came out that Republican lawyers are up in Alaska vetting Palin -- now, more than 72 hours after it was announced that she'd been picked.

* Palin lawyered up in relation to the trooper-gate probe in Alaska -- a move that ensures far more serious attention to the story from the major news orgs.

There's actually more. The lawyer she hired in the trooper-gate probe - which is being paid for by state taxpayers - asked for all documents from the investigator, a discovery request which may make sense in a grand jury but not in an independent legislative investigation. ABC is on the case of the Alaska Independence Party, which is kind of a big deal - a secessionist group which possibly has ties to separatist militias. The earmark story has gone national - turns out that as mayor she had a personal lobbyist that secured around $27 million in federal earmarks. There are at least 10 McCain operatives up in Anchorage at this point, and didn't get there until THURSDAY, the day before the choice was announced. And major media is asking the forbidden questions:

While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain’s judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.

...and...

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said that he had heard no discussion about removing Ms. Palin from the ticket. In fact, he said, he thought her daughter’s pregnancy would not hurt her with voters.

What's notable is that the media is asking the question of if she'll be removed from the ticket. It's not a far reach to go from if to when. When the traditional media smells blood in the water, ideology goes out the window. Check out Campbell Brown, married to Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor Campbell Brown, eviscerating a McCain spokesman.



Focus groups are weighing in with, shall we say, concern, and what's more, major media is reporting on them. And the secessionist party thing is so hot to handle that McCain's camp is not commenting on it. They tried to dump a lot of this news on the Labor Day holiday with a major hurricane hitting land and it didn't work. They are completely off message, the revamped convention (which already lost a day's worth of attacking Obama) is at a crossroads, and the questions from the talking heads will be all about Palin.

I actually hope he keeps her on the ticket at this point, this is too entertaining...

This Is The Right Response

Obama:

At a brief press availability in Monroe, Mich., ABC News asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., if he had any response to Gov. Sarah Palin's statement that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant.

"Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits," Obama said, "and people's children are especially off limits.

"This shouldn't be part of our politics," he continued, "It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.

"And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," he said. "You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits."

Absolutely. This type of gossip and innuendo does have no place in our politics.

Women's issues and family issues have a place in our politics to the extent that I believe that nobody can demand from the perch of the federal government how families should organize themselves. As the McCain-Palin ticket wishes to do that to the country, that's fair game for criticism. A teen mother is not, and any speculation about her motives or decision-making is just that, speculative. Palin's radical extremism is the reason for concern, not her home life.

Vetting, Party Of One

The stories that keep emerging from the frozen tundra in Alaska get more and more strange, and leave more and more people scratching their heads. There was this underground rumor that Sarah Palin's daughter was actually her granddaughter, based on some evidence that was credible and some evidence that was flimsy, and originally spread by Palin's Republican rivals in Alaska (though it will forever be attributed to some mystery liberal blogger). The McCain campaign tried to shut it down today by admitting that Palin's 17 year-old daughter is pregnant now:

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us," the Palins' statement said.

I know that the McCain camp thinks that this ends the debate and there is some kind of nobility here, but teen pregnancy usually doesn't reflect entirely well on the parents, though YMMV. (What this really shows is that abstinence-only education doesn't work at all)

Of similar concern is the fact that Palin thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. And the continuing developments in Troopergate. And that she's appeared at a secessionist movement meeting in Alaska. And you have to wonder whether the McCain campaign talked to anyone at all about this.

Actually, I think they did talk to someone - the CNP.

The CNP deliberately operates below the radar, going to excessive lengths to obscure its activities. According to official CNP policy, "The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs before or after a meeting." Thus the CNP's Minneapolis gathering was free of reporters. I only learned of the get-together through an online commentary by one of its attendees, top Dobson/Focus on the Family flack Tom Minnery.

Minnery described the mood as CNP members watched Palin accept her selection as John McCain's Vice Presidential pick. "I was standing in the back of a ballroom filled with largely Republicans who were hoping against hope that something would put excitement back into this campaign," Minnery said. "And I have to tell you, that speech by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin -- people were on their seats applauding, cheering, yelling... That room in Minneapolis watching on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time."

Minnery added that his boss, Dobson, has yearned for a conservative female leader like Margaret Thatcher to emerge on the American scene. And while Palin is no Thatcher, "she has not rejected the feminine side of who she is, so for that reason, she will be attractive to conservative voters."

The members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain's Palin pick. With her selection, the Republican nominee is suddenly -- and unexpectedly -- assured of the support of a movement that once opposed his candidacy with all its might. Case in point: while Dobson once said he could "never" vote for McCain, he issued a statement last week hailing Palin as an "outstanding" choice. If Dobson's enthusiasm for Palin is any indication, he may soon emerge from his bunker in Colorado Springs to endorse McCain, providing the Republican nominee with the grassroots support of the Christian right's single most influential figure.

That's all this was about. Forget the press reports grasping at straws trying to figure out this pick, whether it represents reform or was targeted to exurban voters. This was a wet kiss to the religious right. There was only one group doing the vetting because it's all that mattered. The theocons were waiting for a signal to start up the phone banks and the ground work and now they have it. The question is whether or not Palin's family values and extreme radical philosophy is distasteful to the wide swath of Americans.

UPDATE: Boy, they're dumping everything while the nation focuses on the hurricane. Palin's husband has a DUI record.

UPDATE II: Interesting that the McCain campaign felt the need to mention that the kid made her own decision to keep the baby, since McCain and Palin want to take that choice away from all women.