If you’re looking for a comprehensive fact-check of Sarah Palin’s web of lies acceptance speech, go here. Setting aside the delivery of the speech, which was quite good, it doesn’t strike me as the best idea to make a first impression as a nearly pathological liar. But your mileage may vary.
Later on today I’ll have access to focus group results that Greenberg Quinlan Rosner gathered from undecided female voters in Nevada. They found no net gain in the group whatsover in terms of which ticket they are leaning towards. She improved her favorability by 10%. Unmarried women felt that she did not address any of their concerns and married women expressed concern that she couldn’t simultaneously perform the job of vice-president and mother (via email).
This candidate provoked a fascinating discussion of gender roles and politics and the challenges this nominee faces. Many women, especially married women, openly questioned her ability to both serve and raise a family, particularly a family involved such a young, special-needs baby. These women acknowledged the obvious double standard (“we would not ask that if she were a man”), but the question lingered. Some even noted, “‘let’s face it, we (women) do the nurturing.”
I have noted the same theme with women I’ve talked to, which I guess opens things up for an interesting debate. As a political matter, I am opposed to raising this argument precisely because it is a double standard. Yet, the double standard is deeply ingrained in our culture and can’t be discounted as a factor in people’s decision making.
On the whole, women in this focus group demonstrated some movement toward McCain/Palin and some movement toward Obama/Biden, but it balanced out exactly. It was a wash among undecided female voters in Nevada.
That’s just a sample and not a very large one. I’d like to know something else, though. For me, her speech left a bad aftertaste. As long as she was up on the screen delivering those sharp remarks with a smile on her face, I felt like she was quite effective. But once her image faded a little bit after I got some sleep, the message sticks out more than the form. And the message was kind of nasty and substanceless. And I’m feeling less impressed with the speech this morning than I was last night. I wonder if other people feel the same way.
Last night had to be her high water mark, and if it was a wash with undecided women, that’s a positive in my book.
NYT/IHT nails it:
Thing is before Palin continues her attacks against elites she had best take a closer look at Cindy McCain’s outfit that Vanity Fair tagged at $300,000.
McCain is down in the national tracking polls. To break-out he needs a demographic to decisively move to him. A wash doesn’t cut it.
FWIW, I thought she came off as a fruitcake.
Christina was losing her shit, and she NEVER gets angry. She’s personally offended by the Palin candidacy.
Like I said last night, I think most of it came off as a parody. The lecture about “community organizer” versus “PTA” is ripe for SNL to tear to shreds. I’m seeing a lot of cruel sketches.
the female occupant of my household was driven to near physical illness by the speech. But we’re libruhls and I don’t think it’s a surprise that we didn’t care for the message.
Christina isn’t the only one with that response. 😉
personally my favorite was Romney, just for sheer insanity and incoherence.
…adding holy shit, Simon comes out swinging:
…and from there he stomps all over Sarah Palin’s speech.
After the snippets of her Ohio speech I couldn’t listen to her speech last night. Can’t tolerate her voice.
From what I’ve read so far she pretty much did what I expected, avoided the issues and served up a nice hot steaming plate of hate, all with a smile.
fortunately, l didn’t have to endure the visuals…no tv…but l listened to the live stream from Pacifica Radio…patched through the stereo…so l had good sound quality at least.
l thought she came off shrill and condescending, and definitely out of her league. she sounded like a small town, bigoted, politico with a side of nasty. it was, imo, cliquish hackery of the highest order.
l think the RATs are going to regret this on nov 5, if not sooner.
she’s an empty skirt.
Forget it, she sounds too much like my ex-wife. Who needs another smug harpy in their lives?
I confess I could only watch it in bits and pieces, and so was beyond being swept up in any narrative arc. My impression was that it was a professionally crafted speech and performance that managed to arouse the otherwise somnolent audience — no mean feat, given the sleepy resentment that characterized this whole convention.
Today, though, even that small accomplishment seemed overwhelmed by a bad taste like the kind you get after indulging in deep-fried Twinkies or especially exploitative porn. It was a taste of pettiness, mean-spiritedness, crude emotional manipulation. There was no hint of the expansiveness that a great speech inspires. Instead Palin delivered the kind of excitement that comes from being part of an angry, self-pitying mob, and my bet is that anyone outside the base who fell for it felt kind of dirty this morning. In the end, all Palin accomplished was to show what a small and embarrassing artifact the Republican Party has become.
My response to her speech is exactly the same as yours.
The Republicans have become caricatures of themselves and are ideologically exhausted. All I can say is that if they try to steal the election again, Obama will put up more of a fight than Gore and Kerry did.
My mother is a Republican, and she reacted strongly against both the Giuliani and Palin speeches.
I had been primed to expect a polished speech from a “nice person”. I agree that Palin did not come across as an amateur. But, I also think that she was condescending, snide and nasty in tone. What’s not to like?
I would really like to see a poll of women’s reactions to this speech. I think the pundits are wrong and this speech is going to backfire big time with moderates and independents, especially women.
Thinks that Obama is poised to raise $10M online today because of Palin’s speech. I don’t know that the haul will be that big, I know most of my social media friends kicked in. Such as shame at the near total silence in the liberal blogosphere in urging people to donate to Obama.
AWESOME. I was thinking that same thing about a massive fundraising day today as I was donating another $25 out of sheer anger over Roody and Palin’s lies.