Do you see what happens when you turn on your base (the press), John McCain? Do you see what happens?
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin made her first solo campaign appearance outside her home state Saturday, sticking largely to a speech that has boosted her popularity among Republican faithful but drawn criticism for having misstatements.
The Alaska governor repeated her claim to have killed the now-famous “Bridge to Nowhere,” which her running mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has derided as wasteful pork. Palin first approved of the project. She turned against it only after it proved to be a political embarrassment.
That’s an Associated Press article that will be appearing in non-elitist local newspapers all over the country tomorrow. Right there in the lede, with no equivocation whatsoever, it says Sarah Palin is making a mistatement. It’s calling her a liar. And, lest you think that’s the limit of the blowback McCain is now getting from the press, you should read the rest of the article.
Watch how many ways they make Palin look weak:
Palin spoke less than 20 minutes, using a teleprompter, at the late Saturday event in a roller hockey rink…
Palin’s first steps alone on the trail without McCain have been cautious…
…the Alaska governor flew to Reno, Nev. and drove 30 miles to the sleepy state capital, the sort of small community she is expected to win over…
The rally was the only public event planned in Nevada before Palin headed to Denver. She had no events scheduled Sunday, and is expected to rejoin McCain on the campaign trail next week.
…The governor has limited her public appearances and chances to mingle with voters or reporters since leaving McCain’s side earlier in the week…
About two hours after Palin’s speech Saturday, hundreds of people protesting the policies of Palin lined a busy Anchorage street, waving signs and chanting “Obama!”
…Palin stayed for two days at her Wasilla home on Lake Lucille, missing a hastily planned rally of about 100 supporters gathered at a hotel near her home Friday evening. Organizers had hoped she’d stop by or say a few words through a special video conference connection they had set up.
What’s ironic is that when this campaign started, my biggest concern was that the love affair between the press and John McCain would mean he’d never get called on anything. But you can’t use the GOP Convention to declare war on the press and then lie to and about them, and think you are going to get the same kind of coverage you got when you were grilling them hamburgers on the back porch.
The press in not going to report Sarah Palin’s lies as truths anymore. And, you know what that means? Without a bigger base or any advantage on the issues or more charisma or an advantage in the news coverage, McCain will have to go for the lizard brain. He will have to play on people’s deepest fears and prejudices to have any chance to win.
Obama was right…the republiCons DO think we’re stupid.
to the ‘Cons:–remember what happens when you assume…..heh (think ass*u*me…)
Got to hand it to you Booman, you were pretty astute with your observations about what will happen once McCain turns on “his base”. I didn’t see that line of thought anywhere else.
But according to Thomas Edsall, the McCain camp has decided that it doesn’t need the media anymore:
It’s pretty shocking how much the McCain campaign is flat-out lying with ease at this point in time. I don’t remember Bush or Cheney unambiguously stating falsehoods this much on the trail in 2004.
Bush/Cheney told BIG LIES. McCain/Palin tell small, petty easily refuted lies.
They certainly did tell countless enormous whoppers, but as I recall most of those were not on the campaign trail, but after they had gained the White House.
The bigger the lie, the harder it is to refute. Not because of the amount of truth within a big lie. A lie is a lie. But it’s because there is so much dependent on the Big Lie.
For ex, the Iraq War is based on a number of big lies. Each one can be knocked down on its own, but the the war is. There are trillions of dollars invested, thousands dead. People can’t admit that the emperor has no clothes. Everyone is invested in the Lie. “My son died.” “My niece lost a leg.” My flag. My party.
If tomorrow every newspaper and cable news network started out their broadcast saying, “Yeah, we lied to you. This war is a fraud. Bush lied, Cheney lied. We all lied to you,” most supporters of the war would just get angry. They’d refuse to believe it. They are wedded to the Lie. That’s why I see the Republican seaminess as more of a psychosis. Just like psychotics live in a fantasy world where infantile destructive urges are simple answers for complex problems (“Let’s go to war with Russia!”), Republicans tap into the infantile to alternately salve or whip up the fears of their constituency.
Our country is built on lies. I am always pointing to the JFK drilling in Dallas (and the other assassinations back then) as to when the train left the truthiness tracks, but quite honestly there are plenty of places before that where our national discourse separated itself from honesty. This is a country that started out declaring “All men are created equal” but has spent the last two centuries equivocating about the details. And in the political debate, details get lost in the rhetoric.
Narcissists and other types of sociopathic personalities lie with absolute aplomb. It is one of the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. Bush appears to be a textbook narcissist, yet there are times he knows he is lying and does not feel 100% comfortable with it. At those times he telegraphs it clearly (his snicker – hehehehehe – is one of the ways he does it). With Palin either she is able to lie without any twinge of conscience, or I have not watched her enough to detect her indicators that she is knowingly lying, and is not entirely comfortable with it. McCain, when he knows he is lying and is not completely comfortable with his lies, goes into what some people have described as a “robotic” state.
Palin may be a narcissistic personality – she certainly shows some of the signs. Narcissists are often very charming, engaging people, more often than not exceptionally intelligent, or at least quick witted, and lack the capacity to feel empathy for other beings. They are by definition sociopaths to one degree or another, and tend to lie habitually, sometimes by preference, and even when telling the truth would clearly be in their best interest. They have a grandiose sense of themselves, their abilities, and their impact on other people. Sarah Palin’s support, and apparent enjoyment of the brutal practice aerial hunting shows, to my way of thinking anyway, a lack of empathy (there are plenty of videos on You Tube that give you a sense of what the animals go through that are hunted in that way. She certainly lies with ease, even when she must know that what she is saying has been exposed as a lie. And she does appear to have grandiose ideas about herself.
As for McCain, he certainly could be a narcissist as well, and/or a sociopath, and who knows what damage his experiences as a POW did to his personality. Wow! Just what we need – another sociopath in the White House with a third one waiting eagerly in the wings.
Oh, come on. Today (as opposed to Nixon’s time, for example) all Republicans are sociopaths, to one degree or another. It’s just that some Republicans are more sociopathic than others.
This is why I can’t get into this shock at what McCain and Palin are doing, although of course using it to help our side is a good thing.
In a rational world, a Republican lying would be as newsworthy as a dog biting a man.
In a rational world a POLITICIAN lying would be as newsworthy as a dog biting a man.
It is not only Republicans who are sociopaths. Plenty of Dems are too. Same with narcissists – Bill Clinton comes to mind, for example. And one has to be pretty narcissistic to go after the presidency.
“McCain will have to go for the lizard brain. He will have to play on people’s deepest fears and prejudices to have any chance to win.“
Which is something the current crop of Republicans know how to do by now, and very effectively.
I don’t think there is much they will stop at to win this one.
I think McCain made a huge mistake with the Palin VP pick. Not just because she’s a lying incompetent nitwit, but because she doesn’t expand his base– she only appeals to the type of voter who was likely to vote Republican anyway. The Republican base alone isn’t enough to win elections, especially in a year when the Democrats have a strong and charismatic team, a huge advantage in new voter registration, and the nation is beset with various problems that can be attributed to GOP leadership (or lack thereof).
In November, Democrats have every reason to expect big turnout, ehanced by exceptional participation on the part of youth and minority voters. To win, McCain would have to draw significant numbers of independent voters and some crossover Democrats. Palin doesn’t help with those sectors of the electorate– she’s driving them away. The wretched Joe Lieberman would have done McCain more good as a running mate.
she only appeals to the type of voter who was likely to vote Republican anyway.
You are overlooking that until McCain pulled Palin out of a hat, the Republican base was demoralized. The Republicans can’t win without their demented base, and before Palin, there was every reason to think that the turnout of the base would have been inadequate.
At this stage, I think the main thing that gives McCain a good chance of winning the election is that many Americans who have not swallowed the Republican Kool Aid still cannot bring themselves to vote for a black for president.
It would have been different if the Democrats had demonized the Republican party, which they choosed not to do when they took impeachment off the table.
Her body language with McSame in front of crowds seems to indicate absence of empathy. She practically crashes into him or brushes him off to make contact with the crowd.
looked to me like she was avoiding all but the minimum body contact with a serial groper!
john doesn’t bring out the cuddle factor enough…
than goodbye rally in Alaska
with pics
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/
I was just about to post a link that to that. 🙂
I love the woman with the sign saying “My daughter deserves better”.
Wow! That made my day! Everybody should see this one. I especially liked the idea of a “Women Reject Sarah Palin Day”.
The NY Times laid Sister Sarah out on a slab this morning on the front page.
Palin = Bush, the Second Chance. No wonder the GOP base is wild about her. She’s eight more years of the same incurious, ignorant, bull-headed, thin-skinned paranoid idiocy we’ve been suffering for the last eight.
Secrecy and back room dealings are a familiar characteristic of republican administrators in our state as well, from the governor’s office right down to the county level. Our dear leader Mitch Daniels would like to reform local government to eliminate many elected local offices. So much easier to control appointees, don’t you think?
Wow – sounds just like a replay of the Bush regime!
Sequestering Palin is the only strategy left to the McCain campaign, given the Gibson catastrophe.
Still, Bush was elected twice in spite of similar problems. Remember when Bush was unable to tell one country from another? Didn’t matter. Competency is apparently not a factor for 51% of the population. Palin qualifies.
Has anyone ever definitely determined what the bump on Bush’s back was during one of the debates?
Some history is dead in the water and not worth remembering. Same applies to me, apparently. No don’t recall.
“Sequestering Palin is the only strategy left to the McCain campaign, given the Gibson catastrophe.“
WHAT catastrophe? You mean the “catastrophe” that actually left a number of DEMOCRATIC voters reassured about her? Yup! That’s what I was hearing over and over again the day after.
It might have looked like a catastrophe to people like you and me, but it was only a catastrophe if other people saw it the same way, and there is evidence that a lot of people who SHOULD have seen it that way, saw it in quite another.
Relax.
I can’t relax. The stakes are too high.
Here’s the best description of Palin that I’ve seen:
But the Question is Did Screech Palin bill the Alaska taxpayers “per diem” which according to her is anything she “does on behalf of Alaska” She’s the Governor you know for ALMOST 2 years!
Did you know that in Manchurian-speak Pai Lin is translated as a “Boob with Sharper Talking Points …lol Oh, Sorry, I forgot the new, improved McCain/Palin ticket, Now Politcally Correct! heard any good “dog” or Rape jokes lately?
I hope that everyone, and especially the Obama campaign, will read this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122125912790430149-lMyQjAxMDI4MjExNDIxNTQ5Wj.html
Depressing stuff.