The emergence of Sarah Palin as a political force in the presidential race has left many top Democrats fretting that, just two weeks after their convention ended on an emotional high, Barack Obama’s campaign has suddenly lost its stride.
Obama has responded aggressively this week to Palin’s presence on the Republican ticket, using TV ads and campaign rallies to attack her contention that she is a political reformer who will take on the Washington establishment — a role Obama has long claimed as his alone.
But some Democrats are now worried about the perils of Obama’s strategy, saying that his campaign, instead of engaging the Alaska governor, should avoid any move that draws more attention to her and could enhance her appeal among the white, blue-collar voters who remain cool to Obama’s candidacy.
A series of new polls suggests that Palin has given a major boost to John McCain’s campaign, exciting the GOP base, winning over white women and all but erasing Obama’s lead.
Senator Obama is off message and running against Palin not McCain and his best efforts are trying to attack her charactor not her achievements and many of his attacks are at best half truths like the bridge to no where. If the selection of Gov Palin as McCain’s VP throws Senator Obama’s most excellent executive experiance into such disaray, what would Putin, or the leader of Iran do to his presidency?
What half truths are that? That while campaigning for gov she was all for anything the AK congressmen could get, including the bridge? Or that she dumped it after public opinion turned against the project? Or that she kept those earmark funds for the bridge and just used them elsewhere?
The half truth is that she didn’t kill the bridge, that it was killed in DC. The truth is she killed the bridge, kept the money, set up a boat shuttle to get to the island and used the money for more important projects. Palin has cut earmarks from 52 when she took office to 31 using the increased oil revenues to offset the ear marks, so she has made a differance.
I was thinking about this last night and had a revelation – McCain has gotten into Obama’s OODA loop! I thought this was some original insight, but I’ve checked and see that several blogs and essayists have been addressing this for awhile. See the following:
Is McCain Inside Obama’s OODA loop?
http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/2008/09/01/is-mccain-inside-obamas-ooda-loop/
McCain and the OODA Loop
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/mccain_and_the_ooda_loop.html
Although I’m slow to the show on this, I think this is a very good observation. Obama has every single advantage, yet McCain is far outmaneuvering him. Every day seems to bring a new mistake, a new error by Obama – yesterday’s was Obama calling Palin a pig, who knows what today’s will be? I’ve never seen anything like this.
Also, from the first post linked above, this doesn’t mean that McCain will stay inside Obama’s OODA loop or prevail:
[blockquote] However, to operate inside an opponent’s OODA loop, you have to do more than just surprise people, you have to be able to exploit that surprise to stay inside their loop. Otherwise they may recover, learn from the situation, and come back stronger. So since we (meaning I) don’t have a good picture of what’s going on inside the Obama campaign, we can’t make an accurate judgment at this stage of whether McCain is inside anybody’s OODA loops. [/blockquote]
Camille Paglia [url=http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/print.html]gets it:[/url]
[blockquote]But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God’s plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.[/blockquote]
The lunacy and rage of the Democrats seems to be snowballing. From Kendall’s back yard:
[blockquote]South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate ” whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.†…
“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,†she said.
Told of McCain’s boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: “Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway.”[/blockquote]
[url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0908/SC_Dem_chair_Palin_primary_qualification_is_she_hasnt_had_an_abortion_.html?showall]LINK[/url]
Personally, I think the Palin pick is still within the OODA loop of the Ds. They don’t seem to have figured out a response to even the selection yet, much less the actions McCain/Palin have taken since.
Still asking my question, If Senator Obama can’t figure out how to handle the unvetted, unqualified, total lacking in experiance mayor of a small Alaska town of 5,000 how can he handle Putin or the Iranian situation?
Here is Obama talking about his Muslim faith. The interviewer has to clarify if he meant his Christian faith:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XKGdkqfBICw
Is it just remotely possible that the mistakes by the Obama team and the wild popularity of Sarah Palin [and the bounce for McCain in the polls] is due to the fact that evangelicals [like me] are actually praying to the Living God, in the name of His Son Jesus, specifically for her? I know that it’s a stretch, but even the founding fathers believed in a God that intervened in the affairs of men and prayed to that God. It seems axiomatic that the majority of Democrats are godless heathens…abortion, gay marriage, no prayer in schools, no religion in public at all…and if that is true, shouldn’t we expect the Living God to hear our prayers and vanquish our nemeses?
The initial smears of Palin continue to be rubbed off by (belated) responsible journalism. ABC today is reporting that many of the $27 million in total earmarks attributed to her terms as mayor were, in fact, not requested by her government but were requested instead by the larger borough government or by private institutions. Most notably:
And what about Palin’s attempt to ban books? ABC finally reached the librarian at the center of that story, who cannot recall any such request being made.
It’s amusing to watch the Obama campaign act as if they believe their own propaganda about McCain-Palin. They have painted a completely false picture of McCain, and if they act on it, they will always fall on their faces. I doubt McCain is “inside their OODA”. I think they are just swinging at ghosts, and hitting nothing or hitting the wrong stuff, and it’s making them look foolish.
This should be the easiest election for them to win, but they are losing ground. It’s astonishing to me.
I think McCain hit a home run with the selection of Palin. I wish she were governor of California!
That struck me too, right after McCain named Palin as his choice for running mate and the press started comparing Obama to Palin. The genius of selecting Palin is that it caused Obama to waste his time attacking Palin, leaving McCain free to campaign to the voters.
I think the real message is that Obama’s scared to death of Sarah Palin.
I think it is ironic that the party (and its supporters) that builds itself as the most inclusive, tolerant, and the most enlightened group that has ever walked this earth has been mired from the get-go in racism, sexism, and hatred. While grass-roots Dems are honorable people, I do have to question the judgment of those who remain associated with a party that seems to give its tacit approval for this kind of behaovior and action.
#12 Chazaq I have really thought alot about all this last night and came to realize what a gift McCain gave Obama and Obama blew it. Palin was a perfect springboard for Obama to attack McCain. Obama could have done a charm offensive like this “I want to welcome the Gov of Alaska to this election season what an accomplishment it is that Gov Palin is Gov of Alaska, do you know why she is Gov. Because she had to fight corrupt Republicans….” “Gov Palin needed earmarks to make Alaska run McCain has sat in Washington fighting ear marks but done nothing to improve the infrastructure that makes them necessary….” Take almost any issue. Instead Obama has insulted small town America by attacking and making Palin and icon of blue collar small town America. The Hillery voters who looked at supporting McCain and Palin have been called trailer park trash, mentions of Jerry Springer, etc. How is Obama gonna build a bridge to them now????
The rabid attacks on Sarah Palin, her values, morals, beliefs, and religion, by the Left (of which I was once a member, alas), is all the more frightening in that is shows what would be in store for the rest of us, the Nameless and Powerless, were they to actually come into power. Great Leap Forward into a Cultural Revolution, anyone?
“Still asking my question, If Senator Obama can’t figure out how to handle the unvetted, unqualified, total lacking in experiance mayor of a small Alaska town of 5,000 how can he handle Putin or the Iranian situation?”
She has perfectly valid experience. But your question is a good one. The fact is that the guy doesn’t do too well under pressure. Frankly, as a woman, I’m sick of the dingbat discussions of lipstick. The talking heads on the right could easily have explained Obama’s comments away by saying the following:
“It does not appear that Sen. Obama was calling Gov. Palin a pig, although it is possible. But, in light of the popularity of her lipstick joke, Sen. Obama’s comment was a poor choice of words and, at that moment, demonstrated poor judgment”.
Which it was and which it did.
Yup, Jeffersonian, Camille Paglia usually gets it. If I’m going to read a feminist, I read her. As opposed to the smart and articulate yet warped stuff put out by Gloria Steinem in the LA Times; which, unfortunately, too many women are too rabid and shortsighted to truly understand.
Back to Obama, being an egghead does not a leader make. Philosophy and leadership, together, are rare. Just ask Ephraim Radner, who has probably tried to explain all this to Ruin and gotten nowhere…
Philosophy and leadership, together, are rare
That is true. But even when you find it there is no gaurantee that wisdom will always follow. Marcus Aurelius was credited as both a philosopher and a good emperor, but he still made the collossal blunder of having his unworthy son Commodus succeed him to the throne rather than adopting a worthier man as was custom with the first three emperors of the Flavian line.
The weird part of the current situation is that the McCain-Palin ticket appears to be growing coattails in congressional races. Given that everyone was expecting a GOP whuppin’ this fall, several races have suddenly gotten competitive and others have GOP candidates in the lead now. Nothing to kick Pelosi out of the Speakership, just keep her in the do-nothing and log-jammed state for another two years. Harry Reid is going to have another opportunity to excell (in what? may be asked, based on his past performance) as well.
But the line that “independent voters’ enthusiasm for Palin will fade when her conservative record is better known” is simply off the mark. First, she is not that conservative in her actual record, as opposed to her family life. Second, extrapolating from family to politics is very dangerous, and not just in the case of the Palins. Of all the Pres. and VP nominees, it is John McCain who has had the most liberal personal life, and now he’s the “conservative candidate”. Palin’s story, like McCain’s confessed marital failure, resonates with many voters on a factual basis. There isn’t any political platform behind trying to raise Down Syndrome kids, or in trying to do the best one can with teenage pregnancies. Lots of families deal likewise with these problems, and Democrats ought to avoid alienating them by trying to walk on that third rail.