Convention Wednesday: GOP Crush on Sarah

Last night was Sarah Palin Night in St. Paul.  Keynoter Rudy Giuliani was followed by Sarah.  Rudy made the case why Barack Obama is not his idea of a President, and why Sarah Palin is up to the task of being VP--stressing executive decision-making; he also let fly with zingers: Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy....voting 'present' is not being President....Biden should get the VP thing in writing.  Palin's grand-slam speech was loaded with zingers: They love their country in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America!....The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick....I suppose a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except we have actual responsibilities....Styrofoam Greek temples.  But above all, Palin showed poise, sincerity and projected authority: the "Palin Power" handwritten signs said it all.  Snd how the crowd loved her.  She has a real, feminine version of Reagan-like star power--connected to a gravitas that Bill Clinton-like rock-star Barack lacks.  Review for yourself, the morning after, the text (11 pages) of Palin's speech.  It merits a close read, for all the zingers I missed in my limited note-taking, too busy watching her star burst into the political firmament, like the beaut about putting the previous governor's state-owned luxury jet on eBay.

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A Rasmussen (pre-speech) poll shows Palin trailing--GET THIS!--Hillary 52-41 for...President.  Sarah's ahead 49 - 45 among men, and trails 57 - 35 among women.  Not bad for 5 days on the national stage, under ferocious media bombardment.  It means ZERO re an real election but suggests that Palin had made a good first impression with voters.  Team McCain will unveil an ad comparing the experience of Palin versus Obama.  As Alaska Governor, Palin oversees thousands and a budget in the billions.

Start with an informative Washington Post front-pager that reveals the vetting process.  Palin was one of two finalists, along with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty; others considered in the final stages were Tom Ridge, Mitt Romney, Joe Lieberman & Bobby Jindal.  (Pawlenty's foreign policy credentials are limited, with several high-profile trips + a trade meeting with former Mexico President Vicente Fox.)  The WP story notes that Team McCain thoroughly vetted the controversy over pressure put on a state official to fire a trooper allegedly being violently abusive to Palin's sister and nephew, and found nothing to worry about.  McCain's top vetter, high-powered Beltway lawyer A. B. Culvahouse, did not interview Palin until the day before McCain picked her, and neither did Big Mac.  The WP story is fair in tone, but Team McCain replied by saying that the vetting of SP has been much more, with several top aides meeting with SP weekly for 6 weeks, and Culvahouse having met her more than once, too.  An Israeli fighter jock chose Palin for a film documentary he is making, on the world's extraordinary women.  It takes lots to impress an Israeli Air Force top gun.  Then again, Palin passionately supports Israel, as most Evangelicals do, and has an Israeli flag on display in her gubernatorial office in Juneau.

Economist Lawrence Lindsey puts on his "citizen" hat and shows that Palin is still perceived moderately positively by a public that has been fed a stream of negativism since Friday's announcement; he rightly sees the October 2 debate as Palin's Big Moment.  Former headhunter Dean Barnett compares Palin & Obama resumes and finds Palin well ahead on points.  Put simply, he is more of a talker than a doer; she is vice-versa.  OK, Obama has done a considerable amount to get where he is, but his skill seems more at getting elected than doing a top job upon getting the position.   George Neumayr pinpoints in TAS what may well be the media's greatest fear of Palin: If she becomes VP, she could inspire many more conservative women to enter politics, a field still dominated by lefty ladies.  Here's an equation: more Palin = less Pelosi.  Pat Buchanan, deeply connected on the Right, sees Palin as a potentially historic figure, and adds that he rarely has seen such enthusiasm for a candidate in his circles, as there is for Palin.  The Wall Street Journal editors contribute more on why Palin scares the Beltway Establishment, and some of the sewage its members are dispensing.  A column in Canada's National Post impales the government-funded Canadian Broadcast Corporation for airing, two days after the Palin shadow pregnancy smear had been exposed at the fraud it was, the story as if it were still live as an issue.

Dick Morris counsels the GOP to stand by their pick--wise indeed, as retreat here would surely doom Big Mac's candidacy, and produce a Democratic landslide that likely would include more than 60 Ds in the Senate, creating veto-proof liberal governance.  Morris still sees Palin as a game-changing win.  As Clinton in 1992 picked Al Gore to emphasize generational transition, McCain picked Palin to emphasize his outsider role. The VP choice is such cases is a theme reinforcement move.  The Gray Lady headlines its latest Palin front-pager "wedge politics," but the article runs through ups & downs of Palin's two mayoral terms, and on balance shows a very competent pol who kept campaign promises, fought for her town's share of Washington largesse--perfectly reasonable to play by the rules even if one disagrees with them--and put political principle over familial connection when an in-law ran to succeed her.  NRO's Jim Geraghty compiles examples of outright sexism, some of them simply viciously condescending, and not only from Male Chauvinist Pigs (MCPs)--the 1970s feminist term for guys who did not "get it"--but also from the females of the left--call them FCPs.  NY Post columnist Andrea Peyser slams sexist slander directed at Palin.  NRO's David Freddoso notes the even the 63-page document released by the Democrats on Palin shows no evidence of the kind of self-dealing that Obama engaged in with convicted financier Tony Rezko.  Rich Lowry wryly observes that Ds love the working class only for liberal candidates, and that Palin is already the subject of partisan hatred that usually is attracted by its object over many years.

Larry Kudlow details the energy factor: Estimates are that the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) has 10 - 20 billion barrels of oil reserves, of up to 100 billion for the entire Arctic, of which 1/3 is in Alaska; offshore, the Continental Shelf has another 100 billion barrels of oil + 400 trillion feet of natural gas.  Palin is, BTW, a former Chairwoman of the Alaska Oil & Gas Commission (2003 - 2004).  Here is an analysis of how Palin negotiated in Alaska--tough with Big Oil, including her husband's former firm, British Petroleum.

At her best, in a great column, Peggy Noonan combines advice for McCain with her assessment of the Palin pick:

The choice of Sarah Palin IS a Hail Mary pass, the pass the guy who thinks he has a good arm makes to the receiver he hopes is gifted.

Most Hail Mary passes don't work.

But when they do they're a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

***

Gut: The Sarah Palin choice is really going to work, or really not going to work. It's not going to be a little successful or a little not; it's not going to be a wash. She is either going to be magic or one of history's accidents. She is either going to be brilliant and groundbreaking, or will soon be the target of unattributed quotes by bitter staffers shifting blame in all the Making of the President 2008 books. Of which there should be plenty, as we've never had a year like this, with the fabulous freak of a campaign.

More immediately and seriously on Palin:

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to a future Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

PN concludes with tart advice for reporters: "Dig deep into Sarah Palin, get all you can, talk to everybody, get every vote, every quote, tell us of her career and life, she may be the next vice president. But don't play games. And leave her kid alone, bitch."  (Italics mine.)

But, alas, at her worst, caught on an open mike, PN told ex-McCain top adviser Mike Murphy that the Palin pick had sunk Mac's chances.  Peg, we thought we knew ye.

Michael Ledeen captures the essence of the Palin pick in a great article well worth reading in full, an essence not fully captured by most (myself included):

For the first time in memory, we have a major candidate who comes from the frontier, and it’s not surprising that the pundits are having a hard time coming to grips with this phenomenon. For Sarah Palin’s world is not defined by the major media or by the glossy magazines; she hunts and fishes, she’s unabashedly patriotic, her son is in the Army, her husband races across the snow. Unlike the other three candidates, she is not a member of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. When she talks about shattering the glass ceiling, she actually means it; it is not a mask for yet another ideological program. Some of her supporters sense this when they call her “authentic.” It’s the wrong word, however; Barack Obama is an authentic radical, for example. Palin is a frontierswoman. Her state capital, Juneau, cannot be reached on the highways of Alaska. If you want to get there, you must either fly or sail. And for much of the year, sailing isn’t smart. No subways in Juneau, but lots of bars. The main bookstore caters mostly to the tourist trade, with a small selection of used paperbacks and a few recent best sellers.

It’s not so much authenticity as independence, and self-reliance, which have always been the basic characteristics of frontier people. They think for themselves. They have to think outside the box, because there’s no available box for them to think in. If they accepted the conventional wisdom they wouldn’t be on the frontier, they’d be in some city and they’d brag about their degrees from the failed institutions of higher education. They’re not big on “conflict resolution,” they prefer zero-sum games. If you go up against a grizzly, you’re poorly advised to look for a win-win solution.

Ledeen's money paragraph:

The real question is whether there is any hope for a basic transformation of government in this country. We all know that government is broken; every citizen who has to deal with the bureaucracy will confirm that. If there is hope, it can only come from people who are outside the box, and Sarah Palin is decidedly that. We’ll soon see whether she’s coherent enough, tough enough, and charming enough to build a national consensus for the tough work that needs to be done.

Sarah Palin met America last night.  Now America has two months to get to know her even better.