Preview of Palin’s Speech Tonight–It’s Mean

Via CNN:

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

“In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change,”

“I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better.”

“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”

“But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion — I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

This should be fun.

A Modest Proposal:

we dub the Republican operatives intent on mindlessly insisting–in defiance of all reason and logic–that Sarah Palin is qualified for the vice presidency as “Palin drones.”

…what, no good?

I Hope It’s Romney

The Christian Science Monitor asks a question I’ve been mulling over for a bit now: would a VP Romney open the door for the Dems to create ads similar to the McCain campaign spots highlighting how Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden expressed doubts about Obama during the Democratic primary?

Probably. CSM points out some of the juicy criticisms that the Romney leveled against McCain, but it misses the one that, in my mind, is the most harsh:

“If you ask people, ‘Look at the three things Senator McCain has done as a senator,’ [campaign finance, immigration, energy] if you want that kind of a liberal Democratic course as president, then you can vote for him. But those three pieces of legislation, those aren’t conservative, those aren’t Republican, those are not the kind of leadership that we need as we go forward.”

That’s Romney on McCain, January 2008. Clearly, there’s something to work with here. But here’s a strategy that would be more effective than just aping the McCain ads: playing up the fact that the McCain-Romney animosity goes both ways.

Biden Not That Bad

Even the Canadians are noting that Biden bungled some key parts of his DNC speech last night:

But nervous, perhaps, he stumbled several times, misreading the teleprompter as he addressed a pumped audience still high on Bill Clinton’s exhortations to unite behind Obama.

He dropped “McCain” in his critique of the “Bush-McCain” foreign policy. He said 150 more parents have health care in Illinois because of Obama’s work, instead of 150,000; he said McCain proposes $200 million instead of “$200 billion” more in new corporate tax breaks and he said America needed a leader “who can change,” instead of “deliver change.”

Yeah, Biden garbled his words a little bit, and of course it’s hard to say that an imperfectly delivered speech has the same impact it would have had if the orator had nailed the presentation. But I don’t agree with commentators like Chuck Todd (MSNBC) and Jeff Toobin (CNN) who think the speech was a flop.