So per my last post, Gov. Sarah Palin deserves support from women, conservative and liberal alike, when she is treated in a sexist manner. But women should also feel free to express differences of opinion with her. What troubles me about Palin's speech on Wednesday night is her charm, high voice, and soft manner belie the depth of her arch-conservative and some would say anachronistic views on abortion rights, abstinence-only sex education, church and state, animal slaughter for pleasure, and the environment. More...
I agree with my colleague Michael Barone that Sarah Palin gave a great speech--she's not quite at Sen. Barack Obama's level as a rhetorician, but certainly highly skilled and with an uncanny ability to charm while being combative. She will be a much tougher debate opponent than anyone has given her credit for to this point. More...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech to the 1936 Democratic National Convention before a crowd of 100,000 people at Franklin Field in Philadelphia--one of three acceptance speeches given at stadiums (the other two were John Kennedy's in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960 and Barack Obama's at Invesco Field in Denver last week). As Roosevelt was approaching the podium, out of view of the spectators, he reached out to shake hands with the elderly poet Edwin Markham and fell. Helpless to rise on his own, Roosevelt was furious; his speech text flew out of his hands. But aides quickly helped him rise and, on the arm of his son James Roosevelt, made his way to the podium and began speaking to the 100,000 in the stadium and a nationwide radio audience. But the pages of his speech text were out of order. Quickly, without a hint of irritation or hesitation, he reshuffled them while he was speaking. He was a pro. (You can read a good account in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Politics of Upheaval, somewhere around page 567; I can't recall the exact page number). More...
Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention last night was a home run. A star was born. While the Obama campaign has attempted to disparage it by saying that it was written by a former George W. Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully--and thus link it to the McCain=Bush meme that was one of the chief ideas thrust forward in their convention in Denver last week--it cannot be dismissed as such. Scully reportedly had written a generic draft that could have been used by whichever vice presidential candidate McCain had chosen. But once Palin was the choice, she and Scully reportedly worked together and produced a draft that was brilliantly designed to promote the McCain-Palin ticket, and not to look backwards and justify the Bush administration. This will surprise no one who knows the independent-minded Scully (who left the Bush team to write a book on the responsibility human beings have to animals) and a woman who was described, by Fred Thompson on Tuesday night, as the only major-party nominee, with the possible exception of Theodore Roosevelt, who knew how to field-dress a moose. According to accounts I heard, they worked together quite satisfactorily and produced a text that reflected the VP nominee's convictions and the ticket's political imperatives. More...
Sen. Barack Obama is enjoying some of his highest numbers so far in the daily presidential tracking polls I frequently cite. Gallup has him up by 8 points today. Rasmussen by 5. More...
ST. PAUL--The levees in New Orleans were not breached, and Republicans had the first night of their convention on the second night of the convention. The convention managers have had to rearrange the order of speakers and the schedule, and they managed to come up with an effective presentation. More...
Conservatives watching as the McCain campaign tries to compare the experience of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the Democratic ticket, think the focus is wrong. Their view: The McCain campaign should be comparing the first woman GOP veep pick to former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, the first Democratic VP nominee. Below is one of the E-mail memos to conservatives and the media, this one dispatched by leading public relations exec Keith Appell of CRC Public Relations: More...
I talked to Chuck Norris today about his new book, Black Belt Patriotism, out next week, and he had some advice for the political and press critics of McCain running mate Sarah Palin: Back off. "Everybody needs to get off that," the star of Walker, Texas Rangerurged. "I just feel so sad for her family." Norris, who you might recall campaigned with Mike Huckabee, called Palin the real McCoy and was especially concerned about how her kids have been handled by critics and some in the media. But, he says, "that will pass" and he urged the press to turn its attention on some of the larger issues facing the nation like the national debt. "This is going to get worse." More...
ST. PAUL--It appears that Republican Party goers put their money where their mouth is. It's just a trickle right now, but we are getting news that the GOP's call on convention-goers here to donate to groups helping victims of Hurricane Gustav worked. Early estimates of total contributions are in the tens of thousands of dollars. The effort came first on the abbreviated Monday session of the Republican National Convention when party Chairman Mike Duncan and Laura Bush asked delegates to phone in a donation to any of the groups. Then they asked groups hosting convention parties to participate. One, the jam-packed Spirits of Minneapolis party, raised $13,000 which was matched by the event's sponsors led by the Distilled Spirits Council, The Hill, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others. Here's what happened when you arrived at the party: After checking in, guests were guided to a table to make a cash or check donation to the American Red Cross. It appeared that virtually everybody stopped to put some money into a fish bowl, including U.S. News. Distilled Spirits exec Frank Coleman tells us that of the eight events on Monday night where donations were made, his raised the most according to the Minnesota Red Cross. More...
A sharp criticism of some New York Times reporting on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor, spilled into a second day today when the McCain campaign sneered that reporter Elisabeth Bumiller was standing by a story that was corrected by the Gray Lady. On a web page devoted to policing the media, the campaign today put out a statement: "Bumiller Stands By Her Story...After Paper Retracts." More...
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been documented in this space and elsewhere as being as ardently pro-life as they come. She's also extremely conservative on other issues: bringing God into government, the right to bear arms and hunt, cutting government spending and so on. So answer this for me: why would she have allowed a picture of herself smiling widely while in the midst of a large group of pro-choice women to be placed on an extremely pro-choice website, The Alliance for Reproductive Justice based in Anchorage. More...
As a follow-up to my previous post on Sarah Palin and the Alaska pro-choice group photo, I heard back from Geran Tarr, executive director of the Alliance for Reproductive Justice in Anchorage. She explained that the picture of her group and others, taken with Governor Palin last year, included representatives from the Alaska Women's Political Caucus, Planned Parenthood, and students. More...
As a follow-up to my last post, other issues worth considering in connection with Sen. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate are: How well was she vetted? Would her deeply held religious beliefs seep into her policymaking? More...
Sen. Barack Obama took the high road in refusing to answer reporters' questions about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol and the girl's decision to marry the father and have the baby. More...
The liberal blogworld is alive and kicking with questions about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and whether she will be as quickly pushed off the McCain ticket as she apparently was added to it. Concerns linger not just over her own version of "troopergate" in which she allegedly fired an Alaska public official for refusing to fire a trooper who messily divorced Palin's sister. Then, too, there's her 17-year-old unmarried daughter who's in a family way. More...
ST. PAUL--In thinking about Sarah Palin's nomination, let me note a phenomenon: the woman who spends much of her adult life as a stay-at-home mother, and then takes a position of leadership and does better at it than her previous background might suggest. Example one: Katharine Graham, who took over as head of the Washington Post and Newsweek in the most wrenching of circumstances and performed more than ably. She tells the story better than anyone else in her elegantly written memoir Personal History. Example two: Madeleine Albright, who performed credibly for four years as Secretary of State. (I haven't read her memoir Madam Secretary.) More...
The Republican National Convention was mostly rained out Monday. But it did one thing that may prove to be of great significance in the 2012 cycle and beyond. As part of the rules it adopted, the convention authorized the party to appoint a commission with authority to change the delegate selection rules. This is a departure from past Republican practice. Up to and including 2004, the Republican National Convention was the final authority on delegate selection rules, and the party had no legal authority to change them over the next four years, as the national Democratic Party has had. The perspicacious Marc Ambinder has the details. Ambinder sees this as a power grab that will antagonize the grassroots of the party; I have a somewhat different take. More...
This is the 20th national convention that I've attended in one way, shape, or form over the years, and this was the quietest Monday I can remember. The Republicans convened at 3 p.m., established the presence of a quorum, received the reports of the credentials, rules, and platform committees and approved them. Then just before 5 p.m., we had a brief speech by Laura Bush, followed by videos of four of the five Gulf Coast governors (all Republicans, she noted: the one partisan note of her appearance). Bobby Jindal evidently didn't have time to cut a video; I would have liked to see excerpts of Jindal's brilliant press conference. Afterwards, Laura Bush returned with Cindy McCain and both gave out E-mail addresses through which people could make contributions. I understand that CNN barely covered the Bush-McCain appearance, while Fox News presented all or most of the speeches. More...
WOW! Talk about energizing the pro-life vote. The McCain campaign has confirmed that it knew 17-year-old Bristol Palin was pregnant when they vetted her Alaskan governor mother to be Sen. John McCain's VP running mate. And that didn't give them pause? More...
I'm surprised, I must admit, bythe initial findings about Gov. Sarah Palin contained in the two daily presidential tracking polls I've quoted repeatedly in this space. More...
ST. PAUL, Minn.--Hurricane Gustav has given us something new in national convention history: a convention that, at least on day one, will be just a pro forma exercise. That was explained in a 3 p.m. press conference Sunday at a small auditorium at the Rivercentre, next door to the Xcel Center arena where the convention will be held. (By the way, the hall feels a lot larger than the Pepsi Center in Denver. Republicans have many fewer delegates than Democrats, and at this convention they'll all be seated on the floor rather than in seats rising from the floor. Curiously, the Arizona and Alaska delegations are not front row center.) John McCain spoke on videoconference and said there should be no political rhetoric while this natural disaster was occurring. Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan explained that the convention must formally convene for legal reasons: otherwise the Republican National Committee would go out of existence and states would list no Republican candidates for president or vice president. Then McCain campaign manager Rick Davis explained what will happen Monday. The convention will convene at 3 p.m. and go through the motions that it must legally go through pursuant to the Call to the Convention. The presiding officer will note the presence of a quorum (a majority of the delegates). The reports of the credentials, rules, and platform committees will be received and, I am sure, promptly approved (as they were at the Democratic convention). No political speeches will be given. More...
If you're looking for answers as to why Senator McCain may have chosen a running mate who's involved in a messy state investigation, think "women's votes" and then think "former Clinton supporters." But she may well try to explain away the allegations of abusing her power by characterizing the investigation as payback for tangling with the state's GOP hierarchy. More...
Sen. John McCain's pick of Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate is a big "come hither" signal to former Clinton supporters to defect to the Republicans. Yes, Sen. Clinton is strongly pro-choice (although she talks more these days about dampening the need for abortion) and Gov. Palin is avidly pro-life, but both are successful female politicians. More...
John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. This obviously undercuts his theme of experience, just as Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden undercut, at least marginally, his theme of change. Palin is just in her second year as governor; she was formerly mayor of Wasilla, a fast-growing town in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. More...
Katie Stands Up To Cancer (4:16) Doctors are working to adapt cancer treatments previously used for adults in order to treat related illnesses found in children. Katie Couric examines this new potential hope for many young patients.
Hanna Puts Scare Into Southeast
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