Palin round-up

I once met Willie Brown who was mayor of San Francisco when I lived there. I didn't like him much but he is a very shrewd politician. Here's what he has to say about Palin:

The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.

Period.

Palin's speech to the GOP National Convention on Wednesday has set it up so that the Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don't do well on defense.

Suddenly, Palin and John McCain are the mavericks and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the status quo, in a year when you don't want to be seen as defending the status quo.

From taxes to oil drilling, Democrats are now going to have to start explaining their positions.

Whenever you start having to explain things, you're on defense.

I actually went back and watched Palin's speech a second time. I didn't go to sleep until 1:30 a.m. I had to make sure I got the lines right.

Her timing was exquisite. She didn't linger with applause, but instead launched into line after line of attack, slipping the knives in with every smile and joke.

And she delivered it like she was just BS-ing on the street with the meter maid.

She didn't have to prove she was "of the people." She really is the people.

I found these two links at Right Wing Nation:

From the Australian Daily Telegraph:

We want a Sarah Palin....

It's not fair!

The Americans have got Sarah Palin. Why can't we have one of those? Mooseburgers may not be everyone's idea of the perfect feed, and some people might baulk at giving their kids names like Track or Trig or Bristol.

Also, the Alaskan Governor holds some views so far to the Right that she risks toppling off the edge.

As a friend of mine remarked on the day Palin accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination: "It's interesting how the apparent contradiction of being simultaneously pro-gun and pro-life resolves itself through the great US institution of the shotgun marriage."

But, hey! The woman is interesting. She's got personality. She's real.

[...]

McCain may have chosen Palin because of her opposition to abortion and her appeal to evangelical Christians and the gun lobby - the Republican Party's base - but I suspect she will have wider appeal, partly because of her background. Americans love obscurity-to-greatness stories and this one is pure Hollywood.

But more importantly, Palin does not talk or behave like a stereotypical politician. She has a down-to-earth manner that normal people relate to.

And from the British Sun:

Palin shows us how it's done

WHY, why, why can’t WE have a Sarah Palin?

That was the question churning in my mind as I witnessed this astonishing American presidential race.

A week ago few in Britain had heard of Palin.

Today, the moose-huntin’ mom is the most talked-about woman in the world.

And with good reason.

Her sensational performance at the Republican convention may turn out to be the moment the White House slipped from Barack Obama’s grasp.

She was an electrifying mix of passion, energy, optimism and plain speaking. The exact opposite of the slippery, two-faced, depressing bunch of third-raters who parade on our Westminster stage.

From the British Telegraph:

Sarah Palin is extraordinarily ordinary

It was the most important Convention in American political history.

At the beginning, the Republicans looked weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. Their candidate was old, tainted by an unpopular war, a stricken economy, and an eight-year presidency that the voters were booing off the stage. Barack Obama was young, eloquent and renewing. He had the future and the big momentum.

Now, everything is in flux. Last weekend, I phoned around my Republican friends. Who is Sarah Palin and what do you know about her?

If cliche can be forgiven, there is an easy summary of their answers: gobsmacked.

[...]

America is different. Despite an increasingly urbanised society, the founding myths still overshadow the political system: virgin soil, the open frontier, log cabin to White House. Even though most recent candidates have been multi-millionaires with a campaign budget the size of a second-world country's GDP, Americans insist on believing that anyone can aspire to the presidency.

Enter Sarah Palin, a woman designed to be the central character in an epic.

Think Virgil, Wagner, Tolkien; the heroic journey through a menacing, God-haunted wilderness, in which success is bought at a terrible price. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Not in our heroine's case.

She comes back from the wilderness to the checkout queue in one of the cheaper supermarkets, swapping stories about price increases with all the other housewives. Sarah Palin has a quality which will guarantee her a high place in politics. She is an extraordinary ordinary person. In old Europe, no one can understand her success. In America, her story has great political power. She is the most important vice-presidential candidate in American political history.

[...]

John McCain knows that this year, the Republican label is a liability. He wants to project himself as the candidate who is above party; hence the slogan "Country First".

Here, Sarah Palin is an asset. A lot of voters now associate Republicans with big money and a self-serving Washington elite. None of that applies to Mrs Palin. She will campaign as a Western populist, and she is a natural born campaigner.

She is also much brighter than Joe Biden, Mr Obama's running-mate, a garrulous blusterer whose intellectual self-confidence is not justified by his intellect. In the one debate between the two vice-presidential candidates, Mrs Palin should win easily.

And from Tammy Bruce in the San Francisco Chronicle:

A feminist's argument for McCain's VP

Whether we have a D, R or an "i for independent" after our names, women share a different life experience from men, and we bring that difference to the choices we make and the decisions we come to. Having a woman in the White House, and not as The Spouse, is a change whose time has come, despite the fact that some Democratic Party leaders have decided otherwise. But with the Palin nomination, maybe they'll realize it's not up to them any longer.

[...]

Palin's candidacy brings both figurative and literal feminist change. The simple act of thinking outside the liberal box, which has insisted for generations that only liberals and Democrats can be trusted on issues of import to women, is the political equivalent of a nuclear explosion.

The idea of feminists willing to look to the right changes not only electoral politics, but will put more women in power at lightning speed as we move from being taken for granted to being pursued, nominated and appointed and ultimately, sworn in.

It should be no surprise that the Democratic response to the McCain-Palin ticket was to immediately attack by playing the liberal trump card that keeps Democrats in line - the abortion card - where the party daily tells restless feminists the other side is going to police their wombs.

[...]

On the day McCain announced her selection as his running mate, Palin thanked Clinton and Ferraro for blazing her trail. A day later, Ferraro noted her shock at Palin's comment. You see, none of her peers, no one, had ever publicly thanked her in the 24 years since her historic run for the White House. Ferraro has since refused to divulge for whom she's voting. Many more now are realizing that it does indeed take a woman - who happens to be a Republican named Sarah Palin.